Mixed Martial Arts – Day Five
Posted on | October 25, 2008
I’m posting a little bit later in the week than I normally would because we ended up not having class on Tuesday because my instructor was sick. By Thursday he was feeling much better and all 5 of us (my teacher, me, and three other “students”) were able to make it to practice.
Anyway, as you might have noticed, I decided to change the title. While the core foundation of a lot of what we’re practicing is Muay Thai, we incorporate a lot of other Martial Art techniques into our routines. Thus, I believe “Mixed Martial Arts” is a better term. Even though everyone will immediately think of “UFC”, which I’m not too fond of, that’s really the best phrase for what we’re doing.
On Thursday, my instructor decided to switch things up a bit and let US choose what exercises we were going to do. We did a round robin type of game where one person picked an exercise, chose how many we were going to do of that exercise and then everyone did it together. We’re a lot different than most people, we don’t simply choose low amounts to make it easier on ourselves. We choose a number that we know we can do, but yet is definitely a work out for our body and then everyone has to do it as well. We did a lot of push-ups, as our instructor kept sneaking in sets of push-ups throughout the day in the middle of our training, and a decent amount of sit-ups. One exercise we did that you can really, really feel is jumping squats. When you go up in the squat, you jump up in the air and reach your hands up high into the air and then when you land, you crouch back down into the squat. Try doing a lot of these and see how far you can get. 
We did more light sparring and form/technique work than anything else. We worked a lot in partners, having one person sit out, and switching up every little bit since we had an odd number of people(5). One of the sessions, one person would latch his hands up behind the others neck and squeeze his arms into the persons neck to cause pressure. The one in the “head/neck” lock would then have to try to fight their way out while the other person kept the pressure on as tight as he could without inducing injury. Knee kicks were also allowed to be thrown, so I definitely threw a lot of those. 
We also worked a bit more on “self-defense”. You’re probably thinking, “Isn’t all of it about self-defense?” And while, in a way it is, the movements we practiced were more towards real life situations such as someone grabbing your shoulder, or starting off at a more aggressive pace where everything is sudden unlike in a spar or ring fight where you are expecting everything. We would have one person put his guard up, and the other partner would unleash punches at his head while the other person tried to only defend. Why practice only defending, sometimes? Well, if it’s sudden and somebody unleashes a fury of punches towards your head, the only thing you might have time to do is get your hands up to block as many as you can.
Anyway, I’ll post more articles soon enough.
Tags: defense > exercise > lock > martial art > Muay Thai > neck
Wing Chun – Effective Demonstrations
Posted on | October 22, 2008
Wing Chun is a highly effective Martial Art that a lot of great fighters have had training in for their core foundation. For instance, Bruce Lee trained in Wing Chun from the young age of 13-18 under the teachings of the famous Wing Chun Sifu Yip Man.
The basic premise of Wing Chun is that it is a very aggressive close-quarter combat system. The idea is to use your energy efficiently. Many times people over look Wing Chun as a viable Martial Art style simply for the fact that in a good majority of the demonstrations that are done, and can be found on the Internet, Chi Sao is the demonstration presented. Most people don’t understand the concept of Chi Sao and therefore don’t see the whole picture, or what’s really happening behind the scenes as the demonstration takes place.
Chi Sao, also known as “Sticking Hands”, is primarily used to develop sensitivity. As one develops a greater sensitivity, through excessive practice of Chi Sao, one can begin to feel his opponents strengths and weaknesses which allows him to not only predict the attackers movements, as he goes to make them, but also see the openings(flaws) in the attackers structure that gives him the advantage of knowing when to strike. Chi Sao is NOT meant to be used in a real fighting situation the same way it is practiced, which is why so many people end up confused. Chi Sao is a very hard concept to simply describe with words. Videos are the only way to really show or explain how Chi Sao works, without actually being present. To fully grasp the concept, one must actually practice Chi Sao, even if only for a brief period of time, with someone else to understand how effective it truly is.
In Wing Chun there are three Empty Hand forms: Siu Nim Tao, Chum Kiu, and Bil Jee. Along with the three Empty Hand forms, there is also the Wooden Dummy. The Wooden Dummy is a device meant for alone time practice as it can only be used by one person at a time. The Wooden Dummy is NOT meant to be forcefully hit and punched, it’s meant as a means of learning angles, reflection, positions, footwork, and also body power. The Wooden Dummy is a unique device that should accommodate every Wing Chun practitioners home, if they can afford to give up the cash it costs and the room to store it.
Lately, I’ve been getting more and more into Wing Chun and I am considering getting my own personal Wing Chun Dummy. It’s not final in my mind, as to whether or not I will yet(I definitely will someday, if not very soon), but if I decide to get one then I will definitely post pictures of it with descriptions of how I came to get mine.
Here’s the real heart of this story, the videos:
Tags: demonstration > effective > martial art > Wing Chun > wooden dummy
Application – The Goal of All Goals
Posted on | October 20, 2008
Too many schools seem to be focused more on traditions and promoting health over everything else. While traditions are fun to learn and being in good health is always a great achievement, you can take things too far and forget about the real goal: Application.
In so many schools today, no matter the style of the school, there are too many places that very lightly focus on application which is a huge part of learning. The schools will promote friendliness(which is always good) but only very light sparring if they allow sparring at all(some schools actually don’t allow sparring!). The problem lies in the fact that no matter how much you practice at something, unless you actually do it, you’re not going to become good at it. Allowing students to go “slow-mo” and apply techniques to other students is a good way to generate confidence and get them into the feel of things, but it shouldn’t be a replacement of real sparring.
A lot of schools consider sparring to be when they put on an enormous amount of pads, such as the head, chest, hand, leg, etc gear and then still simply putting no force behind the moves that are being thrown. Generating a more life-like situation is one of the best ways to get as close to having the same feeling as you would in a fight, yet know you’re not going to get too injured. Pain is simply an indication that something has gone wrong. That’s your bodies way of telling you. Without ever feeling at least a small amount of pain in practice fights, how can you expect to be fully prepared in a real fight?
What is light sparring to me? Light sparring to me is when you simply use fingerless thin gloves for the hands(like MMA style), a mouth piece, and possibly a cup. When you fight with these conditions, you should predetermine exactly how “rough” you wish to go with the other person you are sparring with before beginning. A method that works often is to throw a kick or punch to them, showing them how hard you want to go so they know how much power to put into their hits. For light sparring, the idea is to end up with only bruises and sore spots. A factor of how light your sparring is, depends on your conditioning. Those who are not conditioned will need to go lighter then those who are.
The idea is to feel more like you’re in a fight because you don’t want to be hit. It’s not too painful, but you’re not just tapping each other on the shoulder, so to speak. I find that when my instructor shows me something and then me and another student mimic it back and forth on each other just to learn the movement, it’s usually pretty simple to get the movements down decently. Yet, when I enter into a spar it’s a hell of a lot harder to throw the movements into other combination’s on a whim. That’s part of the reason you can’t just practice it back and forth, because doing something planned is totally different then doing something on the spur of the moment.
It’s not to say that body pads are a bad thing, you just have to realized they have their place. I believe body pads can be good for when you go all out. Wearing all that gear allows you to put a lot of force behind your hits. Yes, you’ll get hurt, but not bad enough for it to ever be serious(most likely). As Bruce Lee once said:
If [a martial art] is a sport, then you are now talking about something else; you have regulations, you have rules. But if you are talking about fighting – as it is; that is to say, with no rules – well, then, baby, you had better train every part of your body!
If you’re not strong enough to take the blows directly to your body, then how would you expect to take them in a real fight? Obviously, no one ever starts out “super conditioned” and is immediately ready to begin taking hard blows, but that’s what you should be aiming for in the long run. Conditioning your body is a very serious part of any Martial Art. If your body has muscle but isn’t “pain conditioned”, you’re going to have issues. That is the reason that many Martial Artists have their bodies trained by other students using things such as rods(really tough sticks) to slap against different areas of the body to build up its tolerance. There are many ways to condition one’s body, but the overall end result should be the same.
Just remember, no matter how long you practice a move/technique/combination, whether it be weeks, months, or even years, if you cannot apply it in a real life situation, then it’s of no real value. That’s not to say that the move/technique/combination is worthless, but that the time you spent merely mimicking a move and never putting it to the real test, has been wasted.
Tags: application > bruce lee > condition > goal > martial art > pain
Muay Thai – Day Four
Posted on | October 17, 2008
This morning I had quite a hard time getting up and out of bed, and ended up being a bit late to work, all because I was so damn sore. I was/am still sore from my Martial Arts class on Thursday. Normally we usually go for about an hour or so. Yesterday, we took it to two hours instead. It wasn’t the length of time that has made me so sore, it’s what we had to do.
For those of you who don’t know what a Pyramid push-up is, it is when you do sets of push-ups. For instance, you do 1 push-up, then you do a set of 2, then 3, etc all the way up to 12. Once you’ve reached 12, you go back down to 1 again. Overall, it’s roughly 150 push-ups in total. My instructor decided we were going to do Pyramid “Everything” which steps it up just a little. First, you do 1 push-up, then 1 squat, then 1 sit-up, then 10 combination’s on one side, then turn and do 10 the other way. The combination’s varied, such as jabs then a round house kick, or a knee, etc. After that, you’d do 2 push-ups, then 2 squats, then 2 sit-ups, and then 10 combo’s for each side. We did this all the way to 12, then back down to 1 which is equals out to something like roughly 150 push-ups, 150 squats, 150 sit-ups, and somewhere around 230 kicks(we did all different kinds, we didn’t just do the same one’s over and over) on each leg since each combination always had a knee or kick movement at the end of some sort. One of the other “students” happened to lose his lunch(oatmeal, Mmm!) right afterward.
We took a 5 minute water break after all that, then we were back up and doing bag work. My instructor has two bags that we use for just beating on. One of them happens to be a huge bag, that takes a lot of the impact out of the blow, the other, erm, doesn’t so much. It’s lighter and thinner. There was four of us out there so my instructor decided me and him would pair up, and gave me the “lighter” bag. It’s funny, I think he enjoys kicking me almost as much as I enjoy being kicked. I can still feel the area where I took the blows, it’s pretty damn sensitive now. After the bag work, we moved onto light sparring. We sparred for roughly 20-30 minutes before I had to head back off to work.
All in all, it was one hell of work out, at least for me! My instructor says he plans on having us do this each time for now on, so I suppose I better get use to it real fast. If I were in shape, this series of work outs probably wouldn’t be so bad, but that’s not the case. I got a ways to go to be back in what I consider “good shape”. If anyone out there has any experiences of having done these Pyramid sets, or just having had to do a large amount of exercise for whatever shape you were in at the time, let me know how yours turned out, I’d love to here about it.
Tags: lunch > martial art > Muay Thai > oatmeal > pyramid > sore
One Style to Rule Them All
Posted on | October 15, 2008
In today’s day and age, there is a lot of stress placed on which Martial Art style is the best. I find this astounding, that so many people can be caught up in themselves and wishing one single style to be better then all others.
There are many people who claim that the old Shaolin styles are the greatest, mainly because of the fact that they are the foundation from which all others build off of. I do not dispute that Shaolin is pretty much where so many styles originated from, but you have to acknowledge it for what it is. For instance, a true Shaolin Martial Artist could pretty much trump a good majority of the others out there. There is one reason for this, and it’s probably not the reason you are thinking. It’s because he isn’t limited. You may be thinking “Limited?”, and I assure you, that is exactly what I mean.
How many Martial Art schools exist today? Far too many to want to count. How many of them offer a variety of training? Not very many. The fact is that most people who study Martial Arts are close minded to the fact that the Martial Art they study is in fact not capable of simply defeating all other styles. People tend to believe that when they become a high rank, or rather “experienced”, in the style they are currently studying, that they are going to be unstoppable and able to go up against all kinds of other styles with ease. This just isn’t so. Granted, some styles are more versatile in the fact that they can handle a wider range of attack forms, but even then they are limited.
To get a full understanding, I’d like to present to everyone the word: wu shu. Yes, I know most of you out there have seen it and know the meaning behind it, but have you truly thought about it rather then just know it’s meaning? Here is what www.dictionary.com had to say:
[Chinese (Mandarin) wǔ shù : wǔ, martial + shù, skill, art.]
As you can see, it’s pretty simple to understand. The point I’m trying to get across is that people should aim for acquiring talent in Martial Arts, or wu shu, not in a style.
Okay, to my point from before about those who study Shaolin not being limited. What I mean is that Shaolin is a collective of Martial Art styles, it’s not really just one style. There are different types of Shaolin styles, and within each there are a variety of other styles. For instance, there are the five animal styles in Shaolin: Crane, Tiger, Snake, Leopard(Panther), Dragon. Shaolin is quite huge and every piece that is broken down is to teach a specific trait. For instance, Crane is for balance while Tiger is for fierceness/power. Shaolin was formed through thorough communication between displays of Martial Arts at temples.
Those who limit themselves to one style end up only degrading their own ability. Those who study Shaolin(or any very close variant based off of Shaolin) have an wider range of training, and because of this they can defeat a larger variety of other styles. This rule applies to those who study Shaolin as well though, if they seek only one specific area and limit themselves, they’re going to inhibit themselves from moving further as well.
This isn’t to say that Shaolin is the ultimate style, it’s to say that those who study as many different styles as they can have the greatest ability to adapt to any given situation. Remember, no one style is the best, only when complete knowledge is sought can success be found.
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