Training Tips and Practice for Improvement

[Rastlinux]

I always crave new and useful methods for training, especially when training alone. So I thought I would start this thread and volunteer one of my favorite secret :cool: training methods. :rolleyes:

Do you remember the Hacky Sack? A small bean bag will do. Hacky sack is best over a bean bag in my opinion due to it being round and able to take some decent hits. One of these little jewels will help to improve your accuracy and hand/foot eye coordination. Simply toss the sack/bag into the air and strike it.

For example, toss the bag and while in perfect form, stance and execution do a backfist. You should hit the bag with your first 2 knuckles and the bag should fly with force in the exact opposite direction. If the bag veers at any angle then you will have to try again.

Working on speed strikes or need something more advanced? Toss 2 or 3 or 4 or have someone do it for you. Test you speed by striking them accurately and not letting them fall more than a couple of fists width before striking all of them in succession. This is tricky since the deployment of the sack/bag is very important. However, a real target is seldom stationary.

Do this will a spinning backfist to test not only speed and accuracy but that you use eye contact prior to an actual strike. Great help for competition fighting where blind strikes are highly frowned upon.

You can use this tool for almost any strike or kick in your martial arts arsenal.

In the end, this little tool will help to break up monotony in a routine and will give a great return for your effort as a little addition in a weekly routine. It can be fun and challenging at the same time. In a classroom or formal instructed environment, it adds flavor and zest to a routine. It's also very impressive to do some sort of spinning kick perfectly executed against a small hacky sack.

They say that Jet Lee is able to kick a target in the exact same spot in the exact same way over and over. The film guys love that. I wonder if he ever trained using a silly tool like a hacky sack. ;)

I hope you find this an appropriate thread, if so .... share your favorite little tip/method or tool for training.

Any fun or interesting solo or partner training tips that can add "flavor" to a workout routine out there?

[warrior-scholar]

Do we work our way up to tossing bricks and stones after a while?

Just kidding...
Thanks for the tip!

[Rastlinux]

This tip will require a partner.

Tossing ....
Bricks? ... stones? ... boards? .... ;)

Your millage may vary with this one and I welcome fine tuning of this tip from anyone that has practiced this method.

For this tip, I must place a disclaimer. I do not know the skill levels of those reading his post. So, broken hands, fingers or any related injuries to ones body are the direct responsibility of the owner of said body. In other words don't try this without the help of a proper ranking individual. Try at your own risk.

This tip covers somewhat the physics of a speed strike. It's all fine and dandy to be able to 4 to 6 back fists a second, but are they each a devastating strike? It could be the difference between love taps and death traps. ;) This can be tested by an old standard of board breaking. I suggest standard pine for the test. Don't go and get oak or some exotic wood to say you broke ?African Iron Wood and only lost one finger in the process?. ... This is about the physics of the strike and a pine board will do nicely. There are standard sizes used for board breaking, if you do now know what they are, then you should seek out the black belt I mentioned in the above disclaimer. If you have never broken a board, seriously, find someone that has and can teach you how. It takes to long to heal when compared to how a little instruction will only take a short time.

The test:
Have a partner suspend the board between two fingers loosely. It should be held just tight enough to hold it in place but if you lightly slap the board it should fall from your partner's grasp. Adjust the angle and height of the board for you strike. Make certain that nothing is in the path of the board for some distance. Think of throwing the board and what is will hit to make your decision on what needs to move or where you need to move to. Make sure that you strike with the grain and not against it. In a back fist, you two knuckles should be parallel to the grain and not against it. Strike the board with as much speed as you can muster. Remember that you hand has to return about twice as fast as you strike. At least that is what you mind must tell your hand. The second think you must remember in the strike is to strike ?through? the board. Do not strike the board. Stay very relaxed and keep you heart rate down. If you execute the strike correctly, the board will break and go sailing across the ground for a short distance. If done incorrectly your hand will probably hurt and/or the board will travel a long distance without actually breaking. A ?needs improvement? strike will break the board but still send the pieces sailing for a good distance. I define accurate strike of pieces traveling about 10 feet or so. I would probably say 25 feet is a bit far to travel. It says that you were fast enough but the strike was not cleanly executed and you did not strike with the grain properly. So two aspects are dealt with here. One is speed and the other accuracy. You must be able to strike with great speed and accurately strike the board to break it exactly where you wanted.

The only way this board will break in this method is if the strike is executed correctly and with proper speed. It is the speed of the whip that causes the damage, not the flimsy leather strap at the end. The same is true for the speed strike. I can do this sort of break with a chop, back fist and jab(punch). I have seen this done with a ridge hand strike. It requires a bit of concentration for me to execute properly. I do not know if I could do two breaks within a second and I currently max out at four speed strikes in a second. I'm not really sure how I would attempt to perform a multiple speed strike break on boards. I'm not sure the usefulness of trying this with a foot strike. A tip for the board holder. Wear gloves like a batting or golf glove. It will help to eliminate the edge of the wood from cutting you or from getting splinters from a more explosive strike.

Now for the fun part for warrior scholar, have you partner throw boards at you as fast as he/she can. Speed strike them to splinters!!!! :p ?Only kidding on this last part!? Don't throw boards at your friends. Unless of course they yell ?pull?, then all bets are off. :D

Hope you find this tip useful in some way.

[administrator]

I'm not sure the usefulness of trying this with a foot strike.

You can break suspended boards with kicks, no problem. I have done it with front snap kicks and spinning heel kicks. I used to require a specific board break for each belt, a few years ago. I had always noticed that the overall form of some of the 'traditional' karate systems had better form than most of the modern kenpo students. I developed a breaking progression that advanced through the belt material. This was done to emphasize the perfection of exectution of a basic strike. It is not necessarily the speed of the strike that counts, but the angle of execution, body alignment, overall form and follow-through. During tests, I have had many children, with less speed, strength and mass, than full grown adults, to easily break boards ulilizing good technique. During the same test, many of the more advanced adults, may have had to take repeated attempts to break a board with the same technique. Speed is a very important factor, but form reigns supreme as the foundation of proper technique.

The result of requiring breaking on promotional exams was students with better form, confidence and executional ability. Why did I stop requiring board breaking? 1. It becomes expensive, 2. the quality of wood has decreased at the home construction stores, 3. I am tired of my fingers getting crushed, and 4. I had a brown belt to fracture his ankle trying to muscle his way through a spinning back kick, rather than using good form. One this particular occasion, he was to execute the spinning back kick to go through two boards (supported), an easy task for many children. However, his mind-set was on speed and power only. His accuracy suffered, and his foot struck the board incorrectly, breaking his ankle. On the same test day, an eight year old broke two boards supported with a front thrusting ball kick.

What was the result of stopping the board breaking requirement? Students in general have slightly less form and less accuracy in kicking. If you are interested in the breaking requirements, I would gladly post them. You can use the progession at your own pace. It is never too late to start.

Regarding the hacky-sack play. Its great. I still do that with some students. If you are in-doors training, you can also used a super-ball that will keep bouncing randomly, and come with numerous games that make accuracy fun. We use one game that requires that you to call out the kick for the next strike on the ball. If that kick is successfully executed on the ball, then that kicker gets to call out the next kick, and so on.

Kevin Lamkin

[Tombo]

If you could, please pass along the board breaking requirements. This is something I think would be great to see and possibly use even just on my own or with my kids.

[The Tabasco Kid]

Yes, please post the breaking requirements. A guide to form would also be greatly appreciated.

[administrator]

These breaking requirements were used by us at our school a few years ago. They were never part of the American Kenpo curriculum by Ed Parker. The purpose of the breaking requirement was to produce finesse and accuracy in kicking, not just learning to break a board.

Angle of execution is critical. Angle of impact must always be at 90 degrees to the striking surface, even with circular strikes. Glancing or slicing strikes will not usually break a board.

We discontinued the requirements because a couple of our students got injured by attempting to break boards before they were properly trained and ready to do so.
Here is our list, do so at your own risk. (all boards are 1" pine, 12"x12")

Yellow - none
Orange - 1 board - Side Thrust Kick (two hand support)
Purple - 1 board - Front Thrust Kick (two hand support)
Blue - 1 board - Flying Side Kick (two hand support)
Green - 1 board - Spinning Heel Kick (suspended)
3rd Brown - 2 boards - Spinning Back Kick (two hand support)
2nd Brown - 2 boards -Jump Spinning Back Kick (two hand support)
1st Brown - 2 boards - Spinning Heel Kick (two hand support)
1st Black - 1 board - Front Thrust Kick (board set up edge, no support)
2nd Black - 2 boards - Flying Side Kick (two hand support)
3rd Black - 3 boards - Side Thrust Kick (two hand support)

The result of my students who trained well, using this as the motivation is, we developed some very good kickers. Ever since I have discontinued the requirement, the kickers have not been as good, although they still arewell trained kickers.

Kevin Lamkin

[Lance C]

We used to do breaking as status within the club, always making sure the stuff we broke was re-used, for example my shed's foundation is completely made of broken cap stones, we made awards out of the wood we broke, makes a nice conversational piece.

Standard issue was the 12" x 12" one inch thick barn board right from the lumberyard. There is no issue with telling someone that it came from there as it is non-planed and rough looking with knots. The concrete was a 20x10" 1.5" piece called a capping stone. And then there was the fork breaking, those were $ store specials, where we would punch a fork to bend it and quickly grab it and snap it back in one motion and often the fork would break.

As for what belt level to do this at, It was pretty much determined when the student was capable, In a class of yellow belt graduates, we had 3 students break one concrete capping stone each, most of the others did a single board. We also did speed breaking at higher levels, few students could accomplish this, also we used to punch candles out (the air from your fist blows it out) Also who could write their name on the wall the highest with a magic marker held in their toes.

Personally speaking, I've been working on the wrestling part of Kenpo and toughening up alot, does it work? While road bicycling 10 days ago I was hit by an 18 wheeler and sent bouncing down the road other than road rash, a bruised lung and a couple of cracked ribs, I got up went to the hospital, then the police station and went camping for a week being a bit sore and short of breath. The doctor said the conditioning kept me together and tucking my head kept it off the pavement, my helmet did not even have a scratch. As for the truck driver, there was no way of knowing who did it as he didn't stop and there were no witnesses.

[warrior-scholar]

Are the students taking advantage of you in the weakened state? :)

Glad you weren't hurt more than stated. My mom's cousin was hit by a tire hurled by a semi and it resulted in instant death. He was riding his motorcycle and was hit directly in the chest.

[Lance C]

Yes they do, I have an 18 year old student that is getting past me every day already now it's like shooting fish in a barrel, and now I've done in my ankle and have had to cancel the park run and any drills, coaching or practice sessions until I'm steady on two again.

At least enthusiasm keeps me going. I am developing remote control retention techniques and couch defenses in the mean time.