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.

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.