Had a bit more body conditioning at training this week, including something that was really fun – iron stomach training!

In the previous style I used to do, we’d messed around a little with this premise before, so it’s been a while since I’ve last done it. I was quite surprised at how much punishment I was able to take though, much more than previously I reckon, but still, I want to be able to take more 😛

This isn’t too surprising in the grand scheme of things, as I’m currently suffering from Cake Belly. For those unawares (which would be most, since I’ve just coined the term :P), that when you’ve eaten multiple instances of yummy cake over a week and haven’t exercised your abs appropriately to offset all the awesome food 🙂 It also brought home that I really need to get back into the swing of doing weights, as it’ll help develop the muscles in my torso to withstand a bit more punishment.

BTW, for those unawares, broken down into its most basic form, iron stomach training teaches you how to tense and use the muscles in your abdomen to withstand a direct strike. The process involves two practitioners standing in front of each other exchanging reverse-punches directed at the stomach on each other, starting with a low intensity and progressing to gradually higher impact until the receiver of the strike reaches their absolute limit.

Or in simple terms, it’s two people punching each other in the stomach until one of them almost falls down 😉

At more advanced levels, I’ve seen iron body demonstrations where planks of wood, baseball bats, concrete, and so forth, are smashed against parts of the body (head, stomach, arms, legs), with little to no harm to the practitioner despite the object breaking/shattering as part of the process.

The awesome part of it was that I was actually doing the iron stomach training with Jyastin-kun, so we were pretty comfortable with upping the intensity of the training as we went, which was awesome fun. I once again fell into the habit of pulling my stomach as some of the punches were coming in instead of letting it hit without obstruction. By the end of it I was working hard to break the habit, but I still need more work.

The disappointing thing at the time was that it wasn’t looking like I was going to get any bruising, despite the fact I knew it had to have had some impact given that I was struggling to bow out at the end of class due to the tender muscles in my belly! Looks like some bruising is starting to come through, so at least I’ll feel a little justified for being a bit tender for the next few days!

So yes, I’m stupid, but body conditioning is fun 🙂

Bloginated Thursday, 17th September 2009 / Karate
Tag-isms: body conditioning | stomach impact | training

Jesse over at The Martial Explorer has tagged me in an awesome bit of blogging tomfoolery. Being rather chuffed to be picked out for this (despite the fact he tagged my almost 2 weeks ago!!!), here ’tis:

The meme works as follows. You post five things about yourself. Four are untrue. One is true. All are so outlandish, implausible or ridiculous that no one would be inclined to believe that any of them are true. And despite the pleas from your readers, you never divulge which is true and which are fabrications. You then tag five other people (four seriously and one person you are pretty sure would never participate).

1. During a home training session, I caused irreversible damage to both myself and my boxing station
2. When I was much younger, inspired by pop culture icons The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, I performed a jump kick while waiting to get picked up from school and snapped my leg in half whilst mid-air, sending the other half flying across the road
3. My brothers and I used to break into my Dad’s tool shed when we were kids and fight each other with spades, rakes and sticks in the spirit of Monkey (or as it was locally known, Monkey Magic)
4. When I was still in primary school (which is elementary school for those of you on the North American continent!), I used my newly-learned Taekwondo techniques to successfully defend myself in a classroom scrap
5. I can still effortlessly perform vertical axe kicks with my prosthesis

There are elements of truth in all of them, so good luck!

Should they happen to drop by (and haven’t been tagged already!), I’ll tag BBM from Black Belt Mama, Wim over at Wim Demeere’s Blog, Patrick from Mokuren Dojo, Jon at EPIC Martial Arts, and brother Tank (who can leave a reply in the comments if he’s interested :P) 😉

Bloginated Monday, 14th September 2009 / Karate
Tag-isms: History | humour

Matt over at Ikigai posted an awesome and humble post on the importance of keeping an open mind when approaching the study and practice of martial arts. There really isn’t a whole lot more to add to what he’s covered, and I can see my journey through a lot of what he has said. While I don’t have anywhere near the knowledge and experience he has, it’s nice to know I’m not the only one who has put the walls up and have tried to tear them down in trying to learn about martial arts wholistically as time has gone on.

For me, I have found that posting in good, open-minded martial arts forums (like OzBudo) have been one step in getting my mind out of the comfortable space it had setup with regards to martial arts, and attending seminars and training with people of varied experience also helps. While there are systems I still have a personal preference for over others, I’ve found I have really started to lower the irrational prejudice I had towards other styles, especially since at times they were petty or ill-informed, and to see things as wholistically as possible.

So this is a tip of my hat to you Matt – I’m committed to making it a habit to empty my cup 😀

Bloginated Monday, 14th September 2009 / Karate
Tag-isms: martial arts | open mind

I was reading a post over at EPIC Martial arts on padwork earlier (I’m trying to finally get back to reading up on what my fellow MA bloggers have been up to, they’ve been busy!), and it got me to thinking – padwork is awesome 😀

In my current style, we haven’t done a lot of padwork, but Sensei has mentioned introducing it a bit more recently. In my previous style we had the opportunity to do a bit of padwork, but it was mainly working on focusing/learning targeting for kicks and punches. Jon’s post discusses the effectiveness of training with doing padwork with real intent on both side of the equation – not just one person hitting a target continuously, but moving around, applying pressure, making you fight on both sides.

I see this as having plenty of benefits – first up, it helps train stamina, which is an essential attribute you need as a martial artist. It teaches you to target and focus under pressure. It makes you learn that fights are two-way interactions with your opponent, you can’t just fire out technique after technique without considering all the variables involved otherwise. And finally, it lets you practice heavy contact in a sparring scenario with relative safety.

Hopefully with all this I haven’t missed the point of Jon’s excellent post, so please drop by and have a look, it makes for great reading! I’m going to make a mental note to talk with my Sensei about this later on this week to see if we can do it, as I reckon padwork is awesome 😀

Bloginated Monday, 14th September 2009 / Karate
Tag-isms: padwork

So to wrap things up, I also thought I’d share something about my new kata.

In the past, I’ve really struggled with learning the pattern of kata, but this year I’ve been trying to go about learning kata a bit differently. First up, I’m trying hard to apply much greater focus in class and keeping myself from getting distracted or relaxing or taking things too easy. When I first started learning my previous grade-kata, I experimented with this and found that I was able to pick up the kata much faster than I usually would. Following my last grading I’ve been working on my focus even more and am trying to make every session of regular training as intensive as possible, trying to match the same dedication and effort you typically put into a grading but in an everyday class scenario. And the same goes for my kata – focus-focus-focus.

And strangely enough, it appears to be very effective – last week was the first time learning my kata, and by the end of the lesson I’d managed to memorise the basic pattern. True, my form was pretty poor, but I was still managing to work on my breathing and put in focused energy into some of the techniques. It was actually kind of amazing, as I entered that tarnce-like state of awareness you can often get when performing kata despite the fact I was still very early on in my understanding of it.

As a result, I came away feeling really chuffed that I’d manage to make such a productive first step in learning my new kata. True, part of being able to pick it up relatively quickly can also be attributed to greater experience and being able to tune into the patterns in other Heian kata, but I also think my attention to detail and my focus were big parts of this, and it’s always nice to find that, despite what you may think sometimes, you are improving as time goes on, you are evolving as a martial artist… even if you habitually look a bit unco 😉

Now I have to hope that I’ll be in good form next week! Will have to put some time aside between classes to go through the sequences, I don’t want to put this good start to waste.

Bloginated Friday, 11th September 2009 / Karate
Tag-isms: kata