A Warrior's Thougts on the Martial Arts

This one's rather short. After working out hard for three days, we gave it a break on wednesday. In order to avoid extreme soreness, however, I scheduled a morning session as a means of active recovery. Nothing special, you see, just some light shadow sparring and no-contact partner exercise. I'm a strong believer when it comes to shadow sparring. A quick search on this blog will produce quite a few posts on the topic, so I won't bother going into any detail here. I'll say a few words about what you see in the video, though. Basically, we were just throwing no-contact combinations at each other. I feel that this kind of training yields the following benefits: Distance control - throwing kicks and punches at a real partner instead of a pad gives you a more accurate feeling for distance. Natural reactions - even if the exercise is no-contact, most athletes (especially more advanced ones) will work their defensive skills. This will show you if feints or combinations w...

When I woke up today, my knees didn't cause any pain at all. Just as I thought. Hence, I took to the opportunity to begin the day with a run on the beach. This is just plain awesome. Quite intense, too, due to the soft sand. Heart rate is climbing up pretty fast. Suits me just fine - I'm not much of a steady-state guy anyway. In the early afternoon, I went to the height park with my girl and my younger cousin. That's something in between a bouldering hall and an obstacle course. Below you'll find a couple of pictures, so you get the idea. Although I wouldn't tag this a proper training session, it did require some balance, coordination and even strength. Hence, it's probably best described as GPP-Training. I just wish I had a parcours such as this one in my Dojo - the kids would just love it... For a strong finish, I hit the beach again after sunset for 10 rounds of shadow-sparring. It's been a while since I did this, so in the beginning, I...

Here's the edited video footage of last saturday's class. Elias, one of my fellow instructors (who also happens to be a great semi-contact competitor) joined us for a sparring session, so things got pretty intense. Took some nice video footage. I've eliminated everything except for the sparring part from the film, so here's a quick breakdown of what we did: ZaZen (meditation) Joint mobilization Shadow Sparring Boxing, lead hand only Boxing, rear hand only Boxing, Combinations, start each from a block Boxing, Combinations, start each from an evasion Boxing, freestyle Sparring, Boxing, 3 rounds Shadow Sparring Kicks, lead leg only Kicks, rear leg only Kicks, Combinations, start each from a direct counter Kicks, Combinations, start each from an indirect counter Kicks, freestyle Sparring, Semi-Contact, 3 rounds Shadow Sparring Kickboxing, Combinations, Punch-Kick-Punch Kickboxing, Combinations, Kick-Punch-Kick Kickboxing, ombinations, start each fr...

Today's session was relatively low-impact due to the fact that I'm cutting weight and hence, my muscle glycogen levels are rather low. After five rounds á two minutes of very basic movement drills, I went through my standard shadow-sparring program for ten rounds. By 'standard' I mean starting out with a dedicates 'movement' round where no strikes are thrown whatsoever and then working up to full shadow sparring from that point. The movement drills Evasion: Bob left, right, left, weave right. Repeat to the other side. Repeat for the rest of the round. Counter Punching: Bob right, left, throw a jab while weaving to the right. Repeat to the other side, this time throwing a cross. Repeat for the rest of the round. Hand/Foot Coordination: Step in a square pattern (forward, right, backward, left - right, forward, left, back - ....), throwing a punch with every step. Alternate between the jab, cros, and jab/cross combination. Step forward with a jab/cross co...

Today was rough. We did a last dedicated sparring session before the national championships next wednesday. The schedule was simple, but far from easy: Five rounds of shadow sparring (strict technical instruction) Three rounds of sparring (boxing only) Five rounds of shadow sparring (3 rounds pursuing loosely defined technical goals, 2 rounds freestyle) Three rounds of sparring (kickboxing) Five rounds of shadow sparring (3 rounds pursuing loosely defined technical goals, 2 rounds freestyle) Three rounds of sparring (kickboxing) That's a total of 24 rounds á 2 minutes. Hence, the net total time was  48 minutes, 18 of which were pretty high intensity. Speaking of intensity, there was some blood, which isn't necessarily a good thing just a week from the fight (wasn't my blood, though). Although I strongly advocate light sparring, I just couldn't help it today. Stuff happens. Anyhow, tomorrow's mothers day, so no training. Next week, I'll just stick to t...

Rather basic program today: 10 rounds of low-to-moderate intensity shadow sparring, 5 of which were really light movement drills. Then, another 5 rounds of pretty high-intensity rope skipping. Another 2 while I was teaching my afternoon class. Apart from that, nothing special in terms of training. On a sidenote, though, I was amazed at my student's performance during today's conditioning class. Those guys and girls do power cleans like they hadn't done much else in their live - I'm really glad to have the opportunity to work with them! Anyhow, as my trainer, Ronny, isn't totally fit (just a bit of coughing, but stil...), I won't hit the track for my 400m sprint intervals tomorrow. Rather, I'll do some rounds of shadow-sparring, probably some padwork, too. Then, I'll hit the gym for a crisp S&C session. So long, take care

My next fight will take place in Villach, on May 19th 2012. This time, it'll be full-contact again. Today, I worked out with Felipe, one of my students. The session was very specific to the reality of a kickboxing bout. What we did was 10 rounds of shadow-sparring, each round being dedicated to some technical or tactical espect (at least, I did it this way). After those 30 minutes, we tossed in three rounds of boxing. Since boxing is an integral part of kickboxing and becomes even more important under full-contact rules, I believe doing some isolated boxing sparring makes perfect sense - as opposed to a pure kicking sparring, say, under olympic Taekwon-Do rules. As a means of active recovery, we followed the sparring up with another 5 rounds of shadow sparring. Then, 18 rounds or 44 minutes into the workout, we did another three rounds of sparring, this time under kickboxing rules. Finally, as a cool-down, another 5 rounds of shadow sparring. I feel that this type of training is ex...

Tomorrow's weigh-in. Still need to lose quite some weight. I never attemted to make that much weight before. If this actually works, it'll definately be something to be kept up for future full-contact bouts. Jesterday's session was short and technique-centered. 5 rounds of shadow-sparring, 5 rounds of padwork, for a total of 10 2-minute rounds. While the technique-goals were rather strict while working the pads, the shadow-sparring was rather freestyle. I didn't ask Chris what he was doing, but my concept was very straight-forward: Stepping / Movement only Boxing, freestyle Boxing, freestyle Kickboxing, freestyle, Kickboxing, freestyle Nothing fancy here. Since Chris is competing in the semi-contact (a.k.a Point/Stop) division while I'll do light-contact (a.k.a continous), our padwork obviously differed a lot. Chris devoted his rounds to the following: Roundhouse kicks only Spinning kicks Lead leg kicks Adding punches and mixing it all up Punches only On the other h...

Three more days until the WKF Austrian Open in Steinbrunn. I'm fighting a hard battle against my weight - for the first time since 2004, I've decided to fight in the -71kg division. Weigh-In is friday from 4pm to 8pm. I'm drinking quite a lot, more than 7 liters a day. Thursday, I'll cut to 3,5 liters. Beginning thursday at 6pm, I'll stop any water or food intake until the weigh in. Really curious as to how much weight I'll be able to drop. Anyhow, when it comes to training, we're not doing a lot anymore. No hard training whatsoever. You see, recovery is becoming an issue when food intake is limited. Probably the single most limiting factor is the absence carbs. This might be less of an issue with traditional diets where you're eating 5 to 6 times a day - with the warrior diet, however, this definately makes a difference. Coming back to the topic at hand - training -, I did 15 2-minute rounds of shadow sparring today. I really come to like this stuff bet...

Next saturday, the Shinergy[battle] autumn cup '11 will take place here in Vienna. Needless to say, my dojo will be well represented. This time, 5 of my boys will compete and pressure test their skills. Yesterday we had the last sparring session before the tournament. The class layout was pretty straight-forward: 10 rounds of technical shadow sparring followed by 10 rounds of actual sparring. Below you find a short summary of what we did during each round. Note that when I say "striking", I'm referring to hand techniques only, while kicking, ... well, I guess the term "kicking" is pretty self-explanatory. Shadow-Sparring Movement only (no strikes, no kicks) Movement & Jabs Free Striking Lead leg kicks, lead hand strikes Free striking, free lead leg kicks Initiate combos with strikes, finalize with kicks Initiate combos with kicks, finalize with strikes Close-quarter only (i.e. striking from the clinch) Free shadow sparring Free shadow sparring Sparring F...

In my post " Thoughts on Coaching Tools: Shadow Sparring ", I mentioned my growing enthusiasm when it comes to shadow sparring. Over the last couple of months, I've really come to love this simple yet immensely effective form of training. Not only has shadow sparring become a staple exercise in my own training (I'm currently preparing for two full-contact tournaments in november), I also have my advanced students shadow-spar a lot. The practice of shadow sparring just comes with so many benefits, it's hard to cover them all. Most important for weekend-warriors and recreational-sports types, however, is the fact that you don't really need to hit the gym in order to shadow-spar On a nice day, you can take your training to the park, on a bad day you might even just work out at home, depending on the size of your living room. Now while shadow sparring in itself is a blast already, I feel that even more benefits can be reaped from this form of training by applying ...

During July and August, I'm officially taking a break. Hence, my Dojo is closed. Still, I feel a certain responsibility for my students and their training, so once to twice a week we're taking advantage of the weather and do an outdoor session. Yesterday, we warmed up with some shadow-sparring. Now I feel that shadow-sparring is a great tool to sharpen an athletes technical skills and work on his cardio at the same time. Unfortunately, shadow sparring doesn't come naturally for most students and many instructors are a little uninspired when it comes to implementing specific concepts within a shadow-sparring session. Therefore, I'd like to present some ideas on how to incorporate shadow-sparring as a coaching tool for martial arts training. Personally, I like to start out my shadow-sparring sessions with a round or two where I do nothing but stepping. I do incporporate some bobbing, weaving, blocking, etc., but no striking whatsoever. This helps me work up to an operatin...