Pushing Yourself

Tonight, I was working on the heavy punching bag after the classes were over. I started by doing some punches and a few kicks and things, then I had an idea.... To see how many side-elbow strikes I could do. I thought I'd only make it to 50 or a 100. Ended up doing 525 good elbow strikes (I redid the sloppy ones, without counting them). I got into a pattern. I would push the bag forward with both hands then intercept it as it swung back, hitting it with a side elbow strike. I'd push, right elbow, push, left elbow, push, right elbow, and so on. Killer workout too... Really works the shoulders and hips. I like to test myself like that sometimes. Just keep going and going 'till you reach the edge. I did 50, and figured I could do another 50. Got to a hundred, decided to do another hundred, and on until I got a lot higher than I initially thought I could.

I share this story because it illustrates a couple of things beautifully. First, that initial expectations of what you can and can't do can be surprisingly lower than what you're really capable of. Second, that if you keep pushing yourself without even the thought of quitting, then you can go and go and go however long you need.

Sometimes, it can be good to have a little reminder of something like that (That, plus I like writing fire-up stories lol). If your body permits, your spirit can push it to do great feats. This can go with anything in life, as well. Mind over body.... Discipline.... All central to the martial artist's life.

 

A couple of months back I wanted to see just how far my limits in the weights room were. I thought I'd only get to about 9000 or 10,000. I reached 18,000, but probably could've made it to 25,000 if I'd had more time and water.

 

A couple of weeks ago I thought I'd see how much money I could extort out of old ladies. I only imagined I could get about £100 from a couple of pensioners by promising them cheap new loft insulation. As it turns out, with a little effort, you can scam thousands from the average retirement village and, if they catch on to you, you can outrun them fairly easily (even the game ones go down after one roundhouse kick - who says martial arts don't work on the street?).

Just goes to show - you can do anything if you put your mind to it! Eye of the tiger guys, eye of the tiger!!!

 

I do it all the time, like set out to do a 30 second full sprint, then say come on another 10 and another 10 and so on....(crap example but you get what I mean)

I find the battles you have with yourself sometimes much more rewarding than the battles you have with other people.

Some people though, will always do as little as they can to get by....I think it just depends on how much of a determined person you are....Beating yourself is always an immense feeling though.

 

"Kangami Biraki"

I think the best example of me pushing myself was the time just before, during and just after the "Kangami Biraki" event at our dojo by our chief instructor Frank Perry.

I trained the hour on Saturday with Ben Spillard then got up early on Sunday morning (6:30 am)and went to get to the dojo by 8 am. The "Kangami Biraki" itself was three hours of straight karate training (with only a 10 min break in between)and I was exhausted by the end of it. At one part of the event we ended up doing over 160 kicks and punches as the whole front line of black belts (16 of them)were asked to count down each time. But when the "Kangami Biraki" was over at around 11 am I wasn't finished yet.

I also particicipated during the kata class on Monday as well as the first hour on Tuesday and so ended up doing six hours of karate in four days ! Without a days break in between.

Christian

 

For me, learning and practicing individual techniques isn't much of a push. I'm pushing every day to make everything more refined and to practice perfectly. My main push comes in trying to increase the speed and contact level in sparring while maintaining the same level of refinement, while being accurate, keeping my feet under me, etc.

The same goes for jiu-jutsu. The major push comes in applying techniques to rolling - trying to apply the new things I've learned, trying new techniques and submissions, trying to see the openings that I missed the practice before.

etc.

 

I hope you had plenty of ice for that elbow.

 

LOL!!!!!


Ok, Dad!

 

Lol, my elbow turned some pretty funny colors last night. I'll be fine though.

Way to go, guys! It's good to know that others push themselves, as well.

 

truly inspirational, good stuff moosey.

and punisher, 6 hours of karate over the course of 4 days is nothing to scoff at either. must take some serious dedication and endurance to pull that off. what kind of dietary recommendations would you make to one who aspires to become as well conditioned as yourself? and more importantly, what kind of sacrifices must you make in order to devote so much time and energy to karate?

 

i find myself being pushed further in every lesson of my jujitsu, I amazed myself in my grading, and in every lesson since. I never thought I'd be as fit as I am now, and the feeling is incredible. Its not just that, i've had to push myself in terms of my confidence several times, and now I'm so proud I've nearly conquered some of my fears.
I know I haven't made any major feats, but for me, it's brilliant. I never thought i'd feel comfortable working with a male partner again, and I am. I'm even giving them a bit of a run for their money now.
Hope everyone continues to push themselves and meet their targets, for me, it is part of what MA is all about.

 

My instructor has an interesting way of having us push ourselves.

Let's say we're about to do jumping jacks. He'll say, "Let's do 40 good ones!" Then when we do them and finish, he'll keep going and say, "10 more good ones, guys!" Then we do those, and he continues adding more. After a a few more increments of 10, he'll say, "Just 10 more guys, I promise." Then after we do those, we stop. We've done that with sprints, too (with smaller numbers of course). It's actually pretty fun. We're usually laughing and grinning by the time we're done.

 

ooh, deja vu from the grading...
we get that in lessons too, we never know when it's going to end. But if we don't respond enthusiastically, the number doubles.

 

Since, from the tone of this post and the hint of sarcasm in it skrom, and also knowing a bit about you, I don't think I will bother answering your questions.Not even sure if I should take any part of your response serious at all.

Christian

 

damn you and your finely tuned skills of reasoning.

 

Great post.

We do this sort of thing regularly (not all that often, but kinda like clockwork). As well as doing some of this in the dojo, we have camps twice a year where we go off for a 3 day weekend as a group and get in some major training. Starts with a half day to get acclimated, then up at 6 am the next morning, done around midnight. Not all of it is physical, but usually more than half. Then get up and do it again the next day (until 4-5 pm)

This frequently includes a couple of classes designed to push us past our limits (and thereby increase them) like 50 minute kiba dachi classes (doing various techniques in horse stance with seniors yelling to get lower... sometimes if our legs get tired we get to do 20 pushups to give us a "break" )

At the end, you're completely physically exhausted, and pretty proud of yourself for making it through!

 

The hardest I've pushed myself was back in January in a training camp at a country club house with all the good stuff in it. Our instructor woke us up at 6:30 AM because he saw two students giggleing silently yet prousely, with water bottles, going towards a room. Well anyway the EVERYONE was instructed to come to the lobby and get clothes on. We all had to go outside and did 150 pushups and our instructor was counting. I managed to do all of them. We got inside and got our unneccessary clothing off. We all were now in trainig clothing. Then INTENCE trainig ensued, with ATLEAST another 140 pushups, all sorts of stretching. Everyone was like "OMG WTF", but I was laughing inside. During that irregular training session, which lasted for another hour until 8:00, we did all the stuff like in ordinary training, AND MORE OF THE SAME three times faster, three times more precisely, three times more INTENCLY. All that without a breakfast. The instructor was about to burst out laughing aswell, but kept a serious face on most of the time. Once the training was done with we all went washing and then came breakfast. But it was the last day of camp and the instructor did a medtitative trainig session with chi kung and/or tai chi and after that strangely I felt physicallly as if I hadn't been training at all that day. We all left camp at 12:00 - 13:00 in separate groups after lunch time, having packed all our things.

 

Interesting story. But didn't you get mentally tried by doing the same thing over and over again?

I sometimes do what you did with "frog jumps". Jumping, stretching hands against the roof/sky, and landing crouched, jumping again, etc.

 

Ahh, I do those exercises too, Decay. We call them Supermans, but they're the same thing. Really good quadricep workout. And no, I didn't get mentally tired, I just got into a rhythm, you know?