Adding Value to Your Dojo part I: Martial Arts as a Social Activity

There are a lot of ways to think about your martial art - is it a form of physical culture, a means of learning self defense, a cultural/ historical preservation activity, etc.  None of these are wrong, and in many ways they aren't exclusive - you can train to get in shape AND to preserve a part of history that you find valuable, for example.  The way you think of your art will, however, shape your training in many ways (if you train to preserve a cultural artifact you're less likely to incorporate techniques from other arts, for example), as well as shaping your marketing (sales pitch) and the way you may structure activities around your dojo.

I've already written about how I think we can benefit from regarding our training from a physical culture perspective (and I stand by what I wrote there).  I have another perspective to share today.

I tend to do the bulk of my training alone.  I go to class when I can, which is often just once a week, but I'll practice kata and kihon or do my conditioning by myself several other times a week (by the way, this is probably a bad idea for any beginner, but I've got many years of supervised training under my belt).  There are advantages to this approach.  I have less travel time.  I can train whenever I want - I'm never late for class!  I can focus on the skills I need most and on the exercises that work best for me.

There are also some pretty obvious disadvantages.  You can't do partner drills by yourself.  It's very difficult to work on many key skills without a partner - you can get clean technique, but how do you develop your timing?  It's even harder in grappling arts, I'm sure - how do you even practice throws, holds, and locks without another body to toss around?

I think that many people will also suffer from a motivation gap.  I'm not that way personally, but for many people it's easier to show up to a class and train because someone is telling you to train, rather than trying to force yourself to practice alone in an empty room when you could just go have a beer instead and nobody would be any the wiser.

Let's put aside these considerations for now - these points all have to do with the fact that training with other people can be better for your karate.  They're valid points, but there is another set of advantages to training with a group that have nothing to do with improving your skill:

The thing is, humans are social animals.  We evolved to travel in groups and there are serious biological implications to that fact.  There is a substantial body of medical literature showing that human health is enhanced by having strong social connections - friends, family, whatever.  We can argue over some of the fine points - do internet friendships count or not (I suspect they do) - but the bottom line is, very clearly, that people are healthier and happier when they have a deep social environment.

You can get friends from a lot of places, but one very interesting social bond is created by shared physical suffering.  Anyone who's ever been through a football camp or a hard promotion test can tell you this.  In my dojo we often hug or pat each other on the back after tough sparring matches.  This is why corporations spend tons of money to take their executives rock climbing or white water rafting and call it "team building."  It really does build a sense of togetherness and bonding among people.

The people in your dojo a) share your interests; b) spend time with you regularly; c) share bonding experiences regularly.  They're also unlikely to be total douchebags, at least in a good school, because if you have good seniors the douchebags get their asses kicked hard enough that they either straighten up their act or quit before getting very high in rank (usually).

My point?  You should be (and probably already are) friends with your senpai and kohai.  You should hang out with them outside of class.  You should invite them to your Christmas party.  You should share birthdays.  You should be Facebook friends.  You should hang around before or after class and catch up with them.

Furthermore, being friends with your classmates is a key benefit of your training.  You might justify watching a football game with your buddies or poker night by saying that you need time with your friends - the same is true, perhaps even more so, about training.  If you're thinking about spending money on a martial arts retreat or attending a seminar or having a social function, and you're waffling, don't think of it in terms of just how much karate you'll learn - think of the benefits of that activity as a social occasion.  Karate can help fulfill your fundamental human need for interaction!

If you can (this will depend on the culture at your school), organize and participate in social activities outside of class with your peers.  Do a martial arts movie night, have parties, go for drinks after class, whatever.  And don't resist these activities because they might have limited direct benefit for your karate - that's not the point.  The point is to enhance your health and happiness by deepening positive social connections.

If you run a school, encourage your students to socialize outside of class.  Get them to do movie nights (or organize them yourself).  Be available to grab drinks or snacks after class, at least some of the time.  Put up a board in your entrance area for people to advertise get-togethers.  You might be teaching self defense, but you're also creating a social network for your students.

Want to convince someone to start training?  Yes, they'll learn to defend themselves, and yes, they'll get in better shape.  But they might also make a whole bunch of new friends, and that has an added value all its own - not just int he obvious ways, but enhancing health and longevity.

If you think you can be fit and healthy and a loner... you're probably wrong.  You can get a social life by going out drinking and partying multiple times per week, but you're probably going to last longer if you hang out with your dojo mates instead!

Osu.

Reflections on Gasshuku and Promotion

I had an interesting week.  I learned a few things, re-discovered a few more, and made a ton of new friends.

First, a short list of things NOT to do before/ during promotion:

1.  Get into a car accident.  I got hit (driver side front corner) going through an intersection last Tuesday morning (promotion was Friday).  Being both male and a little bit stupid I gave my statement to the police, then walked about 15 blocks to work.  Then another mile or so to the car rental place where I got my replacement vehicle.

My instructor forced me to get medical attention the next day (she threatened to block me from promotion if I didn't get checked out, which isn't entirely unreasonable, but I still wasn't happy about taking an extra half day off work).  It turns out that I'm okay - sort of.  I have no actual injuries - nothing that should hospitalize me - but my chest and shoulder were seriously banged up.  As in they hurt enough to make me cry when I try to roll over in bed.

Instantly I went from hoping to do really, really, well on my test to just hoping I wouldn't completely embarrass myself and my instructor.  Even when I was doped up on ibuprofen, though, I could feel that I'd lost about 50% of the speed and power in my right arm.  That's one of the big things they deal with in Z Health - your body shuts down motor units when you're working through a painful range of motion, to protect itself, which is why mobility work and soft tissue work can often unleash a ton of strength you didn't know you had.

Final result:  car completely totalled.  I walked away.  The woman who hit me was hospitalized.  I'm still sore but getting better daily.  And I survived promotion!

2.  Work yourself into a nervous frenzy.  I stressed myself out again, worrying.  But I did a lot better than last time...  so, progress, I guess.

3.  Complain.  I have to admit I can be a fun burglar.  When I'm too hot, or bitten by bugs, or whatever, I have a bad habit of getting bitchy and complaining.  I make myself miserable, I make everyone else miserable, and I have a terrible time.  This promotion was at a camp at a monastery.  No air conditioning, sun beating down on us, waking up at 4 AM to meditate outside, mediocre food, long drive to get there... you get the idea.  I found myself a couple of times running a little loop of bitching in my head - but for once in my life I was smart enough to snap out of it.  I very consciously decided to NOT complain, on the inside or the outside, and try to enjoy the good stuff that was happening.

It's a good thing I did, because the good stuff was amazing.  The weather was fantastic - just as the final 2 rounds of kumite for sandan candidates (including me), the capstone of promotion, started, the skies opened up and it just poured rain on us.  I got two big guys - both bigger, stronger, and far more skilled than I, to spar with (one at a time), and they kicked the crap out of me, which was good, because that's what's supposed to happen during promotion.  The next morning we got to meditate and watch the sun rise.  We did all kinds of camp - team building type of stuff, the kind I usually hate, but all the people there were just so nice, so supportive, so skilled and diverse, that I had the time of my life.  I got to make new friends and get to know old friends much better.  I had to write song lyrics and make an ass out of myself onstage (we had to produce skits).  I got too little sleep, too much food, too much sun and bug exposure, and I had an awesome time.


In the end I also got my sandan (third degree black belt).  Better yet, my teacher says I didn't embarrass her, and while I think she's just being nice, I'll try to believe it might be true.

Weirdly, a handful of people there recognized me from reading this blog, which took me totally by surprise.

If you're a fellow Seido practitioner, Osu!  Welcome to my blog.  Please note that everything I write about here is my personal opinion and NOT the official "line" of our style.  If I write about the correct way to punch it may not be the right Seido way -  it's my opinion, and I'm NOT an instructor!  Especially if anything your teacher says should contradict my writing, listen to THEM (please!)  Of course, you can think about what I write, but I'm no authority on our style.

Here's something I've re-discovered:  the people who practice in my style are nice.  I don't mean they're weak, or soft, or anything like that, but... they're nice.  I've met a ton of people who train in Seido and pretty much all of them are super nice, super supportive, and just great to be around.  Everybody does everything they can to make everybody else better - not to show up anybody, not to show who is stronger, but just to nurture everybody else's karate.  That doesn't mean you won't get hit during kumite - but it won't be out of malice, it will be out of competition, as a part of training.

It's amazing to be in such a large group of people, all tied together by their love of what amounts to a system for dishing out violence, and almost without exception they're all super nice people.  I wish I knew how this was managed - I wish there was a reproducible recipe for this kind of karate.  I'll think about it some more, but in the meantime I'm just very glad that I lucked into this family (the karate club at my college was a Seido club, run by Shuzeki Shihan Chris Caile, who is a fantastic guy, but in all honesty I trained there because it was the only type of karate I could get to without a car - it wasn't the result of exhaustive research or analysis on my part, just blind, fantastic luck).

Bottom line:  If you ever get a chance to spend 3 days training and hanging out with a bunch of karateka, do it.  Even if there's no air conditioning, and you'll be sleep deprived, and you have to drive 16 hours to get there and back, and you'll get bitten my mosquitoes, and you're recovering from an injury, and you can't really afford it - do it anyway.  From your deathbed I bet you'll remember listening to crickets from seiza and forget all the traffic you hit on the way home.  I bet I will.

I'm thinking about what it means to be a third degree black belt.  I'll write about it at some point.  In the meantime, I have to take a break from training to let my shoulder heal, then it's back to training!

Osu!

Countdown to Promotion: Ultimate Week

For reasons I'll explain in a future post this entry has been delayed.  Sorry!

It is normal to want to train very hard in the days leading up to your promotion/ event/ competition/ whatever.  You're probably in great shape, you're worried about losing the edge off your skills right before you need them most, and you're psychologically probably very "up" for your chosen field.  I have one very general piece of advice:

Resist.

The last few days (and I have no scientifically precise data on the exact number, let's say 3-6) before your peaking event should be mostly restful.  This is not when you're going to make gains - this is when you can rest, heal, recover, and make the most of the hard work you've been putting in at the dojo.  Here's what you need to do:

Gently increase calories.  You need to eat at or even a little bit above maintenance this week.  You don't want to get fat, but unless you really pig out you're not going to gain noticeable amounts of weight in 3 or 4 days.  You don't want to be depleted at your event.  You don't need to eat giant bowls of spaghetti or whatever each night to refill glycogen levels, but you do need to make sure to get a moderate amount of carbs each day while avoiding heavy exercise.

Don't train heavy.  No heavy strength work starting at least 3 days before your event, no high intensity intervals in that same time.  You're just not going to get de-conditioned or weaker in 3 or 4 days - your body isn't that plastic - but you might hurt yourself or just get sore and depleted.  This is not the time to get in shape - the 3 months before this were the time to get in shape.  If you did your work then, you'll be fine.  If you didn't, nothing you do in the last week is going to be enough to matter.

Meditate and relax.  Your mind is very possibly your worst enemy now.  You're probably stressing a lot about the competition.  If you have to think about it, actively visuallize yourself being successful - acing your kata, winning a trophy, meeting your own personal goals for the event.  If you can, avoid thinking about it altogether.  Spend time each day meditating.  Enough anxiety will ruin your performance just as quickly as a physical injury - maybe more quickly.

Stretch and do light skill work.  You don't want to train heavy so your body can heal and regenerate, but you also don't want to let it stiffen.  Keep your motor patterns grooved with short, light workouts.  You're not going to get any better at anything in this last week, but you can easily avoid backsliding.  Go over kata in your head - visualize the moves - which is both good for your technique and very good for remembering the sequences.  Do lots of light, dynamic stretching to keep your body limber.  If you have to wring your shirt out after a workout you're working too hard.

Don't do anything new.  New movements/ techniques lead to soreness, which you don't want to deal with on your event day.  This is not the time to take up hill sprints or Olympic lifts. 

Sleep lots; do soft tissue work.  Get an extra hour or two a night if possible.  You're healing and recovering.  If you can, get a massage - even an amateur massage - get in as much sex as you can handle, and do extra sessions of foam rolling or whatever myofascial release work you prefer.  You're preparing your body for an event, treat it the way a Formula 1 team treats their car the day before a race. 

For me, the mental aspect of this week was the toughest.  As I mentioned before, I get nervous, and if I let myself I'll run through doomsday scenarios in my head and generally work myself into a nervous frenzy.  Then, when the time comes, I forget an astounding percentage of what I used to know.  This is bad!  You have to do whatever it takes (other than binge drinking) to take your mind off the event or to think positively about it.

If you have to travel a long way to your event, bring clean food to eat and try to arrange the schedule so you get as much sleep as possible (not always possible, I know).  Pack early.  Stay calm!

Remember, the last week is the time to recover and relax, not to make improvements.  As hard as it is to do, focus on recovery and not training for a few days.  This works - when I took my nidan promotion (not this one, for reasons I'll explain later) I was in my all time best shape - because I spent 3 months kicking my ass in the dojo, then took a week to recover enough to feel how much I'd improved.  You can certainly do the same.  Stop the heavy training, sleep and eat, and you'll be fine for your event.

If you're reading this while preparing for some peaking event in your life, good luck! 

Osu!

Countdown to Promotion: Penultimate Week

My promotion for sandan (third degree black belt) starts next Friday (July 8).  I wish I had another six months to prepare, or better yet a year, but I don't.  If you're new to the blog, here are the important details:  Promotions in my style are fairly rigorous physically (but not insanely so - we don't regularly hospitalize people during promotions or anything) and are taking place this year over a three day weekend.  I've been training since 1988, but I took a 12 year break from 1994 - 2006, and another year from late 2008 to late 2009, so I'm nowhere near as skilled as I should be.

Assuming you're trying to peak for an event like a promotion, a major tournament, or whatever kind of karate event you're participating in, there are a few things you should be doing.  Note that I'm going to assume that you: a) are not a professional athlete - no 3/day workout schemes here, I assume you have a real life that can't be put totally on hold; b) not a beginner - if you've been training for 3 months and you're testing for your first yellow stripe or whatever in two weeks, you need to just keep on training, not peaking; and c) not injured.  If you're hurt then you need to be dealing with that injury.

The first thing is to come to terms with what you can and cannot do in the last two weeks before a promotion.  If you've been training for years you're not going to get siginificantly better, skill-wise, in two weeks - you're not getting any better at kicking and punching.  You might be ablea to fix some technical errors of memory - for example, suppose you tend to punch with the wrong hand at a certain point in a kata - that's something you can work on, but if you just suck at something, you're probably still going to suck when the test date arrives.

You're also not going to get significantly stronger in two weeks.  Unless you are brand new to strength training (which you shouldn't be) neurological adaptions are slow to come by, and you can't build much muscle tissue at all in such a short time.  Getting stronger takes years, not weeks.

Your'e also not going to get much leaner in two weeks.  If you still have bodyfat to lose it's not going to happen now - putting yourself into a serious energy deficit at this point in time will leave you depleted and weak for your test, which is NOT how you want to present yourself.  If you're competing in a weight class event that's another story, but otherwise don't run yourself down by cutting back on food.

What you can do is improve your conditioning.  Maybe not by miles, but you still have time to add a few extra percent to your endurance while maintaining your skill and strength.  Here's what you have to do:

This week do some planned overtraining (sometimes called over-reaching).  Here's how:

• Every day do a hard session of skill training.  Don't focus on any one thing - remember, you're not going to improve much.  Do a few reps of everything in your syllabus - every kata, every combination, etc.  This is the time to make sure there aren't any kinks in your skills.  You're not going to develop wicked spinning kicks now, but if you haven't done any in three months you can sharpen them up quite a bit.  If you want to devote some time to really focusing on one thing, like your punches, do it after the test.  If you are sparring keep the pace high but the contact very controlled - this is NOT the time to do hard full contact sparring (because of the injury risk).
• Follow each skill session with a serious conditioning session.  As always, think in terms of doing high intensity intervals - work very hard for 10-45 seconds, rest, repeat.  Jump rope, sprint, do kettlebell swings, air squats, thrusters, burpees, bike sprints, etc.  Rotate your efforts - don't choose the same thing every day.  And don't do exercises that you've never done before - the soreness from starting swings for the first time can really hamper your efforts the rest of the week.  Also, do more than you think is probably good for you - really toast yourself.  And DON'T use karate skills for this part of your workout - don't do kicks until you're gasping for air.  It's bad for your kicks.
• Do just enough strength work to maintain your strength levels.  Maybe twice this week do an even more abbreviated session than usual - and follow it with skill training and more conditioning.
• If you can handle it, add a second conditioning session in the morning.  I try to get in a 4 minute workout - Tabata style sets of swings and thrusters with a kettlebell (Tabata protocol means 20s work/ 10 s of rest/ repeat).
• Do light stretching every day.  You're not going to work yourself into a split for the first time, but you want to work near the limits of your range of motion for all your muscles every day to stay limber and help with recovery.
• Eat plenty of clean food.  DON'T cheat by chowing down on ice cream and candy - instead eat plenty of protein and carbs in the form of meat, protein shakes, and starchy root vegetables - think lots of steak and sweet potatoes - to keep glycogen stores high and to improve muscle recovery.  This is NOT the time to try to trim off some excess weight - for two reasons.  First, cutting calories will hamper your body's ability to adapt to the training and make it more likely that you stay sore or get some mild injuries.  Second, if you managed to change your body composition now you'd throw off your balance and technique and you won't have time to adjust before the test.
• Make a special effort to cut back on possibly inflammatory foods.  Even if you think you're okay with dairy, this is not the time to push it.  Cut back on dairy, grains like rice and corn (you shouldn't be eating wheat ever anyway), vegetable oils (again, you shouldn't ever eat them, but...) and peanuts. 
• Do a TON of recovery work.  Foam roll yourself, use a self - massaging tool on sore spots (even better, get a massage or two, if you can afford them), sleep extra, eat more often (this is the week to be less than strict on your intermittent fasting schedule).
• Supplement with creatine, beta alanine, and acetyl-l carnitine to improve endurance.  Will they help?  Maybe, maybe not, but if you have the money this is the time to splurge.  Remember, we're peaking!

I'll write another post about the last week before promotion, but the general idea is we're going to taper off our training a lot and give our bodies a few days to heal, recover, and adapt to all the training.  If you time it right you can come into your test in the best shape you've ever been - and that's pretty much all you can ask for.

Summary: Blog so far

I've recently noticed (I know, I'm a little slow) a huge surge of traffic coming from Dan Djurdjevic's awesome blog (thank you very much!)  Welcome - the kind of people who read Dan's work are exactly my target audience.  For you new readers, and anybody else new to my blog, I thought I'd write up a summary of the key points I've been trying to convey.

KC Philosophy:

I began training in the late 80's.  I took a 12 year break and when I got back into training in 2006 I found that a few things had changed.  I was in worse shape (not as strong, not as flexible, with less endurance, less resistant to injury) at 35 than I had been at 21 - and I had never been what you'd call an athlete.  I had less time and energy for training - a family and a full time job can really interfere with two hour training sessions.  But, (and this turned out to be my saving grace), I was connected to a huge body of information about training that I hadn't had access to before, all thanks to the internet (thank you Al Gore!).

I've spent a considerable amount of time over the past 5 years reading and looking at books, magazines, blogs, websites, videos, and DVD's about diet and training - not just about martial arts training, but about training for athletes in all sports, and every minute of it was devoted to figuring out how that information could make me better at karate.  I learned a lot - I learned how to become and stay more flexible throughout the day, how to get faster and stronger, how to improve my health, how to dramatically improve my endurance, how to practice my skills, all without having to train more than a few hours a week.

It didn't take me too long to realize that not everybody knows all this stuff.  Plenty of wonderful karate instructors spend their time learning and teaching technique instead of poring over the latest research on VO2 Max.  Which is fine - I don't mean to criticize anybody's teaching.  I thought I had learned some things that could help other people - people like me, older people or people who aren't very athletic or don't have fifteen hours a week to train - become better at karate.  Not by showing them or teaching them karate, but by helping them train better so their karate can be better.

Nothing, or almost nothing, in this blog is original.  I stole every last idea from sources from Pavel Tsatsouline to Mike Boyle to Bret Contreras.  I've discovered no secrets, no ideas that you couldn't figure out yourself if you want to spend the hundreds of hours of reading to learn it all.  But if you don't have time for that, you can read my blog and hopefully get a few useful tips that will make your karate training more productive and more efficient.

Here's a summary of the key points I try to convey:



1.  Flexibility Training:


You should do two types of stretching: static stretching and dynamic stretching.  Static stretching means moving a muscle into a stretched position and holding it.  Think of things like sitting on the floor and leaning over a locked leg to stretch the hamstrings, or wedge your legs apart to stretch your adductors.  Dynamic stretching involves moving a muscle fairly quickly into and out of a stretched range of motion.  Think mae keage, or swinging your leg up and back, or up to the side and back. 

Do your dynamic stretching daily, preferably early on.  Do ONLY dynamic stretching before a workout unless you have an injury.  I like 2 sets of 10 leg swings to the front and sides per leg.  Do 3 sets if you're very tight or sore.

If you do any static stretching - which will gradually lengthen the muscle tissue - do it when you're cold (not right after a workout).  You can do it as often as you'd like, but you'll probably need at least 3 times per week to get any results.  And don't do it before a workout!

If you need better range of motion, say in your adductors so you can round/side kick higher, you have to build strength in the target muscle (the one that's holding you back) when it's stretched.  If your adductors are tight, get close to a split (as close as you can) adn draw your legs together - either pulling into the ground or actually pulling them together, sliding so you end up standing.  You can do various other exercises as well, but the point is to build strength in the stretched position - that's how you get the muscle to relax when it's being stretched so it doesn't restrict your movement.


2.  Skill Training:

When you try to get better at a skill (say, punching or kicking) you are making a neurological adaption - your nervous system is changing.  This process doesn't work the way, say, building muscle does.  Your nervous system learns new things best by practicing them well; and practicing them often.

That has several ramifications.  You want to practice your techniques as often as you can - every day or more would be best.  You want to practice most often while fresh.  At the end of a workout, if you're tired and drained, your technique will be relatively sloppy.  That is the wrong time to practice karate.  Instead, practice karate when you're fresh - even performing just a few minutes of drills several times a day - and save your endurance work for when you're tired.

That also means your workouts should start with a warmup, then dynamic stretching, then skill practice, then strength training, then endurance training - don't put the strength/ endurance stuff before the skill stuff or your technique will suffer.


3.  Strength Training:

If you're doing a routine you got from your typical personal trainer or the pages of a fitness/ bodybuilding magazine you're probably training wrong.  Karateka need explosive strength, not big muscles (although you will gain some size as you get stronger). 

• Focus on workouts shorter than 45 minutes in length. 
• Do exercises with enough weight/ difficulty that you can only complete 5 or fewer repetitions at a time (for example, don't do regular pushups if you can do more than 5 of them; work on one-arm pushups instead). 
• Focus on movements instead of muscles - hip extension (kettlebell swings, deadlifts), knee dominant squatting (one legged squats), an upper body push (pushups, presses) and pull (pullups, body rows) and core (next bullet).
• For your core do mostly exercises where you stabilize your core against a resistance - for example, a plank instead of a situp.  Do a ton of anti-rotation - holding your core stable while some force tries to twist your body - think one armed plank, medicine ball throw, etc.

Stay away from high rep work in the name of strength training.  If you can do 50 pushups, working up to 100 pushups won't make you stronger, just give you better endurance.  You're better off working up to 10 one arm pushups.


4.  Endurance:

Presumably you want more endurance so you won't gas out during sparring or intense kata practice.  Some people train for that by doing lots of LSD (long slow distance) - jogging, hopping on a bike or treadmill for long bouts of steady state "cardio" work.  Unfortunately, you'll get at best mediocre results from that type of training.

The name of the game is High Intensity Interval Training.  You need to work at a level of intensity so high that it really stresses your cardiovascular system.  Instead of jogging, sprint.  Instead of biking, do burpees.  That means you won't be able to keep it up for long - that's fine.  Just rest for a little while and repeat.  Over and over.  I don't know the best work/ rest time ratio - working 20 s, resting 10s, repeating is popular, I also like 15/15 - but the principle is to make the work very, very hard and not to do anything during the rest.  As you get in better shape don't extend the work intervals - don't make them longer - make them harder instead.

One other point:  you may be tempted to kill two birds with one stone and do your conditioning by working martial arts techniques until you're exhuasted.  For example, doing 500 side kicks.  Don't do that.  Why not?  Becasue if you're pushing your endurance close to its limit you're going to end up doing a lot of sloppy kicks - practicing bad technique.  You only want to practice kicks when you're fresh, then once you're getting tired, hammer away at your cardio with a non-skill movement like running or burpees or something else where you don't care about your skill.


5.  Diet:

I'm a big advocate of a roughly Paleo diet.  Put simple:  Avoid all grains (especially wheat, corn, soy); avoid legumes (beans); eat no seed and vegetable oils (corn oil, vegetable oil, canola oil, etc.); restrict any artificial and processed foods; limit dairy; and limit fruit and nut consumption.  Eat animals that are fed on the same principles - so eat only grassfed beef, pastured chicken, etc.  What can you eat other than meat?  Vegetables, fruit, root veggies (sweet potatoes, yams), some nuts and fruit, some dairy (preferably raw, preferably from grass fed cows).  Yes, you'll be eating a lot of fat.  Yes, it's okay.  No, it won't make you fat.  It might heal your gut and cure your arthritis, though.  This diet, which improves insulin resistance and lowers inflammation, will improve recovery, enhance your endurance, help you drop any excess fat, and make you healthier.

There are a lot of resources on the ins and outs of paleo eating both on this blog and in other places.  This diet has made huge differences in my personal health and fitness.  Many paleo bloggers lean towards the low carb end of the spectrum - I don't.  I find that my karate goes better if I eat plenty of carbs.  I just get my carbs from sources other than wheat, corn, and soy.  Meaning I eat plenty of sweet potatoes and rice but no bread.  Try it for 30 days and see how you feel!

 

 

That's a brief summary of the key points to improving your karate practice that I've discovered over the past 5 years.  I have posts up about all of this which cover each in more detail - if you're interested in more explanation of anything here please post questions to comments.

 

Thanks!

Posture Principles: Packing for Power

I just might have an unnatural fondness for alliteration.  I'm also a nerd for posture.  I think that proper posture is one of the underappreciated aspects of athleticism and of good martial arts technique.

Packing is a term used to refer to the appropriate alignment of a bodypart.  People might use it to refer to other things, but I've only seen the term used in two places:  the shoulders and the neck.  To my knowledge, the term "packing the neck" is very recent, and I only heard of it a few days ago from Brett Contreras' blog (which is one of my current favorites).  These terms come from the field of strength training, not martial arts, but I believe they are applicable.

What are they?

Packing the shoulder means drawing the shoulderblades backwards and together and down, towards the ground (if you're standing).  Pavel Tsatsouline says you should feel as if you're sticking your shoulderblade into your back pocket.  If you want a really nice feel for what this does to your shoulder, both in improving stability and power, do an overhead press with your shoulder packed, then try it with your shoulder hiked up near your ear.  You should feel a big difference in strength.

Note that this is quite different from the shoulder position used by boxers, who lift their shoulders when punching (on purpose) to protect the jawline.  I feel that a packed shoulder offers better transfer of power (from the hips), better handspeed, and better safety for the shoulder joint.

Packing the neck involves positioning the head properly.  You tuck your chin slightly, as if looking downwards, but pull your head backwards, to the rear.  Imagine you're trying to give yourself an exaggerated double chin.  You tuck the chin but pull up on the top of the head, elongating the spine.  For a pretty good idea of what I'm talking about look at pictures of Mas Oyama punching things, such as this one I pulled from this wonderful gallery:

You'll see a slightly similar position used in Muay Thai - chin tucked, head down, but they lower the head too much, hunching the shoulders and causing a power leak at the upper back.  They do it for protection - keeping the chin tucked into your chest makes you harder to knock out, which is the same reasoning that boxers use for elevating the shoulder.

Why pack?

There are, broadly speaking, two reasons I think the shoulders and neck should be packed when practicing martial arts (I'm not necessarily suggesting you should walk around with your neck packed at all times - this isn't that kind of posture - but you should do so when sparring or practicing fighting techniques). 

First, having a packed neck and shoulder put your body in the strongest, most injury- resistant position.  A packed shoulder is more stable (better supported) and less likely to incur injury or dislocate.  A packed neck puts your cervical spine in a good position for resisting forces, making neck injury less likely.  It also literally puts your chin and jawline in a better protected position, possibly preventing a knockout.  Think of what typically happens when someone kiais - how often does the chin lift and jutt out?  Now think about doing that while someone is trying to punch you in the face.  Not a good idea.

Second, a packed shoulder and neck are more powerful.  You will transmit power better through packed joints than through loose joints.  Don't believe me?  This is a simple experiment - punch a heavy bag with your chin up and your shoulder hiked up, then with both packed.  Or do some kind of pressing movement, with weight, and see how strong you are with and without packing.  I think you'll see my point.

Another interesting experiment is to do your pushups, pullups, or any other upper body exertions, with your shoulders and neck packed and unpacked.  I was shocked at how much easier packing my neck made my chinups and pullups.

To assist with packing, you might need to work on the strength of various muscle groups.  If your lats are weak and your traps strong you might have trouble maintaining packed shoulders.  If your neck extensors are weak you'll have trouble keeping your neck packed.  Do pulldowns, chinups, or dip holds (get into a dip position and hold it with arms straight for a period of time) to get better at shoulder packing.  For the neck I'll take a rubber band, loop it around my head, and press back against it for reps. 

Take home:  Try keeping your neck and shoulders "packed" whenever you practice techniques or perform strength movements.  Make that posture automatic enough so that when you hit things during sparring you maintain a packed alignment.  You'll be stronger and healthier!

Conflicting Goals and some link love

A couple of my favorite karate - related podcasts have resurfaced.  Check out Karate Cafe, which was on hiatus for a few years but is back again.  Basically a bunch of guys talking about their martial arts practice.  Also one of my all time favorites, the Applied Karate Podcast, is back.  Check it out. 

If you want some more info on paleo eating, including recipes and tips, a great way to start is the Paleo Rodeo, a feature put on a wonderful Paleo blog.  It's a list of links to hot paleo-related posts from the previous week.  Bookmark Modern Paleo and check through the Rodeo every Friday.  I'll put the link in myself, periodically.

Now a little bit about goals.

Programming errors (in exercise selection, training frequency, or nutrition) are often the result of poor understanding of specificity of adaption, but are just as often (if not more) the result of a failure to properly organize one's goals.  The classic example of the first situation is someone who takes up jogging in order to get better endurance for sparring.  That's a physiology mistake - long slow cardio will do very little to improve our endurance for high intensity activity.  But what about someone who wants to be both a better karateka and a better runner?  Say, someone who enjoys both karate and running for their own sake?  A karateka who wants to be a half decent marathon runner?

I personally have a difficult time empathizing with anybody who runs any distance at all for pleasure, but I've met some of these crazies and they seem sincere.  Dealing with this situation requires a couple of steps:

1. Recognize and accept that if you chase two dogs you don't catch either one.  If you try to be both an endurance and a power athlete (and make no mistake, karate is a power endeavor, karateka are power athletes) you will never reach your maximum potential in either one.  If you're gifted enough you may end up being above average in both, but you won't be your best in either.  Sorry.
2. Remember that although the training for running and karate are different they tax the body in some overlapping ways.  You can't just add a hefty running schedule on top of your karate practice and expect to recover fine from both.  You'll need to abbreviate the training for both or periodize them.  Consider doing heavy running for a few months, then taper to a once or twice a week running schedule and really focus on your karate.  Switch every few months or even weeks.
3. If you can prioritize your goals you can simplify your life. Maybe running (or karate) just aren't that important to you. Maybe you just want to do enough running to make it through a half marathon once a year, or just enough karate to maintain some upper body strength.  That would be more manageable.
4. Stay honest and transparent with yourself about what you're doing and why.   Don't try to justify either practice in terms of the other - your karate isn't really helping your running and your running isn't really helping your karate, unless your training for one of those disciplines really, really sucks.  You are doing both because you want to and that's okay.  Be who you are.

If you're lucky you'll have different goals that don't compete.  For example, I'm a little vain, and I want to be good at karate.  That works out well - training and eating to be better at karate happen to also be a pretty good way to look better.  If I was dedicated to high level sumo competition I might have a problem.  If my vanity was a higher priority than my karate I'd probably train a little differently, but not by a huge amount (you can imagine how - I'd do more sets for arms, more for abs, and spend more time posing in front of a mirror).

Be clear about what you want, then smart about how you go about getting it.  It's fantastically simple advice and something suprisingly few people manage to do well. 

To kata or not to kata

There's a longstanding debate about the importance of kata to karate practice.  I doubt I'll be providing the last word on this topic for anybody, but I wanted to put my two cents in.
As far as I can tell there are three distinct benefits to kata practice:

1. A place for hiding techniques.  That low block to the left?  It's actually a lethal groin strike, or an over the shoulder throw, or whatever.  Studying kata can help us learn lots of cool techniques.  Unfortunately, this is not my strong suit, personally.
2. A method of exercise.  Kata practice can be great for overall body strength and developing power in your footwork.
3. Meditation.  The concentration required to learn and remember kata, as opposed to soemone shadowboxing with random techniques, is a form of mental training.

In my style we do a lot of different kata, and we often do our kata in weird ways - like adding a back spin to every techniqe where there's a forward step.  I remember thinking that this was a silly and impractical way to train (I don't do a lot of spinning during kumite), but I did it anyway, motivated by an upcoming belt test.  To my surprise, my movement during jiyu kumite was pleasantly improved by all the turning and spinning.  I believe that I'd strengthened my legs in ways beneficial to fighting by practicing my kata, in ways that weren't being addressed by squats and deadlifts.
I can see the points of those who are anti-kata, but I worry about the practice of abandoning kata for a couple of reasons.  First, they might be losing out on some of the physical benefits I mentioned.   Second, I don't know how we can be sure that there aren't still valuable bunkai hidden in the kata we practice.  I'm quite sure, given my personal interests, that I'm not going to be the one to finally figure out the real application of the fifth step of Seienchin.  But if I can learn it properly and transmit it to my students or my kohai, maybe one of them will find a really useful bunkai for it. If we all gave up the parts we don't understand that potential future gain would also be lost.