Monday night kicked off in great style with a cracking CrossFit class. Dead Lifts and Push Press were looking great and everyone worked out hard. Although our CrossFit class is fairly new there's clear visible improvement in peoples lifting form. The CrossFit template ensures that you really cant 'cheat' your way through the workout. Well done to everyone. I'm really impressed with how everyones improved since the first week and if you haven't had a chance then get over and check out the website http://www.crgcrossfit.com/
Kickboxing was a good ol' bag smashing, shoulder burning pile of fun. We jumped into some heavy bag work to kick things off, nice n simple straight punches on the bag with intermittent rests. Marcus made a comment on how after only a minute on the heavy bag everyone seemed to be blowing out their hoop and yet usually they can go through a 3 minute round on the focus mitts with no problem at all - why is that? On the focus mitts are you really pushing yourself, or are you sitting on idle a little bit and conserving some energy? You cant outrun the heavy bag folk's! FACT! The heavy bag works for your power development and for your cardio capacity, but when you have a partner holding pads and moving about and giving you targets, that works power, timing, rhythm, footwork, balance, reaction time AND cardio. If you wanna get fitter, better, faster, stronger then there's no easy way to do it. It's plain old hard work, and if you can only make one or two nights a week then you need to make sure you're getting what you need from training. Don't be afraid to ask your partner to amp it up a little.
Krav was a solid strike development session. From the ground up the guys worked through sparring sets adding in different strikes from their tool box on each round. The guys all looked pretty sharp but the thing I was really pleased with seeing was the forward pressure from everyone. A few weeks back I had a talk with them about how when they hit pads, they smash through them and push the pad holder back, but as we were doing more sparring over the weeks that the pressure has dropped in favour for a more "rule" friendly type of sparring. One of Krav's key principles is forward pressure - constant forward pressure. Forward pressure not only makes sure you're putting a powerful physical approach into the situation but it also helps switch that predator/prey mind set. Your fight or flight instinct is worked, so this principle really works vital parts of your overall defensive skill set and I'm really pleased that it sank in. From about the 2nd round in, the forward pressure was visible instead of this tit for tat "sport" fighting that the guys were doing in the previous weeks. Even at 60% the guys were keeping their opponent on the back foot and not giving them a chance to counter. Excellent work.
Tactical Edge worked through our cover and slash drill then pulled it apart to gain some functional empty hand tactics. From there we moved onto defence against a baton striking on our angle one line. Remember, although we were using a rattan stick all the techniques are conceptual and can be used against almost any attack coming on that line. Our first set was to engage the target and disarm to gain a safe escape. Then we moved onto a 'disarm and retaining the weapon' so we could break down our attacker by using the stick to break his hand/knee. Finally we looked at using our series of cross locks, first on our opponents hand and then going to a failure drill and moving the cross lock to their face for more pain compliance and moving up our "force" ladder.
Michael
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