A Dark Side Adventure

Started with breathing exercises designed to get us thinking about stress and discomfort and its affects.  Start lying on your back and hold your breath as long as you can, not a lot of fun, using burst breathing until you’re back to normal. Then repeat while doing very very slow situps and pushups. Then one person leaning their fists into the other persons abdomen, idea is to breathe through. Then breathing through while one person rolls slowly up and down the other. Interesting.

 An exercise falling on the floor, quite hard, from seated and then from squatting.  About not freaking out about falling.

Then a close-quarters drill where you first simply provide pressure to push an aggressor away. Focus on the push from he body not the arm, getting a good firm position, pushing to their centre. Agressor is at first simply walking slowly into very close range but becomes progressively more active, grabbing etc and the responses get more varied.  Loren decided our movements had got very zombie-like so we stopped and did a simple “lead the person indifferent directions as if they are on wheels” drill to remember the Systema way of moving. Then back to a more full-on version of the first exercise with multiple attackers moving in quite fast. Idea is to be quite detached and just deal with it. I loved this, coped really well.

Loren inserts two or three quick exercises to get our brains relaxed – moving from seated to lying on your stomach without using you arms.

I missed this stuff last week.

More layers. Revisited the scissors movement, Matt did well with this. And a circular, shearing kind of development from the spear. Moving. Striking to pads, backhands, all sorts. Lots of experimentation. Kicks. Conditioning.

Doesn’t sound like a whole lot when I write it up but there was so much going on. Body mechanics, learning, trying to work three-dimensionally. Trying to remember how it feels when it works. I love the science of this, a blast, I come away quietly buzzing. Ben says “cool”.

Missed Systema on Tuesday night, had to work. Managed some Intuflow.

Friday morning Tai Chi. Usual light warmup and Qi Gong. This takes about 30 minutes altogether. Then the last 30 minutes working on the form. We have progressed quite well. Mark revises everything well and works the various components separately before putting it together with the linking moves. He’s a lot more repetitive  and patient teaching this than he is with Ashihara, I think because most of the group are not martial artists and have never done anything similar before. Next week we will come up to the super low, sweeping stance parts of the form, looking forward to that.

Uechi. 

Kotikitae warmup, got to remember structure. A new layer, scissor response to round strike, a different range. Just singly while we got used to it, then adding in backhand and alternating arms. Got to remember structure lol. Then adding in more moving, footwork, looking a little at entries. This segued into work on wrist locks. This was very, very useful. Some knife applications, sticks, showing the congruencies. Marcus demonstrated other ground/body/locking/knife stuff on the boys.

Poured with rain so a little cut short but as always interesting, useful, challenging.

Friday Morning Tai Chi Chuan

Simple warmup segues into Qi Gong breathing and meditation. Then practising the next moves from the form before adding them into the whole. This latest part uses shoulder barges, grabs and strikes, very core generated. The martial dimension is always there but not always obvious. Structure is dynamic – the curious raised toe surge is one big difference I notice from karate. We’ve only done about eight or nine steps of the twenty-four so far.

Interesting this class. Same dojo, same sensei as Ashihara, but completely different group, different energy, different instruction. Which is good actually. I come away energised and calm. (Of course it doesn’t last lolol).

Tuesday Systema

Loren and Alex spent the weekend at a Systema seminar in Christchurch, came back full of stuff.

We started with general rolling to warm up, using core shoulders and back. Then one person standing, the other rolling and manoevring around and between their legs, using core, shoulders and back. This  progresses to moving and rolling against the partner, using gifts, manipulating, trying to disrupt, working to takedown. Using bodyweight to pin and move with the partner, trying not to post arms or legs.

Brief  respite of pushups or in my case, situps, done ultra slow, various versions.

Then one partner grabs the others wrists with some tension. Use core and shoulders etc to move the partner (not generated by the arms).  Then move the partner and disrupt, strike or lock, and finish.  I’m going through a stage where the components aren’t  meshing well, so slowed it down and worked one piece at a time,  putting useful sequences together step by step.

“If you think you’re doing it slow, you’re not”.

Saturday – worked most of the day but fitted in a nice long lagoon walk late afternoon.

Sunday – Uechi. Warmup with various tactile drills. Striking to focus pads, trying to work that relaxed/weighted, loose/connected stuff. Then striking at a hook. Then adding a second pad and striking together. Adding a kick. Forward pressure, pushing forward. Conditioning to finish.

Really good session, damm this stuff is thought provoking lol.

Thursday – Deadlifting.  40kg x 5. This is relatively easy but I want to start with that. Then Intuflow to music.

Daz, Marcus I have read and re-read the instructions for technique. Can you give me any pointers about repetitions? I’m not sure if I should do lots of repeats  at a lower weight or just a couple at the maximum I can achieve?

Friday – Tai Chi

Started with the usual 30 minutes of Qi Gong breathing exercises. Then working on the form. Lots of revision as we have missed a week.

Its a very mixed group – a couple of young mothers who do Mark’s kickboxing classes, a couple of grandparents of his young students, a couple of other adults.

Working on core, on connected movement, on continuous movement. Its all here – weightedness, grounding, dynamic balance, flow. The martial applications are there to be explored.

Havent been able to do this stuff for a while and I’ve missed it. As usual we covered a lot of stuff.

Started with me going through some Intuflow for a warmup for about 15 minutes. Did some very basic spinal rocks, quad squats and leg threading stuff too.

Then leaning in pushing hard against a partner who is standing against the wall, fits, elbows, head.  This is all about feeling pressure and breathing through it. Then lying on the ground one partner rolling slowly up and down the other. Learning to be in a bad, uncomfortable place.

Then one partner  pushes the other to the ground continuously, just have to roll with it wherever it goes. This progressed into a kind of  free for all rolling/pushing/gaining and losing dominance game.

Then a progressive drill avoiding kicks, avoiding and gaining position, avoiding and using the legs to retaliate, then hips and body, then  fingers, then hand-slaps, then elbows and finally whatever, prempting if possible.

Sunday Uechi in the park, yay the weather held out.

Warmed up with kotikitae and bridging. Moved to padwork, slapping and backfists. Marcus identified a lack of mobility in my left shoulder, not surprising given the injury, but its really stuffing up the power generation  on that side. So something to work on there. Lots of mechanics. Sensitivity drills, filling. Confrontational NLD, then conditioning to finish.

A really challenging thing for me, this NLD. I just choked. Some fundamental issues for me to confront regarding agression (my own lack of it) and mindset and …the whole point really.

Gosh, nothing small then.