Blocking from continuum and monopoles in gluodynamics

We review the method of blocking of topological defects from continuum used as a non--perturbative tool to construct effective actions for these defects. The actions are formulated in the continuum limit while the couplings of these actions can be derived from simple observables calculated numerically on lattices with a finite lattice spacing. We demonstrate the success of the method in deriving the effective actions for Abelian monopoles in the pure SU(2) gauge models in an Abelian gauge. In particular, we discuss the gluodynamics in three and four space--time dimensions at zero and non--zero temperatures. Besides the action the quantities of our interest are the monopole density, the magnetic Debye mass and the monopole condensate.