Month: February 2015

Heavy hands

Learning to use your full potential in hitting may be easier than you think. Be mindful you are hitting real people when you do and never give more than it is necessary to get the job done.

Drills to bring out the heavy hands the easy way:

  1. Stand straight and take 60 calm breaths to raise your hands overhead from your sides while keeping them loose and another 60 to let go of the tension that you used to bring them up.

(Be mindful to let the forearms move freely and rotate according to the mass shifting while the angles of the arm changes. Feel the flux of the blood in your arms as the angle changes and returns to the original. Within this comes great inner awareness.)

  1. Stand a step and a half from the wall and lean on it with your hands or fists. Raise one fist at a time by moving your body and let them rest softly back on the wall. Continue to lean your elbows on the wall and moving the same way. Continue to lean your shoulders on the wall and move them the same way and combine the three attention points to allow your smooth motion to come forth.
  2. Lie down on your back and raise both fists in the air. Move them in small circles and ellipses and let the feeling of torque and added mass from the small motions and allow yourself to move just as much as needed and no more.
  3. Stand next to a wall or a partner and place your focus on the elbow or shoulder. Start to move the fist from the focal point and make contact with the partner with the elbow or shoulder still in motion so you avoid pressing and learn to sink in where there is no resistance.
  4. Tense up your face and focus your eyes on a fixed point and then let the tension go and remember the change from tense and focused to relaxed and free.

To know fear

One of the stages of getting to know yourself is to know your own fear. Fear will control you if you turn a blind eye to it’s affects on your psyche and body so we will aim to bring our awareness to this as well.

One of the ways to learn the fear response is to learn how and when we bring our necks in. This happens as an innate response to a loud noise or unwelcome touch and is bodily explained by protecting the soft neck with the hard head and scull.

Most of the aggressive postures and movements can be traced to a fear reaction. All the hand movements are covering soft flesh with bone and bringing your chest and arms forward hides and covers your loins and abdomen where a stab will kill you sooner and delete the chances for future offspring.

On the other hand. A relaxed posture is neither closed nor open but mobility oriented as we are not stuck in the future or the past and free to roam the now moment.

Lie on your back with your arms at your sides and your legs together. Press from hip level to neck one side of the back to the ground so the lower back, ribs, shoulder blade and shoulder touch the ground together. Press the back of the neck to the ground and feel how this tension affects your thoughts. Repeat the pressing drill with the other side of the back and compare to know which of your sides is more tense at the moment.

Continue by moving your body from side to side as a worm to relax tightness and to ease instead of press the entire back to the ground. compare your neck tension levels to how it felt when you pressed it with force to the ground.

Slowly raise your legs off the ground and move you back again to better support the mass and change your arm position to relax more and more of your back to the ground.

Slowly relax your legs to the ground and use just breath and movement to ease all the parts of the back to the ground.

Now have a partner push and pull on you sitting and standing and note if your movement is more whole and less jumpy and tense than before.

Learn distance timing and placement using a wall and a tennis ball

It is vital to know where you are and vital to know where you are going.

In this series of drills we will learn to work solo and with a partner in order to bring to mind the location and direction we are heading no matter what is heading our way.

The tools: You, a partner, a tennis ball, a wall.

Partner drills:

1. stand a few paces from each other and throw the ball to each other catching it with a moving hand and never letting the ball stop.

2. stand a few paces from each other and throw the ball to each other catching it with a hand and your body (catching the ball between the body and hand and moving all at the same time) and never letting the ball stop.

3. Walk at a fixed distance from each other and throw the ball to each other catching it with a moving hand and never letting the ball stop.

4. Walk freely from each other and throw the ball to each other catching it with a moving hand and never letting the ball stop.

5. Have one run around the other and throw the ball to each other catching it with a moving hand and never letting the ball stop.

6. Have on stand facing a wall and his partner behind him and pass the ball in the same manner using the wall to bounce the ball through.

7. Have one partner close his eyes and the other throws him the ball (don’t use a rock this time:) ) so he can work toward continuous motion with the ball once contact is made.

8. place one on his fists and feet and have the partner walk around him and throw him the ball. You catch the ball and return it without letting it stop moving.

9. Place the ball on the ground and use your feet alone to pass the ball from one another without kicking it.

Solo drills:

1. Move from standing to laying down and back continuously as you throw the ball up and catch it without letting the ball to stop.

2. Stand facing the wall and bounce the ball off the wall with moving the body off the path of the coming ball and never letting the ball or you stop moving.

3. Stand facing away from the wall and bounce the ball off the wall moving the body off the path of the coming ball and never letting the ball or you stop moving.

4. Stand with your side to the wall and bounce the ball of the wall with catching the ball between your limbs and your body without letting the ball or yourself stop moving.

5. Stand with no expensive glass around you and bounce the ball using just your body and legs.