Punch Blog

Dialing up the speed keeps it real

2012-03-13T10:03:00.000-04:00

Last night’s combat fitness (March 12) featured another round of code x. This is when our normal rest period between stations on the circuit gets eliminated and replaced with more exercise. Hooray for more exercise!

Haganah class focused on proper punching technique. I could practice this for 8 months and still not get it down completely. What I can do slow, I cannot do fast. I understand the mechanics of the jab and straight right, but when it comes time to start throwing them fast, my form deteriorates.

Staying with the same concept of being able to do things slow but not fast, I’m trying to make the Haganah drills more realistic by speeding them up. Last night we practiced avoiding a slashing attack from a knife. To avoid the attack you step to the side and seize the attacker’s knife arm. Practicing slow a few times is good, but to keep doing it slow doesn’t teach much. One of my biggest deficiencies is speed and speed and accuracy are certainly needed to seize an arm bearing a knife. My partner was up for it so we started slashing at each other in real time while not remaining static. We circled each other, threw some faints in and then slashed with speed. It was realistic and way more fun than doing it slow.

Just how doing the drills in real time helps develop speed, the accuracy of punches does the same thing. When we’re practicing avoiding the straight punch, it doesn’t teach us much if our partner isn’t punching fast and directly at our faces. Yeah, you might get punched in the face if you’re not fast enough, but it is a fight class. If you’re taking a cooking class you can expect to cut yourself while chopping onions and burn yourself on the stove. If you’re taking a fighting class you can expect to get hit in the face. Partner preservation is always a top priority, but that doesn’t mean we need to sacrifice reality. You’re doing your partner a disservice if you’re throwing fast and accurate.

P.S.: Based upon the reactions of my friends in the gym, shaving my beard was a bad decision. I pretty much realized it was a bad decision as soon as I did it. Fear not, the beard will return!

Medicine ball babies & softly spoken attack commands

2012-03-12T09:45:00.000-04:00

During Saturday's knife fighting class we tried to stab babies ... sort of. Ok, there were no babies in the gym and no babies were stabbed in the making of Saturday's knife class. Allow me to explain. During some of our sparring sessions one person had to hold a medicine ball and shield it from their opponent as if it were their own child they were trying to protect from a knife-wielding maniac. Believe it or not, I performed better while I was holding my baby. I guess it had to do with staying on the defensive and only countering when my opponent committed himself to an attack. When my opponent held the baby, he tore me up, filleted me. It was like I became so intent on trying to stab his medicince ball baby that I forgot all about defense. I think the medicine ball baby demonstrates two things: one, when we have a little bit of motivation, even made up motivation of protecting a medicine ball, we perform better, sort of like the momma grizzly coming out in us; two, having a more defensive-minded approach to the fight makes you more cautious, less willing to attack, but ready to exploit your opponent's mistakes.

This was my bouncing baby boy during
knife sparring. We had to cradle the
medicine ball as if it were our own child
while fending off an attack.

Knife class also featured the use of voice commands and conditioning. This is how it worked: We had color-coded commands. Yellow meant do nothing. Red meant slash the hand and stab. Green meant push and slash. When the instructor said a color, we had to perform the appropriate action. Sounds easy, right? It is pretty easy when you pay attention and the volume of the commands stays consistent, but just when you become accustomed to the commands being yelled, the commands would be given at conversation volume and then at an even lower volume. The idea here is to be prepared to fight even if your sensory input does register threat. Your opponent probably won't announce his attack with a war cry and his attack may even come during a seemingly benign interaction when there is no yelling. For example, a guy might stop you on a street and ask if you have a light for cigarette. He's not yelling, the tone of his voice is neutral and the volume is low and then he's coming at you. So the varied volume of the instructor's voice commands forced us to ignore yelling or softly-spoken commands and focuse on what the color meant we should do. Just because there's lots of noise in a certain situation doesn't mean you lash out with an attack, and just because there's no noise it doesn't mean that all is ok.

Combat Fitness
There's code blue - 15 seconds rest during each station on the circuit. There's code red - no rest between stations on the circuit. Now there's code x - exercise between stations on the circuit. Saturday's combat fitness (March 10) class debuted code x and it injected the circuit with a heavier work load. So instead of having rest or no rest between stations, we did mountain climbers, jumping jacks and a bunch of other exercises for 30 seconds between each station. It sucked while it lasted, but it made finishing the circuit all the more gratifying.

Size don't matter

2012-03-09T10:34:00.000-05:00

Last night’s kickboxing class was a good one. I finished it feeling better than when I started it, mentally and physically. My knees have been hurting me lately, but somehow kickboxing made them feel better. This is surprising considering the one warm-up exercise that involves my partner trapping my kick and holding my extended leg against his ribcage with one arm while I hop on one leg and throw punches. And the whole time I’m hopping, he’s pulling me and making me move in circles. Go figure. I felt better mentally after class because I was finally able to start incorporating some proper movement into my sparring. Things just clicked.

I got to spar with five people and each one was a different size and one was even left handed. It never ceases to amaze me as to who is good at sparring. Keep in mind that I’m not that great at it, but sparring always proves that size can be insignificant. A guy who stands over 6 foot and looks like he could crush coconuts between his bicep and forearm will simply cover up and go on the defensive the whole time, but a teenage girl weighing in at 110 pounds will engage with a flurry of punches and kicks to my head.

Don't let warm days thwart exercise

2012-03-08T09:22:00.000-05:00

These first hints of spring with sunshine and warm temperatures make it a challenge to get to the gym. When I’m exposed to bright sun and temperatures in the mid-60s I’m drawn to my barbeque like a magnet. And when I’m drawn to my barbeque I develop an insatiable thirst for alcoholic beverages. Stay strong, man! This urge to wuss out and skip class will pass once nice days become common again, but right now the first thing I want to do when I get home from work is crack a Victory lager and sit outside. OK. Enough of that.
My knees feel better after taking off Tuesday night’s boxing class. But it seems like my body must always hurt somewhere, like pain will never truly go away, it will just migrate to another location. Today it’s my right quadricep. I took many, many knees to it last night during FIGHT class, each one seeming to land on the same spot and each one seeming sharper than the last.

Combat fitness class on March 7 started with a twist. We did a Crazy 8 warm up of jumping jacks, jump squats, burpees, pushups, modified V sits, toe-touch crunchers, jack-knives and up-downs. That certainly gets the blood flowing. I have a love-hate relationship with Crazy 8s. Love ‘em because they really push me to the limit and force me to cross thresholds into new endurance and muscle building territory. Hate ‘em because 90 percent of the class views them as a race. Sure, speed counts. You can’t be lackadaisical about it, but I think lots of people are sacrificing form for speed to the point where what they are doing isn’t remotely close to what they should be doing. Jump squats require you to actually jump. That means your feet leave the ground and your hands go over your head. Pushups are done by lowering your chest to where it almost touches the ground and then pushing yourself up to where your arms are almost straight. I’m done complaining.

Tonight is kickboxing class. No matter how nice it is outside when I get home at 5 I will not crack open a beer. No matter how nice it is outside when I get home at 5 I will not crack open a beer. No matter how nice it is outside when I get home at 5 I will not crack open a beer. No matter how nice it is outside when I get home at 5 I will not crack open a beer. No matter how nice it is outside when I get home at 5 I will not crack open a beer. No matter how nice it is outside when I get home at 5 I will not crack open a beer.

I have to keep that thought in my head all day. On a side note, Men’s Fitness has a fairly interesting article about DNA and exercise.

The trench is here to stay

2012-03-06T09:49:00.000-05:00

I’m not sure if Mr. Stuart meant the current trench will stay, or if a new one will be built and remain permanently in the facility, but either way he said we’ll have a full-time trench. That’s pretty cool.

In last night’s class (March 5) we got to play in the trench again and reviewed the straight punch defense, just one of the defensive trench moves we learned during the seminar. I like the trench more and more and I think if I had to get into a fight today I would want it to be in a confined space. There are a couple of reasons for this: The trench narrows down the potential attacks you’ll face because the space eliminates lots of punches, kicks and elbows. It simplifies the encounter and your response to the attack. The trench requires a heightened degree of violence and ferocity and not so much technical and fine motor skills. Where boxing requires a great degree of accuracy and maneuvering, trench fighting is about making your opponent eat the wall. Fighting in the trench also reinforces one of the main points of Haganah, and that’s always move forward. Mr. Stuart says it over and over again, “When someone comes at you, the worst thing you can do is nothing. The second worst thing you can do is move backwards.” The trench boils this point down to its essence. There's no place to run and the only way to end the engagement is to incapacitate your attacker and move past him.

As much as I enjoyed the trench fighting seminar, it did tax my body a bit more than I'm accustomed to. It was held on Sunday which is usually a recovery day with no physical activity. It took me a while to warm up for last night's combat fitness class. Once I got going I was fine, but at first I felt like a rusty old engine. My knees have taken a beating and I'm seeing some swelling in the left one. It's 9:23 a.m. on Tuesday and right now I'm thinking of skipping tonight's boxing class. I consider this a tactical cop-out to give myself some time to elevate and ice. I would be seriously pissed if I injured myself and ended up missing weeks of training. Decision made, tonight I ice and elevate, but just to stay sharp, I'll watch a DVD on combat wrestling.

Walls aren’t just for hanging pictures, they’re for smashing heads

2012-03-05T10:34:00.000-05:00

It was quite the Haganah weekend. I had the usual classes on Saturday (combat fitness, Haganah, and knife fighting), but Sunday was a 5-hour Haganah seminar specializing in trench fighting. Don’t think of muddy fighting positions protected with barbed wire, instead, think of hand-to-hand combat taking place in a phone booth.

The trench fighting seminar brought former Israeli special forces commando and founder of the Haganah fighting system Mike Lee Kanarek to the West Chester FIGHT Center. The day was spent learning how to fight in confined spaces against opponents attacking with handguns, knives, fists, knees and feet. While the trench fighting skills imparted by Sir (that’s how we refer to Mr. Kanarek) are taken directly from the Israeli army’s experience of fighting in the confined urban environment of Lebanon, they easily apply to civilians and situations that any of us could find ourselves in. You might have to fight in a narrow alley, between rows of parked cars or the hallways of your own home.

The idea of fighting in a confined space seemed horrifying at first. A lot of what you know about conventional fighting becomes unusable: there’s very little room to punch, there’s no room to employ boxing skills like footwork and head movement, even throwing elbows becomes difficult. But what Sir points out right from the get-go is that the two walls on either side of you that seem to limit your movement so much, are really your allies. So if you have to go toe-to-toe with someone in a narrow hallway, don’t think of it as one on one, think of it as three on one because you’re going to use the walls to your advantage. How do you use walls to your advantage? Mainly by smashing your opponent’s hands, knees and head into them.

There was a “trench” constructed in the gym. It was made out of plywood and two-by-fours and was padded inside, but due to the fact that there were around 50 students in the seminar, we spent most of the time practicing along the walls of the gym which were not padded. Since the walls weren’t padded, partner preservation was a top priority, especially when it came to slamming their head, which is how almost every scenario ended. The only disappointing aspect of the seminar was that I, and most of the students there, only got to go through the actual trench once. All 50 or so students had to line up, some holding dummy guns, and wait their turn to enter. For a moment it struck me as some bizzare, painful amusement ride we were all waiting to take our turn on.

At the end of the day I was tired and my right hand was sore from repeated wall slammings, but I felt good about what I learned and now I'm fairly optimistic about fighting in confined spaces and using walls to my advantage. I know for sure I will never look at walls merely as things to hang pictures on.

Sparring: from fear to frustration to yearning

2012-03-02T11:04:00.000-05:00

Last night’s kickboxing class featured some light sparring. We call it no contact, meaning you’re not supposed to punch to the face since we’re not wearing headgear, however, you can punch to the face if your opponent is covered up and able to block. My first sparring partner seemed to disregard that rule and tagged me a few times when I dropped my guard. They weren’t hard punches and he said sorry, but then added “I couldn’t resist,” which I take to mean he knew what he was doing and did it on purpose. That guy is way better at sparring than I am so it’ll take me several months until I can accidentally punch him in the face. I can try and be mad at him for not following the rules of no punches to the face, but the truth is that I’m mad at myself for allowing him to punch me in the face in the first place.
Sparring, at first, was frightening. Now that I’ve been taking boxing and kickboxing for two months, sparring has become fun. I should add that it has also become frustrating. When I first started sparring I had no idea what I was doing and I was afraid to get hit and I would freeze up when the punches and kicks came my way. Now I know just enough to be dangerous to myself: I’m willing to go on the offensive to apply the skills we’ve learned. With the type of sparring we’re doing now, I don’t really see the point in holding back, staying on the defensive and waiting for my opponent to make a mistake and then attack. We’re only sparring for 30 seconds at a time and then switching to another partner. So last night I started going on the offensive, leading with kicks and trying to follow up with punches. But what mainly happened is that I would lead with a kick, close the distance and then get punched by my opponent.

The sparring doesn’t end when class is over, I’ll lay in bed going over each of my encounters trying to catalog what I did right, what I did wrong, wondering why I dropped my guard and got punched in the face, wondering why I didn’t trap the guy’s kick when he threw an obvious roundhouse … This is where the frustration comes in. I know what I should be doing but I’m not doing it and as I drift off to sleep I know that the only way to rectify my mistakes is to do more sparring. More sparring. More sparring. More sparring.

I am not a big guy. I’m of incredibly average size. I stand 5’ 9” and weigh 166 pounds and this makes me one of the smallest guys in the class. When sparring, I usually have to go against guys who are taller and heavier than me. Sometimes I have to go against guys who are way, way taller and heavier than I am. Since we’re only doing no contact, the size difference doesn’t matter that much. If we were throwing for real, then it would matter. It can be intimidating to square off with a dude who is 5 inches taller and at least 40 pounds heavier, but if he doesn’t know how to fight, his size advantage doesn’t matter. However, problems arise when my opponent towers over me and also knows what he’s doing. But those situations offer the best opportunity to learn. You can only get better by sparring people better than yourself. And if they happen to be bigger and better, well that’s just twice the learning.

I can't dance even if I want to

2012-02-29T09:47:00.000-05:00

I’ve learned many things about myself in the two months since I started learning how to fight: Although I’m still getting used to it, and it is quite startling when it happens, I don’t mind getting punched in the face (I do mind getting punched in the ear); I really enjoy kicking people; I love, love, love physical fitness; I suffer severely from white man’s disease – I can’t dance.

I've said it before and I'm saying it again, had I realized at a young age the important role dance would take later in life, I would have quit being embarrassed and just learned how to do it (this website says it all). Besides the fact that learning how to dance would have opened up more opportunities with women, knowing how to dance would make it easier to learn how to fight. In dance, as in fighting, it’s crucial that you be able to move more than one body part at a time. Unfortunately, I fight like I dance. That’s to say I can only do one thing at a time. If I’m dancing, I can either move my arms or legs. Can’t move them both at the same time without looking liking I’m having a seizure. If I’m fighting, I can only focus on my footwork while totally ignoring my upper body motion. This is not a good way to go about engaging in fisticuffs. Head motion, hand motion, foot motion, torso motion all need to linked in an intelligent, productive fashion.

A message to dads with young boys: Make them learn how to dance. They will hate you for it for many, many years but you just have to deal with it, knowing that one day it will pay off for them. Explain to them that not only will dance enable them to score with the ladies, it will also enable them to be better fighters.

That's a lotta burpees

2012-02-28T09:40:00.000-05:00

A friend of mine does CrossFit, a very intense style of training, and this weekend he had to do some qualifying for the CrossFit Games. The Games are like the Olympics of CrossFit. People who participate in CrossFit from around the world can compete in the games, but first they have to qualify and qualification starts at each individual CrossFit location. My friend had to perform as many burpees as he could in seven minutes. He made it to 93 and that ranked him at 18,249 out of 26,000 people. The guy who came in first did 161 burpees in seven minutes.
I didn't do any burpees last night. Matter of fact I didn't do anything physical. I played hookey from combat fitness and Haganah class so I could attend my nephews' confirmation ceremony and celebration dinner. While I was eating a monster-sized plate of eggplant parm, my friends in combat fitness were doing jump squats, crunches and pullups and by the time I moved on to dessert they were getting kneed and elbowed in Haganah.

I wish I could dance

2012-02-27T11:18:00.000-05:00

Saturday was a long day of training. With combat fitness, Haganah and then knife fighting, I was in the gym for 3 ½ hours. This was only my second knife fighting class and it made me realize that I should have taken up dancing when I was a kid. Proper foot movement is really important and I seem to lack the ability to do it. I’ve never had rhythm, so, like most men, I’ve carefully avoided pubic situations where dancing is expected. But now, I have no option other than to reveal myself as completely devoid of rhythm, timing, soul and everything else required for busting a move.

Yesterday I tried to fit my new mouth guard. A mouth guard and a cup are required equipment for a seminar we have on March 4. My new cup fits without any problem; the mouth guard is a different story. It causes me to gag. I followed the instructions on trimming it to prevent the gag reflex, but I guess it’s going to take some time to get used to wearing it. I should be wearing a mouth guard during the boxing and kickboxing classes to get accustomed to breathing while wearing it.

Did you just puke into your mouth?

2012-02-23T08:29:00.000-05:00

We had our regular combat fitness class last night, typical circuit of 30 seconds work, 30 seconds rest. On the second time around we went to code blue, which means 30 seconds work, 15 seconds rest. One of the stations was my new favorite: elastic resistance band running! These are like giant rubber bands, un-stretched they are about 3 ½ feet long. We’ve used them for lots of different exercises, but right now we are using them while we sprint. Two of the bands get tied together forming two large loops. One person steps into each loop. One person serves as the anchor while the other person sprints away from them. You reach a point where you’re just sprinting in place and you look like you’re trying to move forward into a hurricane-force wind.
I was partnered up with a 19-year-old guy who has been coming to classes for over a month now. On the last station of the circuit I’m pretty sure he was throwing up into his mouth or doing a great job of keeping it all down. He was making those distinctive heaving noises and his cheeks were puffing out. I didn’t call him on it. I can respect a man’s right to privacy when he averts vomiting indoors. In my early days of combat fitness there were several occasions when puking seemed like a distinct possibility. Never happened though. And during the summer on some 95-degree days I came pretty close to passing out, started seeing spots but it never progressed further from that. In a class last week, a young girl who was there for the first time passed out. She hasn’t been back.

The last thing I wanted to do after combat fitness was spend an hour in Haganah class, but I stayed. Of course, on a night when I was feeling wiped out from circuit training, we spent almost the entire class practicing throws. This is when you throw your partner to the ground. It is incredibly tiring to get repeatedly tossed to the ground. The shock to the body sucks and even standing back up becomes tiring.

Watch your weight

2012-02-22T10:01:00.000-05:00

Last night’s boxing class had a lot to do with watching our weight. Not in the sense of how much we eat or getting rid of unnecessary body fat, but in how we shift our weight in order to block punches and throw good punches.

You can only throw a good punch from the side of your body that your weight is on. Example: I block a punch coming to the left side of my face by holding my left glove over my left eye, tucking my left elbow to my ribs, shifting my weight to my left leg and leaning into the oncoming punch. From that position, with my weight on my left leg, I need to counter with my left hand by throwing a 45-degree punch or a hook. With my weight on my left leg, if I threw a right-handed punch it would have absolutely no power and end up putting me off balance.

I’ve come to think of weight more like the energy contained in the body. The weight we talk about in the context of boxing has nothing at all to do with how much you weigh, but has everything to do with where you create your center of balance. If I shift my weight to my left leg and lean into an oncoming punch to block it, I have created my center of balance on the left side of my body. Now, all my potential energy to put into a punch is stored up in my left leg and since punches start in the legs it only makes sense to throw a left-handed punch.

The shifting of your weight, or the shifting of your energy, is something that has to be done in a split second. You don’t think to yourself, Ok, it’s time to shift my weight to my right side so I can throw a right-handed punch. It doesn’t work that way. It just has to happen without thinking about it. We did a drill last night that focused on the rapid shift of weight. My partner would throw a hook to my ribs on my left side. I would block it by shifting my weight to my left leg and tucking my left elbow into my ribs. Then I would counter with a left 45-degree punch and immediately let my weight transfer to my right leg and then throw a right-handed 45-degree punch.

Physical duress slows the passage of time

2012-02-21T10:16:00.000-05:00

With Mr. Stuart still away because of the Haganah conference in Florida, Monday’s combat fitness was run by Greg and Matt, two young dudes who seem to never pass up the chance to do pushups and pull-ups. I don’t know what Greg’s story is, but I know Matt is training to become a Special Forces operator and no physical challenge seems to be too much for him. After workouts that leave me battered and drained and sitting in a chair for a few minutes in order to collect my strength for the walk home, Matt is already out the door for a run. When I realized they were in charge for the night I thought, this is bad. But of course I meant bad in a good way like, “Holy crap, they’re going to destroy us.”

They didn’t disappoint. Instead of our typical 30 seconds work, 30 seconds rest, we did 60 seconds work, 30 seconds rest and went through each exercise twice with a special group exercises in between the two laps of the circuit and at the end of the second lap.

I can tell you that doing pull-ups for a minute sucks. Not that I can do pull-ups for the entire minute, but doing as many as I can and then hanging on to the bar for dear life is no fun. It’s this type of exercise where I have to play mind games with myself in order to endure the full minute. Physical duress alters the passage of time. It slows it to a crawl, sometimes it even stops completely. The only thing I could do to not let my feet touch the ground was to imagine that I was hanging from a 1,000-foot ledge and to let go of the bar meant certain death. I died my first time on the pull-up bar; the second time around made it.

The group exercises we did after the first lap consisted of two minutes of abdominal destruction with no rest: flutter kicks, V splits, leg raises, and toe-touch crunches. The group exercise at the end of the second lap was pushups. These were done ladder-down style. Do 10, then 9, then 8 …

It was a great class, once it was over. Having guys 18 years younger than me instructing was a definite challenge.

Double-end bag practice and the mechanics of a punch

2012-02-20T10:34:00.000-05:00

I switched things up this weekend and deviated from the normal routine. I spent the weekend focusing on boxing skills by working the double-end bag.

Friday: I spent about an hour and a half at the gym Friday afternoon. Thursday night’s kickboxing class left me feeling frustrated, things just weren’t clicking and my partner during that class kept messing up the drill by throwing punches out of order. All day at work on Friday I was frustrated and annoyed and the only thing I could do to rid myself of those feelings was to get back into the gym.

The first thing I did Friday was take a run on the treadmill. Nothing great, just two miles in 15 minutes and 20 seconds. Then I got to work on the double-end bag. At first, the double-end bag intimidated me to no end, but after spending about 2 hours this weekend practicing on it I’m feeling more confident. The double-end bag is very difficult to hit at first, so in an effort to reduce my embarrassment I like to practice on it when no one is around. The double-end bag is similar in size and shape to the speed bag, but the double-end bag is secured by bungees from the top and bottom. The double-end bag has very erratic movement when struck, so it’s good for training accuracy and speed. Always trying to keep proper form and technique in mind, I practiced combinations. Jab then cross. Sometimes it would be jab, jab then cross.

This is a double double-end bag, similiar to the one I train
on. The erractic movement of the bag and it's ability to
come right back at you and hit you in the face make it useful
for practicing accuracy of your punches and also defensive
skills like slipping and blocking.

Saturday: The regularly scheduled Saturday classes were cancelled because Mr. Stuart and the advanced Haganah students were in Florida for a conference. Instead of having combat fitness, Haganah and knife fighting in the morning, I went in around 2 p.m. and worked the double-end bag again. While I felt like my accuracy was improving (I was able to hit the bag on consecutive combinations), my biggest breakthrough of understanding was on the mechanics of punching technique. This was thanks to Mr. Stuart’s voice echoing in my head: keep your elbows in, extend your arm, rotate your hips … It was one of those “aha” moments when I gained greater understanding of how I should be punching. It’s kind of hard to put into words, but I feel like I know what to do more with shifting my weight from leg to leg and using “rotational torque” generated in the hips to create a whip-like movement that results in a straight right.

I visualize the power of my punch emanating from my feet, particularly my left foot (lead foot). I might be way off on this, but I feel like the greatest power for my straight right is generated by first shifting my weight (or energy) to my left foot, then pushing back with my left foot by straightening my left leg so the energy is directed up left leg into my hips, then into my right foot, up my right leg and out into my right arm. All of this done almost simultaneously and results in a sensation of pushing backwards with the lead leg, and forward with the rear leg so that your torso rotates sharply at the hips.

Just so I wasn't a total slouch, I did some fireman carrys with a heavy bag, burpees, dips and some rope jumping.

Sunday: I wanted some more time on the double-end bag so I put in a 45-minute workout on Sunday. I continued working the jab-straight combo and then added some slips into the mix. I would jab with the left, slip to my right and come back with a straight and slip to my left and counter with left hook. I had to do that drill pretty slow in order to hit the bag but it helped me develop a good rhythm.

I was using my finger-free gloves to work the double-end bag because I feel like boxing gloves make me too clumsy and less accurate. Since the boxing gloves are so much bigger than my hand, I feel like sometimes my hits on the bag aren’t really good punches, and I’m just kind of making contact with it. By using the finger-free gloves I feel like I’m able to throw more realistic punches. The downside to using finger-free gloves is that my second knuckles got pretty scrapped up. On Sunday, once I started seeing my blood on the bag I called it quits.

Violets are blue, roses are red, my Valentine was a punch to head

2012-02-15T10:07:00.000-05:00

No Valentines for me last night, only punches to the head. Don’t get me wrong, I was happy to have ‘em because it meant that I made it to boxing class after missing it for two weeks.

We worked on blocking and countering from the block for most of the class. This meant that my partner would swing at my head and I would absorb the hit with a block. The proper form for this type of blocking is to have your glove held to your forehead, your elbow tucked against your ribs and then you lean into the oncoming punch. Wikipedia defines blocking this way: Parry/block – Parrying or blocking uses the boxer's shoulder, hands or arms as defensive tools to protect against incoming attacks. A block generally receives a punch while a parry tends to deflect it. A "palm" or "cuff" is a block which intentionally takes the incoming punch on that portion of the defender's glove.

Boxer B is blocking Boxer A's left jab.

An important aspect of blocking is leaning into the punch. Yes, lean in to it. It might sound counterintuitive but leaning into it allows you to absorb it better and by leaning you shift your weight and this allows for quick counterpunches. If my partner throws a right punch it’s coming to my left, I bring my glove up to my eye, elbow held close to the body and shift my weight to my left leg. Once I feel the blow, I counter with a left 45-degree punch or a hook and then a straight right.

This type of drill is work for the coach (the guy throwing punches to the head) and for the boxer. In these drills, where the coach is throwing punches and then getting his hands up as targets, the movements - when done right – become a well-choreographed dance of arms. In order for the drill to be effective, the coach has to be quicker than the boxer. The coach’s hands are the target and the target needs to be there before the boxer can punch it. It didn’t really work that way last night. I was partnered with a guy I like training with. We’re close in height and weight and he brings a good intensity to the training. But last night, by his own admission, his mind wasn’t in it because of work-related stress. This meant that there were moments where I was waiting for him to display the target or he was displaying the wrong target or mixing up the order.

Muscle memory: It's all in your head

2012-02-14T09:52:00.000-05:00

Toward the end of last night’s Haganah class I hit a wall where I just couldn’t tolerate doing the repetitions of the gun disarm anymore. It wasn’t because my body was spent, it was because my mind was spent. I just couldn’t absorb any more information. I reached a point where I was defeating the purpose of training because I was training incorrectly.
Muscle memory, muscle memory, muscle memory. This is the key to learning Haganah. The movements your body needs to make have to become so ingrained that you can execute them without thinking and without hesitation. To create muscle memory we focus on repetition of movement and more repetition and when we’re done with repetition we add in some more repetition. And even though what we are practicing is physical (grabbing, throwing, punching, twisting) it’s all being catalogued in the mind and requires concentration to burn the movements onto the hard drive that is our brain. So last night, as my movement became sloppy and I wasn’t focusing on the task, I was reinforcing incorrect movement into my muscle memory. Many instructors, be they piano teachers, golf coaches or Haganah black belts, say they prefer to teach students with no prior training. That’s because the student’s mind is a clean slate the proper muscle memory can be etched upon. If the student has had incorrect prior training, they must first unlearn those incorrect moves before learning the correct moves. So if you reach a point where your moves are becoming sloppy, you need to stop, take some deep breaths and refocus yourself, because the more you do it incorrectly the more you’re going to do it incorrectly.

Exercise and cognitive function

A story in today’s LA Times discusses the link between exercise and improvements in brain function. Taking combat fitness classes will not only improve my strength and speed, all that huffing, puffing and sweating should also increase my ability to learn and retain all of the Haganah moves.

Study looks at how MMA fighters manage their fears

2012-02-14T09:46:00.000-05:00

By TARYN LUNA
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
2012-02-02 11:25:00
More than a week before Rick "the Pit Bull" Borowski's fifth amateur cage fight, anxiety had set in.

A self-admitted "very nervous person," the 29-year-old says he sometimes gets so worked up before a match he vomits.

The pre-fight fear that will "turn the toughest guy into a sissy" continues to escalate even after the cage door slams and the lights go on.

"You have no energy. Your legs feel like they don't feel under you," he said. "It's exciting, exhilarating and it's terrifying all at the same time."

How did the Pit Bull overcome his fears to prevail in two of his five fights?

"Once you get punched in the face, that all goes out the door," he said.

A two-year ethnographic study of mixed-martial-arts fighters by a sociologist at Indiana University of Pennsylvania attempted to shed light on the complex male psyche to understand how men manage their fears.

The study, led by assistant visiting professor Christian Vaccaro, suggests most fighters never fully overcome their fear of losing or getting injured.

But they do learn to manage it enough to enter the cage through a number of mental strategies to exude dominance and maintain their masculine identity, according to Vaccaro.

Some attempted to intimidate opponents, and others blindly convinced themselves they were more intelligent or more prepared because of their training or game plan. To overcome what they often referred to as "nerves" or "jitters," they looked at the match as just another day in the gym or a learning opportunity, win or lose.

And when they did lose, they convinced themselves it wasn't because the other man was a better fighter and they were unfit to enter the ring or even compete in the sport.

"While losing matches could make fighters fear that they were no longer cut out for the cage, framing their losses as valuable learning experiences often eased their fears and gave them enough confidence to continue," Vaccaro explains in the study.

The men also went back to the same strategies they used to garner the courage to fight. They blamed a loss on the fact that they didn't stick to the game plan or "nerves" and "pre-fight jitters" got the best of them, according to Vaccaro.

As Jeremy Bennett, 35, a former professional mixed-martial-arts fighter from Pittsburgh, explains, "The butterflies always set in and you have to learn that it's energy; you have to realize that and turn it into aggression."

Bennett, who has nine wins and seven losses in his career, said success or failure often hinged on his ability to manage the ever-present fear of losing and letting his family down.

"The fear is like your worst nightmare," he said. "Especially later on in my career when my family would come watch me, I think I let it get the best of me, I let the pressure get to me."

But when he was knocked out, or held in a submission he couldn't shake, and his worst fear became reality when his competitor's hand was lifted at the end of the match, he said he learned he had instigated most of his trepidation by himself.

"I put more pressure on myself, because your family is going to love you no matter what," he said.

The realization of fear after a loss or the emotions, particularly shame, a fighter feels in the wake of a losing match is one aspect of the study that R. Tyson Smith, a sociologist fellow at Brown University, thinks is missing.

"That was one of the primary limitations of the study," said Smith. "You have this high-stakes context and then the article revolves around managing and controlling emotions of fear in particular, yet we really don't know what happens in the face of a loss."

When Borowski was knocked out by what he describes as an "underdog" opponent in a fight in Ohio, he was disappointed in himself and felt like he failed his friends and family who drove hours to watch him.

"You question whether you ever want to do it again," he said.

His feelings bring up an important question: Why do these men routinely elect to participate in cage fights when they fear it?

"These are not 12-year-old kids in the roughest section of Chicago who more or less have their back against the wall and must participate," Smith said.

When Borowski pumps himself up by thinking he's a better fighter who trained harder than his competitor, he knows his competitor thinks the same thing.

He's learned through trial and error that he receives "so much respect" for just going into the ring and that his family won't think worse of him for losing, yet he still fears letting them down.

And when he says he beat himself in a loss, he's well aware of the fact that the other guy thinks he won because he's the stronger and better fighter.

The solution? Don't think about it.

"You have to stick to your guns and know that you're the best," he said.

(Email Taryn Luna at tluna@post-gazette.com.)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)

Is there a battleship anchor strapped to my back?

2012-02-13T10:42:00.000-05:00

Saturday’s combat fitness (Feb. 12) was the first class I made it to after being sick. It had been six days since the last time I worked out but it felt like it had been a month. Actually, going through that class I felt like I had a battleship anchor strapped to my back. Even the warm-up was hard. And it wasn’t even a tough class like most Saturday classes have become. I muddled my way through it and now I’m looking forward to getting back to being in the gym five days a week. It’s been three weeks since I’ve been able to make it five days a week. Having three pretty easy weeks isn’t ideal, but it wasn’t horrible either. It allowed me time to rest and take care of some low-grade injuries. And prior to having three easy, inconsistent weeks where I was only getting to the gym two or three times a week, I had been making it five days a week. However, after a month of five days a week, I was feeling the strain. I was experiencing classic overtraining symptoms: tired, rundown, depressed. So I’m hoping that I can come back stronger now.

My first workout after being sick was
tough. I felt like I had a battleship
anchor strapped to my back.

One thing that might assist me in successfully training five days week is whey protein. I just started adding it to my post-workout shakes in an effort to speed muscle recovery. Because of a reluctance to eat most store-bought meat, I don’t get enough protein. Whey protein is supposed to be one of the best proteins for you and since it’s a powder, it’s very easy to consume. I’ve started bringing my post-workout shakes to the gym so I can drink it immediately following the workout.

100 Classes
I broke the 100 class mark last week. Hooray! I think? Mr. Stuart congratulated me for making it to the FIGHT center 100 times in a year and all I could think was that 100 doesn’t seem like much. One hundred times in 12 months is only 8.333333333 times per month. Actually, 8.3 times per month sucks. That means I averaged two visits per week. That needs to get better.

Sick and missing class, but learning from DVDs

2012-02-08T18:36:00.000-05:00

Well, the last three weeks have been less than ideal for consistent training. For two weeks work kept me from making it to the FIGHT Center 5 days a week and this week I'm sick. I made it to combat fitness and Haganah on Monday, but right after class I could it feel coming on: sore throat, aches, runny nose, general crappy feeling. So I missed Tuesday night boxing, I'll miss combat fitness and Haganah tonight and will most likely miss kick boxing Thursday night. It doesn't matter how good of shape you're in and how well you eat, when it's your time to get sick it's your time to get sick.
Even though I've been feeling lousy the last two days, I have been able to do some training that didn't involve going to class. I've been learning from my Lazy Boy by watching Haganah DVDs. The first one focused on common street attack scenarios: you get put in a headlock, a guy chokes you from behind, you get grabbed by your lapel and a punch is coming at your face. It's hard to learn the moves solely by watching the DVDs - there is no substitute for having a live partner to practice on - but they do help reinforce moves you already know and moves you're in the process of learning.

The second DVD focussed on surviving ground attacks. Having a fight go to the ground is very undesirable, unless you're excellent grappler. The perspective that Haganah takes on ground fighting is to avoid it. But if it happens, you're taught to end it quickly by inflicting damage and getting back to your back.

OK. Time to gargle with more salt water.

Knife fighting

2012-02-07T10:39:00.001-05:00

Defending against knife attacks is a big part of what is taught in Haganah. But it’s just that, defending. You don’t learn how to attack with a knife. Offensive knife skills are taught in a separate class called Tactical Knife Fighting (this video shows Haganah founder Mike Lee Kanarek deomonstrating some moves). I participated in my first knife fighting class on Saturday (Feb. 5).

Since there were a few new students in the class, we started with the basics. These basics involved a lot of unlearning. Holding the knife properly was the first thing we learned. You’re not chopping onions. That means do not put your index finger along the back of the knife. The knife should be held in a fist with the blade lined up with the second, or middle knuckles. If you’re right-handed, you hold the knife in your right hand and, different from a fighting stance in boxing, you’re knife fighting stance has your right foot forward.

To practice slashing and stabbing, we faced the wall of mirrors and were told to imagine a box from our hips to our head. The angles of attack exist within that box. You can slash on diagonals from corner to corner, vertically from the top center to the bottom center or vice versa and horizontally across the middle of the box. After practicing slashes and stabs, we incorporated footwork and movement while slashing and stabbing. I found the footwork a little awkward because it’s the opposite of everything I’ve learned in boxing and kickboxing. I was nervous for this and I guess it was obvious because Mr. Stuart kept telling me to relax my body. I think I was moving like a 2x4, stiff and straight.

When practicing footwork and the slashing and stabbing we used aluminum knives with no edge. When we switched to sparring in the last part of the class, we used flexible rubber knives.
As if having to spar during my first knife class wasn’t stressful enough, the sparring was made even more difficult by having to drop and then recover our knives on command while in the middle of the fight. Then, to make it even harder, we were instructed to drop our knives and pick up our opponent’s knife and continue fighting. This created mad scrambles on the mat.

The hits with the rubber knives don’t hurt too bad, except on the knuckles or cheek. What did hurt, though, was when I went shin to shin with my partner as we dove after each other’s knives. That impact left us both temporarily stunned and grasping our legs.

While the stabs suffered during sparring don’t leave marks, the slash attacks do. When I was showering after class, I studied the slash marks, like rug burns, that populated my right arm above the elbow and went over what I learned that day and thought how much fun the class was.

Partnering up with a TV celebrity

2012-02-06T11:17:00.000-05:00

Saturday was an awesome day. I felt really good during combat fitness class, I got better at throwing knees in Haganah and I participated in my first knife fighting class.
As I’ve said before, the Saturday combat fitness class is usually the toughest of the week. This past Saturday was no different. In what’s becoming the norm for Saturday class, we deviated from the typical circuit. We only used eight stations: pull-ups, knee raises, dips, pikes and pike push ups on an exercise ball, dumbbell curls, sufer burpees into upright row, G4 sit-ups with medicine ball and squats with plate extensions (while holding a 45-, 35- or 25-pound plate, do a squat and extend your arms straight out in front, return to upright position and bring plate close to your chest). We started at 12 reps on each station and we had to do three sets on each station. So that’s three times around the circuit. Each time around, we decreased reps by two. So, the first time around we did 12 reps at each station, the second time around 10 and then 8 on the final lap.

Haganah
I’m still making stupid mistakes in Haganah class, but I feel like I’m improving after each class. My first partner on Saturday, Dave, squared me away on throwing knees. Dave is one of the top students in Haganah and instructs when Mr. Stuart isn’t around. Partnering with him is like getting a private lesson. After a month and a half of classes I think I have the knees down.

My second partner was Alex. Alex is another top Haganah student and also instructs classes when needed. Alex speaks with a Russian accent and for some reason this lends much gravitas to his advice. He strikes me as a guy who has had to employ this training in real life. Alex helped square me away on a take down that involves controlling your attacker’s wrist and cranking their fingers toward their forearm until they go to the ground.

My third partner for the day was much prettier than Alex and Dave but was no less informative. During the gun disarm I was partnered with a famous QVC host I will refer to only as Lisa. Not many people can say they’ve held a dummy gun to the head of a television celebrity, but I can. Even though her expertise lies in being a TV host, Lisa was able to give me some good tips on the gun disarm. Thanks, Lisa.

After Haganah, it was straight into knife fighting. More on that in Tuesday’s post. All in all, Saturday was a great day of training. I was in the gym for a more than three hours and felt incredibly calm and relaxed the rest of Saturday.

Seeing how the pros do it

2012-02-02T08:00:00.000-05:00

Imagine if the only ice hockey game you ever watched was played by the mini mites, those kids around 6 years old who can barely stand on their skates and any goals scored come by sheer luck. The kids are trying to play, they just don’t have the coordination and muscles to do it and the games turn into these comically slow follies on ice. Now imagine, after only ever seeing mini mites, you watch the Flyers vs. the Islanders. It doesn’t even look like the same sport.

I had an experience like that in last night’s Haganah class. There’s a large Haganah conference in a few weeks and Mr. Stuart was preparing three of the advanced students for it. Last night’s preparation consisted of this: the entire class formed a large circle, each student held a gun or a knife. In the middle of the circle stood one of the advanced students. One by one, a student from the circle would approach the advanced student and present them with a scenario, it could be an overhand knife attack, a knife held to the throat, a gun held to the ear, a gun held to the back …. The advanced student had no idea what was coming, but they had to react immediately. This was watching the pros do it. Their moves were fast, clean and accurate. They were able to improvise when a certain hold didn’t work and they were able to do it with a lot of people watching them.

Watching this drill starkly illustrated how huge the divide is between the students who are good at it and the students like me who are playing in the mini mite league. Most of the students in Haganah play in the mini mite league. We have an understanding of what to do and we can go through the motions of it, but we have no speed and if one part of our defense fails the entire defense disintegrates. Occasionally we get lucky and perform everything right, but all it takes is the instructor to come over and watch and that tiny bit of stress will make us do everything incorrectly.

Years of practice lie ahead for me before i can do what the guys in the middle of the circle did last night.

Hit me hard, I like to be hit

2012-02-01T10:01:00.000-05:00

Last night’s boxing class (Tues. Jan 31) started out slow. We spent a lot of time practicing movement, staying off center of our opponent and shifting our bodies side to side to align the shoulder we were punching with to its intended target.

The second half of class was not slow at all. We started practicing defense. My partner would swing at my head and I was supposed to keep my guard up and lean into the punch while keeping my elbows tucked close to my body. After blocking the shot, I would counter with a 45-degree punch (like an uppercut on an angle), then a straight, then block another punch.

My partner for this was Greg. He’s the resident badass and probably the best fighter in the gym other than Mr. Stuart. Greg is the instructor for the combat wrestling class. He’s strong, fast, tough and likes to be hit. Partnering with him always teaches me a lot. I coached first when we did the blocking drill, meaning I swung at his head while he blocked. “I want you to really hit me. Hit me hard,” he said with a smile, “I like to be hit.” After two minutes of Greg absorbing my blows, it was my turn. Even though we both had boxing gloves on and I was fully prepared for what was coming, getting waffled in the head is shocking. You can live half your life and never really take a strong shot to the cranium and then, in the span of two minutes, you can get a lifetime’s worth of wallops. The first two times he hit me – and since Greg likes to be hit, he also likes to hit – it was hard to keep my composure and throw the required counterpunches. But after taking a few punches, the buzzing in my head dissipated and I was able to refocus my vision and take the proper countermeasures.

After boxing class I was watching TV with an ice pack on my bruised and swollen left ear. It was injured because I was placing my guard hand over it while blocking Greg’s hits. That was a dumb mistake on my part. My ear hurt, and still does this morning, but it’s a gratifying hurt and even though I’m not yet a fan of getting punched, I can see where Greg’s coming from.

Apologies, sound effects and a stuntman

2012-01-31T09:26:00.000-05:00

Considering the fantastic violence we train for in Haganah, essentially learning how to restrain, incapacitate or terminate people with our bare hands, we are incredibly apologetic to one another when we accidentally catch someone with an errant knee or elbow while practicing.
Even though we practice the moves slowly and make contact only to ensure the accuracy of our strikes, accidents do happen. Accidents pretty much have to happen when you're throwing rear uppercut elbows to you partner's jaw and flexing their arms to the point just before tendons snap. These accidents are always followed by heartfelt outpourings of Sorry dude; My bad; Oh crap, are you OK? Although these apologies might seem out of place while practicing separating the spinal cord from the brain stem, I would want it no other way. You must respect your classmates and always be looking out for their well being. And at the very least, you have to keep in mind that what goes around comes around. If you're going all Attila the Hun on your partner, since we're always switching roles from attacker to defender, it's just a matter of a few seconds before you get your comeuppance.

Apologizing is just one of the pleasant peculiarities found in Haganah class. Another one is sound effects. Many people, consciously or unconsciously, include these auditory enhancements when punching, kicking and elbowing, as if making a noise that mimics fist hitting neck will somehow improve their skill. There could be two reasons for this: We are taught to exhale when punching, kicking or otherwise striking an opponent. It helps add power and exhaling is just way more natural than trying to inhale when striking. So the sound effects could be an extension of that. Of course, the sound effects could also be a symptom of Hollywood, where any movement of a limb during a movie fight brings forth the sound of rushing air and like in the old Batman TV show all hits are registered with a POW! or BLAMO!!

In addition to apologies and sound effects, last night's class (Mon. Jan. 30) featured my first observation of a stuntman. My partner, who is very new to the class, responded to my light blows with exaggerated body movements. Example: I throw an elbow to his neck, he throws his head to the side with corresponding grimace of pain.

Back in the swing of things

2012-01-30T10:34:00.000-05:00

After missing almost all of my classes last week due to computer training at work that kept me in the office late, I made it to Saturday morning combat fitness and Haganah.

Combat fitness deviated from our normal circuit. Instead of doing 30 seconds at each station and going around the circuit twice, we didn’t work on the clock and went with reps instead. We were told to pick 8, 10 or 12 reps and this number is what we had to perform at each station and we would do each station three times. I wasn’t feeling very ambitious so I went with 8 reps. Some of the younger guys went with 12 and they’re bad asses for it.

This type of circuit doesn’t sound that bad at first, but when one of the stations is burpees into an upright kettle bell row, it kinda gets hard fast. This is how we do it: Stand next to a kettle bell so it’s on your right side (we were using a 35 pounder). Do a burpee and as you rise up grab the kettle bell and transition into an upright row. Bend down, set the kettle bell on the ground and transition into the burpee. Repeat 8 times for each side.

If you’re unfamiliar with the burpee, think back to your days in elementary school gym class and remember the squat thrust. Start from a standing position, quickly drop into a push-up and spring back to a standing position. You can greatly increase the difficulty of the burpee by doing a complete push-up before springing back to your feet and as you spring back to your feet add a vertical jump.

Along with mountain climbers and planks, the burpee is a deceptively simple exercise that will quickly kick you butt.

Prepare yourself for a very, very loud noise

In a post the other week I touched on the idea of the psychological training that happens in tandem with the physical training. In that post, I was saying how I needed to raise my level of aggression during sparring and to achieve that I have to assume a different mindset. Another aspect of psychological training is conditioning yourself for the things you know are going to happen. Besides recognizing that in a real situation your heart will be beating out of your chest and fear is going to want to paralyze you, there are the things like loud noises and hard surfaces you have to think about.

The Haganah instructors are always driving home the real-life scenarios of what we’re practicing on the mat. It’s going to be dark, you’re going to be scared, you will be caught off guard, you might be fighting in a confined space (between parked cars), you will most likely be fighting on concrete … the list goes on. So when the instructors see you perform a take down and your knee lands on the mat and not on your attacker’s chest, they will remind you that there will not be a soft mat for your knee to land on in a real situation. Your attacker’s chest is the soft surface to cushion your knee.

In my limited training, it’s the gun disarm that represents the clearest example of being prepared for the real-life scenario. Why the gun disarm? Because guns go BANG! And the closer you are to the gun, the louder the bang. During the gun disarm it is highly likely that your attacker will squeeze off a round while the gun is only a foot or two from your head. This is OK, because by the time he squeezes the trigger you will have already removed yourself from the line of fire. But if you’re not prepared for the blast of noise, heat, light and debris, and fall to the ground in fear, then all of your training will have been for naught.

So now when I practice the gun disarm, at the moment I remove myself from the line of fire I imagine the attacker pulling the trigger and I try to hear the blast and feel the heat and the shockwave of force that will follow.

Only training at work

2012-01-26T09:26:00.000-05:00

Due to training for our new editorial computer system at the Daily Local, I was at work until 9 p.m. so I missed last night's combat fitness and Haganah. I'm usually finished work around 4 p.m. I'm hoping that I can make it to tonight's kickboxing class, but it's looking like it's going to be another late day. I don't mind so much that I missed last night's classes, I think my body really needed the break. As important as training is, resting is equally important. I heard someone say this the other day and it makes sense: You don't build muscle during your workout. You build muscle during your rest.

Getting some rest

2012-01-25T08:27:00.000-05:00

We're getting trained on a new computer system at the Daily Local and it's eating up a large part of my day. I had to work late last night to get my regular stuff done, and combined with how worn out I felt yesterday I skipped Tuesday boxing class. I went home from work, had dinner and was asleep by 8.
I really needed the rest. I've been at the gym five days a week for almost a month and it finally caught up with me. Going rock climbing on Sunday, which is usually a rest day, didn't do me any favors either. I just have to face up to the fact that I'm 39 and can't go full throtle all the time.

Since I was talking about food in yesterday's post, I thought this info from Men's Fitness on pre- and post-workout food might be appropriate.

Feeling worn out today

2012-01-24T09:44:00.000-05:00

I’m feeling tired this morning. Last night’s combat fitness class wasn’t exceptionally difficult, I just feel worn out today, like I’m not getting enough to eat or not eating enough of the right stuff. I feel like I’m eating the right stuff and in the right amounts, if anything I think I eat too much most days, but this morning I headed straight to Giant to get bananas and Greek yogurt before going to work.

I’m craving protein and 7oz of Greek yogurt provides 18 grams of it. Getting enough protein has become a challenge. I don’t eat enough meat. This has to do with my reluctance to eat meat from the supermarket. For the past six months, I’ve been trying to eat only local, grass-fed meat. This approach is difficult for me for two reasons: getting my butt out to the farms, farmer’s markets or Wegman’s to buy it and then having to prepare meals out of it.

Trying to eat local meat eliminates at least 90 percent of the restaurants around me, so getting takeout is pretty tough. Chipotle, the home of the massive burrito, uses grass- or grain-fed meat, but I can only eat so many burritos in a week. There are days when I don’t eat any meat and that’s not doing me much good. I guess I’m either going to have to get serious about getting out and buying the grass- or grain-fed meat and preparing a week’s worth of it in advance, or, I’m going to have say the hell with it and eating anything I want.

Last night’s class was a full house

There were more than 20 people in combat fitness class last night. There were a lot of new faces, I guess resolution makers finally showed up. Due to the large size, the normal routine had to be modified. The class was split into two groups. One group would stay in the center of the room and do various calisthenics while the other group worked at stations on the circuit. Every 30 seconds the groups would switch places. We did this until we made a full revolution of the circuit. We only had time to go around the circuit once.

After combat fitness, we moved right into Haganah. I’m getting better at a lot of the different moves but I still need to improve my knees. Throwing knees is a huge component of Haganah, they are involved in most of the combatives. I tend to throw my knees too high instead of aiming them to the thighs or groin. And speaking of thighs, my right thigh is sore and tender from absorbing several well-placed knees from my partners.

Working the double-end bag

2012-01-23T09:59:00.000-05:00

I donned my winter gear and trudged through the snow to the gym on Saturday morning only to learn that combat fitness and Haganah class had been cancelled because of the weather. I could still get inside the gym because I have a pass code that gives me 24-hour access and that’s when another guy there told me that he just received an email about the cancellation.

I didn’t mind about class being cancelled because having an empty gym gave me the opportunity to practice the double-end bag without feeling like a total idiot. The double-end bag is similar in size and shape to the speed bag, except the double-end bag is attached to the floor and the ceiling by bungee cords so it stands at about head level. When you punch it, it tends to move unpredictably. That unpredictability is what makes it hard to hit and easy to be hit by it. This bag teaches you how to throw fast and accurate punches while also teaching you to get out of the way of the bag as it jumps around on the bungee cords. When you hit it with a strong jab, the bag will shoot right back at your face so you have to slip to get out of its way.

For a while, all I practiced was the jab. Hit the bag and then slip as it came back at me. Once I was feeling OK about that I started to add the straight right. Jab, then straight right. Except landing that straight right on a moving target was a rare occurrence. I punched a lot of air and this is why I was happy to practice in the empty gym because I probably looked like a crazy man trying to fend off an invisible swarm of bees.

I worked the double-end bag for about 45 minutes, jumped rope, did some pull-ups and dips and called it a day.

A trip to Philadelphia Rock Gym

Having a light day on Saturday left me fairly fresh for a rock climbing expedition on Sunday. My buddy’s CrossFit class had arranged an outing to Philadelphia Rock Gym in Coatesville and I was able to tag along. If you’ve never tried this and are looking for a totally different workout, definitely give it shot. You will give your forearms a workout to remember scaling the indoor climbing surfaces. It will also help you overcome fear of heights because it’s impossible to fall. You wear a very secure harness and are tied to a belay man on the ground. So even if you fell from the wall at the same time your belay man suffered a brain aneurysm and dropped dead, you wouldn’t fall to the ground because your rope is tied to the belay man’s harness and his body serves as a counter weight to yours.

Now, even though you can’t fall and get hurt, that doesn’t mean you can’t get hurt by other means. An important point to remember is incorporating your legs to assist your arms during your ascent. One of the CrossFit instructors – a very strong and fit guy – ended up blowing out his shoulder because he was probably not using enough of his legs and was relying too much on upper body strength.

Getting my hackles up on command

2012-01-20T12:12:00.002-05:00

There’s the stamina training, the strength training, learning how to throw punches and kicks, learning how to avoid being punched and kicked, learning how to combine it all and use it simultaneously, now I need to add to that list psychological training. I have to condition myself to be more aggressive.

A certain level of aggression - I call it
professional aggression - is necessary for
the sparring to be effective. I lack that
aggression, so I need to become more like
the dog in the picture and learn how
to get my hackles up.

Due to my very nature, I am not a natural fighter. I’m passive, non-confrontational. I am not an in-your-face kind of guy. Traits that for 39 years have made me easy to get along with and able to work well with others, now just make me an easy mark and reduce the effectiveness of the training for me and whoever is my partner at the time. I lack the necessary aggression in the gym. I'm sure that in a real-life situation I would have no problem becoming aggressive in a fight. Fear and adrenaline would take care of that. But in the gym, when one minute I can be talking to a guy about what he did last weekend and the next minute I'm supposed to be sparring with him and trying to kick him in the stomach, that transition is kind of tough for me.

Even though the sparring is being done slow and not at full force, I'm being way too laid back about it and that's not honoring the training. It's not a yoga class. I don't have to be at peace with my inner child. It's a fighting class and I need to learn how to be able to ratchet up my aggression and get my hackles up on command.

Taco lunch fueled a good workout

2012-01-19T09:36:00.000-05:00

I’m giving credit for my good workout last night to a lunch of three tinga tacos with loads of hot sauce from Don Gabriel’s Mexican Restaurant in West Chester. Muchas gracias for the fuel.

The circuit hits the major muscle
groups of the body. Not designed
to build mass, the circuit increases
muscle strength, muscle endurance and
provides a great cardio workout at the
same time.

Here’s the circuit we did in combat fitness: Inclined pushups (feet raised about two feet), side to sides (lateral jumping movement so you land on one leg – kind of looks like a speed skater in full sprint), bicycles (sit-ups where you touch elbow to opposite knee while moving your legs as if riding a bike), squat rows, chest press on TRX (like a pushup except your hands hold handles at the end of a rope that is looped over a pull-up bar so you’re suspended above the floor), handstand pushups against a wall, jump squats, pushups into a Spider-Man plank (do a regular pushup and then lift one leg off the ground and bring the knee to elbow so you look like Spider-Man scaling a building), hanging leg lifts, dips, squats with medicine ball (hold the ball against your chest, squat and extend your arms straight out from your chest), throwing knees into the heavy bag, burpees into a kettle bell lift and then Bulgarian split squats while holding a weight.

Circuit training works the entire body and provides cardio and strength building. What we did last night is more or less a standard circuit for us. We go around the circuit twice. During the first lap, we spend 30 seconds at each station and get 30 seconds rest between stations. During the second lap, we spend 30 seconds at each station and get 15 seconds rest between stations.

Thirty seconds might not sound like a long time, but I assure you that it can seem an eternity depending on the exercise. For instance, doing mountain climbers or jump squats for 30 seconds really sucks; pushups for 30 seconds, not bad. And you can get in a good number of reps in 30 seconds. I can do 20 to 23 inclined pushups, about 10 pull-ups, 11 or 12 dips (depending on what stations I’ve already done), and five to six hand stand pushups in 30 seconds.

After combat fitness we had about a five-minute break and then Haganah class started. I had the benefit of partnering up with three guys who really know their stuff. They were able to point out little things and big things I was doing wrong. A little thing was the angle at which I was pinning my attacker’s arm against his own body during certain drills and a big thing was the height at which I was throwing knees into my attacker’s legs. “You’re throwing aerobicise knees,” one guy told me. “You don’t want them to be high. You want to drive them into your attacker so when you’re done throwing them you have moved him back several feet.”

Being constantly corrected is something I’ve come to crave. Without it I could spend weeks doing something wrong, and after weeks of doing it the wrong way it can be hard to make yourself do it the right way. Ideally, I would have one of the instructors standing next to me with a switch while I did the drills and every time I did something wrong he would deliver a lash. Immediate corrective criticism with some pain to facilitate learning.

Slipping on ice, bad. Slipping on the jab, good.

2012-01-18T09:43:00.001-05:00

The good news is I feel confident that I’m getting the basics of punching. My punches are getting stronger and I’m starting to grasp all of the body mechanics involved. The bad news is that I’m also getting the basics of being punched. It seems that I lack the necessary skills to avoid getting tagged. If I keep at it this way, my strategy will be to wear my opponent down by letting him repeatedly hit me in the face, and then, when he’s out of breath and he’s arms are burning, I’ll move in for the liver shot.

Fighter B is slipping the jab by
moving to the outside of the punch
while also delivering a counterpunch to the body.

We worked on slipping jabs in last night’s boxing class. A slip is a defensive move and is done by bending your knees, tilting at the waist and turning your torso so the punch slips harmlessly past your head. This is how Wikipedia defines it: Slip – Slipping rotates the body slightly so that an incoming punch passes harmlessly next to the head. As the opponent's punch arrives, the boxer sharply rotates the hips and shoulders. This turns the chin sideways and allows the punch to "slip" past. Muhammad Ali was famous for extremely fast and close slips, as was an early Mike Tyson.

The slip is a great move because it allows you get close to your opponent and deliver powerful counterpunches.

We drilled the slip by throwing jabs at half speed. My partner would throw three jabs and I was supposed to dodge them by slipping to the right, the left and then right again. Supposed is the key word here. What I tended to do was some spastic motion with my torso and then watch as his glove got bigger, and bigger and bigger until it hit me on the nose. Fortunately, pain is a great motivator so I plan on learning this move pronto.

Worse than the pain of getting tagged on the nose is the pain my ego suffered from executing a move so poorly. Expertboxing.com explains the slip in great detail and it helped clarify some aspects. It also says how hard mastering the slip is, which did wonders for soothing my bruised self-confidence.

Bad food = bad workout

2012-01-17T10:20:00.000-05:00

Saturday morning’s Combat Fitness (Jan. 14) was a typical Saturday class. It was tough, but it wasn’t the tricep-killing, back-breaking, dread-inducing Crazy 8 circuit that we had the week before. I wasn’t feeling particularly pumped up for class. Beers and bad food the night before gave me a poor night’s sleep and a lack of gusto. One of Mr. Stuart’s sayings is, “You fake it till you make it.” Meaning: even if you’re feeling like you can't give it 100 percent, don’t skip the workout. You’re not going to be able to be a superhero every time you’re in the gym. So I faked it for the first half of class and by the second half I was feeling ok.

Even though I had a mediocre workout, it helped reinforce stuff I know about my diet. It’s become quite clear to me how what I eat affects my performance. Chicken wings, waffle fries, braised beef on a white flour bun, three beers and a shot of rum on Friday night does not contribute to a good Saturday morning workout. My typical diet consists of nuts, grass-fed turkey, Greek yogurt, salads, tuna, fruit, protein shakes, granola bars, coffee and lots of green tea. The momentary enjoyment I get from eating waffle fries does not justify the bad feeling I have to live with for hours afterward.

The Haganah class following Saturday’s Combat Fitness was unremarkable except for the elbow I took to my right bicep. We were practicing a scenario where a person has you gripped up by the collar of your shirt and throws an overhead punch at your face. The goal is to block the punch by raising your arm with it bent 90 degrees at the elbow. It was going great until I threw a punch that was too low and the boniest part of my partner’s elbow impacted my bicep. By Saturday night I couldn’t lift a glass of water.

Exercising with an artifical leg

2012-01-17T09:27:00.000-05:00

Check out this post on GeeklMom.com, FitnessWeek: Staying in Shape with the Help of Bionics. It’s about being an amputee and exercising.

Choose sweat over beer

2012-01-16T10:27:00.000-05:00

I’m in the FIGHT center by myself, just me and the heavy bag alone in the corner. The large room is dimly lit from a distant light in the back and from a few orange rays from the setting sun breaking through the glass front door. The only sounds are my breathing, thud after thud from my gloves impacting the bag and the creaking of the steel chains as the sack of leather and stuffing jerks and swings from my barrage. The bag moves toward me and I slip to the left. The bag moves away and I land a 1-2 combination. The bag moves toward me and I slip to the right, pivot and land a devastating hook to the body, and on the walls around me this motion is recast in shadows of my legs dancing and my arms firing like pistons.

At least that’s how I envisioned my Friday afternoon, alone in the FIGHT center without any scheduled classes that day, getting some much needed practice on the bags. But my plans were foiled by a simple text message, a few aches and pains, and my overactive imagination.

The text from my friend asked: Wings? And then, in my mind, the image that played was a warm bar on a cold day, and the bar was filled with beautiful women who were all incredibly interested in everything I had to say and with every beer my wit and humor only grew and after my fifth beer and my belly full of delicious chicken wings, a dark-haired woman approached me, took the stool to my left and asked if I wanted to buy her a beer.

Well, the wings were so-so. The only woman in the bar was with her boyfriend and I had to stop at three beers because I was driving. And later that night the wings had given me indigestion and the beer left me with a vague ache in my head.

The moral of this story: Even if you’re tired and have some aches and pains and your friend tempts you with chicken wings, just go do your workout. Just go do your workout because even a bad workout is better than an ok time at the bar.

Kickboxing class

2012-01-13T10:42:00.000-05:00

I had my second kickboxing class last night. I love this class. Having played soccer from age 6 to 18 imprinted me with the desire to use my legs. Now, instead of balls, I get to kick my friends.

The class is patterned the same way as the boxing class, you partner up with a person of equivalent size and throw kick and punch combinations for 45 minutes.

We practiced posting last night. This is where you throw a straight punch and instead of immediately retracting it, you keep it stuck in your opponent’s face and then throw a thrust kick to their mid-section. Keeping your hand in their face – or posting – keeps your opponent focused on your hand and it also blocks his vision so he doesn’t see the thrust kick coming. When fighting, you have to switch up your attack. Attack upstairs (head) and then attack downstairs (lower body).

At 39, I’m usually the second-oldest student in the class. I’m jealous of the young kids in it, not for their conditioning, I’m in better shape than most of them. I’m jealous of the fact that they’re learning this stuff so young. Most of the people in there are in their early twenties, but a few are in high school.

Since it’s Friday, there’s no class today. No combat fitness, no Haganah, no boxing or kickboxing. Which means I should get into the gym and practice on the bags, but taking classes five days a week has me feeling tired in the mornings, and right now the thought of going to the gym is losing out to my thoughts of beer. Maybe I just need more coffee and some heavy metal to get motivated.

Whether I make it to the gym today is up for debate, but I’ll definitely be there first thing tomorrow for 8:30 a.m. combat fitness.

It’s called combat fitness for a reason

2012-01-12T10:07:00.001-05:00

Last year, without the fighting classes, getting in shape through the combat fitness class had the purpose of improving my conditioning, improving my cardio, improving my strength. But after several months of doing it, I started to question myself: Am I doing this just to look better, to feel better? It was as if I was training just to be better at training and at times this didn’t provide enough motivation to push myself to the max. But now, with the addition of the boxing, kickboxing and Haganah classes, combat fitness is a means to an end. The end is fighting. Physical conditioning now has the clear purpose of enabling me to fight.

The exercises have a purpose

There are some exercises we perform in combat fitness that had me scratching my head. I didn’t understand what good they did.

Example 1: the woodchopper. You hold a medicine ball over your head with both hands and pivot one foot and bend at the waist to bring the ball to the outside of the ankle opposite the foot that is pivoted.

Now I get it. It helps simulate a move in a Haganah where you force your attacker to the ground when you have control of an arm.

Example 2: Hip-ups. Lay on your back with the heels of your feet close to your butt. Push your hips to the ceiling while keeping your shoulders and feet flat on the ground. It’s part of our warm-up and it helps stretch your hips but I never felt like it did much.

Now I get it. The hip-up isn’t just a warm-up, it simulates a move you do to escape from your attacker when they have you pinned to the ground with their body on top of yours. By doing a fast and powerful hip-up you can bump the attacker off of your body.

I'm starting to see the bigger picture.

P.S.: Last night was combat fitness and an extended Haganah class that went 90 minutes. I can't eat enough this morning. Tonight I'll have my second kickboxing class.

It all goes down the drain when they punch back

2012-01-11T10:45:00.000-05:00

I completed my second boxing class last night. These classes focus on technique, movement, fundamentals. There’s a light warm-up and then we partner up and practice offense and defense. This class does not involve cardio and strength training. That’s what combat fitness class is for.

Straight punch. Also called a cross.

In last week’s class (Jan. 3), we partnered up with a person of equivalent weight and took turns throwing 100 jabs, then 100 straight punches, then 50 left hooks, then 50 right hooks. It was especially important to be partnered with a person of equivalent weight for the 100 straight punches because we had to take them to the chest. Even though my partner was wearing boxing gloves and punching into my boxing gloves crossed over my chest, the blows add up. And they really add up if your partner is throwing properly.

Fighter B throws a jab as a counter punch
to fighter A's straight punch.

Throwing a proper punch involves the entire body: ankles, legs, the rotation of the hips and torso, the extension of your arm. You can tell when you’re throwing good punches, they just feel right. And you can tell when your partner is throwing good punches because they move you. The good ones crash like powerful waves, the bad ones land without consequence, like sea foam lapping at your feet.

At the end of the class, which lasted about an hour, Mr. Stuart said to consider this a warm up. If we have any aspirations to fight or even spar, training needs to be done six days a week. That means getting to the gym when you don’t have a scheduled class and working the bags, doing cardio, and light sparing if you have a partner.

Fighter A throws a hook.

In last night’s class (Jan. 10) we practiced ducking. Jab at your partner’s left hand - held up by their left shoulder - then duck their right hand as they swing at your head. Then we did some non-contact sparing. Even without contact, I felt like everything I learned -which isn’t much at this point - just went down the drain. I was moving into punches rather than away from them, and my punches, instead of being weapons of an offensive attack, were merely opening windows for my partner’s punches to walk right through.

If everything went down the drain without getting hit, what happens when I take a shot to the nose? There is much to learn and even more to practice.

The massage roller: bliss in the form of a foam cylinder

2012-01-10T14:11:00.000-05:00

In the corner of the FIGHT Center sits a gray, foam cylinder. I always wondered what that thing was for. The other night, Mr. Stuart explained that it’s a massage roller and demonstrated how to use it. As he rolled it back forth beneath his back and hamstrings the look of bliss on his face sold me instantly.

I went out the next day and bought my own. At first I felt dumb for paying 40 bucks for a piece of foam, but within the first few minutes of use it had paid for itself.

It’s beyond simple to use. Lay the roller on the floor, position the sore part of your body on top of it and roll back and forth. When I first used mine, the feeling was so great that I had my eyes closed and was emitting moans that came from deep in my body. When I opened my eyes, my dog was standing over me, head cocked to the side with her ears up.

The foam roller stimulates blood flow, offers myofascial release and helps break up scar tissue. And it just feels damn good. You can achieve a similar effect by using a ball in the same manner, letting your body weight press into it. My buddy uses a lacrosse ball. If that’s too hard, try a tennis ball.

I was able to use the roller on my horribly sore triceps and I’ve found it beneficial for a hip flexor injury I’ve had since high school.

Go buy one today. Any sports store will have them. Your dog might look at you funny, but your body will thank you.

My triceps are ground beef

2012-01-10T11:23:00.000-05:00

After Saturday’s Crazy 8 circuit during combat fitness, my triceps burned. I imagined them looking like ground beef. Those muscles were shredded. It had to be the 35 dips. My understanding is that dips can be particularly brutal because of the negative repetitions. The negative repetition is the lowering of the weight. If you’re doing bench press the negative rep is when you bring the weight down to your chest. When doing dips, the negative rep is when you lower your body. The slower the negative rep, the harder you’re making the muscle work.

The triceps are the muscles between the elbow and shoulder.

After a year of combat fitness, feeling as sore as I did on Sunday on Monday is rare. What I was experiencing was Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness or DOMS. While the pros say that having sore muscles after a workout isn't neccesary for increased muscle growth, and repeated muscle soreness means you’re doing too much or doing it wrong, others - like WebMD - say that it can be good encouragement. I wear that soreness as a badge of honor. The occasional DOMS I experience now I consider a gold star on my homework.

This morning, the soreness in my triceps is gone. Last night’s combat fitness class flushed away the pain.

My sensitive Adam's Apple

2012-01-09T14:22:00.000-05:00

Like me, you probably don’t spend much time thinking about your laryngeal prominence -- or your Adam's Apple -- until it hurts, like when you’re ill and have a sore throat or when your partner during Haganah class is being particularly barbaric while employing choke holds.

After last Wednesday’s class I went home and had to ice my throat. That was a first. It hurt to swallow for a day and then the pain went away. It wasn’t anything serious, but it goes to show that this stuff is no joke.

If I can get hurt when we’re just practicing, going at half speed, I can’t imagine the damage that could be inflicted in real time when the intention is to hurt.

The sound of resolutions breaking

2012-01-09T10:42:00.000-05:00

Did you hear that, that cracking sound like a stick being snapped in half? It’s the sound of willpower biting the dust. It’s the sound of resolutions being broken all around you. And the sound you’ll hear after that is silence. That’s the sound of sloth.

A story in England’s Daily Mail says that by today most resolutions have been broken. Don’t be a wuss. Man up!

I’ve been taking a circuit training class for a year now, three times a week. It sucked at first. And by sucked I mean my body felt like I had been dragged behind a horse over a steeple chase course and then left in a water obstacle overnight. Sitting still hurt. Sleeping hurt. The only thing that didn’t hurt was my conscience.

But maybe you need some external motivation to workout. Take a look at Zuzana in this Youtube clip. Let Zuzana be your guiding light to carry you through those dark hours of doubt, those times when you come up with 10 excuses not to workout. Stick with a program and in a few months you’ll be coming up with reasons to workout more.

I’ve reached that blissful point where the gym takes priority over everything else. Going to the gym is the reward, not the punishment at the end of the day.

As of last week, this is my fitness schedule: Monday – 1 hour of circuit training, 1 hour of Haganah (self-defense class); Tuesday – 1-hour boxing class; Wednesday - 1 hour of circuit training, 1 hour of Haganah; Thursday – 1-hour kickboxing class; Friday- rest; Saturday - 1 hour of circuit training, 1 hour of Haganah; Sunday – rest.

Saturday morning's Combat Fitness class

2012-01-07T14:02:00.000-05:00

It’s around noon on Saturday and I’ve just finished up showering and eating after Combat Fitness and Haganah this morning.

Saturday Combat Fitness classes are always tough, usually tougher than the ones held on Monday and Wednesday nights. I think Mr. Stuart’s philosophy is if people are willing to show up at 8:30 in the morning they really want to workout.

While all of the fighting classes – Haganah, boxing and kickboxing – are new to me, the Combat Fitness class is not. This week marks a year that I’ve been doing it, and other than missing class here and there due to the flu or the occasional work obligation, I’ve being doing it three times a week.

Today's Combat Fitness class employed the dreaded Crazy 8s. The only thing worse than Crazy 8s is Tabata (more on Tabata later.)

Crazy 8s might sound like a card game your grandma plays for fun at club, but I assure you there’s nothing fun about the Crazy 8s we do. Crazy 8s are when you do eight repetitions of the exercise at each station on the circuit and continue going around the circuit decreasing repetitions by one each time around.

In today’s class there were eight stations in the circuit: hanging leg lifts, dips, dumbbell curls while balancing on wobbly platforms, toe touchers with a kettle bell, press and praise with a heavy plate, pushups with feet on a raised platform, pull ups and skull crushers (skull crushers are a tricep exercise). So your first time around you do eight reps at each station, the second time around you do seven reps at each station, and continue your way around the circuit until you’re down to one. Fortunately, we only had enough time during the hour-long class to make it down to two. However, today’s class had the additional burden of a Crazy 8 station that was performed after each lap around the circuit was completed. This consisted of various exercises like jumping jacks, crunches, jump squats and other moves that I’m too tired to explain now.

In the end, since we only made it down to two reps, we did 35 pull-ups, 35 dips, 35 skull crushers, etc.

Once that was done it was on to an hour of Haganah where we drilled escaping from headlocks, choke holds and bear hugs. Oh yeah, and we did more push-ups and crunches.

Welcome to Punch Blog

2012-01-05T09:00:00.020-05:00

This is my personal account of getting in shape and learning how to fight.
I’ll turn 40 later this year so I’m sort of in midlife crisis mode and since I don’t have enough money to buy the flashy convertible I’ve decided to learn how to fight.

Punch Blog is my first-hand account of learning Haganah (a self-protection system) and XBX/MMA which is boxing, kick boxing and combat wrestling. All of this takes place at Mr. Stuart’s FIGHT Center in West Chester.

This blog is not intended to teach any of the fighting or self-defense. I am the furthest thing from an expert on this topic. For the record, fighting is new to me. Other than one year of high school wrestling and one or two minor bar scuffles, I’ve never been in a real fight. The intention of Punch Blog is to provide a look at the training through the eyes of a person new to it all.

My first Haganah class

2012-01-05T08:55:00.002-05:00

I took my first Haganah class in the middle of December. Within minutes of it starting, I was being instructed on how to disarm an assailant who had a semiautomatic pistol jammed into my back (watch a video of it being done by Haganah Master Mike Lee Kanarek). The pistol is a blue, rubber dummy, but the training is all the same, real gun or fake.

The concept of the gun disarm is simple: get out of the line of fire and gain possession of the pistol by “short circuiting” your assailant. The concept is simple, but mastering it isn’t. I was in over my head. Since I was starting at the end of the year, I was jumping in when the more advanced tactics were being taught.

Everyone in my group had been through the gun disarm before and moved through the drill with smoothness and efficiency. Then came my turn. It wasn’t pretty.

The instructor kept telling me to drive my elbow farther into my assailant’s face. Even going at half speed and not connecting to inflict injury, I found this hard to obey. My attacker was a high school girl much smaller than me. It’s difficult to muster the required violence when your attacker smells nice and wears a pony tail. However, that kind of thinking has to be dispensed with. The reality is that this girl, armed or unarmed, could knock my teeth out and make me walk with a limp for the rest of my life.

Now, after having about 6 classes under my belt, the concepts of Haganah are starting to sink in and learning the moves is becoming easier. Still, it's a lot of information that I have to absorb. I find myself going through the moves in my head as I lay in bed at night.

I’m getting way ahead of myself. First, I need to explain what Haganah is.

What is Haganah?

2012-01-05T08:52:00.002-05:00

Haganah is considered a reality-based self-defense system for worst case scenarios. Consider situations where you are attacked by two people as you're getting into your car in a dark parking lot, or as you turn a corner someone jumps out to mug you.

This description is copied directly from the Haganah NationalHeadquarters web site:

“HaganaH is primarily a mix of Israeli martial arts - called Krav Maga and Hisardut - and Israeli military systems. The approaches are all combat-proven to work in a real life setting against today's types of threats. All are blended together in a unique way so that only the strongest most tactically sound approaches from each system are used. There are no uniforms; no bowing. Only practical, simple to learn material is included. It is innovatively structured, using tactics unique to Haganah and oriented toward maximizing an individual's effectiveness in the minimum timeframe. Haganah represents the best tactics in use by Israeli Special Forces operators, police and other professionals confronted with violence on a daily basis. To this day, Haganah is enhanced by updated tactics flowing out of Israel, and also from information provided by more than 50 programs across America teaching it.

HaganaH teaches effective self-defense strategies to use to respond to the most common and most severe types of attacks. Continuous training of these same techniques reinforces them, so when an attack happens the response is immediate and natural. Practitioner's bodies "know" what to do to protect them. Haganah does not require years of training.”