Tag Archives: training

Weight and See

2 Replies

In my ongoing struggle against nature (and my love of ale) I’ve joined another gym, a swish new one. This time though, I’m not going to do the usual of ‘do lots of bike, cross trainer, a bit of resistance – quit after a few weeks’. Easy to say now I guess, but I’m pretty determined, and I’ve got a new focus this time.

The most I’ve ever done for my strength is some resistance work at the gym, and some dumbbell work at home, but working out at home is difficult without a dedicated space to do it. Moving the kitchen table, then making sure a spaniel isn’t licking your face every five minutes isn’t exactly the sort of motivation you need after a day at work. This has changed though, and thanks to a friend from work who’s pretty serious about his weights, I’m on a mission to do something about me (for my size) below-par strength. There’s a couple of resistance machines I’m still using, but mostly I’m working with free weights now which is something I’ve wanted to do for a while, but always been a bit chicken to do without someone experienced with me to a) spot me, and b) make sure I don’t have horrible technique. It’s a good job I did wait for that help, because my technique was indeed, horrible. There’s a lot of nonsense talked about martial arts and weight training, people seem to think that weights = muscle-bound, no flexibility, slow. Not true.

If I can motivate myself enough to keep it all up and keep progressing, I’m hoping to keep a record of what I’m managing to do here so I can look back at my progression. So for posterity, here’s where I’m starting.

Exercise Weight Reps
Leg press 213KG 8
Shoulder press 22.5KG x2 9.5
Lat pulldown 90KG 5
Chest press (Smiths) 70KG 8
90KG 3(!)
Chest press (bench) 70KG 6
Military press 60KG 5.5
Bicep curl 17.5KG x2 6
Tricep pulldown 50 10

The observant among you will notice I’m not doing anything over 10 reps, and that’s because I’ve been advised to go heavy and low reps. I know there’s a huge amount of debate about what’s best to do, low weight and lots of reps, heavy and low reps, or somewhere in the middle, but this is what I’m doing. I’m doing everything (with the exception of the tricep curl – I just didn’t have time) to failure, and hopefully over the next few weeks the numbers in the first column will be going up. Explosive up, controlled down.

From a quick Google, it seems I’m on the right track:

Link 1
Link 2

Kicking My Own Backside

1 Reply

I’ve been feeling a bit frustrated lately, mostly with myself. I really want to train more, not necessarily Tang Soo Do, just training in general. Since I started teaching my own training has dropped to twice a week and I’ve really started to notice the difference, my strength has dropped, as has my CV fitness, it’s not good and I need to do something about it. My problem has been kicking my own arse into doing something about it.

This past weekend I went to Birmingham with the club to see The Martial Arts Show, a new expo built on the ashes of what Seni used to be (before it turned into an MMA-focused nonsense), and as always it was really inspiring. It’s a combination of watching martial artists of all disciplines walking around and doing their thing on the stages, and just being immersed in the atmosphere for two days, there’s no way anyone who trains couldn’t be inspired. I think it was the tipping point for me though, it finally drummed home that I’ve got to do something to sort myself out and get back to where I was, and a long way past.

The first and most obvious thing to do is get my bike back out on the road, that’s one of the main reasons I bought it in the first place after all, I just need to get those tyres sorted and put some miles in. On top of that I’ve got a few ideas, the first of which starts soon, but I’m going to keep it under my hat pretty much until it’s actually all up and happening, otherwise it’s just more talk, and if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s getting excited about something then losing interest pretty quickly.

I’d love to be writing here again in say, six weeks time, and be reporting about how well it’s gone, how much stronger I feel, how much weight I’ve lost. I guess it’s up to me to make sure that’s what I’m doing :)

Downtime

Leave a reply

The observant (or perennially bored) among you will have noticed that I haven’t updated much lately around here. There are a few reasons why, but the short version is that I’ve had a lot of stuff go on lately away from Internet Land, and not much of it has been nice. It’s been a very trying and upsetting time for my family and me, but there are breaks in the cloud now and things seem to be getting better.

On a training front, I haven’t got a lot to report really. I’ve unfortunately had to miss some seminars that I’d have loved to have been at, but that can’t be helped and I look forward to the next chances I get to go away and train. My own class is still going well too, albeit with a minimal number of students for now. It would be really easy to look at that as a negative, but that’d just drag me down, so I’m focusing on the positives from it. With a small number of students I’ve been lucky enough to spend a lot of time working on specifics, and giving a lot of attention to the things I can see which need addressing, and I’m hoping that what we lack in numbers at the next grading, we make up for in quality.

When I first knew the class was going to be opening on a Friday, I was a bit sad to be losing one of my own training sessions each week to run it. I thought I’d really miss putting on my dobok, standing with the others and working up a sweat. So far though when it’s come to it, I haven’t really had a chance to feel like that. From start to finish I’m completely engaged, constantly thinking, analysing and trying to adapt what I had planned to what’s happening in the dojang. I’m sure as time goes on it’ll become more instinctive and organic, with less detailed planning and more adaptation, but for now the challenge is great.

It’s really quite interesting now that I take some time out to sit and think about it as I write this, because it’s yet another aspect of Tang Soo Do I’d never really thought about before. We do a lot of work on the Internal and External as we progress through the gup grades and beyond, and teaching is yet another area where it applies. When I train on a Wednesday or Sunday now, my focus is very much internal. I’m thinking about me. How is my form? Am I applying this correctly? Are my stances good? When I’m stood in front of a class though it’s all about the people in front of me, and I’m asking the same questions of them in my head. I’m getting a lot better at pacing a class, knowing what time it is roughly and how long I have left, but I still have a few moments of thinking ‘oops, I haven’t checked the clock for ages, what time is it??’. I’m hoping the attention I pay to the moment is seen as a good thing by the people stood in front of me, I can think of nothing worse for them after paying money to be taught, to think my attention is elsewhere. Respect is a two-way street, it needs to be earned.

A Long Week

Leave a reply

Well, it’s Friday, and it’s the Friday at the end of a very long week. I’m not sure why it’s felt so long, but I swear it’s lasted about ten days so far. With the squad training session on Sunday, dog agility on Monday, training Wednesday, teaching/training on Thursday and more training tonight (all on top of a very stressful week at work), it’s been quite tiring. There’s a Gup grading on Sunday which sees two people go for first gup, and that’s a big step, so I really feel for them. Don’t get me wrong, I feel for anyone out there currently sweating and dreading the thought of standing up and showing us what they’ve learned since the last grading, but at first gup it feels like a really big step, especially as it’s your very last gup grading ever.

One of the second gups I mentioned above is about to turn the big four-oh, and in celebration (commiseration?) of the fact she’s hired out a local venue tonight for a big party. Hog roast? Check. Bucking bronco? Check. Licensed bar? Check. Karaoke(!!!)? Check. All signs point toward a great evening! I don’t envy her having just the Saturday to recover before her grading though, but then I kinda know the feeling, I took my Dan grading the day after a week in Germany ‘sampling the local cuisine’.

I’ve had the pleasure of teaching the Falmouth class for the last few weeks, and I’m just starting to realise the enormous feeling of satisfaction you get when something you’ve taught comes together. I’m not nearly vain enough to claim that it’s down to me of course, I’ve only been there for four or five weeks, but seeing the little differences take hold is a fantastic feeling. The lower (I hate using that word, it sounds so condescending) gup grades especially have taken everything on so well and given the limited time back a lot of them have had, I’m impressed.

Plans for my own class (eek!) are coming together, I’ve got an appointment this afternoon to see the owner of a local studio with an eye to hiring it. The nearest Freshers’ Fair is on next Tuesday, so I’m hoping with a bit of help from some of the friendly faces we’ve already got training I may be able to get some on board, all ready for the first night. Before all of that though, I’ve got a serious amount of unwinding to do tonight, and a cocktail of beer and karaoke is just the ticket :D .

Good times ahoy, and good luck to everyone grading this weekend. You’ve done the hard work, enjoy the day.

(yeah, right! ;) )

Crammed Calendar

Leave a reply

We’re on the third row down on my desk calendar now, which can mean only one thing: it’s the best bit of the year! :D

September is when I start to get really excited about the stuff coming up, but before all of the various festivities get going I’ve got lots going on. The EMTF British Championships are coming up, and in preparation the clubs down here are getting in some serious training to make sure we’re all on top form and repeat the success we had away at the Europeans earlier in the year. It means we’re having squad sessions every other week at the moment (on a Sunday before heading back over to the academy for evening training…) to make sure ours forms and sparring is as good as we can hope for.

At the British Champs my instructor is grading for his Oh Dan (5th Dan) and there’s extra preparation for that too. We’re away for a trip up to see SBN Nessworthy which may end up being in Newcastle, and there’s an extra trip to Bedford in the offing as well. Somewhere in the middle of this there’s a Gup grading happening too, so those guys grading are under even more pressure to train hard at the moment. To be honest I’m feeling the pressure a little too, as I’ve stepped in to teach one of the clubs once a week, which means their preparation is in part my responsibility. There have been lots of changes in the syllabus recently, and although none of them are massive ones, they’re small differences to things which can highlight a lack of continuity between clubs at an event like a grading. I’m doing my best to help make sure this continuity is present next weekend.

My own training last night was the worst in ages. I’d been feeling a bit off all day at work, that sort of car sick feeling, and thought I was fine until I got my dobok on. I had nothing in me, no energy at all, and my brain refused to work. I forgot at least one move in each of my forms and wasn’t with it at all. My forgetfulness didn’t stop there; I got home and realised I’d cycled back and left my helmet at the academy. It hadn’t even occurred to me while I was riding. Here’s hoping for being a bit more lucid tonight, those poor people deserve more than me stood in front of them for an hour and a half going ‘durrrrr I do karate I do!’.

In other news, I finally moved the shed in the front garden! Ok, so it took me and three friends (friends bribed into doing it with homemade pasties) to do it, and there was a bit of shouting a bit of blood, but it’s done. It means I have a front garden again, and light in the living room. The shed was sat right at the front of the garden, and the garden’s raised up about 3 feet on a wall, so it practically eclipsed any natural light that might attempt to come in the house, and in an old miner’s cottage with walls 2 feet thick and small windows, every last bit of light is precious. Unfortunately I now have a garden that looks like it’s been lifted out of the Battle of the Somme. The next thing to do out there is decide what to do with the unruly hedge, sort out, level and replant the lawn and then create some steps in the wall to get up there more easily than with the death-trap steps already there. A landscape gardener I am not.

There Is One Place That You Have Not Looked…

3 Replies

...and it is there, only there that you shall find the master

It really doesn’t matter how long I’ve trained for, I permanently feel like I’m only just getting to grips with a lot of things.  Last week we worked one of my favourite combinations;  san dan tollyo chagi > san dan dwi huri chagi (high section roundhouse to high section spin hook kick), and doing that against a slap paddle is enormously satisfying when you feel the heel whip through. Right-sided was fine, I’m quite obtuse in as much as I prefer left footed spin hooks, which is unusual for a righty. Left side though was a nightmare, the roundhouse coming out 6 inches lower than they should with enormous tight pain across the front of my pelvis. Something’s not right here I thought, and over the course of the next few kicks I started trying to analyse what I was doing wrong.

I’ve always trained for myself, to make myself better. Being a big guy I was never in any illusion of being 6 feet in the air with a perfect box splits kick, or side kicking vertically, so right from the off I’ve never been too… competitive. I’m naturally a very competitive person, and it’s not a trait I’m always very proud of, but I temper it back significantly during training. I think it can be good in a way, but only when it’s either asked of us (endurance and speed exercises), or when you’re competing against yourself. Some people seem to try to compete at just about everything, and the times when I see it most I notice how detrimental it is to progression. It’s not even when you might expect it, like sparring for example (where it obviously does belong to an extent), but something as silly as stretching. I’ve seen people trying to be the furthest turning during spinal stretches, the longest in a splits stretch etc., but all of that negates the point of a good stretch.

I think the problem comes mostly with advancing rank when it does happen, which is ironic as we should be showing more kyum son (humilty) as we progress. It’s almost as if some feel the need to prove their rank, and more often than not it seems to lead to bad technique if nothing else. I’ve been guilty of it in the past I know, but I make a concerted effort to keep my head in the moment now.

The reason for my apparent tangent above is because the situation I found myself in on that Friday could well have led me to making my technique sloppy just to try and touch the target and avoid some pushups, and I hate it when hook kicks get sloppy, as they turn into ugly looking crescents. Instead I just made a concerted effort to look at what I was doing and see what I could do to fix it. In this case I was holding my hips back, under-rotating, and not leaning back on it far enough. I didn’t fix it, but I at least managed to get a few kicks out without hurting myself or looking like a praying mantis with an inner ear infection.

I still find it amazing that even now, over four-and-a-half years after I started learning, I still have to look at how I throw a roundhouse kick and make big changes. And it’s not just with roundhouses either, I could write a list of things which need improvement but I’d be here all day. If I could give anyone any advice to help them make the most of their training, it would be to swallow their pride and look at themselves, not the people around them. I’ve been training for such a short time relatively, so this will probably sound very up myself with an over-inflated sense of self-importance, and I feel a bit stupid writing it if I’m totally honest, but this is my place so there you go :) .

(and I managed to get a very tenuous link to The Last Dragon in there too!)

Moo Do on the Moor

2 Replies

It’s another catchup post, hooray!

Last weekend was the first Moo Do Summer Retreat for our club, which meant ~15 of us packed up and headed off onto Dartmoor for a few days to completely immerse ourselves in Tang Soo Do. We had a hostel to ourselves to cook and sleep, and a field about half a mile away for training, and we didn’t need any more. I couldn’t get the Friday off that I’d already booked (….not that I’m bitter), so my brother and I headed up on the Friday night. I was gutted to have missed the first day of training, but glad that I could be there for the other two.

A 4am wakeup call was harrowing after a couple of hours sleep, and that Saturday was a long one, but at the same time the various sessions went very quickly. Before I knew it 10 hours of training were over and it was back for a chilled out evening with a couple of barbecues. Sunday started with a more humane 7am alarm, but again was a very tiring day. I won’t go into all the details of what we did here, as the vast majority of people reading really won’t be interested, suffice to say I came back exhausted, blistered and very happy. The fact that people are already asking to be booked onto the 2011 camp is a sign that it went very well.

Because of being away all weekend, and then being so tired I could barely function for the next couple of days, I’ve not been out for a proper ride for a week now. I mean, I’ve ridden it training and to the shops, but that doesn’t really count. If the weather stays not-too-monsoony today I’ll try to get out for an hour tonight, but the impending apocalypse clouds out the window suggest otherwise. The cycling is really working my legs, and the weight is continuing to drop off which I’m very pleased about. It was one of the main reasons I bought a bike again, as I know how good the exercise is. Time will tell how far it’ll get me before I have to start putting some more serious miles in, although I hope being lighter by then will make it less arduous than it feels right now.

Things are going well all in all at the moment, a bit more summer sun would top it all off.

Tang Soo Done

Leave a reply

Where to start? It’s been a while since I updated here so I’ll try to cover as much as I can for now. It’s been a busy couple of weekends as far as Tang Soo Do is concerned, with more to come. A couple of weeks ago I headed up with three others to Rushden for a Masters/Dan seminar with the rest of the EMTF, in a very hot hall, where we went over some higher-level forms.

The afternoon started with a big group warmup led by Master (Jan) De Vry which as well as being very hot, was hilarious. Master Kumar Jr took us through some basics which were far harder than they had to be. I don’t mean what he was asking us to do was difficult, because it wasn’t particularly, but the combination of the heat and my outrageously long dobok bottoms (I really must take them up!) made me give a much worse account of myself – and more annoyingly my club – than I’d have liked. But glancing around it was clear I wasn’t the only one struggling, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Later we split into smaller groups each with a couple of masters teaching, and I was with the very likable Master Mantle who took us through Jinto (one of the forms I’ll need at my next full grade) and my favourite form-I-won’t-need-for-a-long-time, Rohai. It was a really strange experience being taught by a different master, as everyone teaches differently, but it was valuable. Rohai especially; it’s not a form I actively practise, but I love the shape and movement in it. I cracked my knee on the floor far too hard with an over-enthusiastic ‘break’ punch halfway through, which still hurts if I kneel.

Later we all re-grouped and went through the second dan gum (dagger) form. I’d been through it a few times before with the people who went to the first seminar, but it was nice to have it drummed into my head with constant repetition for an hour or so. There were some finer details that I wasn’t sure about too which I’ve been able to clear up since which was good. The main problem with the day for me and many others wasn’t the heat directly (although it was really debilitating) but the kicking and turning on the wooden floor. I think a combination of the humidity and the wood meant that we ended up with a lot of blisters. Proper nasty, deep blisters. Most of them have healed now, but one tore open last weekend and now I have that super-soft baby skin on the bottom of my foot; I can’t see it being much fun to train on. The Masters ended the seminar by being taught the first new sword form introduced to the EMTF. It’s a very nice looking bit of very Korean sword, and I’m looking forward to learning it in the future. Our great hosts made sure we went away with full bellies as Master Kumar Snr’s wife prepared a great buffet with homemade samosas and pakoras – heaven!.

Skip forward a week, and it’s another weekend of Tang Soo Do. Saturday say my brother take his First Dan grading, and two others take their Senior First Dan tests in a scorchingly hot dojang back here in Cornwall. The heat was really oppressive, but everyone gave a great account of themselves despite it, I felt tired just helping out with the Ho Sin Sool, Il Soo Sik Dae Ryun and free sparring at the end – I can’t imagine how it felt for everyone else. The following day we all went down to the Falmouth dojang for the gup grading, which again was very hot, but a lot better thanks to the breeze. Again, everyone did very well, and at the end of another long day (which thankfully kept me from watching England’s dismal display in the World Cup) we had a quick lesson to brush up on some of the changes made to various bits and pieces we do. My blister tore open during one of the races we had at the end, but by then I didn’t even notice. A really good, if long, weekend which saw a lot of people take their next step on the ladder.

This weekend is free so far, so I’m planning a Saturday involving a long lazy barbecue in the afternoon followed by a trip to the Blue Bar in the evening for a pint on the beach watching the sun go down. I’d better make the most of it, it’s the club’s first annual summer retreat the next weekend, three days of 4:30 am starts and 12 hours a day training, eating and sleeping Tang Soo Do.

Awesome.

Demanufacture

Leave a reply

Not only one of my all-time favourite albums by the mighty Fear Factory (I strongly suggest you listen to it if you’re into Metal in any way), but also a word that’s been in my head lately when I think about my Tang Soo Do training.

For me, training seems to go in cycles, ones which have happened enough times now for me to recognise and acknowledge them. I’m at a point now where I’m looking at everything I do and pulling it to pieces, and this is due in no small part to the new teaching changes which see Sunday evenings focusing on the lower gup syllabus. We’ve been taking apart a lot of the stuff I first learned years ago, the building blocks of the art, and it’s really making me think about how I do them, and making me want to greatly improve these parts. I touched on it in my last post here, but introducing Shin Chook (tension and relaxation) into things I do automatically now such as the first few il soo sik dae ryun, makes them feel very different – but at the same time very familiar. A bit like the first time you put your favourite jeans on after washing them.

I do a lot of my best thinking and analysing of what I do in the kitchen these days. While I’m cooking meals I’m constantly working through moves, combinations, forms – anything and everything basically – and since tearing those basics apart and starting to rebuild them into a better, stronger version of what they were I’ve begun to look at everything and question my execution. Am I putting a full amount of hip into high blocks? Nope. Am I STILL not locking my back leg out in a front stance after years of practise? Yep. Are my shoulders and hips square when I perform a simple choong dan kong kyuk? Not on your life.

I’ve also started looking at the various moves and turns in the forms, and trying to decide on what the applications could be. We learn this sort of thing in our lessons, and every man and his (computer-literate) dog can look up ‘bunkai’ on youtube, but personally I feel there’s a lot of value in trying to work it out for myself. I don’t believe for a second that there’s a single intended application for every movement during the hyung, so putting an imaginary opponent(s) around you and deciding how you might use or adapt a sequence is mentally challenging and really interesting; to me at least. I realise just how pretentious this could all sound, but I don’t care :) .

I imagine this all sounds pretty familiar to a lot of practitioners of classical martial arts, especially those who have an active interest in it and don’t just go through the motions and switch off once they get home. At least I hope so, I’m not that odd am I? It’s one of the cycles I mentioned at the start. Every so often I think ‘Hey, you know what, I’m really beginning to get this now’, only to be made to look at what I’m doing and then think ‘Just how badly have I been doing that??’. I remember a few weeks after I started training in Tang Soo Do thinking ‘I wonder if it gets boring once you get to Dan grade and know how to do everything?’. Oh how wrong could I have been?? I know now that the learning and improving never ends, and in a way it’s a very reassuring thing. It’s nice to know that in 5, 10, or even 50(!) years time I’m still going to be looking at what I’m doing and trying to make it better in some way.

I’m doing it again now, thinking too much. I was just re-reading what I’ve written and started thinking about the forms and applications. A lot of what we do is derived from Chinese kung-fu styles, which got me wondering about what their applications for the forms involved. The use of huri (hip) in the movements is a very TSD thing, and when I think about some of the throws and re-directions in the forms (low blocks, high blocks etc), I wonder how practical they’d be without that efficient use of body weight transferral that the hip movement affords us. I can’t imagine it was designed with brute force in mind, so was there a completely different intention for those motions or does it work without the huri?….

*That paragraph above is pretty much a stream of consciousness as it came. That’s what it’s like in my brain most of the day when I’m not concentrating on something else, it’s no wonder it takes me so long to get to sleep*

The Griller In Manilla (well, Somerset)

Leave a reply

It’s about time I updated I think. I had the week off last week and spend 5 days of it up with the in-laws on holiday in Somerset. It was a nice relaxing time and I got to spend lots of time with my extended family, especially my niece who insisted I went on as many rides as possible at the nearby theme park! I visited Longleat for the first time too which was awesome, there’s so much to see and do and feeding the deer through the car window while we went through the safari area was hysterical.

But now it’s back to normality and back to work. Luckily the unseasonably hot, sunny weather is still with us and I’m loving it. I’ve already managed to get a couple of barbecues under my belt (literally, with the amount of meat I ate), and it’s when I’ve been sat in the back garden in shorts and a t-shirt, relaxing with a beer in the sunshine that I have to remind myself it’s still only April! Long may it continue I say.

I’ve got loads lined up over the next few weeks, starting with a rock night before too long. It’s been AGES since we had a good club night out. I’m looking forward to hopefully having a few(!) beers this time and getting my mosh on! I’m feeling in the need for some excessively loud metal and a lot of leaping around with like-minded folk :) . With a bit of luck we’ll entice some rock night virgins up too and get them well and truly initiated (and inebriated). After that I’m off up to the bright lights of London for a weekend with my mates. It’s smack-bang in the middle of birthday season, so we’re going up to watch a night of boxing at West Ham’s Upton Park ground, featuring some of our latest Olympic stars such as James DeGale and Frankie Gavin. It’s on the same Saturday as the FA Cup Final, so it’s going to be a great day. Football, boxing, then back to the hotel to watch Amir Khan’s fight in the States on the same night – good times! Finally, the end of May sees our long-awaited holiday. Twelve of us are packing our bags and heading to sunny Spain (volcanoes permitting…) for a week of lounging in the pool and relaxing. Despite the fact that it’s Seni that weekend (noooooo) and the Eurovision Song Contest final on the same day (double-noooooooooo), it’s going to be great. I’ll just have to buy more pointless weapons and awesome Muay Thai shorts another time ;) .

Training’s great at the moment, the change of each class to be focused on a specific grade has meant I’ve revisited a lot of the very basic stuff I take for granted now, and taken them apart only to rebuild them incorporating concepts I wasn’t introduced to the first time I learned. I can already see just how powerful those simple techniques are with proper use of shin chook applied, not to mention just how much better they look when done that way. I’ve always thought you can tell how accomplished a martial artist is by how natural and easy they make things look, and I’m hoping this is just the start of working towards that. I’m still struggling with the recurring hip injury I’ve been carrying for literally years now, and it’s really painful (not to mention annoying) at the moment. I ought to go back to the doctor again but they just seem to shrug it off, the most I’ve ever had done is some simple exercises from the self-referral physio. Ho-hum, maybe I should just take a leaf out of Bill Wallace’s book and only kick left-sided ;) .