Monday

Quiet day today.

Went to Kobudo in the morning, now have the entire sai kata in my head and for a second there I did the power generation correctly!  Felt it all align in me and it felt good.  Have I been able to do it since?  Of course not, but there you go.  Also had an interesting lesson on trapping techniques.

From there I was going to moped it home, but Betsy refused to start so I walked in the rain.  Urrgh.  Kamefuku for a massive meal then home and a 4 hour nap.

Jujitsu tonight we did that hideous warm up where everyone calls out 5 exercises, so there was plenty of press ups and crunches and all sorts.  Then we worked on throwing from the clinch and finished with some Kubaton work.  A great session.

Then took Betsy home as she decided to start!

So, 4 1/2 hours of martial arts, a good day.  Tired now though.

A Weekend

So I went to BJJ on Saturday night and... and the guy's not there.  There are two different Aikido classes on in the padded hall so I sat myself down and watched what I can only say was a display of such territoriality it could only have come from a martial art that preaches peace and love.

On the far right were the usual Aikido guys with the rude sensei, and on the left with a far bigger class were the guys James had trained with.  Both classes put up tones of Aikido posters and pictures and all sorts in an attempt to claim the training hall.  And the body of language of he two teachers... they couldn't even look at one another. It was real HATE all the way down.  Funny to watch though.  I stayed and watched their warm up and caught some of their techniques which were typical and unrealistic.  It frustrates me about Aikido, there's something there, but trying to find the right class that shows you what is there is a problem.

Sigh.

Abbe would be turning in his grave.

I went down and lifted weights instead:
Mobility warm up
Bench mark -Press up 20, Pull up 8, Chin up 2, HLR 8 (legs high), Dips 7, HLATR 10, Wide pull up 1

Squats: Bar x 10, 5 Jumping squats, 70k x 5, 90k x 5, 110k x 3, 110k x 3, 110k x 3

Single leg raised squats 5 per leg 3 reps per leg.

Glute bridge raise (you load the bar up, lie down, put it across your belly and basically do a bridge, great for escapes)
70k x 5, 120k x 5, 150k x 5, 170k x 4

Biceps - 20k barbell doing 21 protocol, not putting bar down: 30, 15, 15.  So that's 60 reps without putting the bar down.  Ouch.

Over head presses 20k in each hand, 8, 6, 6

Then home!

Once home James, Hisano and the girls came back from their trip to try and buy an air con unit (it took a loooong time).  we were all hungry but there was no real food to cook (well, cook easily) so we opted for pizza!

Pizza take out in Japan close at 9pm.  What the fuck?  So, me and James head on off to this place:

Mos burger, Japan's home grown premium burger place.

Not too expensive, with nice glasses instead of paper cups if you eat in.  Had a milkshake and it tasted... dunno, different.  Not bad, but not great.

Burger wise I had a double decker cheeseburger which was very filling as it seems to be good quality meat (although slightly small):

Chips were okay.  Overall 7.5 out of 10.

Next morning I had this:

You got to guess what it is, the answer will be at the end of this entry.

So, Sunday and Sunday means beach day!  So off to the beach in the hot, hot sun we go.

300 workout again, this time completed in 12.20, with everyone else making it by 12.44!  Good improvement, and that's despite us having an extra person so needing to share some equipment!  Then did a padwork, person bag and tanren circuit.

Then swim!

So good, oh so good.

Mike can now buy things on base and he got me a little present:  BACON!  Oh so good, we ate that when we got back and then the entire household had a nap.  So hot.  Nice night now though.

Tomorrow I'm getting to Kobudo rain, hail or snow!

Karaoke! and secret Somerset Pasties!

Well, I had to do it eventually...

Yesterday was a very, very rainy day.  I kept trying to leave the house but Betsy wouldn't start and the rain was so ridiculously bad I just sat around and chilled and ate everything I could.  My original plan had been for me to go to BJJ at night, but Mike rang me up out of the blue and asked if I wanted food and a drink, to which I said yes!

But I'm getting ahead of myself, first things first, the pasties!

Now, some of you may foolishly think that pasties come from Cornwall, and that's true if you want average non special pasties.  But there is also a secret special type of truer, realer pastie that comes from Somerset!  It's a big secret and the special technique is passed from father to son on dark, wind swept nights!  Cornish pasties are but pale, pale imitations of the true wonder of The Somerset Pasty!  James told me this and his father told him and he cooked some of the SECRET Cornish Pasties the other day!  And with a surname like Pankiewicz he must be the real Somerset deal!

They were damn good, with Thai curry ones for the adults and less spicy ones for the kids.  Mmmm.

Look at that!

Anyway, he made loads and I ate them over Thursday and Friday.  In case you haven't guessed, this post is going to be a food and beer post, but there you go, I'm in a food mood!

Oh, and my plan for yesterday had been to get my hair cut, but that didn't happen so James did it!  I am now hairless, mostly!

So, I meet up with Mike and Rodney and an ex student of theirs at a bar/restaurant in Hadena, which is the town over.  As it was pouring with rain, James gave me a life as he and Hisano were on the way to have a meal.  These bar restaurants are called Isikias and they're where people hang out after work.

The place was bigger on the inside than on the outside and the beer was cheap.  How cheap? 105 Yen per pint, which is about 85p.  Only until 8pm, but I got there around 6ish...

This is cheese wrapped in pastry and deep fried. Lovely!  I also had chicken, spaghetti carbonara, chicken on a stick (a big Japanese bar food), a potato/cheese/egg dish, chilli octopus and some other stuff I was too drunk to remember.

From there we discussed me only having a month left and things I needed to do.  Mike asked if I'd done Karaoke in Japan, to which I said no.

So our next port of call was the Karaoke bar across the street!

By this time it was raining real heavy and we got soaked to the skin walking 15 metres (well, running).  It was a super strong downpour.  Damn nice day today though.

Anyway, the Karaoke bar was called "Big Tomato", I dunno why.  And it was a series of rooms, one of which you booked and you sat in and selected songs and sung.  Lots of families there and other people, even some Evangelical Christians singing standing up in their room.

It was decked out like some quaint European street.

This was the room complete with stereo system and video screen.  You chose the songs using some complicated hand held device:

Strangely, it played videos whilst the music was on, but they weren't the videos to do with the song.  So when anything rocky played, a generic video of Japanese bikers was shown.  Whenever something romantic was played it was moody emotional Japanese couple arguing, falling out and making up.  Anything R&B or poppy had dancers in a warehouse.

The deal we had was that we could drink as much as we wanted whilst there so we got to work demolishing a bottle of sake whilst singing our way through assorted songs.  I did Bohemian Rhapsody, some Sting, a little Jay Zee and some Michael Jackson.

We finished on Piano man.

Quite a surreal night, all in all, but a good one.  Tonight I'm going to go to BJJ.

Hitting the wall

I was hoping to hit a 200kg deadlift today, but I woke up knowing it wasn't going to happen, my body was just in a "I'm frazzled, leave me alone" type of mood, but me being me, I dragged it down to the Budokan anyway.

I'm probably partly frazzled because of yesterday, but I've been training hard these last few days and it's been hard power movements: those 6 minutes of continual power shots on the bag yesterday was damn tiring; not so much in a cardiovascular sense, but in a nervous system sense - sustained maximum effort wears the nervous system out, and what's a heavy dead lift?

Yeah, a maximum effort lift.

Coupled with last night's training too, I was on a hiding to nothing today, but I went and did it anyway because I'm me and I'm pig headed.  Sigh, I should have listened to my body, I've been getting good at this over he past two months, but I just wanted to see if my mind could overcome.  If it had been a muscular thing, I'm sure I could have, but not when your nervous system itself is frazzled.

Anyway, last night's training.

Last night at the Budokan we had a hard warm up (which I felt, put it down to not enough carbs on the day, but  it was more than that).  There were four of us and each had to call out five warm up techniques.  Me, James and Shun called out twenty reps on a variety of things ranging from press ups to squats to burpess to jumping squats and clapping press ups, Cody came at the end and only called out tens, which was a relief!

We spent the session looking at throws: hip throw, body drop, shoulder throw (ha!), half shoulder and major outer reap.  To give them their Japanese names, o-goshi, tai-otoshi, seoi-nagi, no translation and osoto gari.  It was a good session: my hips are more flexible than ever and my legs are faster than before so I'm good at sort of jumping in and getting loooow on the hip throw and the shoulder throw.  Interestingly, seoi-nagi does not translate well as "shoulder throw", a better translation is "back carry", which is something that can be borne in mind whilst practising the throw.  The reason that there's no translation for the half shoulder is that it isn't a judo throw, it's something else...

After playing with these throws for a long while, James decided to pull out the stomach throw!  Which is another mistranslation we picked up, it's actually a "circular throw", but there you go, we picked up a few bad translations from the old club and its pseudo Japanese ways.  I've never liked doing or having that throw done to me, but my break falls have gotten better and, well, it went better last night.  We finished the night with fifteen minutes on combat applications of the hip throw and body drop; just playing and trying on different bocks, different entry points.  The old game of "if I do this, then you do that so I must do..."

I love nights like this as you learn a lot by taking things apart: everyone's an equal, everyone's opinion is valid and everyone has something to bring to the table, which is so important.  We found out how the stamp throw is actually supposed to work (or, at least, we found something that looks like a stamp throw, only better!).

I've been thinking, which is always dangerous, why we have so many throws in jujitsu.  Do we need that many?  Could we make do with less?  Or, perhaps, could we teach them in different ways?  Having all the throws that rely upon a certain body mechanic grouped together and teach them as a "block" of throws might be something that could work.

Or maybe not.

Anyway, I felt all those throws this morning!

Today's training:

Cycled to Budokan
Mobility warm up
Bench mark - Press up 30, Pull up 5, Chin up 4, HLR 10, Dip 5, HLATR 10
Weight - 101.55

Deadlift - 70k x 5, 100k x 3, 120k x 2m 140k x 1, 150k missed as grip went, 150k x 1 (over/under grip), 160k x 1, 170k x 1, 180k miss

120k x 3 for speed (nothing else in tank!)

Bench
Bar x 10, no power, leave

Cable cross overs max weight x 16

Then vibro machine for cool down.

In hindsight on a tired, worn down day I still hit my old maximum.  Training on a Thursday isn't good for me, I need to shift it back to a Friday - Friday training works because I used to take Thursday off save karate and stretching, I'll do that next week and we'll see...

Karate tonight, Kobudo and BJJ tomorrow!

Can't think of a title

So last night we didn't get a chance to get to Karate but we did take the kids to the playground attached to Angelina's school and I had fun on the climbing frame and pull up bars (hanging leg raises, pull ups and so forth). For an infant/junior school it's equipment puts anything in the UK to shame.  I'm not going to bother describing it, I'll just get some pictures and put them up and you'll probably think what I thought when I first saw that playground: "Why did I never get this a a kid?"

Anyway, this morning got up and trained with Shun.  Did a mile and a half jog then came back into the training area.  James hit upon a solution for our problem with the pull up bar ropes: he's tied two rings tightly into them so now we have rings to pull up on!

I did 30 pull ups at sets of 5, Shun managed 20.

We then did 6 minutes straight on the Human Punch Bag (a punch bag you wear, I'll get a photo, another invention, basically a military satchel filled with a two by four wrapped tightly in two duvets).  6 minutes continuous is hard, bad enough holding the damn thing, but going at it... I practised power shots: everything designed to end a fight (or a combo designed to end a fight), changing techniques once I was flagging.  6 minutes of that is hard.  I used power slaps; power slap with left stepping elbow, knees with elbows, thigh kicks with elbow, push kicks... I was so glad when the time went.

So was Shun.

Have spent the rest of the day sleeping or reading or chilling.  Deserved.  Have Jujitsu tonight and then heavy weights tomorrow.

Because of those damn rings I'm going to give myself a new challenge: I'm going to do a muscle up on those rings!

Watch this space!

On training

Okay, so yesterday James comes back from work with two nylon ropes, some plastic clips and an interesting idea.

...

Having reread that sentence I should probably explain in more depth before people get the wrong ideas: the training area of the house is sort of in the front garden, the front garden being below the ground level entrance of the house.  Sort of.  We're on a steep hill and the house has two floors, with the front door being on the top floor linked to the street by a walk way with the training area beneath the walk way on the same level as the "ground floor", the gap between the walkway and the training area being just shy of five metres.  The back garden is then a level down from the "ground floor".  Complex, huh?

Where was I?

Oh yeah, the pull up bar we've been using is quite narrow and therefore not ideal for us long armed people, so James had the idea of hanging down chains from the walkway into the training area and us using them for pull ups.  He didn't get chains, he got nylon ropes and plastic clips, which he then attached in this manner:

The ropes are attached to the railings of the walkway by plastic clips of the kind you get on satchels.  We tested them a few times with me pulling to ensure that they would hold weight...

We stared off using a thick piece of bamboo for a bar, held in place by plastic clips which then snapped on my second pull up.

So we decided to use the metal barbell, which worked until the plastic clips gave up on my fifth pull up!

So we tied it in place and it worked fine, sort of.

You'll notice that I'm at a slight angle in the picture, that's because the damn bar was starting to slip as it sunk fully into the knots, but then it held and it was all good.  We dug out the equipment for doing harness push ups (sort of two handles attached by rope which ware then looped over a bar so you're pushing up against a wobbly base), we did two sets of push ups with that attached to the bar (I could only manage 5 push ups!  It was so hard) and then we started doing lateral raises with it.  

On my second set the clips at the top gave way and I was lucky to be at the bottom of the move and only fell an inch, thankfully missing having the metal bar brain me!  

Back to the drawing board for that one. 

I then played with the tanren, getting 15 reps on each arm, which is an improvement from my first attempt at 8.  Then swung it around till my wrists were sore.  

Jujitsu at night was a series of drills I'd been thinking about: clinch dominance drills and then run throughs of what me and James had been doing on Sunday.  It as good, good training and so hot, I weighed myself at the end and I was just over 101kg!  

Sleep at night was a bitch as it was so hot!  I kept waking up and falling into a doze and waking up.  

This morning was even hotter!  But not muggy, which was good.  I dragged myself out of bed at 9.30, all stiff and sore.  Hisano was working from home, which meant Selly was not at nursery.  Bless her, she's even worse with the heat than I am!  

Despite my body protesting I dragged myself to the Budokan, cycling there in high gear. 

And, it being Tuesday, it was closed.  DOH!

It was a good cycle, though, and it woke me up and got my blood pumping and got rid of all my aches (god bless active recovery) so I wasn't too upset.  I got ice cold coffee for everyone on the way back and it was so needed.  Getting up the evil hill was a doddle, easier than ever even though I haven't ridden the bike in nearly 2 weeks.  Rest has been good for my legs (although the initial climb on had me thinking, "Wow, it's a lot higher than a moped").  

Got back and me and Hisano did a mile and a half jog.  Remember that hill I couldn't run up when I first got here?  We did it twice today!  Easy.  Scary how used I am to running again, and that's running whilst carrying a lot of muscle.  When I was running loads I was never this heavy.  

Got back, stretched, did 20 reps on each arm for the tanren (hah!) and 4 pull ups.

So, smashed a self imposed target with running that hill.

Just got 200kg dead lift and 100 push ups...

Body changes wise, my hands have gotten noticeably bigger and thicker, probably from the grip work, the tanren and the makiwara.  The middle knuckle of my right hand has permanently changed shape, it seems...

May go to the beach in a bit!

Revelations

Okay, so last night we didn't get to Karate due to baby sitting, but it actually worked out very well as me and James went into the training area out the front of the house and did some training.

The original idea was to use the tanren for a bit and I mentioned doing some pad work.

This is the tanren, by the way, I made it myself from a big block of wood!

Funky, huh, the guy that invented ("rediscovered") Daito Ryu Ajijujitsu swore by this thing, the idea being that you move it around slowly sort of like a sword and it makes you really strong.  Me and James had been using a sledgehammer for the exercises, but this is way harder, weighing in at 10 kilos or so.

Anyway, it's pouring down with rain and we put the awning up and we start doing pad work as a warm up, with me working on punching power.

Now, my punching power has really increased and has gotten a lot better and we discussed that, but then we went off track, as you do when I made the comment, "I don't know why we teach our students to punch, it's hard to do and you're likely to injure yourself."  Now, if we're honest, you are likely to injure yourself if you punch someone in the face: the skull is composed of some of the densest bones around and punching it without gloves on is bad for you, your knuckles and your wrist if you're not aligned correctly.  Hell, even if you are aligned correctly and you punch someone really hard there's a good chance that you'll bust your knuckles.  Self defence wise, punching people in the head is not good.  Punching people is softer areas is waaaay better, but we came to that topic later.

Anyway, I brought up how I felt I could slap way harder than I could punch and we tried it out.  Sure enough I can, because my body's natural force generating mechanisms work really well with that movement; it is easy for me to slap very, very hard, whereas punching very hard takes more energy and focus.

We spent the next twenty minutes working along that principal looking at its use in confrontations, how you would set it up with a simple distraction and then combinations built upon it.  All this whilst keeping in mind the fact that it had to be simple, easy to use and learn and with a high probability of success.  We used pads at first and then put on the wearable kick bag, which gave me and James a chance to go to town and properly generate a lot of force with the slap leading very neatly into elbows and kicks.  Interestingly the slap could also be a knife hand downward strike to the neck.

From there we returned to punching and tried to apply the principals we learnt from slapping to punching, with some success, my punches being a little stronger, but nothing compared to the slap.

We then wandered into Karate territory and looked at the lunge punch, oi tsuki.  Now, when you see it done in kata, you're like, "humm", and I want to show you it but it's damn hard to find the version I'm thinking of on the internet, whilst looking I found this:

Which has got nothing to do with the technique I wanted to show.

It sort of looks like this:

Not as nice as the other picture, I know.

Anyway, it's blatantly a punch to the groin, so we tried it, and then used the pads to see how much power we can generate (we're dedicated martial artists looking to bring you cutting edge self defence developments, but repeated groin shots is a little uh... well, a little like these guys: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pB7gnB31NnI) and you can generate a fair bit of force because you're dropping your body weight into the strike and tensing up at the last second, which is the key.

 The body mechanics also make it a great defence if someone grabs you, simply due to the manner in which you move, so we played with that too, and it works.

So, nearly an hour of playing with hitting hard in the rain, and it was time for the tanren, which we did in the prescribed manner, but then James got all Conan and started swinging it around like a broad sword.  So, of course, I want to have a go and it turns out that swinging the damn thing around and riding the movement is a hell of a shoulder and core work out.  So today I woke up in pain.

Funniest bit of the night was Selly putting a bandanna across her face and trying to come out and join us whilst shouting, "I'm a ninja!"

More ninja news tomorrow!