Results for FireDragon Fitness Test

[Bill Glasheen]

I just finished entering the raw data. It will take a little while for me to do all the analyses I want to do.

However...

Some of these performances were so extraordinary that I simply had to share them. So just to tease you a bit, I am going to post the bests in each of the categories. I am not (yet) going to separate by gender, because - yes - a woman won one of the categories.

BEST PERFORMANCES - 13/Aug/2005

One-Minute Push-up Max
Fedele Cacia - 124 reps


One-Minute Pull-up Max
Fedele Cacia - 21 reps


One-Minute Sit-up Max
(tie)
Dan Munger - 61 reps
William Schneider - 61 reps


Standing Broad Jump
Kevin Guse - 9 feet 4.5 inches


One-Minute Air Squat Max
Fedele Cacia - 73 reps


Mile Run (done after all other events)
Bridget Stevens - 6:24


Do these performances surprise me? No.

* Fedele used to compete as a bodybuilder before he went into martial arts. And in spite of his smaller size, he hits like a ton of bricks.

* I don't know the gentlemen who won the sit-up max, but they just barely beat a cluster of others. That's basically one sit-up per second.

* Kevin Guse played football at Nebraska, and football is all about explosiveness. He and some associates have just come out with a general purpose training video for all sports.

* Bridget is a student of Jimmy Malone, and is preparing for her first boxing match. I imagine she does a fair amount of road work for her conditioning.

Finis origine pendet - the end depends upon the beginning.

- Bill

[RACastanet]

"Standing Broad Jump
Kevin Guse - 9 feet 4.5 inches"

WOW! I saw someone hit 9 feet and was amazed at how the person flew. Kevin's score is amazing. Bill: Is Kevin a big person? Lanky? I never quite made 7 feet but I was 49 when I tried the Marine version of this test in Feb 2002. And it was below freezing outside. I do not know if freezing or hot/humid is better for sailing like that. Bill?

When Bill gets all the results tabulated and normed or whatever I am going to share them with the MCMAP director. I bet he'll add this into his curriculem for instructors and trainers.

Rich

[Bill Glasheen]

Kevin is built like me, Rich. Most people wouldn't give him a second thought. I have his stats at work, and will give them later. (I know he won't mind)

Chad saw his performance, and was absolutely stunned.

This is what power development gives you. It's the plyometrics on top of the strength training. When I visited David Lamb and his Uechi club in Lincoln last fall, Kevin brought me into the Nebraska football team training rooms and also let me sit in on practice. (I needed special permission and passes.) Those folks are REALLY serious about what they do. And those boys can hit hard.

I bought Kevin's group's brand new training video from him at camp. I'm going to review it after I get done with this.

- Bill

[gmattson]

I've viewed about 1/3 of the dvd. Really good material here and training techniques that should prove invaluable to martial artist who wish to take their training to another level.

All simple exercises, using inexpensive equipment, easily made or created with available resources.

[chewy]

I just finished entering the raw data. One-Minute Sit-up Max
(tie)
Dan Munger - 61 reps
William Schneider - 61 reps

* I don't know the gentlemen who won the sit-up max, but they just barely beat a cluster of others. That's basically one sit-up per second.


- Bill

Bill,

Dan Munger is one of Sensei Pat Saunder's student in Stow, MA... he is one of the teens in our adult classes. I didn't participate in the Fire Dragon Team because I was so overwhelmed with the amount of clinics going on and didn't want to miss anything. On the car ride over I encouraged Dan and his younger brother (Jordan) to try the Fire Dragon event, given that they are so young and healthy (unlike me ).

Dan also ran a fast mile from my recollections (just over 7 minutes?) and supposedly excelled and many of the events. He is 16-17 year old and in excellent shape.

Fidel Sensei never ceases to amaze me! He is Sensei Saunder's instructor and visits our dojo occassionally. So much power! He makes me feel like I'm working with somebody closer to my own height/weight. Incredibly fit man!


cheers,

chewy

[RACastanet]

Bill: What was the time interval between stages?

Rich

[Bill Glasheen]

Good question, Rich.

The logistics were everything here. I had to make this work first time with only a handful of smart people, with the available space (not knowing where I would find a chin-up bar and where the mile run would be beforehand), and with an unknown number of people presenting themselves expecting to be tested within a short interval of time before lunch. As it turned out, twenty people showed up for the morning test. We had to get them through it all in a short time slot. And to time the mile correctly, I either had to have 20 people with 20 stopwatches, or have everyone start at the same time. And only one person at a time could go through the chin-up and the standing broad jump.

Sooo...

It immediately became obvious to me that if I made the time interval between exercises short enough, that the ABSOLUTE time interval would be critical. Thirty seconds rest would be very different from a minute rest.

I decided to make it like rests between exercises in the weight room. I wanted order not to matter too much, and performances not to change a lot if we had 2 or 20 people come through at a time. As it was, some people did chin-up first, and broad jump second. Others did it the other way around. This way we got the group through those bottlenecks as quickly as possible.

For the push-ups, sit-ups, and air squats, I developed a buddy system. We would go through 2 rounds. One would do the exercise, and the other would count, give feedback (go deeper... come all the way up...), hold feet on the sit-ups, and just coach. It wasn't perfect. I know some push-ups were better than others. Vicki was way too generous with Sterling's push-ups (he's 6 years old and terminably cute) so I threw that result out. Some squats didn't go all the way to thigh parallel, some didn't straighten up enough, etc. But it worked out 'half decent.'

The air squats were the next to the last part. Because one group went before the other, I waited until everyone was done and folks had a chance to rest just a bit. Then I had them all line up and start at the same time. The competitiveness helped people push a little harder, and made it easier for our "pace car" to lead people through the standard mile circuit around the MMA campus. A "mercy car" followed everyone, and picked Sterling up (sandals and all) about 3/4 of the way through.

There are lots of ways you can run this. If you want a reliable, reproduceable assessment, and want it done with a minimum of fuss, I believe this "adequate rest" interval works out best. If you want to do training as opposed to assessment, then you can shorten the time intervals and even make people do extreme things (crawl, drag things, etc.) from station to station. That would be a good way to train for the test.

Trust me - the thighs still were fatigued for many. You could tell. Bridget burned through her mile with no problem, showing her superior boxing legwork conditioning. (Should we be surprised? This points to a weakness of Uechi supplemental training, IMO.) Others ended up walking the last half. There was quite a spread. The combo achieved its desired effect without the issue of extreme sensitivity to test conditions, IMO.

Thoughts?

- Bill

[Valkenar]

Thoughts?

I enjoyed doing it, and think overall it went well from what I saw. But do I think there was a fair bit of wiggle-room in a number of the exercises, so I'm not so sure the scores should be taken as gospel. Still, it should generate some interesting numbers.

Hopefully as time goes by it'll be refined to the point where it's possible to get really reliable statistic. Of course, the desire for simplicity is always going to be at odds with the desire for accuracy. I'm looking forward to seeing the finished results.

One personal change I'd make, is that next year I'll try to pull my hamstring sometime after the test, rather than the day before.

[RACastanet]

"For the push-ups, sit-ups, and air squats, I developed a buddy system."

At MCMAP amost all drills were in fact partner exercizes and we counted for each other. This works well. For the run pretty much everyone had a watch with a timer and we timed ourselves There needs to be some trust. That eliminates the need for a lot of counters and timers. However, for the official semiannual fitness test (PFT) there are official counters and timers.

Regarding the buddy honor system, there was always someone wandering around. The rule for cheating was at the least a glare, then probably a lot more personal attention and work, or if flagrant, termination of participation at that event or the program. I do not expect GEM will be expelling anyone from camp though.

"(crawl, drag things, etc.) from station to station. That would be a good way to train for the test."

Yes, a good way to train. My partner was Sean for the last 9 months or so I had a nice solid 185 pounds to drag around. Of course, he had 200 pounds to haul. One other evil thing to keep you warm while between stages was a curling/pressing station with lots of barbells. Another was a row of benches with 30 cal ammo cans full of wet sand. For your minute you had a can in each hand and you stepped up onto the bench alternating legs. That is nasty. I can go on and on with ways to keep busy during these one or two minute intervals.

"I believe this "adequate rest" interval works out best."

This is fine just so it is consistant. Five minutes between events is ok just so it is the consistant rest time. But that would really extend the total test time.

Swapping the up front events is fine but leave the long jump, air squats and run in that order at the end.

Since I value flexibilty so highly the one thing I would add in the future is a simple stretching test. Maybe just sitting on the ground with legs straight and seeing how far forward you can go. A simple measure of distance of your fingertips beyond your ankles would give a benchmark. A yardstick would do the trick.

Rich

[chewy]

First, let me say, that Bill did a great job on very short notice. I could tell from the tail end of the Saturday morning session that the sheer turn-out forced him to make some basic changes. Live-and-learn...

A few thoughts from watching my fellow students and discussions on the ride home.

1) Now that the FDT has been run once we need to encourage dojos to not only do the exercizes, but LEARN THE RULES. I realize sticking with the rules isn't something many teens and 20-somethings like to do yet, but watching the situp portion of the FDT I could see many people counting bad situps (butt off the ground). If we are comfortable with the FDT standard, then we need to promote not just the excersizes, but the role of the spotter.

2) Anyone want to design a portable chinup bar? Great job improvising though. I didn't watch the chipups, but based upon available equipment I assume Bill had to run people through serially. We need a nice solution for this to speed up the FDT process. While our dojo's two guinnie pigs loved the event, they regretted missing some of the morning sesssions.

cheers,

chewy

[Bill Glasheen]

Justin

Your description pretty much nails it. This is an approximate assessment - like those "surveys" we were looking at in another thread - that works out pretty damn well considering its simplicity and occasional lack of precision. Simple and reasonably accurate and reasonably precise and reasonably comprehensive and easy to execute under a variety of conditions is difficult to pull off. This assessment seems to be the right balance.

I have much more discussion in my back pocket, partially based on some great conversations I had with Jimmy Malone. In a bit...

I'm looking forward to seeing the finished results.

I want to be completely open with this. I'm de-identifying the individual results (just like HIPAA rules here where I work) to protect identities and assure people they can be privately assessed. But I have some charts that I want to share.

George has provided me with a place on the site where I can upload Powerpoint slides and stuff. I'm putting together some interesting histograms and such. But it sure would be nice if I could just drop some jpegs of the Excel or Powerpoint plots on a place where I could have them in this thread. Right now I can't figure out how. And I don't have my SAS Enterprise Miner where I could do this easily. Bummer...

But I'll just put the slideshow together and create the link. Then we all can discuss. Already it's looking interesting.

Swapping the up front events is fine but leave the long jump, air squats and run in that order at the end.

I agree, Rich.

Roy Bedard pulled me aside and offered his opinion. What he said baffled me. Maybe he's right, and maybe not.

Roy was saying that if we did the mile run first, that this would burn fats which would release energy that we could use in the subsequent events. He was talking energy and ATP and such.

Hmm...

Now I didn't do all that great in biochemistry but...

There are three general modes of energy release.

The first, which is what you would use exclusively on the standing broad jump and early parts of the push-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups, and air squats is the phosphocreatine system. This is where you lop off phosphate bonds on the ATP, and put it back inbetween events with the phosphocreatine. Sprinting and most weight training events primarily use the phosphocreatine system.

The second kicks in after about the first 10 seconds or so on some of these events where you can do more than 10 seconds of effort (push-ups, sit-ups, squats). That would be the glycolytic system. It too is anaerobic, like the phosphocreatine system. It gives less energy than phosphocreatine, but carries you through farther.

The final is the aerobic system, which is what you use pretty much for most of the mile run.

Can anyone explain to me how doing a mile run first would boost the reserves in the phosphocreatine and glycolytic system? I think Roy is confusing burning fat (and getting in shape) with what we really want to be doing - getting a best assessment of someone's fitness level. Or maybe I need more biochemistry.

Perhaps Dr. Ian or Dr. Haydu can comment - depending on how far removed they are from all the classroom work. I just want to give Roy a good response to his suggestion, since it was given with the best of intentions. Maybe there's something we can do with it either on the training or the assessment end of this.

Since I value flexibilty so highly the one thing I would add in the future is a simple stretching test. Maybe just sitting on the ground with legs straight and seeing how far forward you can go. A simple measure of distance of your fingertips beyond your ankles would give a benchmark. A yardstick would do the trick.

I'm with you, Rich. And I also want to consider something Jimmy Malone said.

As you probably know by now from being my student, there are many vital aspects to flexibility that are important to a Uechika. It isn't just your ability to touch your toes (lumbar, glutes, and hamstring flexibility) or do a lateral split (adductor flexibility). As you know, we constantly see people in beginning Sanchin who can't hold their elbows where they should be because of tightness in the posterior deltoids, rotator cuff problems, etc. Plus toe and thumb flexibility come in important for doing good "Uechi pointy thing" techniques.

I think this is something that could be its own test. Let's consider it as a future project. We can get Mr. David Lamb involved, our Uechi instructor in Nebraska. He's also a gymnastics coach, and has daughters who have competed in college. One in fact works now in Cirque de Soleil. Very cool!

Jimmy was talking about the problem with tests like these vs. the needs of LEOs. He said they had officer candidates who would do well on a test like this, but couldn't make an arrest. Because of their specific needs, they started assessing people on 180 pound bag drags and such. They wanted to simulate a few scenarios common to getting their job done, such as moving an uncooperative prisoner from point A to point B.

Over time maybe we can do a simple strength assessment in a gym. We could do some classic Olympic lifts, or something like that. Or maybe we just have people drag stuff...

For future projects.

For now, we need to understand what this test does. It DOES tell you whether or not you are a fit human - pound for pound. But like a lot of things we do, it isn't a guarantee that you'll be able to open up a can of Whoop-Ass at the moment of truth. It is what it is - no more and no less.

To a certain extent, the kinds of extra tests put on LEO candidates are as much culling exercises as they are assessments and benchmarks. Some little pixies never will be able to drag an 200-pound man from point A to point B. So you weed them out early, and help them find a career path that takes advantage of their own unique set of skills.

We can consider assessing absolute strength and power skills. But we'll have to realize that - like boxing and wrestling - you're going to have different expectations for different weight categories.

- Bill

[gmattson]

Is that there is always too many things to do and too little time. Going into this thing, Bill, Fred and I didn't expect a big turnout. . . hoping to just get a couple of volunteers to see how it would work. Therefore, time wasn't an issue.

However, when 20 showed up, with only an hour to complete everything, Bill and Fred did what they had to do and accomplished their task... in exactly one hour!

Now that we know how popular this test will be and how it will grow, next year we will probably run it on Friday evening from 7-9PM. (Stays light until well after 9PM)

Portable chin-up bars are a must and I see opportunities for between set activities, ala Rich's suggestions.

We are looking for FireDragon designs for a shoulder patch. If anyone would like to submit one, please email it to me asap. (The one I did was "last minute" and I'm sure can be improved upon.)

[RACastanet]

"Can anyone explain to me how doing a mile run first would boost the reserves in the phosphocreatine and glycolytic system? I think Roy is confusing burning fat (and getting in shape) with what we really want to be doing - getting a best assessment of someone's fitness level."

I agree with you on this. The MCMAP Instructor/Trainer course includes certification as a 'Combat Conditioning Specialist'. I have gone through some of the training and they have great documentation on the three energy systems. It appears to me that the run will deplete some of the ATP reserves before the events that really need them.

However, in one of the MCMAP CCS manuals it states that anerobic activity can stimulate production af ATP, allowing for the last sprint in the 3 mile run. Lots of lactic acid production though. I need to read and reread this section in the manual.

Much of the training out in the fleet is to allow each Marine to max out in all three systems. They believe the maximal exercise using ATP can be extended to 30 or 60 seconds or more.

"Jimmy was talking about the problem with tests like these vs. the needs of LEOs. He said they had officer candidates who would do well on a test like this, but couldn't make an arrest."

And "Or maybe we just have people drag schit... "

This is one reason so many MCMAP partner exercizes include various buddy drags between events. I'll show you some on Saturday. I'll bring my flak jacket so there is something good to hold onto.

Rich

[Fedele Cacia]

I can’t speak for anyone else but if I had ran the mile first; I would have had to rest for at least twenty minuets before I would have been able to complete the other events to my satisfaction. As I said to you before Bill, I think that you did a great job of arranging the events and the only thing that I would have changed would be a few more minutes between the squats and the run.



Ps. give us the results already!!!



Fedele

[RACastanet]

"a few more minutes between the squats and the run."

Heheheh.

The original intent of this test was to start the run immediately after the max squats. I ran it that way a few times and the burn was excruciating ... and it added minutes to my run time. You need to thank Bill for the modification. I wanted him to do it without any rest time after the squats.

To be honest though, I'd take as much time as allowed in the future.

Rich