Calisthenics: (main focus on stretching) - lunges - jumping jacks - situps (abdomen, hip flexors) - crunches (abdomen) - pushups (chest, arms, triceps, shoulders) - pullups (back, latissimus dorsi, forearms, biceps, rear deltoid, trapezius, erector spinae, abdominals) - chinups (back, arms, biceps) - squats (legs) - hyperextensions (lower back, erector spinae) - leg raises (abdomen, hip flexors) - calf raises (calf muscles) - dips (arms, triceps, chest, back) - bridges (back, spine, flexibility, triceps) - handstands (shoulders, triceps, trapezius) - planks (core, abdominals, back, shoulders) Cardiovascular: (main focus on breathing) - cycling - swimming - jogging - running - walking - dancing - jumprope Hardcore Training: (main focus on strength) - wrestling - boxing - freestyle sparring - weight lifting drills - heavy bag drills - focus mitt drills - speed bag drills - kicking shield drills - technique training That is basically my own personal training regiment. I don't really have a style, and I don't really practice forms, kuens or katas. You could compare my system to boxing, wrestling or kickboxing. Most of what I do consists of freestyle sparring, usually while wearing protective gear, since most of my training is full-contact. Right now, I'm working on trying to develop some after-training methods for healing and recovery. Other than that, there's not really much else to it. Everyone I train with goes at their own pace, and each of us has our own unique training regiment or schedule. Basically, we just set a goal in mind, and try to exceed our own limits. All of my hardcore training methods involve at least two people. There are a lot of two-man drills, partner exchanges, style exchanges, etc. We don't have any forms that you can practice by yourself, but I do a lot of cardio training and stretching exercizes before and after we train. Some people ask me what I call this style or system that I use. For lack of a better term, I call it 'American MMA', but in reality I haven't really thought of a name for it, nor can I really think of anything it might relate to other than full-contact mixed martial arts. For that reason, I haven't given my system a name. It has no name.
Some members of the MAP community have asked me to talk more about my personal training and development, so I decided to do just that. ^_^ My very first experience in martial arts started with Taekwondo when I was very little. The instructor was a very nice Korean guy who was remarkably good at breaking boards and bricks with his hands and feet. However, it was an American school and there were over 200 students who lived there at the dojo! I stayed there at the TKD school for a little over a year, but eventually decided that large classes weren't for me. After about a year, I realized that I hadn't really learned much at the TKD school, so I moved out and started looking for other martial arts instructors in my area. I eventually discovered that my very own nextdoor neighbor had a brown belt in Shotokan Karate and was just getting ready to become a black belt instructor. He was the member of a MMA school which had several different classes and styles. However, there were also a lot of students at the MMA school, so I asked my neighbor if he would train me one-on-one in his own backyard. We trained together for several months, but for testing, I had to go to the MMA school and perform Shotokan Karate in front of his instructor. That was the only way I could move up in rank. After about a year of one-on-one training in my neighbor's backyard, I went to the MMA school and blew them away! Instead of earning a yellow belt, I skipped ahead of my class by a few degrees and went straight to red belt, which was three ranks ahead of the other white belts at that time. Unfortunately, my instructor moved away and I was never able to finish my training in Shotokan Karate, but I continued to train and practice everything he had taught me. A few years later, I ended up running into someone at the bookstore who trained in Yip Man Wing Chun, who gave me the number to the Gung Fu Institute where he trained. I decided to check it out, so I made a visit to the place where they trained, and instantly I was impressed with what they were doing. Rather than having a large school with over 200 students, I was amazed to see that the Yip Man Wing Chun instructor only had a tiny little classroom with a handful of diehard students, all of whom were in top shape! I immediately decided that I wanted to learn Yip Man Wing Chun, right then and there. The instructor invited me in to one of his classes and asked me to demonstrate Karate, which I did. Afterwards, we touched hands and he threw me around the room like a ragdoll! He showed me where my weaknesses were, and offered to teach me Gung Fu, at which point I accepted his teachings without question. Later on, he introduced me to a few guys who were doing Jun Fan Jeet Kune Do, so I started learning from them as well. I studied Yip Man Wing Chun for about five years before I had to move to a different city. There was a Western Boxing gym down the road from my house, so I decided to go and train at the Boxing school. There, everything was very hardcore. The workouts were very different from Gung Fu, and I remember having to take a lot of breaks because the training was so intense. There was a lot of cardio training and sparring at the Western Boxing school, so I had to drink a lot of water. After a few years of training off and on at the gym, I started fighting in the ring, and my coach said I was a natural athlete. I entered the professional light-weight division and started boxing competitively. In all the years that I did boxing, I never once lost a single match. That turned out to be quite an experience. Unfortunately, as time progressed I was forced to move again back to my old city. Ironically, fate placed me right back at the same spot where I had begun my training several years ago. I went back to the MMA school to see if my Karate instructor was still there, but I found out he ended up moving to a different state where he opened his own school. I wasn't sad, of course, I was actually happy for him because I knew that's what he wanted to do. By now, the MMA school was in a sort of flux and there was a lot of building construction going on. There were also a bunch of new instructors who I had never seen before. They were no longer teaching Shotokan Karate, but instead were training people who wanted to join the UFC, so there was a lot of grappling and wrestling going on. That's how I got introduced to Judo and Jujutsu for the first time. I started training up at the MMA school when they were having Jujutsu classes, as I wanted to learn some ground fighting techniques. That's how I met some of the guys I train with today. Nowadays, I no longer train at the MMA school. Instead, I train in my own backyard with a group of diehard MMA practitioners. I have a gym in my backyard, which is where we do most of our training behind closed doors. Through the other guys that I train with, I was exposed to Kali, Bando, Muay Thai, Kendo, Krav Maga, Aikido, Tai Chi, Tong Long Kuen and several other fighting styles. I don't claim to be a master or teacher of any fighting style. I'm not a certified instructor, so I don't teach anyone the things I've learned. I don't really claim to practice any style, I just take what I can from my own personal martial arts experience and try to work from there. I don't train with beginners or people who have no prior experience in the martial arts. Every person I train with has had at least five years of training or more. Basically, what we do is spar together and learn from one another, using everything in our power to train. A lot of people have come to me and asked me if I am a JKD guy. The answer is no, I am not a JKD practitioner. Although I do have experience in Jun Fan Jeet Kune Do, and I do still practice what I know, I do not consider the heart of my training to be strictly JKD, nor do I wish to make a name off of Bruce Lee's art and philosophy. What I do today is basically what I think Bruce Lee would have wanted his students to do, and that is to express myself honestly, and try to find the cause of my own ignorance in martial arts training. For that reason, I do not practice Jeet Kune Do, nor do I really wish to associate myself with the politics and misconceptions that go along with it. I just practice MMA, for lack of a better word, because what I do involves a lot more than JKD. ^_^ Happy Training!
Saturday, December 17th, 2011 This morning's regiment consisted of watching MMA home videos and playing fast-action video games. I had milk and eggs for breakfast. Afterwards, I got on the computer and checked the MAP forums cool. Then I did a few stretching exercizes, and jogged over to my friend's house. My friend is an intermediate level practitioner of Brazilian Jiu-jitsu, and currently holds the first-place trophy for M.A.U. wrestling. Then I played some more fast-action video games with my friend. Afterwards, we did some stretching exercizes and started wrestling on the mats he has at his house. After about thirty minutes of wrestling, we took a water break and played some more fast-action video games. My friend had an extra bicycle, so we rode up to the store, then went back to my house. Once we got to my house, I ate a chicken sub with mayonese, lettace, tomato, olives, salt, pepper, oil and vinegar. I also drank some tea. I showed my friend the MMA videos and UFC videos that people have given me. Most of the UFC videos featured Anderson Silva, but some of the other tapes covered things like combat training and military arts, with and without weapons. I believe in one of the videos, the U.S. Marines were actually practicing a type of knife-fighting similar to FMA, but with more devastating bone-breaking techniques aimed at killing the enemy with minimal effort. I have a few wooden knives and swords that I made for training, so my friend and I decided to practice some of the knife-fighting techniques we saw on video. We played around with the knives for about thirty minutes, then decided to spar with both knives and swords at the same time. This went on for about ten minutes, then we decided to take another break. Neither one of us was seriously injured during our weapons training, but both of us had a few knots and bruises afterwards. Then we turned on the radio and listened to music while working on different things, including the jump rope, heavy bag, speed bag, weight machines, and bench set. We must've been in the shed for at least an hour before another one of my friends showed up on his bicycle. My other friend is a Jun Fan Jeet Kune Do practitioner with no other experience in anything besides JKD, and what he learned by himself at my house from cross-training with me. My friend learned Jeet Kune Do from Sifu Ted Wong, who unfortunately passed away not too long ago. I did not teach my friend martial arts, he already learned martial arts before he met me. We just cross-train together. I took another water break, then ate another sandwich. This time it was a ham and cheese sandwich, with a dill pickle and potato chips. Afterwards, we played more fast-action video games for about an hour. Then we went back into the shed and trained some more. But this time, after we got done lifting weights, we practiced full-contact sparring with MMA gloves, shin guards, cups and mouth peices. We each sparred one another for a set period of time. I sparred my first friend, then we took a break, and both of my friends sparred each other, then they took a break, and I sparred my other friend. This way, all three of us got to spar with one another. This is how it went down. Punching, kicking, elbows, knees, grabbing, slamming, throwing, sweeping and wrestling are allowed. We made those rules up a long time ago, when we all first started training together. Things which are not allowed include clawing, scratching, eye gouging, fish hooking, or nut grabbing, but kicks to the groin are legal. Each match has three rounds, and each round lasts a total of four minutes exactly. We use a stop watch to keep the time. While two of us are sparring, the third person usually acts as the referee. We always have a thirty second break between each round. You can lose by tapping, forfeit, knockout, or technical knockout. After each match, we also took water breaks and practiced our stretching exercizes. The three of us must've sparred together for a total of about one hour, maybe a little longer, before going back inside. After sparring for an hour, we once again played fast-action video games. A lot of the games I play deal with two-player fighting, four-player shooting, and one-player puzzle strategy games. I consider video games to be an actual part of my backyard training. Video games help to train your reaction time and hand-eye-coordination, as well as your thinking cap. We played video games for a good three hours before my friends left. I took a hot shower and then I slept for about an hour. When I woke up, I ate dinner, and then I trained some more. For dinner, I had some shrimp and crab salad with a little bit of mixed vegetables. Afterwards, I did a few more stretching exercizes and went back into the shed to work on my weight training. I did some pullups, pushups, bends, leg presses, arm presses, curls, butterflies, and other types of training like air-punching with free weight resistance. I'm not even sure how long I did that for, at least thirty minutes or so. To be honest, I didn't even keep track of the time. I just lifted weights, doing burnouts and repetitions until I got tired and couldn't do it any more. Afterwards, I started practicing my kicks on the heavy bag. It used to be that by seven o'clock in the afternoon, I was sore and tired from my intense workouts. Now, I still get tired, but not as quickly, and I'm not nearly as sore afterwards as I was when I first started training. The rest of my day consisted of health snacks, television, and more video games. I signed on to the internet a little while ago because I got bored, and because I'm still interested in finding new after-training methods for healing and recovery. I figured that since I'm at the computer, I'll just go ahead and give everyone a basic rundown of one of my typical days of hardcore training. By the way, this is just a list of things I did today. This isn't exactly what I would call a training schedule or concrete regiment, since I didn't do the same stuff yesterday and I probably won't do the same thing tomorrow either. As I said before, my training is in a sort of flux right now, and I don't really have a particular training ciricullum. However, I do make it a habit to train in the shed for at least five hours a day, if not longer. Really, all I do is try to work on whatever I feel needs to be worked on at any particular moment. I spar with my friends at least three days a week, and sometimes twice a day when we get an early start, or just feel the mood to spar. And that's really how my system works. It's not really anything special, and there really isn't any secret to it. Like I said, I'm all about training at my own pace, and just going with the flow. Luckily for me, I've been training for a long time, so I tend to stay in pretty good shape. In another hour or so, I'm gonna go help another one of my friends work on his truck. We have to replace the engine, so we're taking the whole engine out and putting another one in. That should be pretty fun, so you know how that goes. I hope this helps anyone who wishes to know more about my daily routine, and how I train personally on a regular basis. If there are any questions, you can always feel free to ask me. I'll try to answer the best I can. Thank you! ^_^
