Training diary

I'll try to create a training diary here, where I keep track of what I do, and what it results in. This started on Mon, Sep. 1st 1997 with a conclusion of answers that I got from the alt.martial-arts.karate.shotokan newsgroup. I archived the relevant parts of the dialog here.

I don't really know, if anybody cares, but I'll organize this page newest message first, so you if one comes back, the new stuff is in sight without scrolling down a lot.

Thu, Jun 25th 1998

Day in, day out...

I don't attent as much classes as I'd like these days...

nevertheless, I recognize a slow but steady gain in ability and understanding every day.

Despite what one of my club-mates thinks, I am training. I'm doing bulks of chukozuki, and one-step kihon in our living room. And although that's by far not doing anything for my constitution, I can without any feeling of guilt say, that I've improved quite some hard-wired bad habits.

A good example...

for that is the wrist twisting during the punching: While I always trained to twist both wrists at the same time, this is simply idiotic.

Twisting the punching hand's wrist too early forces the elbow to flail out from the straight line it's supposed to move on. Punching with the fingers pointing upwards all the time helps keeping the elbow in. Also, there's some tearing damage to be done by a fist that is twisting at the moment of impact.

The elbow-reason obviously is equally valid for the pullback hand.

So while my punching used to be

It's now - still in progress, but getting better:

Another thing...

that slowly starts to pay out is not to exaggerate on breathing. I used to forcefully breath out during every technique. That used to completely exhaust me after 2 or 3 lines. Discussions on AMAKS lead me to more relaxation, and breathing in every once in a while ;-), which did a tremendous job on surviving the 4th of 5th line suddenly. Now if we're going full power, I often still lose it, and fall back to the old habit, but I am getting there!

By now, I'm far from completely detaching my breath from the technique, but I'm starting to get used to the concept.

Lately,...

I'm playing with Rob's and Elmar's Idea of using the front hip for pivoting, instead of the body center. Physically, it makes complete sense, but currently, I find it to be a difficult movement. But I guess it's the same with all the above mentioned hard-wired bad habits.

May 2nd and 3rd...

I attended my first seminar after a very long time. The instructors Eftimios Karamitsos and Sharzhad Mansouri made clear that this will be a Kata seminar, and so it was.

The coordination of that event was a bit chaotic, because on the first day, groups were devided into 9th-4th kyu, and 3rd-Dan. I had to attend the 1st group, and the focus was put on Tekki Shodan and Bassai Dai.

That part wasn't about anything brilliantly new to me, except for the fact that I still can't manage to do an urazuki instead of the tate-uraken in the Tekki Kata, as they wanted us to do it.

One thing that I found interesting was during the Bassai Dai hour, where Mr. Karamitsos explained that he wanted us not to focus on the hip movement - as about every other instructor I ever trained with always demanded - but on the locking of the lower arms. That made complete sense to me. Many karateka's uchi-ude-uke simply sucks, because they can't lock that specific technique.

However, although it took me a long time to get that technique right too, I got to that point many years ago, so there wasn't anything really new for me on that take.

Then, on the second day, groups suddenly got announced to be 9th-5th kyu, and 4th-Dan. So we happily entered the hall to attend training to see that there were only four of us 4th kuys between perhaps 75 brown- and blackbelts. Well, we didn't get kicked out of the hall, took our place at the end of the line and participated. I still wonder why all the other 4th kyus that attended the grading procedure attended too.

The topic was Nijushiho, and again, there was hardly anything new for me, but 2 concentrated days of training were fun anyways, so I don't feel cheated at all.

Then came the grading...

Mr. Karamitsos started with the lower kyus, so we had to wait quite some time.

During that time, Kerstin passed her 6th kyu without any problems.

When our time came - we were 3 from my club - everything went like a charm until it was ushiro-geri time. Well, I knew I sucked at that one, and so it was. So Mr. Karamitsos eye must have been quite focused on poor me stumbling my way through the 5 techniques. I guess that's when he detected my (twilight zone music)... nosering.

Yameh!, You, come over here

Pointing towards me. I move over there, and he asks what the hell that thing on my nose does, and if I'd find that any good.

So I do my standard explanation, that this is a closed steel ring, that needs a special tool to get it removed. I also state that I'm aware of the danger - which is bullshit btw, because nobodies fingers are small enough to get trapped in there - and that I take it as completely my own responsibility if something happenes to my nose.

Then he gave me some hints to enhance my ushiro-geri ("try to keep your body as much upwards as possible") and made me do them again.

I tried as he recommended, and they felt just great. No more stumbling, the feeling of the leg locking down, what a difference! He nodded quite pleased, put me back in line and let us finish the testing without any further interruptions.

On recap, he gave me some more hints for strengthening the ushiro-geri - quite identical to what Roland Müller from AMAKS recommended, but they were not part of my initial problem. He also said to never again attend any grading under him with that (twilight zone music)... nosering.

While several others got pretty much asskicked, he commented my test with

Except for the first Ushiro-Geri line, this was a very good test

One of our club-mates video-taped all of our gradings, so I have Kerstin's and mine on tape. Seeing that I can truly say that I'm happy how that grading went out.

How to attitude a grading...

Some nights later, we had our after-training beers, where I had quite some diversion with one of my club-mates.

He thought that I didn't prepare enough for that grading, because the two others that graded with me were preparing very hard the last 6-8 weeks before the event. They went through the program again and again, while I had only time for one class per week by that time.

What that guy didn't know, was that the fitness club where I'm a member too, had an empty room with a wooden floor, and huge mirrors all over the walls. Coming back from work late, I could easily go to the club about 21h30 and do some serious kihon and kata training.

But he was right in that I didn't prepare for the grading itself. Simply because I consider that cheating. Looking at the grading requirements, there's nothing new for the 3rd kyu! So what I did, was improve my general kihon. Thinking of weird combos, and training them for some time. Then thinking of others, and doing them.

Due to that, I was much more flexible, and had Mr. Karamitsos required some completely weird combo, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have had the slightest problem with it. That was much more important for me than to learn the grading procedure by heart!

Mon, Sep 29th 1997

Don't push too hard...

I've let things go a bit slower for the last two weeks...

...and although I had bad feelings, I noticed an improvement in flexibility and concentration. Maybe I tried too hard for the last weeks. Taking some time off actually made things better.

Thinking about it, the more I tried, for example, to stretch my upper leg muscles, the more difficult it became. Now after a while, the muscles seem to be much more relaxed, and stretching comes nearly naturally.

I will keep that in mind!

Tue, Sep 16th 1997

Out in the green...

We've been out in the green for 2 days of training and fresh air.

Our club does that twice a year, and I was with them for the first time now.

We've been there from Friday evening to sundae afternoon, with more or less 5 training sessions per grade level. Focus for this time was Hangetsu for my group.

I find the stance uncomfortable, but I suppose it's only that I'm not used to do it. We had some diversions about when to do zenkutsu-dachi and when not in the kata - three coaches, three interpretations...

Hangetsu can be good for your back!

Due to an unfamiliar bed, and much training, I got a bit of a problem with my back again, but after we've learned Hangetsu, and started doing it with power and rhythm, I recognized that the pain went away.

I attribute that to the very strong pressure in the lower abdominal muscles. My slipped disk resulted from a hollow back, and the tension that is built up when locking the technique in Hangetsu, seems to work exactly against that. If I can prove this to be true, this is a great discovery for my training.

Videos...

On the last day, we took videos from the last training, and some kata. Personally, I saw myself doing Hangetsu and Enpi.

I'm not familiar enough to evaluate my Hangetsu - although it didn't look extraordinarily wrong to me ;-) but I had some deeper looks at my Enpi.

The last thing we did, was a two person synchronous Hangetsu, which I have yet to see on the tape, but several people noted that we were very synchronous until the fast turn/block combos. We synchronized again afterwards. Great, we need a 3rd person and more time...

Besides of that...

We did some kihon mawashi-geri in slow motion.

First of all: I have the power to do so :-)

The right leg pretty much does the right move. Lifted from the back right to the side, then slowly turning the hip, and one snapping movement right out of the knee. The toes were pointing a bit downwards, right into the gap between head and shoulder. This should be pretty disastrous on an opponent.

The left leg is a bit different. I raise it to much towards the front - more like the kumite mawashi-geri - and have a bit of a balance problem. But I'm getting there...

Fri, Sep 12th 1997

Progress, at last...

On Wednesday, I managed to punch my first real sanbon-tsuki

Well, sounds like a stupid remark for a 4th kyu, but here's the story:

While watching for the 'leaning forward' and 'twisted hip' problems during the training, I concentrated heavily on first shifting the hip, not the shoulder and upper body, keeping tension in my buttocks and abdominal muscles.

During the combo we where training

I had a glimpse of how sanbon-tsuki really feels.

Up to this day, well, sanbon-tsuki was just three punches, just like oi-tsuki. But this time it was a totally different experience.

I knew, it was properly locked, I had a stable stance, no strange feeling in the hip, full body tension. Three clean and strong feeling punches with the correct rhythm.

Of course I totally lost it when the combo evolved, and we started to power through it, but now I know which direction to take.

I've re-tested it later with both, sanbon- and oi-tsuki, and it still works for me. What a progress with such basic techniques which I thought I'd mastered for a long time. Again, this shows how much I think I know, and how few I really do. Stupid me...

I also watched for the proper hip movement on the gedan-barai turns, and it starts to get better, but I'm not yet there...

And a downer...

Afterwards, we did some kumite-preparation combos

My distance after the 45° movement is horrible, and I'm by far too slow. I just don't manage to get out of the 2nd kisami, because I made it long and deep. Feels a bit like a balance problem due to the hip positioning. I'll be investigating.

Wen, Sep 10th 1997

Too fast is not necessarily good...

Back to sanbon-kumite

After a long time, Sonja decided it's good to do some gohon- or sanbon-kumite again. Of course she was right...

Blocking soto-uke isn't much of a problem, and works really fine with me.

However, my age-uke is a mess. I don't see the technique coming, and thus raise my block by far too early. That resulted in that everybody hit right against my rising arm. Well, bruises are good to train the memory...

Wen, Sep 3rd 1997

The more I train, the more faults I recognize, but I guess that's just the way it is...

Sonja had a big eye on me yesterday:

I need to put more focus on the following things:

Conclusion

Tue, Sep 2nd 1997

Stand in with Kurt

The group before my training had an uneven number of participants, so I did a stand-in. After some kisami-tsuki / gyaku tsuki combos, I now have a nasty blister nearly on top of my big toe. Seems as if I drag my leg. Other than that, things went pretty well, and it's obvious now, that there is a difference between our grades.

Conclusion

I need to watch my back leg more. To make a really long gyaky-tsuki, I need to raise my heel and bring the hip towards the front, not drag my foot.

Prologue, Mon, Sep 1st 1997

Starting detailed observation.

Status Quo:

A request on AMAKS resulted in some very encouraging and informative answers, which I try to summarize here with some additional information that I found on the web after following some pointers from AMAKS people:

Concerning big karate guys

Being big in size and weight means no jumpin' around, but that doesn't have to be a problem. It's just another style.

"I'm by far too slow to do real sparring."

"Nah. You just have to sparr differently than a little person." (devonerik@aol.com)

So how I understand this, I need to concentrate more on counterattacks and pushing the opponent - not meaning to really go and push him, but to let my mass work for me. Not doing 20 fast techniques, but fewer ones, that are real hard work to block away.

I guess my mass and my range just scream for enhancing my sweeps.

Speed vs. Strength

Some people noted that strength and speed training are not in line with each other. The jogging won't be good for the strength training, and vice versa. However, For the moment I need endurance, so I'll have to keep that in my program.

FAT vs. Mass?

It looks as if it's really true: Muscles seem to weight more than fat. I always thought it's a hoax, but most folks that replied sounded quite well informed, and they had a consense about that.

Thus, pure mass isn't the problem. It's the weight/fat ratio, that makes things uncomfortable. One has to get this ratio measured, to decide what to do, but in general, to lose fat it's not enough to look at the calories. Here's a quote from the misc.fitness FAQ, created by Jeff Gleixner (glex@cray.com) that explains a really important point that I wasn't aware of - note the emphasized part!.

"Modify what you eat. Eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, chicken, rice, potatoes, etc. Read the labels. 1g FAT = 9 calories (to make the math a little easier round that up to 10 calories) 1g protein or carbohydrates = 4 calories. Don't be fooled by "95% FAT free"! Look carefully at how many calories come from FAT. i.e. if something has 120 calories, which is pretty low, but it has 9 g FAT and 5 g protein and 5 g carbohydrates, almost 70% of that product is FAT. Try to eliminate the FAT that you eat. There is FAT in virtually everything so shooting for a 0% FAT diet will probably put you in the 10%-20%, just because not everything is FAT free, and you do need some FAT in your diet. Simply switching the obvious foods will make a big difference, such as, skim instead of whole milk, chicken instead of hamburger, bagels instead of croissants, etc. Also eating small meals more frequently during the day will raise your metabolism and keep you from getting that "I'm starving" feeling."

which is directly in line with what devonerik@aol.com said:

"Concentrate more on cutting out fats than sugars. Sugars (simple carbohydrates) aren't very easily converted into fats (triglycerides)."

Plyometrics

Several people suggested doing plyometrics. Skimming the net, I found some information that made me wonder a bit, if this is really what I want to do:

It's sound, that plyometrics enhance strength and speed. But here one can find the following:

Permission to quote not yet granted, Please visit the Introduction to Plyometrics and look at paragraph 5, "Receptors within the muscle called..."

The problem is that training plyometrics requires one to do that pre-stretch move, and I'm a bit afraid, that this will find it's way into my karate techniques.

Remember when training gyaku/kizami tsuki from chudan kamae for the first time? At least I was again and again told, not to pull back my fist in advance. It has to be fired right from where it is, because everything else is a warning to the opponent. Another thing where this may fail is when stepping out of a deep zenkutsu dachi. I've seen so many folks either pulling back their front foot, straightening their front knee, or bending their back knee right before the step - what is exactly the thing not to do!

However, I'll try to do some of these plyometric exercises, while trying to keep them out of my karate techniques. If I discover anything new, I'll post it later.

Ok, let's try to create a new training program here as a conclusion

Be patient

Although smart1234@aol.com is not really considered an institution of wisdom and common sense in the group, he said something very important for a conclusion here:

"DON'T OVER WORK OUT, this may cause injury, or burn out."

Work hard, but patient with yourself also. (devonerik@aol.com)

Acknowledgments

Although much more people responded, thanks for providing me with this information goes to especially to DevonErik@aol.com and to Moine@videotron.ca (Moine97) who - although not as quotable as DevonErik - provided me with the information about plyometrics and a complete overview of a training program a great deal of which I will build into my current workout.

Also thanks go to jimison@vision.net.au for his "Introduction to Plyometrics" and glex@cray.com for the misc.fitness FAQ. jimision@vision.net.au hasn't granted his permission to quote from his page yet, but thanks for providing this informations publicly!

Please send suggestions, corrections,
or just some blurb to mike AT lamertz DOT net