Jackpot! You may remember that I was recently looking for new music to workout to. I found it in Apocalyptica. I first heard about these guys about 10 years ago. My friend was a huge Metallica fan and her husband was a french horn player in an orchestra. She told him that you could play Metallica with cello and he refused to believe it. So she got one of their CDs as a gag gift for him for Christmas and boy did he not like it.
Here are a couple of my favorite songs so far. This stuff should remind you of that Lovecraft story “The Music of Eric Zann.”
“Path” My wife plays cello, too. She had never heard anything like this before. I think it might inspire her to play again.
“Life burns” Great to run to. Guaranteed to make you go faster.
“Faraway” To soothe your soul after the other two. A softer side of the band. Great range, eh?
This is my newest training partner. Throwing buddy is an 80 lbs. heavy bag with a stylish judo gi. I bought this because I wanted a heavier punching bag but I use it primarily for throwing. This allows me to practice my throws, sweeps, pins and groundwork outside of class. I can do endless reps of stuff that no one would let me do on them for real. It stands about 5′ which is only about 7″ shorter than I am. So he’s a big sucker.
This thing is heavy!!! I was shocked at how heavy it is. The weight is ungainly and very difficult to control. I have to wrap my arms around it just to carry it around. The weight naturally sinks toward the bottom, making some of my throws very difficult. I have started just using it for weight training because I’m not used to it yet. I do 100 reps of grip switching, hip thrusts, etc. while holding it in a bear hug. Squats, posts to shoulder, etc. are also part of the workout.
The gi stays on quite well. I thought it would just slip off but it doesn’t. I can grip the two lapels to practice throws. The arms are naturally no good but the lapels work out quite nice. Neck surrounding throws from grips are coming along nicely, too.
I would highly recommend something like this if you don’t want to cough up US$500 for a throwing dummy. That was too expensive for me. And to top it all off, they don’t stand there on their own. My version does. All you have to do is just put it where you want it. The weight at the bottom insures it stays standing. Double/single leg takedowns can then be practiced.
My first few years in Taiwan were spent studying from a teacher famous for winning full contact fights in his youth. I wanted to join such competitions myself so I asked him what were the top two things I should train. I expected him to talk about a striking technique from one style or a throwing technique from another style. He didn’t mention anything like that. Do you know what he recommended most?
Running and jumping rope.
I’ve sat on that piece of advice since then because it’s the kind of truth the traditional martial arts community isn’t ready to hear. Probably never will be. People want desperately to believe that practicing the “secret form” or “secret shenfa” or the “deadly eye poke” will make them great fighters. And it won’t. Or they want to believe that “the reason we don’t see style X in the UFC is that people don’t train 8 hours a day.” Mmm….that Kool-Aid sure does taste good, doesn’t it?
And it doesn’t even have to be competition that we’re talking about. My number one recommendation for anyone looking for self-defense would be to get in reasonable shape. You don’t have to be Hulk Hogan or a sprinter, but your initial ability to fend off an attack or run will likely save your life more than any martial art technique.
Naturally my second suggestion after basic fitness would be a few techniques. But without basic fitness you wouldn’t have much of a base to build on or rely on when things turn sour. Getting in basic shape is also relatively easy while MA techniques are harder to learn and must be maintained.
One of the best ways to incorporate conditioning into your existing MA training is by tacking 10 minutes of running onto your existing workout. Do all the forms, etc. that you want but then at the end, take 10 minutes out for running. It doesn’t have to far or fast, just do it consistently after every workout. That’s all it takes to start.
You could actually take this quite far if you think about it. As you become better at the running, you could run farther and faster in the same time frame. No need to spend more time doing it unless you want. As you progress, your endurance in sparring and other endeavors will increase.
Short Review: Love this program! A great place to start for martial arts fitness, especially grappling.
Here it is folks, my favorite conditioning program. This will be a long review so you can see what comprises the program. Hope you decide to get it because it can really help you.
a 30 minute follow-along advanced workout with Hatmaker
The grappler’s dozen may only contain a stretch or two that you haven’t seen. For the most part, it’s a fixed sequence of stretches that starts with the bottom of the feet and then progresses through the entire body sequentially. You’ve likely seen most of these, but the great thing is that by following these stretches IN THIS ORDER you get a heightened effect. They work synergistically. So even if you’ve done these before, you can get better results with them following Hatmaker’s sequence.
I’ve also noticed a big advantage in having a set sequence of stretches that does not vary to use before class or competition. Doing the set sequentially lets you know that you are 100% prepared to start class or the tourney. If you just stretch this or that in no order, the physical and psychological effect isn’t the same. So this is a great sequence.
The 8 to hate is the guts of the program and there’s a lot of meat there. For those of you with extensive knowledge of other body-weight programs, most of what’s here won’t be a surprise to you. The 8 to hate are mostly common body weight exercises — no mystery to them. But Hatmaker has narrowed all the possible exercises down to just eight and those eight cover everything from head to toe. It’s a full body workout that covers everything you will need for grappling conditioning in a condensed package. That’s it’s genius.
One thing that Hatmaker does with the 8 to hate is that he gives you an idea of how these movements would be useful in grappling. I haven’t seen that in other programs. This makes his exercise selection even more relevant since you know WHY you’re doing them.
Many programs give far too many exercises and no idea of program design. Hatmaker takes that worry away from you. Eight is a small enough number for anyone to manage, but be warned that it’s still a VERY tough program. He calls for 100 body weight squats, 50 judo pushups, etc. These are scalable up or down so you can start at your own pace and work up to his. No need to kill yourself, but you could take it as far as you could want.
The sandbag workout is an alternate workout to the 8 to hate. It’s sort of a backup in case you need to work something else into your program and you’re getting a bit bored. You use a common sandbag and Hatmaker gives you tips for making your own. There are eight or so exercises in the program
The mat drills is a short section of mat moves that can increase your range of motion on the mat. They can be done as actual exercises, not just drills. Naturally, you’ll need mats for these whereas the other parts of the DVD don’t require them.
The last part is the best in my opinion. Hatmaker gives you a full 30 minute 8 to hate workout that you can follow along with. I haven’t seen that either on other DVDs and after watching this one I wondered why not. It is VERY motivating doing the exercises at the pace he sets and then trying to achieve the same amount of reps. He really pushes you as he pushes himself to make all those reps.
The exercises in this last part are a bit more difficult, they expand the range of the basic 8 to hate. But it’s no problem to just substitute the basic 8 to hate until you’re ready for the harder moves. That’s how I do it.
I’ve had great success with the program over the past three months. I’ve been doing it 2-3 times a week and my bodyfat has really dropped. My grappling conditioning has also dramatically improved as has my general conditioning.
For beginning to intermediate level fitness needs in martial arts, I can’t think of a better program to get started with. Hatmaker gives you all you need and prepares you for more advanced material to come. Combining this with his excellent Floor Bag workout (see my review here) will give you great conditioning.
I learned a ton of things from this tourney. It was quite the experience. I got what I wanted because I clearly gained a lot of knowledge.
The tourney itself was a bit weird this time. It’s being upstaged by a tourney in Kaoshiong later this week that lasts four days. All different types of traditional and modern guoshu/wushu will be displayed. So a lot fewer people attended this tourney than two years ago. The forms competitors were as many as last time, but the spectators were fewer as were the push hands competitors.
The push hands showed more grabbing and even holding of wrists this time. That wasn’t allowed two years ago. And they managed to wrap up their part of the comp while forms were still going on. I couldn’t believe it.
As for lessons learned, here are a few.
1. Periodization of training and peaking are important. I didn’t know anything about setting up athletic training to arrive at a result when I started my preparation, so I ended up peaking way before my competition. I couldn’t then maintain that peak of performance. I trained hard for the tourney but my peak was 6-7 weeks ago and my coach has been away since then. Now I know how important these things are.
2. You can’t do this alone. My recent post on the circle of influence was the honest truth — if you try to do something like this by yourself, it’s really, really hard to do. I pretty much set up the training by myself: when to do what, how to prepare, etc. I learned there’s a lot I don’t know about this stuff. Not having a circle of influence comprised of fellow students and teachers that had competed before put me at a distinct disadvantage. BTW, I haven’t done anything like this in over 10 years. That was my last competition and it was once. Before that was four years earlier. So I don’t have my own experience to draw on. Having a large pool of experiecne to access is CRUCIAL for competition success.
3. Preparation is EVERYTHING. I understood that before the tourney but now I KNOW it. The two are not the same. A lot of people understand things intellectually and think they KNOW, but they don’t. Understanding is easy, knowing is hard. Experience is the difference between the two.
4. There are things that are simply beyond your control that can derail all your preparation and then performance. This was a hard lesson for me this time and I learned it well.
As for specific preparation tips, there’s a ton of stuff I could talk about but let’s cut it short for now. Tired.
It’s a whirlwind of activity here. We have the World Cup Taiji tourney starting tomorrow. A ton of info and schedules here. I compete on Sunday. Dr. Yang is here and scheduled to perform tomorrow. My camera batteries are all dead. Yikes! Moving PH and my form are scheduled for the same time. Have to choose form. And we have a judo tourney today that I’m attending. Several of my classmates are competing. Just found out yesterday that there’s another one next month and I’m so excited that I almost want to go to the gym and start training for it today! Restrain yourself, restrain yourself….
Anyway, it’s chaos here so posts will be slow this weekend. Wish me luck!
Original here. We need to hear a lot more of this open-minded perspective. Please notice the emphasis on being practical and not being afraid to study other styles.
OTM: You are a two time world champion in Tai Chi Chuan. Many BJJ practitioners write off styles like Tai Chi. Why do you think that is?
JW: I was fortunate enough to be introduced to Tai Chi Chuan by William CC Chen, who is humble, understated, very practical, a true master of body mechanics, and a fabulous teacher. He is well into his seventies and is still a demon in the boxing ring. If grapplers were exposed to William Chen’s Tai Chi, they wouldn’t write it off.
But to answer your question—honestly, a very large percentage of Tai Chi practitioners have their heads in the clouds…and they are the ones who make the most noise, stage the silly fake demonstrations, and create a cultish mindset that a practical fighter can just walk right through. I’d write them off too. Plus the system has little groundwork and most teachers are still closed minded about that element of the martial arts. Frankly, I think this problem is rampant in many traditional martial arts—teachers are terrified of looking bad and losing students so they create a world that denies what they don’t know.
On the other hand, if you travel to Taiwan and China and focus on the top competitors, the Tai Chi scene becomes incredibly dynamic. The rules of International Push Hands competition are that you are in an 18 foot diameter ring and points are scored for throwing the guy on the floor or out of the ring. No frills. The fighters are superb athletes, training 6 and 8 hours a day since childhood, competing all the time. There is no fancy esoteric language—they just smash you on the floor with a speed and power that is breathtaking. They are open-minded, incredibly subtle, and of a very similar spirit to the top BJJ fighters.
The chess world made me practical, so I always challenged and rejected the elements of the Tai Chi scene that were overly idealized. If someone told me they could throw me without touching me, I asked them to do it. If they said they could kill me with a touch, I said I’d be willing to take the risk. This led to some pretty funny scenes and was an easy way to filter out the nonsense.
OTM: What benefits from Tai Chi do you bring to BJJ and vice versa?
JW: Well, the learning process begins from different places but arrives, ideally, at a similar feeling. In BJJ, you tend to begin with technique, and through repetition you come to a smooth, efficient, unobstructed body mechanics. In Tai Chi, you begin with body mechanics, get a certain internal feeling over months and years of moving meditative practice, and then you learn the martial application of what you’ve been doing all along.
The essence of Tai Chi is sensitivity to intention. Turning force against itself, overcoming power without meeting it head on. Of course these principles are at the heart Jiu Jitsu as well. In my mind, the arts are completely intertwined and to be honest, the purest Tai Chi I’ve ever felt has been getting my ass handed to me, over and over, by John Machado and Marcelo Garcia.
OTM: Do you still practice Tai Chi?
JW: Internally, yes. Chess and Tai Chi are at the core of everything I do.
OTM: What are the practical fighting limitations of tai chi?
JW: I think that depends on how literal you’re being. If you come from my perspective, in which I rebound away from traditionalism and don’t care much for labels, Tai Chi is in everything just as chess and Jiu Jitsu are in everything. The boundaries are very porous. From a slightly less irritatingly abstract perspective, the Tai Chi system, if cultivated in a no nonsense manner, can be quite powerful as a striking and throwing art. Despite what some might say, the ground element of the game is not terribly developed–and that’s a big limitation.
This is one of those myths that IMA guys tell each other so they can seem superior to other styles. Unfortunately, it’s only a myth. No good boxer, MMA fighter, or karate guy is going to punch with his arm only. It’s just crazy. Where do people get these ideas?
Here’s a clip of ESPN boxing knockouts. The BODY is driving the punch in every single one of these knockouts. Isn’t that obvious in this clip? Look at the slo-mo.
Here’s my favorite K-1 fighter — Ernesto Hoost. Watch his core when he punches and kicks. He’s not just using his arm. He’s using a solid core that is connected to the ground (another IMA myth).
There are so many myths that IMA people tell each other that there isn’t time enough in one lifetime to dispel them all.
If we go outside of talk about techniques, then there’s two main things to talk about in martial arts — power and sensitivity. All styles that I know of fall on a scale between these two poles. None have 100% of both because that’s practically impossible.
Think of it like this:
power<————————>sensitivity
Why these are polar opposites will be clearer below.
The taichi form (I’m thinking Yang and it’s variants) starts quieting the mind and body. This is a process that the student will go deeper and deeper into as time progresses. The aim is to reduce the amount of neurological feedback that you produce by yourself. This feedback is the result of muscle and mental tension. Both must be reduced to a bare minimum in order for relaxation to take hold.
For many people this is a hard row to hoe. Physical patterns take time to overcome. Mental constructs that create stress are even harder to overcome. That’s why I talked so much about accepting some parts of Chinese culture last year and earlier this year. You have to learn to think in new ways to avoid that mental tension and that’s hard, if not impossible, for some people to do. Chinese philosophy gets you on the track to thinking in ways that are crucial to mental relaxation.
Sitting meditation is also crucial. The combined exercise of mind and body in the taichichuan form may be too much for some people. They may need to take the process apart by separating the mind part from the body part. Sitting meditation tends to deal solely with the mental aspects, allowing a student to isolate that area.
Flexibility training, massage, etc. allow a student to go deeply into the body tension without the component of mind. They are valuable as well for that reason. These two paths can then combine and be heightened in the taichi form.
Many people talk about relaxation, but it’s a necessary but NOT sufficient quality. Relaxation by itself is practically worthless, if we’re talking about taichi for martial purposes (if you do taichi for relaxation then this doesn’t apply to you). The relaxation from the above practices clears the mind and body of that self-imposed neurological interference, and allows room for a new ability to arise — THAT’S its use.
The new ability that can arise through the training is sensitivity.
Having lessened your own neurological feedback, you can now be sensitive to the movement and intent of others. If you started trying to develop sensitivity right away, your own tension would get in the way.
Sensitivity is developed between partners through the push hands medium. You still have to work on your own tension at first, but this time your tension is in relationship with the other person. This relationship gives you feedback as to your own areas of tension that still remain. Solo training would never reveal all of that because there is no relationship, no “other.”
Going back to power, I won’t get into all the aspects of martial power. It’s a large subject. Just using the basic definition of power will suffice: power = speed + strength.
We can see right away that the reduction of tension aids the building of speed greatly, but speed isn’t taichi’s forte. If you’ve been taught specific ways to use taichi to build speed, then more power to you. Truthfully, the fastest guys I’ve ever seen did Kempo or JKD. Taichi speed training seems almost non-existent.
The strength part of power is where taichi really flounders. Building strength involves breaking down and rebuilding the muscles — but this process INCREASES neurological feedback, the very antithesis of sensitivity training.
And please, let’s skip the idea of groundpaths, peng, “internal” mechanics, etc. The simple fact is that the human skeleton has no way of keeping itself upright without muscle, let alone generating or transferring any force. So let’s skip this issue. I don’t want to discuss it.
The building of strength interferes with the building of sensitivity. Taichichuan seems to acknowledge that fact and the classics suggest that sensitivity, not power, is the path to follow. Now you know why.
If you want the secret of taichi, work on your sensitivity.
No other art that I know of has this focus on extreme sensitivity and the components in place to develop it so thoroughly. If you do taichi, I would most highly recommend trying to get this aspect of the art.
BTW, whether or not sensitivity is enough is a topic for another day.
Thanks to Pat from Mokuren Dojo for suggesting the topic.
Alwyn Cosgrove is one of the sharpest people in modern fitness. He’s also a 4th dan in taekwondo and a pretty good observer of human nature. His blog is well worth checking out. The following post of his blew me away. Lots of wisdom here:
…it’s not a huge leap of faith to realize that your way of thinking, your attitude towards success, your relationships, your business and pretty much your life are all essentially influenced by the average mindset of the people you converse or interact with the most.
Sports psychologists call it “leveling” and “sharpening”. Leveling refers to when the average person in the “circle of influence” has less skill than you - then your skills tend to diminish and “level” out. If the average person’s skills are above yours - then you tend to “sharpen” your abilities. It’s one of the reasons why finding a good training partner or crew can elevate your workout. And why surrounding yourself with successful people is one of the fastest ways to ensure success.
For example - Rachel and I had a small party at our house last weekend where we watched the Olympics and the UFC. At this little gathering we ended up having a training discussion with fellow fitness professionals, Robert Dos Remedios, Valerie Waters, Chad Waterbury and Jason Ferruggia.
…quite a list eh? And it’s definitely fair to say that all of the names on that list are smart people, and are all very successful at what they do.
My abilities can only be elevated by the influence of people like those guys. I’m not the most skilled at training or business, or the highest earning amongst that group — so I’m being “sharpened” - just by knowing these guys. (Plus it was a fun party!)
So how is your circle of influence looking? Are you surrounding yourself with like-minded individuals with similar goals and mindsets? Does your circle contain people who earn more, and know more than you do? Are you learning every day as a result of your interactions?
Or are you surrounding yourself with negative people - who tell you that “you can’t do that” or who’s entire life consists of looking forward to Friday night Happy hour. Get a picture in your head of the people you associate and interact with the most. Is that group something that most would aspire to be part of? Or are you being “leveled” by association?
Bill Parisi once told me that his goal is always to be the dumbest person in the room - it’s the fastest way to get smart. Make sure that you are in a position to “sharpen” just based on who you associate with. This is a little concept that will reap big rewards for you.
Doesn’t this explain a lot of things? It does for me. With a strong circle of influence you start with lots of good advice from successful people. Without that, you start from scratch and hope for the best. In some ways, I’ve been trying to do that in my life. No wonder things aren’t working out.
