Here, in a nutshell, is why I'm so suspicious of self defense instructors, especially ones who come from a martial arts background.

Most of them have very little experience in actual self defense situations. Take me, for example (although I would never claim to be a self defense instructor to begin with). I haven't been in a real fight since grade school. I've never even been close to a real fight. Most martial arts teachers I know have either never or very rarely been in a real fight. What makes you think the tae kwon do instructor down the street has ever actually been in a real fight against a real thug who was really trying to hurt him?

Does that mean I know nothing about defending myself? Well, I can't know for sure, now can I? How would I find out? I'd have to put myself into situations where I was likely to get into serious fights on several different occasions and see how badly I get hurt. Guess what? I'm not going to do that. No chance.

What about bouncers? Well, as some bouncers will admit, most of a bouncer's job is dealing with drunk people who aren't too interested in fighting the bouncer to begin with. Do bouncers get into real fights? I'm sure some do, but again, I'm not sure how applicable their experiences are to more common self defense situations.

Cops? Well, I'm somewhat suspicious about generalizing a cop's fighting experience to a non-officer. What I mean is, I think that the situations most cops get into have very different dynamics than what a non-police officer is likely to encounter. That uniform seems to add a dimension to fights that isn't the same as the fights I'd get into. Police are usually armed, for one thing (I'm not, and you're probably not). I'd still take a cop's word for the reality of violent encounters over, say, my own, because I'm sure most police have a lot more real experience with real violence than I ever will.

One group that I would think does deal with a lot of violence is prison guards. Think about it - a bunch of violent people locked up all the time. The guards are in uniform, yes, but the prisoners see them every day, so they might not have the same reaction that, say, I would have if a police officer pulled me over (familiarity breeds contempt and all that). These are guys (and gals) who have to put their hands on crazy and violent people with some regularity.

Check out Chiron's blog. I got into it via Steve Perry's website (the author, not the singer. Great books, by the way). It's about violence, guns, self defense, martial arts, and a whole lot of other stuff, written by a prison guard. Good writer, lots of interesting points, and an experience I trust a lot more than that of most of the other guys out there who claim to know self defense.

Want to get in shape for basketball? Play basketball. You can run sprints and lift weights until the cows come home, but you'll probably get beaten on the court by somebody who just plays basketball. There are two general reasons for this. The first is that the person who plays basketball will presumably develop greater skills than the person who lifts weights or runs sprints. The second is that the conditioning the player will receive will be exactly the kind of conditioning you need to play basketball, whereas the conditioning you get from weights or running might be different.

Want to get in shape for fighting? Run windsprints. Lift weights. Play basketball.

The two questions above look the same, but there is one important difference. In theory you could get in shape for sparring or fighting by sparring or fighting - clearly the training would be sport specific - you don't get more sport specific than practicing your sport. There are two reasons I don't think sparring should form the core of your sparring conditioning program.

The first reason is injuries. I'm not talking about trips to the emergency room injuries, I'm talking about the dings and bruises that you get from sparring. For example, we had a pretty good sparring workout this past Saturday (it was promotion day in our class). I fought a lot and had a great workout. But Sunday I couldn't straighten my left arm, I had multiple lumps on my arms and shins, and my hips and back were extremely tight from the kind of overuse I can only put them through while under the effects of serious adrenaline surges.

None of these were real injuries, but they were enough to curtail my training on Sunday. I used the foam roller for a while and by Monday I was nearly fully recovered, and other than some bruises I'm fine now (it's Tuesday). The thing is that if I depended on sessions like that to stay in shape I'd have to repeat the session today, or tomorrow at the latest. I'd walk around all the time with dings and bruises and light joint injuries. As things stand now, we fight every other week for an hour to an hour and a half. That's plenty of time to fully recover between sessions. If we did it three times a week do you think we'd still remain injury free? I suspect that those little dings and bruises would quickly mount to things more serious.

I'm reminded of stories about Muay Thai fighters. These guys fight a lot of bouts in their careers. I've heard (and this might be wrong) that they don't spar very often, depending instead on rigorous training, because when they spar they take too much damage.

The second reason not to spar yourself into shape is that doing skill development while you're tired is not the best thing for the skill. If you do a lot of fighting while you're slow and fatigued you're training your body to move the way it does when you're slow and fatigued. I'm not saying not to ever do this, but I suspect it shouldn't form too large a chunk of your training. Which means you need to develop your endurance doing something that isn't fighting, so that when you do fight you get the neurological adaptions you want.

In my limited experience people who spar more often tend to be teenagers, or they go easier (lighter contact, slower speeds), or they spar less intensely - spar a bout, then watch some other guys do a bout, but not nonstop fighting. I'm sure there are exceptions, but I think that especially people who are older or have had injuries or who aren't inherently durable will do better getting in shape with some other activity and treating sparring as a skill development, not a conditioning development, session.

Now, I have benefited from occasional sessions like last Saturday's, and sparring to one's physical limits on occasion is very good for "topping off" your cardio. I just don't think it's a good idea to use this as the meat of your training regimen, no matter how much fun it is.

There's at least one other reason not to depend on sparring for your conditioning. Getting a good sparring workout requires a number of partners with the appropriate skill levels (I would say at least close to being as good as you). Some people have access to communities of partners like this - if I trained in New York, where my style is based, I'd always have more partners around than I could hope to work through - but most of us are in smaller schools and just can't count on getting enough people together often enough to make sure to always have enough partners. Could you get a good workout sparring just a couple of people multiple times per week? Maybe, but I think you'd get bored with each other, and fighting bored is not a good idea.

One last point. Exercises you do on your own are more controllable in the sense that you can strictly vary the pace, intensity, and effort put into it. If you're doing snatches and you want to do 6 in 20s, you do 6 in 20 s. If you're feeling good you can just move up to 7, if you're tired drop to 5. If you're sparring the pace will often depend on the other person's ability and conditioning and how they feel that day. If you're fighting someone who's tired or weaker than you, you could just push the pace and pound the crap out of them for the sake of getting a good workout, but I'm not sure that's entirely ethical. Plus, you might find that you have a hard time getting people to train with you.

Osu

I've read a couple of blog posts recently that made me think about martial arts technique.  Check out this post on koshi - it is about old Okinawan methods of generating power.  It starts out pretty straightforwardly, but by the end, the "advanced techniques," it makes relatively little sense to me.  Just what is meant by "internalized movement?"  What the hell is moving internally?  Your liver?  You're generating power with your appendix, your spleen, what?  I find it relatively easy to ridicule these notions.

Try out this post.  It uses language that is even more nonsensical to me, although it's all coming from a Chinese, rather than an Okinawan, source.  Same nonsensical stuff though - joints moving on their own, with no muscle action?  Opening and closing joints, stuff happening that wouldn't make sense to anybody even remotely familiar with an anatomy book.

When you approach writing like this there is among many of us an urge to dismiss it immediately and often with disdain.  I respect that urge, I really do, and I tend to participate in it.  But it might be useful to keep a few things in mind.

The first is that these people clearly do not know how to explain well what they are doing.  The tendon twisting post in particular makes no sense.  BUT the fact that they cannot explain what they are doing coherently does not mean that they are doing something wrong or that it is ineffective.  It is possible that their words just do not convey the reality of their techniques very well.

For an example of this, take acupuncture.  The qi channels that those needles supposedly open or whatever don't exist, but the fact remains that if you stick the needles in the right spots you can do wonders for people, especially in pain management.  Many doctors and Western trained people dismiss acupuncture because it's "backstory" makes no sense.  The fact is, however, that it works, at least for some things.

I cannot rule out the fact that either Mr. Gooden or Mr. Phillips or both have incredible skills in body mechanics and are tremendous martial artists based on the fact that what they say they are doing (opening and closing joints, twisting tendons, utilizing internal torque) is nonsensical.  I can rule out the fact that they are scientific thinkers, but that doesn't make them bad people or bad martial artists.  It is entirely possible that both these gentlemen can hit harder than me, fight better, and move more quickly. 

The second thing to keep in mind is that you have to maintain skepticism in the face of these kind of descriptions of body mechanics, especially because they make no sense.  Just as there are people who would immediately dismiss these guys as idiots, there are others who would gasp and pant and proclaim how cool they are and go find a tai chi class to attend immediately.  That's equally stupid.

I have a secret weapon here.  A person I trust completely happens to tell me that the theories Mr. Gooden is relating, at least, are potentially very effective.  So I'm convinced - but I don't expect you to be convinced by this story - I mean, come on, "a guy I know believes it..."

The only way we should take these guys at their word is if representatives from either camp came out and participated in some kind of objective testing.  I'd love to see someone Mr. Phillips endorses as a skilled instructor come out and hit one of those pressure sensing makiwara contraptions.  Let's see how hard he can really hit without involving his muscles and so forth.  Let's see Mr. Gooden break something, or hit a heavy bag, using internal torque alone.  

If you can get a 150 lb. tai chi instructor to hit harder than a 150 lb. kyokushinkai sensei then I'll believe there's something to it.  Until then, I have to regard any technique that can't be explained with real anatomical concepts, the way someone like Pavel Tsatsouline can explain things, with the utmost suspicion.

An open mind is a good thing, but if it's too open, all kinds of crap can get into it.

For now I'm just going to have to stick to techniques that I can understand.

I want to say a little more about speed.

I might be the only one, but I've had the tendency to associate speed increases with an increase in quadricep strength. That is, I think (or have thought) that to get faster I'd have to develop bigger (or stronger, or both) quads. After all, look at high level sprinters - they have outstanding quad develoment. So I've tried to do things like squats (which for my body are a quad dominant exercise for some reason) or even (gasp!) leg extensions to get faster.

The problem is that I'm not a sprinter. Look at what a sprinter does. They start from a crouched position with their feet on those neat little blocks. From there, with legs bent, the initial push can indeed come from straightening the legs - all quads. Then, to maintain their stride, they need to lift the knees high and drive the foot forward with every step - quads again.

But do we do this in sparring? I never take more than two or three steps in any one direction while sparring. I certainly never get my knees as high as they go during a sprinting movement. And I am always moving from a basically upright stance - my knees are bent, but not very, and certainly nowhere near the way a sprinter's are at the beginning of their run, while they're in the blocks.

So what muscles do we use to move forward while sparring? I first realized this because of where I was feeling sore after a long sparring day. It wasn't my quads - it was in my hamstrings and glutes. So I started thinking.

When you move forward from a fairly upright position your quads can't do much. Try it - stand in a fighting stance and straighten your legs forcefully. Unless you keep your back leg kind of coiled underneath you (not a typical fighting stance) you won't get very far. What really happens? To move forward, you have to kind of pull the ground towards your back with both feet. Try it. Grip the ground with your toes and pull it back. What happens? Your body moves forward. What muscles are you using? It's not your quads - it's your glutes and hamstrings. Those are the muscles that pull your legs back, whether the leg starts in front of you or behind you. If you want, you can "load up" your legs to feel this. Face a wall and place both hands against it. Keepign your knees very slightly bent, try to push forward against the wall. You should feel this in your hamstrings and glutes.

What exercise will work these muscles? The squat will, of course, but for many people the emphasis will be wrong - it will get more quads and less the muscles you need to worry about. Deadlifts would work great, with the added advantage of working the back. My favorite, though, to get the real snap - the strength up near the locked out position of the hips - I like kettlebell swings. Heavy swings will make your closing speed (the rate at which you can accelerate forwards out of a fighting stance) better.

What about lateral movement? Well, unless you fight with your feet parallel to one another (which most people don't) anything that lets you drive your legs in any direction (side to side or front to back) will cross over somewhat to movement in other directions ((skip this if you don't care - but think, if your front leg is facing forwards but your back leg is pointing to the side at a right angle to the front, then the same hamstring and glute strength that lets your front leg pull you forward will let your right leg pull you to the right. But you'd get better motion in both directions if your front leg was better at pushing you to the right or left and your back leg could do the same.))

Now which muscles contribute to lateral movement? I don't know the names of all of them (bad me), it's a combination of hip adductors (muscles that let you spread your legs forcefully) and hip abductors (let you snap them together when they're spread). These are muscles in your groin, the outside of your hip, and some of the muscles in the glute area.

How do we work these? Swings won't do it, and neither will squats. I mean, squats will work everything a little, but won't maximize your lateral movement hip muscle strength.

I'm still trying to find the best exercise for this. I've just started doing weighted side lunges, which seem to be doing good things for my lateral speed. A slideboard should help as well. Try Thomas Kurz' isometric stretching exercises. When I think I have the best answers I'll post them.

Once again, you will be a lot faster if your skills improve - that is, if you get better at recognizing the times when you want to move your body by reading your opponent and having good strategic awareness. But that's a separate issue from strengthening the muscles you need to move around, and that's what I'm focusing on for now.

If anybody else has good lateral movement strengthening exercises, post to comments or e-mail me! In the meantime, train hard and don't forget to wash your gi.

Osu.

I'm slow. I've always been slow. I come by it honestly - I come from a long line of slow people. I contributed to it by reading a lot as a kid instead of playing tag or football or whatever. End result? I'm a fast reader, but you need a calendar to time my 40 yard dash.

The problem with being slow is that when you spar, the slower you are, the harder it is to get out of the way of the people trying to hit you. (remember: "best defense - no be there"). You can make up for it with timing, strong technique, etc., but it's still better to be fast than to be slow, all else being equal.

So, being the person that I am, and being tired of getting my ass handed to me in sparring sessions, I started looking up articles and books on training for speed, online. What I found was a preponderance of materials that focus on improving one's running-in-a-straight-line speed. They had drills for improving running form and all that so you could go 10, 40, or more yards more quickly than before.

But that's not the kind of speed I'm worried about.

There's nothing wrong with straight line speed. In fact, being able to run fast has serious self-defense implications - you get jumped by 3 guys, you might be able to stun one and run away, but if you're me, the other two will catch you (us?) before you can get to a safe place.

But if you want to get better at the stuff that happens before you run away, if you want to be a faster fighter, that's a different kind of speed.

Think about the last time you sparred. Where did you line up? 2 meters apart? 3?  I've never had a match where we started out 10, 20, or more meters away from one another. And even if you did, you don't need to close that distance quickly.

The speed you need in a sparring session is the ability to take a step or two in any direction, quickly. Think about it - you throw a kick or punch at me, if I can get one step to the side, you're going to miss. I don't need to travel 40 yards to get away or to close on you and hit you unless you're an octopus.

Fighting speed is about quickly moving from a standing fighting position to a spot one or two steps away in any direction - in some situations you need to close quickly, in some to move to the side, in some to retreat, but rarely more than one or two steps. It's also about stopping and changing direction while moving one or two steps in any direction (like when you close on someone and suddenly realize you have to sidestep or back up or whatever).

So how do you develop fighting speed? It's not by sharpening your sprinting technique - relaxing the shoulders, lifting the knees, all that. You don't do all that when you sidestep or close on someone in a fight.  Which means that all those books and DVD's on improving 40 yard sprint times aren't much use to someone who wants to get better at sparring. 

Here's what I think:

There are three parts to improving fighting speed. The first part is knowing when to move by reading your opponent, having good strategic ability, and so on. In other words, the faster you can realize that it's time to sidestep or close, by reading your opponent's position and recognizing that it's time to move. My old teacher could hit me anytime he wanted. Was he a great athlete? Well, he was, but it was more that he saw every opening in my defenses immediately, and could read my every move before I made it by noticing subtle tells and shifts in weight and so on. He also knew what to do instantly - he was so experienced that he knew if sidestepping, blocking, or closing would be more effective. I, for a contrast, often only realize that I should have sidestepped a technique after the exchange is over. No matter how strong your legs are, if you don't know which way to go, you're not going to be a fast fighter.

You develop these skills through sparring practice and through sparring related drills. It's not a function of fitness - it's all neurological, it's about how quickly you can get from seeing the guy in front of you to deciding how to move to optimize your fighting position.

The second part of fighting speed is to develop the muscles that actually move you around after your brain has decided that you need to do it. Imagine someone who is very skilled but has badly damaged knees or just weak legs or hips. They might instantly see that they should sidestep a certain attack, but if their legs give out, or can't generate much force, they can't do it.

That strength - the leg and hip strength that moves you around in a fight - is a function of fitness, and I think you can do a lot of exercises that can improve that fighting - movement - specific strength. And they're not the same as the exercises you'd do to improve your straight line sprinting speed.

What are they? Well, I have to save something for the next post. 

The third part of improving speed is minimizing your mass. For a given level of strength (the ability to generate a certain amount of force) if you can weigh less, you can accelerate more (F=ma, so a = F/m, so if m is bigger, a is less). Adding muscle mass to your hips and legs might make you faster - the increase in force generation might compensate or more than compensate for the increase in mass - but extra fat (or even long hair) does nothing but slow you down.

So lose the fat.

By the way - I'm not going to address the skill component of speed much, but I'm not knocking it at all. The skills involved - reading your opponent, timing your response, having good strategies at your fingertips - might be more important than the fitness/ strength component. I just don't have anything to contribute to anybody's ideas of how to develop those skills. There are lots of books by martial artists about how to develop fighting skills, and you should get one (or many) of them. I think I might know a little bit about the strength part, so that's what I'll write about. In the next post.

Osu.

I have a funny story.

I re-started karate training in April 2006 after a 12 year layoff.  I got back into it by e-mailing an instructor in my old style, Kyoshi Kate, who was teaching near where I live now (my previous instructor is in another state, so going back to him would have been impossible).  As far as I remember, I had never met Kyoshi Kate before, and if I had it was only in the sense that we might have been in the same dojo at the same time 14 years ago - we had certainly never had a conversation.  She only knew me from one or two e-mails and a two minute conversation we had when I visited the dojo for the first time.

We spar as a class every other Saturday.  I'm not saying that's a good or bad ratio (in my opinion it's a really good one, but I'm not arguing the case here).  My first sparring session was shortly after I began attending classes.

In that session Kyoshi Kate put on pads and fought me.  She was mildy aggressive with me in that she didn't just hang back and see what I was going to do but closed in and hit me, but not in the sense that she injured me or did anything even remotely improper.  I remember a flurry of fists and feet and avidly trying to get out of the way and throw something back at her.  Remember, I hadn't really fought in 12 years, but to be honest, after over a year of hard training, if she fought me today, the results would probably be the same.

I didn't think about it much at the time, and to my discredit haven't thought about it much since then, until a couple of weeks ago.  I don't remember what we were talking about but I realized that Kyoshi Kate hardly ever spars with us.  In fact, I don't think I've seen her in pads since that day she fought me, and if I have, it hasn't been often.  She usually walks around making sure the rest of us don't kill each other, offering advice, etc.  So why that day?  At the time I figured she just had an itch to fight.  But now I'm pretty sure she was giving me an asshole test.

Here I am, a guy she doesn't know, with a black belt, even if it is an old one, so I presumably have some technical ability.  I'm not a big guy, but I weigh about 175 or 180 and at least some of it is muscle.  If I seriously hit a kid or a younger woman or someone who is injured, they're going to get hurt.  I doubt Kyoshi had any reason to think I was an asshole, but she couldn't be sure that I wasn't.  For all she knew, the first time a smaller person or a woman hit me with something I might have flown off the handle and started mauling people or whatever.

So instead of just letting me do the regular thing, she made sure to fight me herself, because if I flew off the handle with her, she could just kick my ass, while if I flew off the handle fighting another student they might not have been able to (in fact there are plenty of folk in the class who could still kick my ass if I went all berserk on them, but remember, at the time she couldn't have really been sure of that).  And she pressed me a little - I thought at the time it was to see how good I was, but I suspect it was more to see how I'd react to getting beaten up by a smaller woman.  Think about it - if you want to set off an asshole, having a smaller woman beat him up is a  pretty good way to do it.

This is all guesswork on my part - Kyoshi Kate hasn't actually come up to me and said, "yes, that was an asshole test."  But it makes sense.  I think I passed - I was a little embarrassed, but not too much, and I certainly didn't lose my temper or try to poke her in the eyes or anything.  I'm actually not prone to really losing my temper in violent situations anymore (I was as a kid, but that's another story). 

The moral of this story is that often your instructors are smarter than you ever realized they were.  The second moral is that if you pay enough attention to the how's and why's of training you might end up being a much better instructor yourself, if that time ever comes.  The story also says something about a good instructor and their responsibility to the students in the class. 

I'm not an athlete.

What do I mean by this? I had a friend in high school who said that he could tell who would be a good football player just by watching them walk around. I thought he was full of crap at the time, but now I think he was onto something. Some people hold themselves differently. When they walk the motion seems to come from someplace different - like they're floating. This sounds kind of mystical and weird, but I don't mean it to be.

You can see this in some MMA athletes. Watch George St. Pierre in the ring. Look at him move - he seems to glide around. He changes direction really quickly.  He accelerates really quickly.  When he attacks he seems to pounce on them, like a cat or something.  And he's not the only one, just the example I can think of right now.

There are also some guys who are really successful at various athletic endeavors without being athletes in this sense. For another UFC example, watch Tim Sylvia walk around. Heavy hands, great fighter, could definitely kick my ass with one hand tied behind his back, but he doesn't move well. It's like he's working too hard, or working wrong, to get his body around the ring.

It is in this sense that I am not an athlete. Nobody has ever watched me move around and thought that I was in any way athletic. I've been in decent cardiovascular shape (not like a professional athlete, just compared to a regular guy). But I've never had that quality of motion. So, being me, I'm trying to figure out what it is that I'm missing and hoping that I can do something to get it. And being me I have a theory (without which this post would be pretty pointless).

I'll introduce my theory with a story. I have a friend who is an athlete. He's naturally strong, fit, and pretty successful at anything that requires strength, power or speed (but not coordination - he's pretty much a spas, no offense intended). I was walking up a flight of stairs ahead of him one time 20 years ago and he asked me what was wrong with my ass.

I had no idea what he was talking about. He said, "it just hangs there." I had no idea what he was talking about. But I might now.

I wonder if I tend to not activate my glutes when moving around. I tend to climb stairs, squat, and move by using my quads and hamstrings. That's where I feel exercise first, those are the muscles that get sore, and that's what gets worked most. This has always been true (at least since I was a teenager).

I started watching the glutes of guys I consider athletes. And no, I don't mean in a sexual way (I happen to be straight, just for the record, although I have no problem with other guys looking at another guy's butt in a sexual way). To stick with the example, look at George St. Pierre in the ring. His glutes look high and strong. He also seems to initiate motion from the glutes - his knees don't flex and extend a huge amount so much as his legs are moved by muscles all around his hips. That's the kind of motion that looks like gliding. Chuck Lidell moves the same way, and has the same kind of butt.  Then watch Sylvia. His pelvis is roated backwards at the top so his butt seems to disappear. He moves from the knees, not the hips. And his glutes are proportionately underdeveloped. Or so it seems to me.

I've been working on exercises the past couple of months that would get my glutes better involved in my movement. This is primarily air squats - I've been really working on curing my "butt wink" (see the Crossift air squat video - seriously, watch it, it's hugely important). The better I get at holding my pelvis up at the bottom of the squat the greater the amount of work I get from my glutes and hamstring and the less pressure there is on my quads. In other words, I think I'm slowly curing my ass-related problems.

The last time I sparred extensively (at my nidan promotion) my butt was sore the next day. I mean the glute muscles were sore - and that can only be because they were working hard to get my body around the dojo floor and out of the way of people trying to hurt me. And my thighs weren't sore.  Plus, and I really don't mean to brag, a couple of people said I was fighting well - more to the point, they said I was moving well. Nobody ever said that to me ever before. I was the guy who stood in one place and might as well have painted a target on the back of my gi. I was never, ever, even remotely mobile. Now it seems I am as mobile as the average person, or maybe even a little more than that. And I really think that the reason is improved glute activation.

Want to improve your glute usage? Do squats properly (watch the video, man. Seriously.) Try getting into a shoulder bridge (feet and shoulders on the floor, pelvis up in the air) and thrust your pelvis up into the air, squeezing your glutes.

When you stand or fight try to subtly tilt your pelvis forward at the top. Imagine that you are trying to stick your ass out, just slightly. If you naturally tuck it forward then work on reversing that. If you're a guy over 35 and your pants threaten to fall down the back then your pelvis isn't set right. I actually get up on my toes and push my feet against the floor, mentally pulling from my glutes and hips, just for a few seconds before a sparring match.

One thing - don't overdo it. One other thing - if you rotate the pelvis forward at the top you'll also open up your hips for higher side and roundhouse kicks (see Tom Kurz's stuff for a fuller explanation). So two birds with one stone.

Please let me know if this makes any sense to anybody else. And if you're as secure in your masculinity as I am, watch some UFC matches and see how often the more agile figher (who isn't necessarily the winner, but just the more mobile guy) has an anterior pelvic tilt and higher and fuller glutes than the less agile guy.

On that note I think I'll call it a day.

Train hard. Do your squats.

I've been under a huge amount of stress lately. I was studying hard for my nidan promotion, had some health issues in my family (not me, but still...), and had a gigantic problem with my job (basically getting screwed for being too good at something, which is incredibly frustrating...)

Nidan promotion went well and I'd be really happy if work wasn't so bad. I find that when I'm stressed I can get decent workouts but my brain suffers most - I can't write or be creative at all, and that includes blog postings - I've started and stopped like four different posts in the last few weeks, unable to put my thoughts into words.

So a little bit about goals. It's really useful to think in terms of short and long term goals. My long term goals tend to be sort of vague and hard to define (which is bad) but not too complicated - I want to be fit (in the Crossfit sense - strong, with endurance, balance, coordination, etc.) and a decent martial artist (decent fighter, good kata, crisp technique, etc.) The latter is hard to measure but it's like pornography - I know it when I see it - so it's good enough for me.

Short term goals are the goals that inform your weekly training plan. I won't say daily plan - on any given day my training changes if I'm sore in a particular area or if my schedule is tight or if my diet is off. But in a given week I try to accomplish certain things based on my short term goals. Before my belt test I shifted short term goals. I've been focusing entirely (or almost entirely) on the things that I thought would be part of the promotion. I practiced the specific sequences of movements (kata, yakasoku kumite, etc.) much more than I had been (though not enough - my brain froze during the test a couple of times, to my tremendous embarrassment).

Now that the test is over I will probably go back to working on some things that will increase my fitness and abilty without translating directly into testable feats (I mean things that I'm likely to be asked to do in class). For example, I want to master the one arm pushup and the pistol (one legged squat). I want to get back to working on handstand pushups. And I'm doing more squats - air squats for now, at least until I get my butt wink cured - to improve my general fitness. I also want to get back to heavy stretching. I've gotten really lazy about Kurz' stretching exercises.

All of this is good. It's important to continually re-evaluate your training concentration to figure out exactly what you need to work on. And by "continually" I don't mean every day or even every week but every month or two. Changing focus too often is bad - you don't make progress. Changing focus too little probably leaves holes in your preparation.

I've been listening to Karate Cafe and The Fitcast (links on the links page). Good stuff. I'm thinking about making a mailing list/ forum for this page with google, but I doubt enough of you would be interested.

My first independent post-nidan workout:

Tabatas.

Set 1: 4 rounds of punchouts out of sanchin dachi interspersed with 4 rounds of side punches (I'm blanking on the Japanese - jun tsuki?) out of kiba dachi.

Set 2: 4 rounds of weighted (3 lb dumbells) blocks (judan uke, chudan uchi uke, chudan soto uke, gedan barai) interspersed with 4 sets of air squats (minimum 20 per set).

Set 3: repeat of Set 2.

Set 4: 4 rounds of chinups or pullups (mostly jumping or negative-only) interspersed with another 4 sets of air squats.

Barely made it down the stairs. I'm nice and sore today. Back to the grind!