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.