I can't dance even if I want to

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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.