Apologies, sound effects and a stuntman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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.”