All too often in my travels I end up doing padwork with people. other gyms, other arts, other artists, joe makori down the road who sleeps under grafton bridge. And almost inevitably their padwork sucks more than something horribly horribly sucky. So this is my guide to the long lost art of not holding a pad like a muppet. because nothing upsets me more than people with floppy pads. 1- learn your combos. if its a straight punch hold them flat. if its a hook hold it to the side. not "sort of" to the side but so that it is at 90 degrees to your face. people holding pads at strange angles is a sign of laziness and possible retardation and needs to be stamped out. like communism. Also an uppercut is called an uppercut for a reason not a halfway hook/upper ******* child. If you don't know how to hold a pad for a front kick then try asking before my foot stomps through your hastily (and crappily) erected pads and winds you. you rolling on the floor crying like an infant eats into my precious training time. 2- Don't smack the living crap out of the pads, it isn't neccessary and its dangerous. accidents happen, you catch the pad on the other guys hand as it swings back, it catches on your erection, whatever. if you are launching a full bore death maker kick while this happens you are not going to be popular. knocking out your pad holder makes you a jerk unless you are buakaw doing it for tv. 3- meet the strike with your pad. this cannot be stressed enough. if you stand there and just let the punch hit then your arm gets knocked back. when this becomes a combination things start flying everywhere and it gets ugly. padwork should never look ugly, it should be beautiful. part of being aesthetically pleasing is pushing back (not reaching out and pushing back, mind you) so there is a satisfying thud but no pad holding arm flying around like a epileptic at an auction house. 4- feedback. staring back at me, stony faced, and waiting for the coach to come over and clip me around the ear for dropping my hand every time is not cool. it makes you, again, a jerk. so does standing like a statue. move. don't just hold the pads there 24/7 until your arms drop off, flash them up at me and then say terrible things about my mother when i dont hit them fast enough. padwork involves two people, if i wanted a one sided conversation I would have brought some rohypnol. if im dropping my hand paw me with the pad. 5- be SOLID. every time i hit the pad it should be like hitting a heavy bag. this ties into meeting punches. same goes for kicks- drop INTO the kick. don't shy away from it so your spine gets bent at a messed up angle and you can't walk properly after class. padwork is a two person thing. you should RELISH padwork. you should grow a big rubbery one every time you get to hold the pads. learn to love your pads, sleep with them at night if you have to. you should feel satisfaction from being a good pad holder. it is a great way to make friends and influence people as well because everyone wants to train with you and not the other nobbies who cant hold properly.
Amen! My pet hate is people who, no matter how often I tell them, hold pads for knees parallel with the floor! I'm not driving up, I'm driving through! Then they look at you funny when! And people who insist on battering through a combo as fast as possible, swinging wildly all over the place with no technique and no guard! NO! Technique, power THEN speed! This is the order you should work for! Sorry for the rant. Good post Ikken.
good post there, it will help me next time im on the recieving end for padwork. Since im still fairly new, i'm never really sure what to do.
Good post Ikken. I've been thinking for some time that the pad-holder should show the same intensity as the person they are holding for, and not use it just as time to have a rest!
Wow. That had to be some of the worst punching and kicking I've ever seen. And what was the point of that punching drill where you're lying flat on your face and hitting the two mits behind you? There's no way you could hit the guy who actually has you in mount. What was that for, hitting his two heads on either side of your body?
Thanks Ikken! We have a poster in the TKD forum that recently had a question regarding how to hold target shields and having a prob with her partner. http://www.martialartsplanet.com/forums/showthread.php?t=51942 After she dries the tears from her eyes, I hopes she sees this
Well maybe we should let some of those guys punch and kick you and you would feel different The floor drills seems fairly obvious to me - working on punching from arkward positions. I didn't know people took things so literally. Maybe all pad work is useless - I mean I've never been attacked by a man wearing big, flat gloves....
Great post. The only thing worse than a bad pad holder is a sucky self-defense and sparring partner. I'll have to annomously slip this post on the dojo bulletin board, maybe it will sink in.
First of all, the punching he did when the guy had his back would never do him any good in any situation. I can't see any possible applications, except maybe the afformentioned punching midgets in the nuts - it would take hitting someone in the nuts for those punches to hurt anyway. Second of all, look at the way that guy's arms flail around when he does those low kics. Not only does he have no semblance of a guard, but he doesn't even seem to know where his arms are. And finally, the punching in the next shot. . . it's just. . . I don't know what to say. It's just awful.
Im with AZeitung that is definitely not the kind of pad holding Ikken had in mind when he made this thread...
holy crap, please don't pollute my threads with this sort of trash. could a mod split this off or something?
The pad drills on that clip were unbeliveably bad, obviously keeping a guard up isn't as important as I had thought..... I've never seen so much effort used with so little power actually hitting the pad. If those guys are getting paid to teach then......pah! I'd like to add that, for me personally, I want someone to jab my guard now and then between sets of strikes. Being jabbed in the face by the hard edge of a focus mitt is a good reminder that a guard should be kept up at all times! Good points Ikken.
I just wasted about 2 minutes of my life there. If you wish to discuss the video please start another thread. If you wish to critique Ikken's mini-article, please continue here.
I was beginning to think I was the only one who did this. Why is it TKDers think they can drop their guard? And they give me such scornful looks after I smack them with the kick paddle. Is it just me or is there an overall drop in the amount of smack talking in the dojo? In Aikido we have a saying, "Nage does 51% of the work." Shouldn't this concept carry over to pad work? If I'm spending a chunk of my training time holding pads then I should be trying to get the most benefit out of it as possible, not just standing there like a door nail.
