Intensity Skipping Instead of Sprints

In the last month or so, I started doing hard interval running and sprints as conditioning for a potential upcoming fight. Unfortunately, I started to develop some minor pain in my left achilles tendon so, upon advice from my trusty doctor Jenny, I switched over to intensity and interval skipping to replace the running.

To simulate an MMA fight, I always do three 5-minute rounds with a 1-minute rest in between. When doing intensity skipping, I do three 30-second rounds of double skipping within each 5-minute round. This gives me a solid anaerobic work-out that very much simulates the way a fight goes. Jenny told me however that I should only do this type of work-out once a week as it is hard on the body. On other days, I simply do three 5- minute rounds of regular skipping, practicing various technical patterns, with a single 30-second round of double skipping at the end of each 5-minute round. Check out my post, Increasing Your Cardio When Skipping for a video demo of double skipping.

The skipping work-outs seem to put less stress on my joints. And with skipping, I get to work out my upper body more than I do with running, particularly when I'm doing the double skipping portion of the workout. Skipping is almost always the way I warm up as well.

The Usefulness of Flexibility in the Open Guard

This blog post has been moved to our new address: http://pacificwavejiujitsu.com/blog/the-usefulness-of-flexibility-in-the-open-guard

Mastery Revisted

I wrote a blog post last year, Banzo's Sword and the Road to Mastery, that discussed the concept of mastery in the context of martial arts. This concept, which can be applied to the learning of any art of discipline, is what distinguishes us as martial artists rather than self-defense practitioners or fighters.

Anyway, I watched an excellent National Geographic documentary on Kendo and what it takes to achieve the elusive 8th Dan. Kendo, also known as Japanese fencing, is considered both a sport and a martial art. That being said, you are not considered a master simply by winning a gold medal at the Olympics. The 8th degree black belt test has a less than 1% pass rate, the testing of which is not based on how many points the applicants score during the testing, but rather the mental and spiritual commitment of their strikes. They must demonstrate the ability to be fully and completely in the moment, free of all attachments, during their performance.

I know many fighters and self-defense practitioners scoff at the importance of this concept, believing that winning fights or being able to successfully defend one's self is the highest goal. But those who apply the concept of mastery to their training usually end up being better at those other goals.

Here is the video below. It's about 45 minutes long, so brew yourself a cup of tea. Oh and if the Korean subtitles are preventing you from reading the English ones, be ready to pause the video with your mouse. Enjoy!

Developing the Lock Sense

Joint locks are incredibly useful in self-defense. In Jiu jitsu specifically, they epitomize the very ideology of the art - the least amount of force needed to subdue an attacker.

Locks are very scalable; you can use a wrist lock to get rid of an overly friendly drunk at a wedding or club without causing any permanent damage or escalating the situation. You can use the very same lock to disarm a weapon wielding attacker in defense of your life on the street.

The downside to joint locks, and wrist locks in particular, is that while you can learn the techniques rather quickly in the dojo, it can take years to develop and master what I call the lock sense.

The lock sense is the ability you get once you've mastered joint manipulation and you can apply locks by feel alone without having to rely on particular technique. Even in the dojo, the same joint lock doesn't work exactly the same way on everyone, and since locks are so incredibly technical, requiring very fine motor skills, people learning locks are not able to successfully apply them every time. Since acquiring the lock sense can take years, I take a very structured approach to foster its development.

When first teaching locks, I like to skip the big easy joints. Causing pain with an arm lock is quite simple, the elbow only bends one way. However, getting into a position to use an arm lock is quite challenging. Since I'm trying to develop that sense for locks, I'd rather go with a smaller, more flexible joint - the wrist. Getting someone's wrist is pretty easy, since many attacks begin with someone grabbing you. Maneuvering your way into an arm lock can be very challenging. And since the wrist bends in every direction to a limited degree, it gives students more opportunity to sense different tension levels.

I start by teaching three wrist locks which all focus on applying pressure in different directions, causing pain in different ways. The three locks, kote-gaeshi (wrist turn), ura-kote (reverse wrist) and kote-gatame (wrist lock also known as z-lock in many styles), require very simple movements of feet and hips and mostly rely on correct hand positioning.

When introducing locks I have students work very slowly for two reasons: one, locks can come on quickly, easily causing damage when rushed. Safety is always the primary concern in the dojo. Number two, you can get a better sense of resistance of the muscles and tendons in the wrist of your training partner when you apply it slowly.

Finally, in an effort to truly grasp the locks, I make sure all the students feel the pain of a properly applied lock. When you know how it feels in your own wrist, you can begin to visualize how the lock should be applied.

Locks are very easy to demonstrate, but incredibly challenging to teach. There is no way to convey the idea of lock sense to a student, you can only point them on the right path, and correct the technical aspects until that moment of realization.

From a self defense standpoint, locks are an exceptional way to control aggressors and defuse a situation quickly. In actual practice, the fine motor skills and minute adjustments necessary to apply a lock successfully in a high stress situation make them unreliable for the majority of jitsuka until they've truly mastered the lock sense.

And on a final note - you always need a distraction when defending yourself, something to disrupt your attackers movements and thought process to give you that chance to take control. If a slap works, I'm all for it :)

A Cold Shower VS. A Slap in the Face

Tonight, I experienced 2 things that phased me; a cold shower and a slap in the face. You can probably guess which one phased me more... yep, it was the cold shower.

It was my dojo's other instructor's turn to teach tonight. In case you don't know, Chris, one of my students is a brown belt in another style of Jiu-jitsu, Shorinji-kan. After recently promoting him to purple belt, I decided to have him teach 2 classes a week. He's already an experienced instructor since in his style brown belts are considered full instructors, some even running their own clubs. This arrangement has been working out well, allowing me to train with my students on the nights he teaches.

Anyway, tonight Chris taught a class on joint locks. He was teaching an off-curriculum class showing slightly different variations to familiar locks. I had recently chided him that he didn't hit me hard enough when he was using me as his demonstration uke. As a result, he decided to go harder on me. Unfortunately, it was in a way that I didn't expect. For his distraction, he decided to slap me solidly across the face.

"Well you told me to go harder on you!" Chris defended in response to my glare as I touched my hand to my stinging cheek in front of our watching students.

"Yeah, kick me in the groin, punch me in the gut, elbow me in the brachial plexus origin... you just slapped me in the face!" I responded, struggling not to react to the angry shock that comes from being hit that way. The students all shared a laugh at the unusual exchange.

Well as much as the slap in the face surprised me, it didn't bother me anywhere near as much as the ice cold shower I took after I got home. I recently discussed various ways of dealing with muscle soreness on my blog. I even provided information on how to do an ice bath, a method of preventing delayed muscle soreness from working out as recommended to me by Jenny, one of my students who is a doctor. Having told her that I couldn't bring myself to do an ice bath for the perscribed 15-20 minutes, she suggested a cold shower, starting with it on warm, then reducing the temperature.

I figured it was worth a try tonight since I did 2 hours of boxing and strength training with an interval run scheduled for the next morning. As I reduced the temperature to purely cold water, I bellowed loudly and constantly for the full minute or so that I was able to stand it before I wussed out and turned the water off. I can't tell you if this procedure helped. I suspect I didn't do it long enough to get the benefits. Bah!

Anyway, given the choice of being slapped in the face and taking a really cold shower, I would definitely choose the slap. The slap doesn't last as long. :P

Btw, I've recently invited Chris to post on my blog occasionally so expect to see his thoughts on Jiu-jitsu Sensei in the near future.

How to Do Shadow Boxing Effectively

My MMA coach was away on holiday last week, so I met up with my Vancouver personal trainer friend Louis Sargeant (also a professional boxer and martial artist) a few times to keep my training up. We worked exclusively on my striking form and strategy. We did pad work mostly, but he also had me doing shadow boxing as part of my workouts.

Shadow boxing is more than just a warm-up drill, though it is an effective, sport-specific way of warming-up the muscles. It also helps you develop and apply your striking skills. If you shadow box in front of a mirror, you can watch your form and technique to ensure you're striking properly.

Shadow boxing without a mirror is just as important, if not more so. All the best fighters, practice visualizing their opponent when they do shadow boxing. They throw punches and kicks, imagining the reaction of an invisible opponent, then react accordingly themselves. The best shadow boxers look like they're actually fighting someone. Check out Fedor Emelianenko as he does a shadow boxing workout:



Louis tells me that he does a lot of shadow boxing when preparing for a fight. He loves doing it and often does it for as much as 30 minutes. He tells me that if he or my coach isn't available to hold pads for me, that's what I should be doing to practice. I'll definitely be taking that advice on board.

Dealing with Size Differences When Grappling

This blog post has been moved to our new address: http://pacificwavejiujitsu.com/blog/dealing-with-size-differences-when-grappling