What sort of things/practices do you guys bring to your practice to become better at your art? It can be to any aspect of your art, your forms, your drills, your sparring. Currently, I'm trying to integrate my HIIT with my line drills. I think there may be something like this in CLF, but I just haven't heard of it. I also picked up something from the guys at the gym that do interval training, where they'll do lower body workouts and then upper body workouts in order to minimize recovery and rest time during a workout session. So the martial art analogue to that is to do stance training and then do the knuckle/fingertip/back of hand (I especially hate these) pushups. Don't know if it's very effective yet, we'll see how it goes.
My strength coach has issues about doing skill stuff for HIIT intervals. I haven't had the full talk with him, but I don't think he's going to want me to mix up intervals and skill work. What I'm doing is transitioning from lots of fitness work for half fitness work and half skill work. I've done full fitness work and it's really got me to where I need to be in terms of fitness, so I'm switching to more challenging skill work sessions. So that's how I've used intervals to jump up my level of training. I do 2 sets of tabata intervals with a 2 minute break at this point. Your recovery time for stance training will be pretty small eventually. I would also recommend adding in some pullups. Half of your punching speed is going to be dependent on your pull strength, which is easily built doing pullups. I've been doing 2 conditioning sessions and 2 weightlifting sessions for quite some time. I'm about to switch to 1 skill session + leg left, 1 skill session, 1 conditioning session and 1 weightlifting session per week. For my skill work I've just been doing sick rounds on the bag, like 10-15 3 minute rounds with 30 second breaks. In class I try to focus on the same thing and study it in depth for a couple of weeks before moving on to the next thing - that way I can improve pieces of my game to my satisfaction. I've been working my subs from the top, my headwork, and working my power on the bag.
Training, for me, is my main activity, and I spend most evenings training. I vary and rotate what I'm working on over periods of three or four weeks, but in one session I'll usually do a variety of stuff. I'm doing a lot of fitness and strength training at the moment, but I'm at the gym a long time, so I'm doing a lot of technical work as well. I find that if I think about my training, new ideas and areas for training present themselves naturally at the right time. If I practice one kind of footwork with kicks, say, after a couple of weeks of that I'll think "Well what if I move backwards doing this?" then I'll start training that. At the moment I'm thinking about advanced foot work movement, and making kicks flow more easily with it - trimming down the hesitation factors that come with new, unusual movement. Fitness wise, I'm akways training pretty hard anyway, but I generaly separate specific fitness from technical improvement - only bringing the two together in sessions specifically targeted at that. For specific fitness, I do a lot of sprints combined with longer runs.
Interesting thread. I have been living out of hotel rooms for the last 5 weeks and was very busy with work for about a month before that, so I am currently mostly just wasting away and eating poorly, but before then I was fairly consistently using this routine for my solo training. 2 days a week Bill Starr 5x5 weight routine picking from squats, deadlifts, bent rows and military press and occasionally do some chins when I am not lazy. 4-5 days a week bag work two different bags. I sandbag and one heavy bag. I use them for different purposes. Always do chi kung as well if I use the sand bag. Working the bags I am mostly also practicing my footwork/stancework although spend a bit of time drilling techniques aswell. I practice a little bit of pattern as well on some days depending on what I am working on. Could be every day I train or could be none just really depends on what I feel I am getting most out of. When I practice pattern I also do a little bit of chi kung. I also often drill certain moves or footwork with out the bag. Actually I tend to train pattern like a drill as well. I tend to mostly pick out sections with techniques and footwork I like to use and work on and drill them. 2-3 days off. My training is done at night time. That is pretty much it for the physical training anyway. Enough to make steady improvement, but certainly not what I would call full on training.
I think I see why Yohan's coach is against HIIT with techniques. At the very end of that kind of interval training, technique tends to just go out the window. And when you're training badly done techniques, it tends to become ingrained. I'll have to re-think this for a bit. Also thinking about FQ's notion that ideas and training tend to present themselves at the right time, as I have a tendency to 'bolt on' things in a bit of a haphazard manner. Lots of stuff to think about while training.
