01.27.07 - Saturday Practice

New Items Today:

1. Ground Fighting - Escapes

Reviewed Other Items:

1. Warm-Ups
2. Ball Kicks
3. Focus Pad Drills
4. Mat work
5. Small Joint Manipulation
6. Techniques

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Warm-ups
We did a pretty typical warm up today but did some additional focus work with ball kicks and replacement roundhouse kicks. After doing them stationary, we did some in a forward advance as well.

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Focus Pad Drills
There were two areas that we concentrated on today with the focus pads: combination striking and “Yes-No” control drills. We started with the combinations, utilizing a three count combo alternating right and lefts. My first combo was a right straight punch, a right back knuckle and a left lunge punch. After several repetitions, I did the opposite with a left straight punch, left back knuckle, and a right lunge punch. As we go through these drills, the point isn’t so much to try to tear through the pads with the power of your punches, but rather to make sure the technique is sound and the punches are on target. When the pad is hit correctly, it simply rocks backward with the force of the strike. If you are off target, the pad sort of ‘twists’ and the strike reacts as a glancing blow, with the focus pad staying mostly in place. Although you can gain some (sometimes significant) power utilizing strength of the arms, the real power of these strikes comes from proper technique. For instance, with the lunge punch coming off from the back knuckle, the power comes from the stance change combined with proper body alignment and torque from rotating the fist. When you can ‘marry’ all of these elements together into a single fluid motion, you have achieved the greatest level of striking power. Personally, my challenge is maintaining proper form after several strikes. I don’t have a partner to work out with at home but I do bang on the heavy bag pretty regularly. It’s not the same feedback but it works in a pinch.

The other half of the focus drills we did were “yes-no” drills. I did okay with these today. My control issue with this drill is not so much hitting the pads on a ‘no’ but rather controlling the depth of the strike on the ‘no’. As Sifu says regularly, the punch thrown on a ‘no’ isn’t a “miss” but rather a controlled strike that where the depth is just short of the surface of the pad. With this mindset, if you lightly touch the pad on the ‘no’ then you are not fully controlling the strike. I’m working on it. Just like anything else, my strong side is more controlled than my ‘weak’ side, but they are both developing just fine.

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Mat Work
We didn’t spend a lot of time on the mats today. We just started off with some forward rolls staying down with a break fall, alternating from right to left sides. Sifu stated that if we felt comfortable to go ahead do air rolls. I think Walt and Phyl are the only ones doing full air rolls at this point – everyone else just sort of crash lands in a semi controlled fashion. But we are all getting better!! We did just a couple of turns doing the forward rolls coming up on our feet an d then we put the mats up.

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Small Joint Manipulation
Sifu had us practice some basic joint manipulations at the wrist and elbow. I was working With Walt for this. I’m starting to feel more comfortable with joint manipulations, but I still haven’t quite made the transition to where I feel real comfortable using them in a sparring situation. We always practice in a very controlled environment paying close attention to the tap of our training partners. I’m looking forward to learning more.

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Ground Fighting
Marty led us through some things today that were pretty cool. We used some of what we have used in the past but built on the knowledge, expanding to include escapes. We started basically on the bottom and our partner was going for an arm lock. Our job was to escape the arm lock and reverse positions, winding up on top in the mount position.

I worked alternately with Alfredo, Alex, and Phyl with these, which was a good mix of body types. It was pretty easy to see that technique is vital. In some cases you can muscle your way out of or into position but if you use leverage through technique, you expend much less energy. The less energy you expend at once, the more you have to work with when you need it. I was also keen to note that subtle shifts in body position (like sprawling) can make a big difference when defending against an escape or reversal.

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Techniques
The latter part of the class was spent working technique. I was working with Brandon and Alfredo this class covering largely the Orange belt techniques, but also squeezing in my Purple belt as well. We sort of bounced back and forth between doing the techniques in the air and doing a mini line. It was really good to review the Orange belt material again with a body as I haven’t been working technique with a partner for a while now except in class. Brandon and Alfredo are coming along good and I think they are going to be great.

My Purple belt techniques are getting better. The more I am able to work on a live body, the more I can see some of the subtle parts of the technique that are hard to envision when you are working in the air. Of the things I am struggling with a little bit are really basics – timing of when to begin the technique in some cases and in other cases where to intercept so as to allow the appropriate space to operate in when doing the technique. I have this knack for moving way in and getting all jammed up. Brandon and Alfredo are both different in height and weight so working with them today really helped to work out some of these issues.

01.13.07 - Saturday Practice

New Items Today:

1. Crescent Kicks

Reviewed Other Items:

1. Warm-Ups
2. Purple Belt Kicking Drill
3. Freestyle Kicking Drill
4. Master Form
5. Techniques

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Warm-ups
Solid warm-ups today with lots of leg stretching – for good reason.

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Kicking Drills
Following our basic stretches, we did some foot maneuvers to get the blood flowing and then we lined up along one side of the mat and went back and forth across the mat doing the Purple belt kicking drill. The first time up and back was a little rusty for me but after that I was okay. After several trips, Sifu had us pair up and we continued the Purple belt kicking drill with a partner, the partner backing up with the kicks so as to provide a frame of reference for the kicks in the drill. I was paired up with Walt for this exercise and was constantly adjusting range to accommodate his long legs!

After several minutes of the Purple belt kicking drill, Sifu had us continue the same exercise but instead of using a pre-determined set of moves, he wanted us to just use freestyle kicks, adjusting to our partner as they retreated. Again, we weren’t making contact with the kicks but rather just using our training partner as a frame of reference for targeting, etc. We probably threw 150 kicks or more during the course of the kicking drills.

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Crescent Kicks
Sifu had us line up and formally taught us the inside and outside crescent kick today. This is something I have done in Taekwondo, and Jeff has been using these pretty effectively for sparring, but we haven’t covered them in class before (so far as I know). We started out with the inside crescent. This kick uses a straight leg rotating in a circular movement with the inside edge of the foot used as the striking surface. Describing a right inside crescent kick from a neutral bow, I move the right leg across my center with the foot traveling in a continuous arc, first heading to the outside left of my circle of protection, continuing on to the apex of the circle and back down again to the mat into a neutral bow position. Optimally, I have seen this strike used as a kick to the head, but Sifu also described this as a clearing kick able to remove an attacker’s defenses allowing you to move in and take care of business.

There are several things that are important about the crescent kick. The circular motion is critical. It works with the rotation in your hips/core to create torque and power for the kick. It is also important to keep the foot fully flexed and rigid as this is your weapon being delivered by the kick. Failure to keep the foot flexed will diminish the effectiveness of the kick and could actually cause you injury depending on what you strike. One of the primary differences between the crescent kick and many of the kicks in Kenpo is the fact that the knee is locked with the leg straight.

After we practiced the inside crescent, we switched up to the outside crescent kick. This is almost identical with just a couple of minor differences. One difference is obvious – you are now kicking in the opposite direction of circular movement. The other is the striking surface of the weapon, the foot. With an outside crescent kick, you are kicking with the outside of the foot. Again, it is critical that the foot is fully flexed for this. We practiced this for several minutes before we took a quick water break and moved on to the next item of the day.

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Master Form
Sifu had Marty working with the Blue belts today on their techniques and the Master form while he took some time to do the same with me. He started by having me do the Master form from the beginning – salutes and all. Right off the bat, he mentioned that when I roll into the second hand gesture in the salute, I had a sort of double claw instead of the claw and the fist. Oops. Another item that he mentioned to me later that was in the same vain was that when I close, the right foot comes to the left. I had been doing it the other way around and realized that I do the opposite for Taekwondo. Oops again.

The critiques Sifu gave for my portion of the Master form were mostly accuracy. Starting with Beheading the Dragon, my waiter check tends to trail on around my shoulder instead of maintaining it in front of me. The next item of note was on Escaping Ram, where he stated I am not fully extending my rear kick. He went onto surmise that this is probably from working with a live body as we don’t try to kick through our training partners. However, it is something that we should be doing when practicing in the air.

The next item of note was in Thrusting Release, as I was not properly executing the thrust kick. From his description, I am doing a sort of quasi snap kick with an extension at the end. The knee is coming up but there are two distinct movements between the rise of the knee and the extension of the kick. They should be married together with the power of the kick coming from the movement of the hips. He worked with me on this with one of the B.O.B.s and I understand what he is talking about. After a couple more times, he said the kick looked better.

Retuning Serpent was pretty good but he reminded me to make sure I get good rotational torque on the lunge punch. I have a tendency to punch flat because my hand is facing palm in instead of palm up.

When transitioning to Deflecting Thunder, I have the tendency to just sort of sweep the blocking arm in a circular motion into a check instead of doing a close fisted block. There should be a clear block there and then move into the hand check.

And finally, on Thunder and Lighting, my block was a little low. I was doing the movement of an outward block but it was lower than it should be. Get the block up to the correct location and remember the basic “gable” theory of the blocks. We went through the Master form several times before we moved on to the Purple belt techniques.

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Purple Belt Techniques
We started from the beginning and went through each technique in detail. Stopping the Storm is the first one we did and I had some questions for Sifu. I felt I was having problems getting the correct range when working with a person. He basically showed me that my range was okay, it was the body reaction that was jamming me up. That first punch is going to really bend them back, which provides the room I need to do the rest of the technique. Also, Sifu noticed that I am bringing my fist upwards and then in for the stop punch. This is a point of origin punch all the way from a natural position. If the motion begins by turning the palm up during this path of travel, you can get the torque you want at the delivery of the punch. The only other thing that he mentioned was to be sure to anchor the left hand back after the initial block/parry/grab.

As we did Hidden Wing, Sifu made a correction on target acquisition that solved another problem that I was having – range for my kick. I was taking my adjustment step out at an angle away from the attack as opposed to stepping directly forward. Making this small change cleared up all of the problems I was having.

There is a lot to think about in Circling Serpent. First is the check in the beginning. It is a pinning check at the elbow; there is no downward pressure or movement. While doing this in the air, it seems that I was pushing down. The next point of focus is the grab at the shoulder. When this happens, it is vital that my elbow is anchored at my side, outside of his arm, providing a check for that arm. It also puts him in position for the upcoming leg buckle/sweep. Finally, when doing the leg buckle/sweep, step straight back into a firm rear bow while bringing the right hand from the right shoulder down to the left hip. This creates the correct path of motion for the bad guy to travel in order to plant him on the point of your knee.

I was having some issues with Hooking Thunder. The hooking part was fine but for some reason I keep getting the left hand check too high, often right in my own face. It should be centered and vertical. The other thing I was doing had to do with the foot placement as I step back into a cat stance; my rear foot is more at a 45 degree angle as opposed to the 90 degrees it should be. This is upsetting my balance a bit and causing some problems.

Captured Wing was another one that has a lot of stuff going on. First of all, when practicing in the air, I was picturing my would-be assailant too far to my left. He will likely be more directly behind me. Correcting this initial posture actually corrected some other problems I was having further on down the line. I was having an issue getting rotated around enough to get a good arm break. I had 180 turn in my head but was actually having to travel further than that. By changing the initiation point of the technique, everything came into place where it needed to be. Regarding the arm break, I seem to want to come around with a more circular motion with the left arm. Instead, I need to bring the arm in and shoot a good solid ‘block’ for the break. Finally, there should be a circular motion with the right arm as it begins it’s decent for the vertical elbow to the spine. I tend to want to go up and then drive downward. Sifu says to utilize a circular motion with the right hand and follow the orbit down for the elbow strike. In doing it that way a couple of times, it feels much tighter and compact as opposed to that vertical rise.

We discussed some of the finer points of the throw in Clapping Tiger. For the most part, I’m doing the technique properly but there were some things about the throw itself that we discussed like the importance of the ‘butt bunk’ and getting below the attacker’s center. Sifu said there is a very site on the internet at judoinfo.com. This site is perhaps one of the most comprehensive sites on the topic of Judo available on the internet today. On the site is information for a throw called Seoi-nage which is in essence the throw that Sifu has us doing for Clapping Tiger. We discussed that, in fact, the I.K.C.A. Purple Belt videos show a side throw and even that is a variation on the Seoi-nage throw but the version we do is more true to the Judo move. Sifu briefly discussed with me the starting position for Judo players and how the throw is done from that position. The overhead throw seems to be more effective than the side throw. It can be more disorienting and you can certainly do more damage. Sifu explained that at the end of the throw, you can actually ‘shorten the circle’ by pulling in on the arm, thus increasing the force of impact upon landing.

We sort of ran out of time today and didn’t get to Raking Hammer. I know from practicing it that I need to work on dropping into place with the initial block. Also, I’m dropping into a horse stance – not a neutral bow or a lunge stance. I have been working with these and I’m getting better with them but I’m still fighting bad habits.

One final thought regarding today’s session with the techniques. Sifu says I am starting to drop my head again when I’m moving through the techniques and the Master form. I’ll try to be alert to this as I practice.

01.06.07 - Saturday Practice

Reviewed Other Items:

1. Warming up with Basics
2. Techniques
3. Sparring

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Warm-ups
We did some additional foot maneuvers today along with our usual warm-up routine. After our normal stretching, we lined up along the mat and went down and back with several foot maneuvers, such as step-drags, step-throughs, covers, switches, and forward planting roundhouse kicks. Sifu also switched things up a little bit by calling out several different maneuvers in no particular order and we all progressed down the mat with them.

After the initial warm ups, we broke out the focus mitts and did some lunge punches. I was working with Walt for these. Next up we did some “Yes/No” drills. It has been a while since I have done these but seemed to do okay. There was only one time that I got tripped up and punched on a “no”. Overall my control seemed to be good.

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Technique
Next we worked technique. We had some visitors in class today and one of them, Brandon, came dressed and was participating in some of the exercises. Sifu took Brandon and the White belts off the mat and worked with them on some techniques. I worked with the Blue belts on the mats, starting with the Orange belt techniques and working our way up through their material. I was mostly comfortable working the Orange belt material but I haven’t had much time working the Purple belt techniques on a body. Phyl, Alex, Walt and I all rotated around and worked with each other on the different techniques. They all gave me some great advice on tweaking my Purple belt techniques.

When we got to Clapping Tiger, I happened to be with Walt and we stepped onto the padded mats for the throw. Walt seemed to think I had the throw down pretty good and asked me to throw him a couple of times. The next thing I know, Phyl and Alex are lining up for me to throw them too! Apparently this caught the attention of Sifu and he came over to give me some additional pointers. I wasn’t having any problems doing the throw with Walt or Phyl, but for some reason Alex kept coming around my side instead of going over the top. I asked Sifu why this was happening and he said “…because that’s where you are putting him.” Sifu showed me the trajectory I was using and then showed me an adjustment. On the next throw, Alex went over the top like he was supposed to. The adjustment was in the grip and in the height of my stance. One of the critical factors in this throw is to get my center below his center. One of the easiest ways to think of this is to get my belt below his belt. Another pointer he gave me was to be sure to use the ‘butt bunk’ to get the motion started in the throw. That helped a bunch. Putting all of this together really made this a nice, tight, controlled throw.

Another pointer that Alex gave me for this was the position of the shoulder. He showed me that if I planted my shoulder right in his armpit as I was coming into position, it dramatically increases control of that leverage point. I tried it a couple of times and it really did help. In fact, it seemed to help so much, I did it one time without actually holding that shoulder with my right hand and the throw still worked. Great tip, Alex – thanks! Reflecting back, I believe there was a gentleman from Milwaukee that was giving Phyl the same or similar advise on the mats when we were at the Kenpo in the Carolinas 2006 seminar. I looked back at the pictures and I think they were actually doing the same technique.

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Sparring
After we worked through our techniques, Sifu had us pad up for some full speed sparring. I was surprised to see that everyone had recently purchased head gear! Up until now, nobody was wearing it. Sifu stated before we got started that the head gear didn’t negate the need for control and warned us to maintain control and accuracy while sparring. Walt and Alex paired up on one side of the mat while Phyl and I paired up on the other side. Sifu said “go” and we started in. It was all of maybe 15 seconds and we all stopped due to injury! Walt caught Alex with a hooking punch to the nose and Phyl caught me with a fore-knuckle rake to the nose. Sifu just sort of looked at us in disbelief for a second as this is not the norm.

He came over to me and told me to come with him to the bathroom. I figured I must be bleeding if he wanted me off the mat. I looked in the mirror and saw that I had a small cut on the bridge of my nose, which didn’t really surprise me based on the force of the blow. I immediately felt for separation of the cartilage and didn’t feel any so I didn’t think it was broken. The blood was minimal and I went back out to the mat and waited for my next turn.

My next sparring partner was Alex. He was a little off his game now too so it was sort of a slow match. My nose was swelling from the inside and I couldn’t breath so I was getting winded way too fast. I almost ditched the mouth-piece so I could get some air but I realized Alex was probably having the same problem so I just pushed on. It looked like he took a direct hit and was probably worse off than I was as he had a small trickle of blood coming from the nostrils. Sifu called for a break and we both spit out our mouth pieces for some air.

My last sparring partner for the day was Alfredo. Alfredo has some big guns so I tend to angle off when he lines up. I’ve watched him connect with Walt and I would rather avoid that. When we started, I noticed that he has a tendency to come straight in but throw round punches. Cool. I can deal with that. I started angling off as he came in and was able to tag him with either straight punches or back-fists to the head in some cases and in others I was able to come up with a pseudo roundhouse kick to the ribs. He tends to be well protected from the front so I was forced to attack from the sides. It wasn’t long and I was sucking wind again because of my restricted breathing. I had to slow it down and go more on the defensive which had an interesting effect on Alfredo. I got the feeling that he thought I was setting a trap for him or something because he slowed down as well – and I know he wasn’t tired! He did get a couple great shots in on me, particularly a left hook to the ribs that caused me to step back. When he starts putting combinations together, he is going to be a real force to reckon with.

After the class, Phyl and I figured out what happened. We both angled off in the same direction and he changed his strike from a punch to a rake, coming in from my left side. I never even saw it. He apologized and I told him there was no need. I walked right into it.