Dialing up the speed keeps it real

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

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

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

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

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

Medicine ball babies & softly spoken attack commands

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

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

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

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

Size don't matter

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

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

Don't let warm days thwart exercise

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

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

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

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

The trench is here to stay

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sparring: from fear to frustration to yearning

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

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

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