Archive for February, 2012

Wednesday – Mainly Legwork

Friday, February 17th, 2012

I got to training late, working as always, this is Loren’s Facebook blog of training Wednesday -a very comprehensive description:

Wednesday 15/02/12 – Breathing pyramid while walking in on your partner/he moves ouof the way. 2 4 6 8 and back down. Natural stepping. As above, breathing however you wish, but now stepping is changed – person escaping must keep your knees together. This position forces you to using alot of turning movements. Added pr…essure by slipping piece of paper between the knees and held there – if it drops, so does the person for 10 push-ups. As above, now feet together – must hop to get out of the way. And finally, as above but now using a very large step – like as if you were stepping over a creek that was just abit to wide. A few excercises thrown in here and there – push-up work/squats. Tag game using the legs – join hands with partner/try to tag one another with the feet/kicking – emphasis on movement. Kicking drilling – starting from pushing game with the feet/pushing to legs (hips down). Allow the pressure to come on – they move you to begin with. This progresses to you feeling when you want to move – still from their touch but now you feel the touch and go. Continue on – now move when you want to/in response to their movement – don’t let them touch you. This then builds into – evading then working against the attacker’s leg to disrupt them and bring them down. Timing/catching/doing more with less. Very hot /humid day today/ quite vigorous work – added in cool down phase for the last 10 – 15 minutes: partner comes in for the grab/you evade then look to see where your weapons have ended up – strike/touch 5 targets using your various weapons. Look for the odd angles, let the weapons feed each other, feel how their body is moving – make your work short and precise…..subtle/efficient. Nice flow to the session – people working very well with one another/switched partners alot today and people gauging work to new partner in good ways. Talked within the group about: feeling ok with reseting, going back along the progression of things start getting tense/uncomfortable/just not working – go back a step, or two – slowly build up when you’ve recovered and calmed. We also discussed how the four main pillars can be used very positively to help you – but the flip side to that is they can affect each other in negative ways if we ignore them and a vicious loop can kick off – stop breathing and you can’t relax, can’t relax and you stop moving, stop moving and you try to compenstate by deforming your structure, when your structure is gone – you can’t breathe! And so in a downward spiral……..take time during training if things are working right – if it’s one of the principles not being applied, fix it and watch/feel the positve roll-on!! Thanks very much for the effort Crew – enjoyed the session a lot!! Cheers!!

My own comment is that I LOVE the way a quick foot slip or sweep f**ks  up your brain. We walk thousands of steps every day and always our foot meets the ground as we expect. So when it just doesn’t – WOW – brain is momentarily stunned.  We can train to perform it and also to be less affected by it.

 

Tuesday

Tuesday, February 14th, 2012

Systema . Started with mummy drill on the ground -  moving to avoid a person walking at you, just getting out of the way but with the minimum of effort and staying in contact distance if possible. Then a nice set of ground leg exercises – kneeling drills,  from box to box, hunter to  hunter, and then the whole series from box to squat to hunter and back. Then back to the first drill this time adding some kind of  to disrupt with the hands. Super slow pushups. Situps, then partner checked situps. Same with squats, importance of keeping structure. Then a kind of reverse quad press – partner lies on your arms and legs, you have to lift them up and down, then around as much as you can. This moved us back to the early drill adding in leg disrupts, particularly lifting against the inside of the opponents thighs and also using the body. Segued very nicely into the work we did on Sunday, trapping the foot and sing the body to take down. Lots of knee work tonight, I have to be very very careful.

Sunday

Saturday, February 11th, 2012

Completely forgot to blog Tuesday’s Systema, which was largely groundwork, lots of quite full-on wrestling, as well as the usual squats/pushups/situps in different formats and some work  using your own body movement and connection to move the attacker.

 Today we got a list (ask my family, I love lists), very helpful. Warmup of spinal rocks/presses/starjumps/jumpsprawls/squats/leg threads – 40 of each, any order you like. Then ground stuff – facing the attacker, getting up by threading the front leg back. Also a very nice leg lever takedown. Functional. Kanshiwa revised. Conditioning, nicely buzzed.

Sunday

Sunday, February 5th, 2012

Started with spinal rocks coming up to the knees and (eventually) standing. Couldnt do it until I tried. Then revision of stuff from last week. Dealing with hooks and strikes at three levels. Striking pads. A taste of Kanshiwa. Conditioning. There was heaps more of course. I think we are now starting to see relationships better, or at least think about them more strategically,  and JCM has become a big part of that thinking.