Last night I had my first instruction on the ancient art of ground-slapping, also known as breakfalls. Having been interested in learning this for a while, and having observed the art of falling to the floor with as much utility as possible in such a situation, it was great to have the chance to learn this properly. In short, breakfalls are awesome 🙂

Not that I’m all that good at them – my technique is generally pretty shonky, but I figure I’m just starting, and I can get in plenty of practice between classes if I feel like subjecting myself to deliberately falling over. The theory behind breakfalls is relatively simple – transfer the energy through to the ground from your fall and be as flexible as possible in order to avoid immediate injury and recover as quickly as possible. This means to not resist the fall (tensing up incorrectly means you’re not as malleable when it comes to rolling through to recovery), clamp your mouth shut and move your tongue out of harm’s way, tuck your head into your chest, and slap the ground with your palm and arm extended horizontally. The latter is one of the keys to successfully transferring energy from your fall and into the ground, lessening the impact to your back/shoulders and assisting with a swift recovery. It’s a simple rule, but is surprisingly effective in lessening the impact.

My biggest problem with breakfalls (and ground rolls as well) is that I forget to tuck my head in, which means I jar my neck on impact, which gives me head-spins and the beginnings of a throbbing headache afterwards. If I do extra practice between classes, this is where I need to really focus my energy – I can get over sore muscles or a sore palm, but a jarred head/neck is painful.

The great thing is that sensei instructed how we can practice the techniques solo if we want to, which works well for me fitting in some practice between classes.

So yes, a big fan of breakfalls. As part of the technique, we were also taught a very basic throw, which was also awesome. I’ve always wanted to know how to do throws because I think they’re cool, and the simple one we learnt was good fun. Much to my relief, I was even able to pull it off, though I think my footwork differed a bit from everyone else because of my leg. I’d like to practice this stuff more in the future, it was great fun 🙂

Anywho, might sign off here – I’ll try and add another post tomorrow as well, as we have a special karate seminar tonight. I’ve never been to one of these before, so I’m looking forward to it. Will post my impressions of it tomorrow.

Bloginated Thursday, 12th March 2009 / General training
Tag-isms: Breakfalls | Technique | training

I had one of those lightbulb moments last night. After doing maegeri’s (front kicks) for years, something finally clicked last night. It was definitely one of those weird, frustrating but ultimately refreshing training moments you get every once in a while.

Let me give some background – maegeri’s are front kicks. The execution is simple – raise knee, leg goes out to strike with the ball of the foot, retract leg back, leg goes down. Simple. Once you get beyond elementary skills, you start perfecting your technique – grounding yourself better, make the kick faster, pull the toes back every time to ensure your striking with the ball of the foot, use your hips, perfect a “whipping” motion, dynamic extension, etc. The one problem I’ve had is that there have been numerous times practicing my kicks on vertical striking pads or on a boxing bag where I’ve mangled my little toe. I always thought it was because my little toe is somewhat demented, in that I can pull back all my other toes, but my little toe refuses to move, so if I strike, there’s an extremely good chance my toe will be bent back or to the side, which is annoying and painful. My theory is that all the abuse I’ve exposed it to over the years of having only one leg malformed it in some way, and that there wasn’t much I could do to improve the quality of my front kicks with the stupid little thing. Until last night!

I’ve found that by adjusting the horizontal angle of my foot a fraction to the right, I’m now not only kicking more prominently with the ball of my foot, but my little toe is no longer getting in the way! The extra bonus is that the slight change in angle has also re-enforced the kick, as it has brought all the bones and muscles into tighter alignment. The stupid thing is that I should have realised this ages ago, as it follows the same precepts behind any standard punch in karate – align the bones, lock them in at the point of impact and focus the strike on the two knuckles nearest the thumb. Obviously in the case of the maegeri, exchange “knuckles” for the area of the ball of the foot around your big toe.

So yes, hooray for me and my lightbulb moment. I didn’t go too full on with my kicks on the bag last night since I hadn’t warmed up my knee enough (and I was conscious of the time I had available to fit in my usual workout), but hopefully I’ll be able to get in some additional practice with my kicks from now on to improve them.

Mind, I also intended to squeeze in some additional kata before tonight’s training, so I should have done that as well. I blame it on my nerdy score-burger over the long weekend just gone, as its more convenient to place the blame on an inanimate object than myself. And because I’m so proud of my nerd achievement, I’ll also pollute the blog with a post about it in the near future 🙂

Bloginated Wednesday, 11th March 2009 / General training, Technique
Tag-isms: Crappy technique | Maegeri (front kicks) | Technique | training

Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve done one of these!

Had training last night, went very well! It was extremely full-on, but rewarding. Sometimes when you head out to martial arts training you have spurts of flat-out exercise, and then by the end of it, you’re not feeling knackered; then you have the opposite, where despite the few breaks between drills, your gi is soaked all the way through with sweat, your muscles are getting achy, but despite it all you have that stupid look on yourself that says “Check out my awesomeness – I just jumped around in a pair of white pajamas and probably looked a bit on the unco side, but I’m exhausted and it was uber”. Last night’s training is closer to the latter – I tried to work really hard to improve my technique, though there were some points where I wasn’t sitting right in the socket on my leg and I was paranoid the leg was going to drop off, despite the fact I always strap it to my waist before I head out for training 😛

So yeah, excellent training. The only thing we didn’t cover was kata, as we’d run out of time to focus on it properly. I’ve decided that I’m going to squeeze in some extra kata practice over the next week, as I’m keen to get the pattern solid in my head so I can move beyond simple memorisation and start to focus on the quality of my technique, and from there, executing that same quality along with appropriate speed and kime. I normally take a while to solidify the pattern of a new kata, but I’ve been trying to really suss this out in my head. It helps that I’m doing pure shotokan, as there are plenty of vids of people demonstrating kata. In fact, a couple of weeks back I wanted to have a quick refresh of my kata, I looked it up on YouTube and tracked down a demonstration of it by Kanazawa-sensei, and was blown away by the technical proficiency of such an early kata in the shotokan syllabus. It’s bizarre, you think you know a kata and do a good job of it with your peers, but when you see your instructor or legendary figures like Kanazawa perform the same sequence, it really hits home how much more you can achieve with your kata.

But talk on kata could probably be left to a future blog. Besides, its getting late and I’m planning on getting into the office earlier than usual tomorrow, so I might call it a night. I’ll try and squeeze in another blog before next week’s training, but we’ll see how I go. If nothing else, expect another round-up next week along with my usual musings!

Bloginated Thursday, 5th March 2009 / Karate
Tag-isms: Karate | kata | Technique | training

Well, so far I’m actually doing what I set out to do this month and have started exercising between classes. My in-laws recently moved interstate, and my father-in-law has passed along his old weights and benches to me before they made the move (along with his blower-vac, which should make cleaning the floor of the shed much easier now!), so I’ve got some new additions to my setup. I’ve also put my boxing station together, and while it isn’t bolted into the floor as securely as I’d like, I’ve piled on plenty of weights on each corner to stabilise it for the moment (I need a slightly wider masonary drill bit to finish the work) and it’s behaving itself. At the moment I’m starting off each session with a short workout on the bag to loosen the muscles up, then crunches and leg lifts before getting into light weight training, alternating exercises during the week to target specific areas (chest and torso/arms/shoulders/etc). At the end, I’ve tried to slip in a little bit of lighter bag work, but so far it’s been pretty crappy since I’ve been a bit exhausted afterwards 😛

I’m not aiming to bulk up too much, primarily I’m looking at increasing muscle mass to the point of being toned and with a degree of greater physical strength. I realise there’s a correlation between size and speed when it comes to martial arts, so my aim is to hopefully balance things correctly (as opposed to over-doing the weight training and becoming a sluggish meat-head :P). At the same point though, because of my condition I don’t have the same level of agility that an able-bodied martial artist would have, so I figure the increased muscle around my chest, back and torso will help to deflect at least part of the damage caused by a blow (i.e. the ‘suit of armour’ concept — turn the muscles into an organic suit of armour to withstand strikes where possible). It will also mean that, in combination with proper technique and correct use of biomechanics, I could deliver greater impact with a strike to make it count.

Plus, I find it an enjoyable way to augment my training – it builds up a sweat, normally leaves me feeling pretty knackered afterwards, and is hopefully going to reduce the amount of ‘padding’ around my midsection 🙂 I think the really good part is integrating bag work in there, and down the road I’d also like to put together a makiwara so I can alternate or complement bag training with makiwara work too.

So yeah, so far so good, but we’re only two days in 🙂 My muscles are really sore at the moment, but I’m of the opinion that the best way to loosen up sore muscles is to give them a workout, so I’ll be looking forward to training tonight, especially since I missed it last week because of my mangled stump. I’ll add another post before the end of the week with a roundup of tonight’s training for those interested.

Bloginated Wednesday, 4th March 2009 / General training, Weights
Tag-isms: training | weight training