Another monthly round-up!
grumble grumble one of these days i will actually become true to my word and update more than once every four weeks. Okay let's go:
A couple of Sundays ago, I drove out to Poole to fight a man I'd never heard of. In the interests of disclosure, I suppose I ought to elaborate on that, thus revealing to you that my life is not in fact as exciting as I make it sound. A chap that people in my club know was doing a sponsored spar for charity - fifty rounds of kickboxing, each two minutes long, with a minute rest in between. Just think about that for a moment. Even one round seems like an eternity when you're moving and gassing out and throwing out hits and trying to survive your opponent's barrage. Of course, noone was trying to wear him out since it was an exhibition event, but even so it's a Herculean feat of fitness. And he did it. I went in for two rounds, including one of the last, and I'm pretty sure the guy could have knocked my head off with both arms tied behind his back even after another fifty.
I've started fencing on Friday nights - there's a club at the sports centre in Bournemouth who starts their session right after my kickboxing/stickfighting finishes, so I thought, since I'm there already, why not add something else to my repertoire? I'd only be sitting in the bar otherwise.
I find fencing a little bit counter-intuitive - the stance is more sideways and restrictive-feeling (compared to MMA where you stand more square on to avoid takedowns), you can't move side to side, only forwards and backwards (as opposed to my other arts where we spend a lot of time on using triangular footwork to set up angles of attack). Hopefully there won't be too much interference. I'm hoping fencing will increase my reaction speed, hand-eye coordination and ability to close the distance.
A couple of amusing things happened on Friday which gave the impression that I already have lightning reflexes, and I'm certainly not going to disabuse people of that notion! The first was when I somehow managed to pull a kid's sword out of his hand with the tip of my own weapon, which prompted an amazed-sounding "WOW, you ARE fast!". The second involved a drill, where the coach dropped a glove which you then had to try to pin to the wall with your sword. The first couple of people missed completely. Now, I knew that the trick to this is not to watch for the movement of the glove, but rather to concentrate on the opening of the hand, thus buying you an extra fraction of a second. However, even this little advantage was not enough to explain how I managed to pin the glove to the wall by the tip of the little finger! Hmm, perhaps I need to start buying flowers for Lady Luck?
So, that brings my training schedule up to an average of twelve hours a week:
Mon: 1.25 hrs MMA kickboxing/standup grappling/takedowns, 1.25 hrs groundfighting, 1 hr kickboxing sparring
Wed: 1.25 hrs MMA kickboxing/standup grappling/takedowns, 1.25 hrs groundfighting, 1 hr kali (stick/knife)
Fri: 1 hr kickboxing (padwork), 1 hr kali, 2 hrs fencing
Weekend: an hour or so solo work, occasional seminars and training with friends, etc
Speaking of seminars, I have quite a few coming up in the next month or so - an entire day of Bartitsu, a three-session event on the diverse fields of Medieval Italian dagger and grappling, bare-knuckle boxing and WWII combatives, plus a couple of Dog Brothers Martial Arts get-togethers in London.
I just got this year's event calendar for the New Forest and there's all sorts of stuff going on, walks and wildlife hunts and even a venison preparation workshop! Soon the days will get longer, there will (hopefully) be more sunshine and I'll be outdoors a lot more. I was driving back through the Forest the other night and it was so foggy I could barely see five metres in front of the car even with full beams. Ed Alleyne-Johnson's Oxford Suite makes for excellent mood music in the misty midnight forest!
I'm still progressing with both Python and FPGA programming, I think it might be time to revisit the idea of the old sentry gun project.
So, in summary I have been/will be Doing/Thinking About Many Things. I must say that the more I do, the more I realise that I really cannot understand people who spend all of their time parked in front of the TV. I just can't relate to that mentality.
The human brain is the most powerful computational device in the known universe. Its capacity is almost boundless. And here's the kicker, right. You get one, gratis, just for showing up. No strings attached. You don't have to be first past the post, you don't have to defeat all comers - the hard work of winning the evolutionary arms race has already been done for you. All you have to do is be.
So why would you not use it every which way you can?
A couple of Sundays ago, I drove out to Poole to fight a man I'd never heard of. In the interests of disclosure, I suppose I ought to elaborate on that, thus revealing to you that my life is not in fact as exciting as I make it sound. A chap that people in my club know was doing a sponsored spar for charity - fifty rounds of kickboxing, each two minutes long, with a minute rest in between. Just think about that for a moment. Even one round seems like an eternity when you're moving and gassing out and throwing out hits and trying to survive your opponent's barrage. Of course, noone was trying to wear him out since it was an exhibition event, but even so it's a Herculean feat of fitness. And he did it. I went in for two rounds, including one of the last, and I'm pretty sure the guy could have knocked my head off with both arms tied behind his back even after another fifty.
I've started fencing on Friday nights - there's a club at the sports centre in Bournemouth who starts their session right after my kickboxing/stickfighting finishes, so I thought, since I'm there already, why not add something else to my repertoire? I'd only be sitting in the bar otherwise.
I find fencing a little bit counter-intuitive - the stance is more sideways and restrictive-feeling (compared to MMA where you stand more square on to avoid takedowns), you can't move side to side, only forwards and backwards (as opposed to my other arts where we spend a lot of time on using triangular footwork to set up angles of attack). Hopefully there won't be too much interference. I'm hoping fencing will increase my reaction speed, hand-eye coordination and ability to close the distance.
A couple of amusing things happened on Friday which gave the impression that I already have lightning reflexes, and I'm certainly not going to disabuse people of that notion! The first was when I somehow managed to pull a kid's sword out of his hand with the tip of my own weapon, which prompted an amazed-sounding "WOW, you ARE fast!". The second involved a drill, where the coach dropped a glove which you then had to try to pin to the wall with your sword. The first couple of people missed completely. Now, I knew that the trick to this is not to watch for the movement of the glove, but rather to concentrate on the opening of the hand, thus buying you an extra fraction of a second. However, even this little advantage was not enough to explain how I managed to pin the glove to the wall by the tip of the little finger! Hmm, perhaps I need to start buying flowers for Lady Luck?
So, that brings my training schedule up to an average of twelve hours a week:
Mon: 1.25 hrs MMA kickboxing/standup grappling/takedowns, 1.25 hrs groundfighting, 1 hr kickboxing sparring
Wed: 1.25 hrs MMA kickboxing/standup grappling/takedowns, 1.25 hrs groundfighting, 1 hr kali (stick/knife)
Fri: 1 hr kickboxing (padwork), 1 hr kali, 2 hrs fencing
Weekend: an hour or so solo work, occasional seminars and training with friends, etc
Speaking of seminars, I have quite a few coming up in the next month or so - an entire day of Bartitsu, a three-session event on the diverse fields of Medieval Italian dagger and grappling, bare-knuckle boxing and WWII combatives, plus a couple of Dog Brothers Martial Arts get-togethers in London.
I just got this year's event calendar for the New Forest and there's all sorts of stuff going on, walks and wildlife hunts and even a venison preparation workshop! Soon the days will get longer, there will (hopefully) be more sunshine and I'll be outdoors a lot more. I was driving back through the Forest the other night and it was so foggy I could barely see five metres in front of the car even with full beams. Ed Alleyne-Johnson's Oxford Suite makes for excellent mood music in the misty midnight forest!
I'm still progressing with both Python and FPGA programming, I think it might be time to revisit the idea of the old sentry gun project.
So, in summary I have been/will be Doing/Thinking About Many Things. I must say that the more I do, the more I realise that I really cannot understand people who spend all of their time parked in front of the TV. I just can't relate to that mentality.
The human brain is the most powerful computational device in the known universe. Its capacity is almost boundless. And here's the kicker, right. You get one, gratis, just for showing up. No strings attached. You don't have to be first past the post, you don't have to defeat all comers - the hard work of winning the evolutionary arms race has already been done for you. All you have to do is be.
So why would you not use it every which way you can?