A Warrior's Thougts on the Martial Arts

Today we had a boxing masterclass with [Tom Knöbl] . Since I'm currently handicapped, I wasn't able to do most of the stuff he taught, but that's ok. At least, I know what what we'll be working on over the course of the next couple weeks. In essence, what Tom covered was weight distribution during stepping and striking. Especially, he explained something of a pendulum jab, where you bob into your strike to increase effective mass and thus, punching power. Tom also covered the importance of conditioning, as fatigue leads to a decrease in concentration and situational awareness, which in turn puts you at a greater risk of being knocked out. That's exactly what I preach all the time. Strength and conditioning first and foremost fulfill the role to keep the athlete injury-free and enable him to actually exhibit his technical and tactical skills over a longer time. 'nuff said. Below, you'll find a couple of pictures of the class. Note tha...

Wow, so it's been quite a while since I've last posted video footage of our training. So, without further ado, let's get ready to rumble... Music courtesy of Fallen To Flux.

There's a thing with [youtube] . As soon as a trainer / coach has the time to put up multiple videos every day, I can'thelp but wonder how much time he actually spends... well, coaching people. Or training himself. So, I consider most of what you see on youtube crap. However, there's always an expection to the rule. Some stuff you find online is just plain awesome. Well, I guess that on a platform as huge as youtube, it'd be against all rules of probability if there wasn't anything useful, right? Well, anyhow, one of those pleasant surprises turned out to be a canada-based boxing coach called Jason Van Veldhyusen, or simply ["JT Van V"] , as he calls himself on youtube. Jason also hosts a homepage at [http://www.precisionstriking.ca] , where you can order his videos over the webstore. You should definitely check it out, this stuff is great. Amongst my favourite videos is a clip onside stepping and the creation of angles. The idea of shifting your wei...

Here's some video footage of our sparring session on thursday, december 8th 2011. Probably not of much use to use if you weren't there, but for those that were, it's an opportunity to analyse. My two cents: Too much blood for a sparring session. Everyone was way too aggressive. Need to limit intensity next time, especially during the warm-up rounds. Feel free to post your thoughts on sparring intensity in the comments section. So long, take care

It's been a while since my last post. Quite frankly, my motivation to post was pretty low as I wasn't really doing martial arts training. Up until now. Yesterday I did my first training - albeit a very light one - in ages. To be precise, it was the first time in 6 months I worked the pads. The video - analysis was quite frustrating as there's a lot of rookie mistakes. Also, my endurance ain't anywhere near the point it should be. Well, I guess I shouldn't be overly surprised by that. Anyhow, it was a great feeling to be punching and kicking again. Now as much as I'd love to get at it again, I'll have to carefully limit my specific training as not to injure my ankle again. It's time for me to build up a solid foundation of strength, endurance and joint stability before I can put an emphasis on improving my striking game. My program will basically consist of lifting weights for strength, swimming for endurance and doing light technique training to re-learn...