Exercises - The bible

Not the actual Bible, but I thought I'd detail the exercise for anyone wanting to try it at home. Troy Flugge (one of the founders of the Submission Factory) was a huge fan of this exercise and would go through it every time there was a new beginner in the club.

All you need is a deck of cards and 20-30 minutes.

Shuffle the cards. Work through the deck of cards with the following rules:
Black card - Push ups
Red card - Squats

Number 2-10 - number of the above exercise
Jack = 11
Queen = 12
King = 13
Ace = 15
Joker = 20

Work through the deck until you're done! (My legs feel like they're about to fall off after this is done).

You can also vary the exercises if you'd prefer crunches or something along those lines.

I also realise I haven't updated in a while. Feels like my BJJ is...not progressing. Seem to have hit that hump and just get stuck with the same problems over and over again...

Kenpo – Orange belt grading

Last Thursday (30^th August 2012) I graded for my Kenpo Karate orange belt and was successful! I graded with Phil (going for his brown belt) and Mike (going for his orange belt too).

It’s the 2^nd Kenpo grading that I’ve done and I felt a lot more nervous this time around. I’m not sure why, but there were quite a few more things which I had to know and work on that it seemed like it was going to be much harder than I thought.

A quick summary of the items I had to work through:

·         Recitation of the Kenpo creed;
·         Demo Defence (defence against a set of pre arranged attacks);
·         Push drag footwork theory and demonstration;
·         Forearm pad round (demonstrating push drag footwork);
·         Kick shield round;
·         Yellow belt master techniques;
·         2 x random yellow belt reference techniques;
·         Orange belt master techniques;
·         2 x chosen orange belt reference techniques;
·         4 x 1 minute rounds of sparring;
·         Master Technique Scenario (Demonstrating Orange belt masters techniques)
·         Defence scenario

Overall, the main feedback that I received was that my technique was sharp and concise, but my sparring could definitely use some work.

The most significant feedback that I received was that I tend to drop my hands and that I look too low when I’m sparring.  Therefore, I tend to get hit a fair bit after I’ve thrown a kick or something.

Also got a few more items to cover, will do so in later posts!