09.01.07 - Saturday Practice

Reviewed Other Items:

1. Mat Work
2. Drills: Hubud
3. ¼ Speed Sparring

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Warm Ups
We did a good solid warm-up today with lots of kicking. After some stretching and loosening up, we did several ball kicks and roundhouse kicks.

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Mat Work
The mat work we did today started out normally as we worked through forward rolls. At first we stayed down, slapping to dissipate force and avoid injury. We also did the forward roll coming up into a fighting position, which we also do frequently. But then Sifu changed things up on us a little bit. Then next set that we did was a forward roll staying down but kicking into an air shield from the ground. Practicing this gives you a realistic idea of the power and snap you can generate in a kick while on the ground. It was interesting to note that any effective power generation generally comes from being in an appropriate position to deliver the kick, just as if you were standing up. If you throw the kick while out of position, there may be some basic impact, but it seemed to increase exponentially when you apply one or more of the basic principles like back up mass or mass in motion.

The last part of our mat work today was also something relatively new to me: the “belt roll”. I’ve seen this before but had never attempted it. Essentially it is a forward roll without the initial use of your arms or hands. It sounds simple enough but when you go to actually do it, there is this urge inside you to get your hands out there for protection. You have to override his urge, tuck your head, and go into the roll with your hands on your belt! Once you go through the initial roll, you can either use your hands in combination with your body to break the fall or you can continue forward with the momentum and come right back up to your feet. If you wanted to you could actually just leave your hands in your belt the whole time if you are coming back up to your feet but you would probably want to assume a neutral bow or at least have your hands ready for action.

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Drills: Hubud & Rolling Backfist
A couple of years ago a good friend of TKI came to visit and introduced us to a flow drill he simply called “hubud”. Today we revisited this drill again. It’s a cool little drill that trains in several things all at once like accuracy, speed, sensitivity, blocking, relative body position, and more. Apparently the origins of this drill are from the Filipino martial arts but the benefits can be applied across many arts. We worked it in class with a few different partners and the subtle changes and adaptations from person to person was interesting. Some were doing the drill with speed and flow in mind, others with more of a “conditioning” mindset by using hard strikes & blocks. It’s a great drill and I’m glad we worked it again today.

Following the hubud drill we did another one that we haven’t done in a long time. I’m not sure what this one is called but sort of a rolling backfist/block flow drill. It can be worked on the right or the left side and can be done slowly or quickly. Once you find your rhythm you can pretty much close your eyes and do it blind. Sifu introduced another element of this drill to us today. As your are rolling through the drill, one person will randomly grab the back-fist of the partner and pull it down and back at a 45 degree angle. This can cancel all three of their zones and it really takes them by surprise as they don’t have any idea when its coming. We did this for several minutes and then moved on.

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¼ Speed Sparring
Although we have done this exercise several times in the past, it was a little different this time just because we had some new students in class with us that were sparring at ¼ speed for their first time. As we train together in class we sort of learn how the others tend to fight so it is always interesting and sometimes enlightening to spar with fresh new faces. Today was no different. One of the new students held rank previously in another flavor of Kenpo several years ago and is coming back to it. The other “student” is currently a 2nd degree in American Kenpo. We didn’t all get to spar with everyone but it was a good session as we worked this for almost an hour.

I was doing okay today but not great. I’ve been out of class for a while and am trying to get back into the groove. I didn’t quite find the groove today but I wasn’t far from it and it felt good to be back in class. I’m expecting a new baby soon and will have to take some time off again for that in the near future but I’m already re-engaged with class mentally and ready to move forward. Seeing how some of the other guys in class are moving up was really cool. I’ll be back soon, guys!