[quote]Miss Parker wrote:
Congratulations, Slimjim! Glad to see you doing so well. This weekend I attended a krav seminar with John Whitman, who is one of the top guys in our system. First day was a few hours of basic combatives & groundwork, just tweaking us, letting us fine tune our skills & speed.
Second day started with various ways of forcing your way through a crowd in either a mob-type situation, or when more than one person is trying to prevent you from getting from point A to point B. Then several hours of gun/knife/hostage defenses.
Two creepy things: First, seeing John on his knees while another instructor had a (fake)gun to the back of his head, execution style. Even though the situation was not real, it still gave me a sick feeling seeing it. Second, I didn’t always get the gun from my attacker! Maybe my hands were slippery with sweat, maybe I didn’t do the attack right, or both, but realizing you’ve failed to get the weapon that was about to blow your brains out is sobering.
The most interesting part of the day was practicing de-escalation techniques and learning cues that a person gives when they’re about to attack you with a weapon. Deciding under what circumstances you will attack if de-escalation fails. This is very tricky, especially as a female, as we’re socialized to believe, “If I’m nice to them, they’ll be nice to me”, and to act accordingly. Setting those initial boundaries to keep someone away when they haven’t “done anything”, but you sense something very wrong about them can be more difficult than striking them once they’ve crossed the line.
Third day we took a giant two-level party boat onto the lake & drank & swam & compared bruises & swam some more![/quote]
Sounds like you’re hooked up with a high-quality school!
Thanks, Vash, I love this place. They constantly expand my boundaries by pushing me to the limit of what I think I can endure or accomplish, and then pushing me just a little bit past that point.
Went to train at a friends brother’s MMA school.
I came on bjj night. I was able to use some of my judo that I have learned to hold my own against a few of the white belts with stripes. When I started rolling with any blue belts I quickley developed a hand cramp from all the tapping. It was a lot of fun though. I look forward to supplementing my Judo training with a little bjj by training here and there with those guys.
Also I have decided to compete in the Houston open Judo tournament. So I am beginning to gear up for that. I need to pick my weight class and start training for that.
No, I’m in Austin, but I’m originally from Houston & go there pretty frequently. If I’m around then, I’d like to see the tournament. Btw, your 10 round endurance workout looks like a killer.
Last half we did bull in the ring for 5 rounds. Great work. I begin to get real comfortable with with a few throws. Felt good to get an idea of what I am really training for in a few months.
I just finished a class and it was real fun but exhausting. All that in only one hour!
Lucky me, there was a girl in the class who’s a striped blue belt, very flexible but weak and she makes a great training partner for me. Couldn’t ask for more.
This was my first time sparring in over a month. I had go-rounds with the other two guys and I was really enjoying the class style which is a very slow and relaxed way of sparring, going for positions, not submissions, and the first guy was really big, heavy and strong but I had a terrific round with him…then the second guy and I’m all set up to just work my moves on him and he’s a farking spazz and attacking me and tap, tap, tap farking arm bars and triangles and chokes every minute then he gets my bent elbow and I knew I’d be tapping soon but I had no idea what was coming and all of a sudden he’s jerking it back and before i knew it i hollered out… i was so shocked and scared and everybody looks at me and the instructor says, “are you ok?” and I say, “yeah…” and he’s like, “are you sure? If you’re ok then don’t make sounds like that, pff…” and I’m like, in my head, “well, he STOPPED doing it so I’m ok NOW…I mean, sheesh, nobody’s ever done that to me before…” and there were ten seconds left in the match and I just had to quit because tears started welling up in my eyes but really it was just systemic fatigue.
It was all ok, i got the perfect three partners:
weaker than me, so I can kick her around
stronger than me, but easy going with nothing to prove so I can work on technique
someone who kicks ME around and keeps me sharp and aware of consequences
Classes here at Maxercise are going to be great. World-class instructors. A formidable competition team.
Dang, I’ll be spending the next month basically living in an MMA gym.
Yay! Downwardog is back! I’ve been wondering where you were. Your workouts always inspire me to get my butt in gear.
Pictures, please!
Boooo! I jammed my thumb tonight on my partner’s elbow when she blocked my shot. Two loud pops & now it’s killing me to move it, though its possible to do so. I put it in a brace & was able to jam the whole thing into a boxing glove to play “get the shit beaten out of you by 2 attackers”, or whatever fancy name they call it in Krav Maga Hell. I admit I enjoyed that, but now I’m sitting here pouting over my immobilized thumb. Booooo!
I wouldn’t imagine it would be a huge amount, due to the likelihood of damaging the hands when punching without gloves/protection. My friend did it with the military and he did a lot of cool stuff with using everyday objects to batter people, groin strikes, eye gouging, choking etc
Ooh, boxers tend to do very well in krav, because usually they are fast as hell, aggresive, & start off with great form. In level one we do use a lot of hand strikes, but not all straight boxing style punches. You’ll also do palm heel strikes, hammerfist punches (where the strike is coming in more of a downward or sideways motion), elbows, knees, kicks, and various chokes. Plus, you’ll be working on the defenses for all these, so your shoulder should get a more of a break than in would in boxing training. You’ll do lots of fatigue drills, too. Oh, FightingIrish, I wish I could do a krav session with you! I love working with boxers! I know you don’t like training with women, but a girl can dream, right?
Hey, JonnyTMT, your buddy actually did an even more intense krav than me. Military krav is only taught to military & law enforcement personnel, so I have to do civilian. Initial training is more basic, we don’t go into the stuff your friend did until we go up the ranks a bit.
First hour - level 1 - hammerfist to the side & back, then vertical front kicks with additional combatives at the end. For the first time I experienced what you guys have been talking about when you say you get to just work technique because you have a smaller (or female) partner. I ended up partnering with a 12 year old girl on her 3rd lesson. She was half my size & strength, so I scaled everything back & focused only on technique & really got a lot out of it.
2nd hour - level 2/3 - pad work, then sparring to the body only, then working the heavy bag. Next, my teacher did something interesting. There are 5 of us females in that class (that’s a huge amount for krav) & she paired each of us up with the 5 largest guys in class & told us to just beat the shit out of the guys with body shots, go 100%, while they defended, but did not strike back. The truth is, all of us females are holding back on our strikes when we’re actually hitting someone. I’m particularly bad about it. I have no problem going 100% on the ground, but I’m having such a difficult time really hitting someone hard in the face. Those big guys were such good sports, yelling “GO! GO!”. She’s de-socializing us from the “be a nice girl” training we all grew up with, starting with body shots.
3rd hour - canceled! No groundfighting today because the Gorgeous Bastard is off training soldiers.
Irish,
Good to see you back training. Hope that shoulder is getting better.
Miss Parker,
Crazy as always!
Well, looks like I’ll be putting my training on hold for a while. It’s a good thing, actually, as my wife and I are getting ready to move into our first house! We’re excited, but realize that there is a lot of work ahead of us. So, in an effort to put our money to the best possible use, I’ve agreed to stop going to classes for now and concentrate on using the money towards the home, both in repairs and saving some for when something decides to go wrong.
Once I get my car paid off (about a year), I should be able to return.
I’ll still be posting around here and will still do some home boxing and Muay Thai workouts on my heavy bag.
