haven’t been able to do any training other than some rehab exercises in ages. got up this morning and did a little taiji form as qigong and that’s about it. the strength of a “qi” feeling disappears quickly with lack of practice and seems slow to come back so we’ll see what happens.
March 29, 2011
Well haven’t really been doing anything lately except doing some forms as qigong. Can’t really get too interested in any MA aspects lately other than watching Jon Jones take the light heavyweight UFC championship, devastating “Shogun” Rua. Looks like he’ll be champ for a long time. Exactly what I thought about Machida so who knows.
January 17, 2011
Finally got another KB, a whopping 25 lber. With various kinks in my joints, the recommended 35 lber will have to wait, but the 25 lber feels good. Swing feels about right, and Turkish getup offers a good challenge for the abs and shoulder stability without feeling like I’m going to mess up any joints – really “prehab” / rehab and I should be ready to move up to a more standard (less wimpy) weight soon enough. Forgetting about any MA interests now but just helping with ADLs like standing up easily and having better posture is good enough. Also trying to get some anaerobic power training in for soccer sprints, kicks, and sudden turns – the swings and getups don’t seem sport specific here whatsoever, but the general training feels helpful nonetheless. Seems more sport specific for an eventual return to judo/jiu-jitsu, especially if I can keep moving up in weight. TGU especially good. Grip training is integrated without having to think about it, too.
November 6, 2010
great analysis
October 18, 2010
This method seems to be working rather well for my simple test. My left foot was crappy at doing this juggling control, but going back to a simpler exercise seemed to do the trick to get past this problem. I am finding if I do r-l-r then repeat getting to 9 or 12 is almost there 1 out of maybe 4 tries after about two weeks of nearly daily practice. Should be more consistent soon. Seems to be helping my actual game play first touch, too. At least a psychological boost. I don’t know if I’ll bother getting to 100 reps but we’ll see since one of the kids said he’d give me a prize for getting there.
October 11, 2010
See the preview here. I really like the explanation from 3:15 to 4:15 on why you should strictly keep your knee behind your toe. Am trying to use these rebound mechanics as yet one more factor in learning a hard soccer kick, and it seems to be working. I’m using the bagua toe out and toe in drill and some simple stretch reflex as well. Not getting it all just right yet but definite improvements in power are coming along.
October 2, 2010
I was reading this article about juggling that says to learn new tricks or to prepare a trick for actual stage use (under pressure), practice at least 10 times without failure first. If you can’t do the trick go back to a foundational trick and practice that one without failure.
Then, to speed up the brain (nervous system)’s learning process do multiple things at once if possible, e.g., juggling different size and weight objects. The brain can then do visualization to further ingrain the training without doing the physical portion (combine visualization with the physical training).
Finally, the nervous system is still learning through this process even if you think you are in a plateau. Once you break through the plateau you can make unusually high progress immediately afterwards because you are still going through a learning process while in the plateau. If you stop training due to discouragement you won’t make this gain.
Well let’s see what we can apply these principles to, for IMA, or whatever… here’s a sample schedule for me learning to juggle a soccer ball (football). 20 touches right foot dropped by hand. 20 left. 20 reps of right then left. Switch to 20 of left then right. 20 of r-l-r. 20 of l-r-l. See if I can progress it up til I can do 100 reps of any of those with no failures. Then go back to 20 reps of r-l-r-l and so on. Then throw in a half dozen tricks to pick up the ball to start the routines and so on. Go to inside and outside of feet, then thigh touches, then shoulders, then backs of heels and calves, then eventually head juggling (can’t do it at all right now). See if I can hit 100 reps with no failures for all of those tricks, and incorporate different size and weight balls while doing other activities. See if I can do 20 reps of 100 touches. And so on.
September 17, 2010
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August 6, 2010
Short demo by Guo Shilei from Ma Weiqi Baguazhang:
