Hard warmup with handweights - stair work, lunges, a variety of lifts, cleans, pushups (situps for me). Then 1 minute rotations of bagwork/ abwork/ skipping. Finished with 150-odd squat kicks. 45 minutes. Then stretching.
Kata Nage Ichi with bunkai practise.
Legs are killing me lolol.
Warmup of pushups on the wall on a person. Then grabbing handfuls of/pinching a person.
Then ground work. First all in a circle with a target held out, person in the centre has to move around striking the target with hands, elbows or feet. Then onto partner work, one on the ground their using legs to destabilise or disrupt the other. Went onto avoiding and absorbing slow kicks, then preemptive hand and leg work from the ground. Jam and disrupt, takedown.
Some pushups to break it up. Then very slow absorbing and redirecting, disrupting pushing kicks.
Hard work, challenging, important.
Pouring with rain so Systema in the band rotunda, just eight today.
Started with a shoulder warmup. One person has an outstetched arm, other has to just manoevre their shoulders around, over and under etc staying in contact. Same with elbows, turns into a flow. Then the outstretched arm gives pressure or direction, have to flow and move with it. Don’t move too much. Two on one, feeling the pressure and moving to release. Then add the gift, maybe just a lazy weighted slap, only if it works.
Then the same just balancing on one foot – how to keep structure by using the other leg as a counterweight.
Moved to a group drill, everyone in a circle feet wide but touching, all pushing, lots of laughing. Finished with one in the centre, everyone pushing at once, ramping up the intensity. This was harder work than it looked, body contantly moving, absorbing, redirecting. Intu-flow with external impetus - a workout because its three-dimensional.
Nearly two hours of constant, flowing movement my aching body tells me lol.
To start we just worked with our partner’s arms, very relaxed. Object was to find locks and point of disruption using their fingers, hands or arms. Long levers and short, all flowing in together. Various parts of the body to create the lever – arms, body, chin etc. Cool thing the Russians call the “shovel”. I haven’t done a lot of this so it was very very valuable stuff. Progressed to moving past a person using a lock or disrupt on the way through.
Then the mummy drill, three against one, not fast, just get out of the way. (Be not there!) Then the mummys move through with one arm out, idea is to deflect and avoid. Then add the casual locks on the way through. This ramped up to using pre-emptive strikes, locks and jams, still three on one, at a faster pace. Amazing fun.
Today my arms are telling me that they got twisted about some. Another good, useful session.
Warmup with 8 kgs of hand weights – stair running and lunges, a variety of strength drills. Hard work, I’m still resting the left side. Then partner stretching, went well.
A nice drill working the choke – double block, ear clap, grab head and knee to the groin, grab head (crank?) and rotate to takedown.
Then kata in groups – at last a chance to actually learn Kumite Ichi. Its not difficult and I enjoyed the process. Got me thinking about kata and the brain.
Systema.
Warmup was pushing on the ground. Then out came the knives. First just moving out of the way – be not there. Slow. Then same against the wall, adding a guide. Then freeform pushup/forward pressure variations against the wall. Finished with more knife avoidance and re-direction, two against one. Nice.