Ha, man I totally feel for your kid as this is definitely how my brain works too. Like, once “instinct” gets rattled and stops working, you have to apply more and more mental energy to it in effort to make it work, which in turn carries you farther and father away from said “instinct” (I couldn’t think of a better word for this).
When that happens to me, I have to switch tasks to cool off for a while and get out of my own head.
EDIT: this drives my wife nuts. She doesn’t get why someone would just stop in the middle of a task lol.
@TX_iron Good to know my kid is in good company, haha. I may lean on you on the shared psychology aspect if it comes to that. I definitely made use of that strategy the last time we encountered it and immediately switched to something that my kid was good at it go get in some positive reps. The plus side is that my kid does have a fair amount of things they’re good at already. I can safely say my kid woulda kicked my ass at their age, haha.
What you’re describing as “instinct” is something my eastern philosophy professor talked me as “wu wei” from Taoism. “Effortless effort”, where things just flow, whereas once wu wei is gone you experience “firstness”, the experience of experiencing something. No different than when you go your whole life regularly swallowing saliva with no thought about it and then one time you screw it up and choke on your own fluids and have to relearn bodyfunctions again, haha.
Notes: 3:45 between heavy presses, 2:00 between giant sets. I’m hemorrhaging strength on the press, but before I go salt the earth on the program I have to keep in mind that, on top of losing 10lbs of bodyweight, I also haven’t been afforded the luxury of 2 a day training since early March, and it was during those 2 a days I saw my strength explode on the press. My instinct is that the programming is still sound, but the effectiveness is reduced due to circumstances. I AM getting the itch to do some behind the neck pressing again, but my right shoulder is just not having a good time, most likely a result of the reintroduction of combat sports. I told the weights way down on the lateral raises and really focused on the muscles in hopes of that having an effect.
Workout finished and the Mrs hit me with “You look really veiny”, so I suppose the diet has been worth it.
Dude, I’m pretty sure I’d have given you some PTSD with how today’s lesson went. We were overcome by itchiness. Couldn’t get through 4 moves of a form without taking a break to scratch some phantom itch on the face or the foot. And THEN the hiccups set in. I had to cut it short after that. Hiccups just drive me insane, and my kid had already had a bout of them during a zoom meeting just 30 minutes earlier.
Dan Gun is at least looking better, and I saw my kid throw a few punches in the practice that actually looked like they had some intent behind them, but they also threw a punch that was a total hitchiker thumb.
For new material, I taught them how to check kicks, and then how to throw a right hand off the kick check to counter and get their weight behind the punch. I’d like it to be an overhand right or a cross, but even with a TKD style punch it’s pretty effective.
I’ve been milling around an idea of teaching some boxing punches while keeping the TKD punches in there and teaching the idea that the latter are sucker punches meant to just create space and get the hell away and that, should that fail, we start boxing. It would at least make them make more sense, especially with me teaching that the whole chambered punch/switch hands thing is “grab your opponent with your offhand and pull them into you as you punch”. You’re not going to throw combos under that set-up, but it can definitely be a devastating opening move.
@twojarslave Where did you buy your mats from? I’m thinking of putting some in my basement. Less so to teach any sort of grappling (I’m super unqualified for that) but more to have a soft training space to work in. Right now we’re just training on carpet in a spare room, and I’d rather be down in the basement to have a real dedicated training space.
I didn’t. They are actually my instructors, who has acquired several sets over the years for various purposes. He had 3 uncut roll-out mats sitting around so we decided another training space was needed in my basement and I’ve got these on indefinite loan.
I can definitely say they are quality mats and reasonably-priced compared to others. I think the surface might be ideal for your application as well. It is a smooth-glossy finish. The only watch-out is that sweat can make the mats quite slippery, unlike a Tatami-style mat that has a grittier surface that will still have traction while wet.
It cleans up easy, and I just use a Swiffer pad with antifungal/antibacterial solution after training sessions.
My nieces, age 7 and 8 love them for reasons entirely unrelated to martial arts.
We don’t go full-force stand up in the basement because we’ve only got three of these mats to work on, but I don’t have a problem with all 270lbs of me being forcefully thrown on these with a strong Uchi-Mata or anything else that might hit you with the ground pretty hard. Not that its fun to repeat over and over, just that it’s safely trainable without having crash pads.
3 of these is really a great setup for two people training. Enough room to move around on your feet and really go at it with just two people, but still enough room for two pairs to drill or train lightly.
@twojarslave Much appreciated dude! What you linked is a great value. Good to know it’s holding up well. Definitely won’t be doing anything super high velocity: I just like being able to train barefoot without worry of catching foot AIDS and having something soft to land on if a kick goes errant. My kid seems to like falling on the floor in between kicks for some reason. Maybe she’s part Gracie, haha.
PM WORKOUT
Axle bench press 296
1x10
1x8
1x6
Close grip axle bench 256
1x10
2x6
Swiss bar incline bench 220
1x10
2x6
Dips
1x40
1x35
1x30
2x35
Poundstone curls
106xAxle
Standing ab wheel between sets of benching
8x8
Notes: 2:45 between sets of benching, 2:00 between dips. I think I’ve accidentally gone full on martyr mode in my dieting. My muscles have been cramping all day, and for the past week I’ve gotten gnarly ab cramps. Legs have me walking like a toy soldier. This workout kicked my butt pretty good as a result. It’d really help if I had an actual end game for getting lean: typically around this time I’m doing it for a cruise and a fitness test I have coming up, but with the world put on hold I may have accomplished what I need. We’re planning on doing Thanksgiving in May this weekend, so that might be a good head start in the right direction.
I got the attachment to my BAS today. I plan to set it up later tonight, after a dinner of a ribeye and some other good things.
These are probably lifetime mats with decent care. Definitely not junk.
My instructor’s old place had the same models of mats, just custom-cut to fit the room we were training in at the time. Those were his instructors’ mats before him too, so they have some significant, hard mileage going back at least 15 years, along with some 110 lb energetic pit bull mileage. The surfaces on those old mats are just as good as the less-used, newer mats in my basement.
Notes: 3:45 between heavy pulls, 2:00 between giant sets. Hamstring is definitely back in business. Still a little gunshy pulling with a bar in front of me, so was moving slow on 635 and didn’t want to go any harder, so dropped it to 585 and went for broke. Got another one of my famous moonwalks on film. Good to see I still got it in me.
Giant sets were solid. Neck harness fits in.
Borked my blood lipids test. Forgot that fish oil would count against the whole “fast for 12 hours” thing, and my 5 tabs taken before bed resulted in a 50 point spike in my LDL from my previous test. HDL and triglycerides were still the same as before, so that bodes well, but doc advised me to come off the fish oil for 3 days, do a real 12 hour fast and then come back in. Will be getting that knocked out next week.
TKD lesson was great today. Too easy to let them run super long. This is the last week of school, so soon we can really drag them out.
Taught 2 new breakaways from a position of someone grabbing your shoulders from behind. Not the most threatening position, but I’ve actually legit used it when I was in middle school. Good way to get some dude messing with you to knock it off, and it led into a good discussion of how the trunk is the source of power when it comes to martial arts.
Basically, you can either reach your arm up high, turn toward that side and wrap up both of the dudes arms in your own (leaving you free to punch, elbow, headbutt, etc), or you can put your hands up in a fighting stance, lock them in place, and spin your trunk hard like a washing machine agitator to knock the hands away. Both work, and it’s like a magic trick.
From there, I got to do something I’d really wanted to do for a while: have chambered punches make sense. I wrote a pretty long write up of this over on the combat section, and I’ll link there for those interested in it
But basically: chambered punches aren’t meant for prolonged stand-up striking fights. For that, you wanna use boxing. TKD style chambered punches are meant as part of a sneak attach offensive to quickly defuse a situation/create space. They work by taking your non-punching hand, grabbing the opponent with it, and then pulling them to you/off balance while you fire a short straight punch to the stomach/face/whatever.
This makes the forms make SO much more sense (why the hell do I have this arm out in front of me? OH, I’m grabbing the dude and pulling him into my punch), and it allows TKD style of punches to co-exist with boxing style. It also means training the chambering hand to move JUST as hard as the punching hand.
A lot of what I’ve been teaching my kid the value of keeping your balance and taking your opponent’s balance away, so the premise of “pull them off balance and punch them while they can’t roll with the punch” works so well. Having reconciled this in my brain makes it easier for me to teach these style of punches now.
Teaching TKD has really been awesome for me: I’ve been discovering a lot of the things I discarded before and able to make far more sense of it.
I let my kid pick what to do next, and that was HUGE for them. I’m going to do that every lesson. 5-10 minutes of whatever drill they want to do. I feel so stupid for not remembering that trick earlier: when you give students ownership of the lesson, they take it a lot more seriously. Now THEY are responsible for their own development, and it’s a big moral victory when you get to do what YOU want to do. My kid picked stance transitions, which was great.
We finished off with push kicks, round kicks and roundhouse kicks. The round kick is now trickier for my kid, having been exposed to roundhouses, and I get that. The roundhouse slams into the target and has a wide arc, while the roundkick is very precise. Still good to have the diverse selection. Kid went to kick combos from there: push kick to roundhouse.
I swear, if I had a roundhouse like my kid does when I was there age, I NEVER woulda gotten as bullied as I did growing up, haha. I’m not at all worried if my kid ever has to scrap: only worried about the kind of trouble they might get into…
Great realization. Bringing it back to the history of most martial arts: people often forget that many of these arts were being highly developed when guys were fighting in armour. If you’re in close enough to be punching a guy, there’s probably a high chance your grappling with this guy to some degree, as most weapon ranges exceed that of strikes. Training to be able to quickly yank your opponent in and smash him in the face or throat to give you a moment to break distance or pull another weapon would be a valuable skill.
Thanks dude! That’s a cool point to consider on it. Its like it was supposed to make sense, haha.
I think it fits in so well with the leg dominance in TKD too. You wanna keep the fight at kick range, so if someone encroaches you grab them, slam them and then get away back to kick range. Make it YOUR fight rather than theirs. Would also explain how there is a very limited upper body striking arsenal in general: trying not to spend much time in said range.
10 rounds on the BAS (2 minute rounds, 45 seconds of rest, boxing for the first round, boxing and kicks for all others,16oz gloves for first 5 rounds, MMA gloves for last 5)
5 minutes rope skipping
A few stray thai kicks
Notes: Filming from this angle was helpful as I realize how very little trunk power I’m using on the punches. If I start twisting a little, I’m bound to get some more out of it. A few short hooks and uppercuts looked solid, but I’m robbing myself of power. Surprised at how decent the right leg roundhouse was looking. I’m not turning my hip over as much as I’d like, but it’s still decently fluid. Left is significantly less so, but that doesn’t shock me.
Need to find kick range: was hitting with my instep a lot. My TKD is showing. Did throw some snappy roundkicks with the lead leg a few times in my combos.
Got a good sweat out of this, and the product holds up.
However, the most important part is I can still fit into my 2005-era Sprawl shorts without as much muffin topping
Thanks @anna_5588 No creep received. This is absolutely the leanest I’ve ever been at this bodyweight. I stepped on the scale and saw 198 today, and that’s typically where my body starts to show signs that I’ve been eating too much, so to have it be where the abs are coming in bodes very well.
