Focus on your goal. But not too hard.

The WBC World Middleweight championship was by no means a given result but Taylor, the American, was talking it up big: he wanted to put Froch "to sleep". And so it was that Froch in the last round was staring at a 106-102 deficit and although he'd been knocked down (for the first time in his career) but not put to sleep it was all over bar the shouting.

But it wasn't. Froch said later in an interview (radio 2, Chris Evans, 29-4-09) that as long as there was one round left he was in the fight. He knew he had to do something special: knock Taylor out or stop him dead a couple of times, and his trainer, rather than putting pressure on him and telling him to knock the guy out, said he needed a special round...

Froch rocked the challenger but maintained that he didn't want to rush straight back in instead he literally boxed clever and finally clobbered Taylor with a "booming right" leaving him on jelly legs. The fight was stopped with seconds to go. Good job too looking at Taylor's eyes rolling in his head. Technical Knock Out to Froch.

Amazing example of keeping one's cool and not grasping at victory. Often that final grasping can be the undoing. I've been in fights when I've been winning (just) and lost it all by flailing at it, not seeing the clarity of the situation. Equally if you're behind, like Froch was, it's good to see the opportunity of a last round, a last few minutes to box clever and still be able to do the job. As Froch proved it's not over till the fat lady sings, bows and heads off for the changing room to tuck into the pies.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/boxing/8020426.stm

Hard breathing.

It was a rough, hard session tonight and I'm partly to blame. I took the warm-ups and my obsession with burpees seems to have set the tone for the whole evening! Master Campbell took us through a rigorous examination of jumping techniques. This meant lots of repetitions with ahp chagi, ee dan ahp chagi, deah ahp chagi, dwi dollyo chagi. That's one set! I found it hard work and I was breathing hard so I concentrated on correct breath, deep breath and breathing throughout the technique. It's very tempting to suck in breath for jump kicks but this is unwise. Especially if you have a gruelling 25 minutes of consecutive jumping ahead. I tried to breathe as evenly as possible throughout and when I was really paggered (tired!) I controlled my breath making sure I got plenty of air in. I find there's no point in hiding one's tiredness by toughing it out and breathing in a shallow manner to look macho. This robs you of the oxygen for the next set of reps and makes you head for the floor, face first.

Made a cracking dollyo chagi, ee dan dwi chagi combination on 'Bob'. 

I love burpees

Yup. I love 'em. And Phil (thanks PMY) knows it which is why he sent me this link:-

http://100burpees.blogspot.com/

This is a fun site documenting some people's obsession/commitment to doing one burpee on day one, two burpees on day two and so on till achieving one hundred!

I enjoy doing a slow burpee with a press up half way through and instead of leaping into the air I bring my hands above my head and do some dynamic tension low blocks on the way down. If I do venture into the jumping style I can't do more than 15 correctly.

Maybe it's time for a 100 day burpee challenge...anyone?

An introduction to Japanese armour and swords

I spent the day in town looking for martial arts books and came away with an armful! I'll post a review when I've finished them but as a quick Sunday night post here are the references for two slim publications I picked up from the Royal Armouries.  At about 36 pages each they're not too detailed but they are really great introductions (as their names imply) and I found them incredibly well laid out and easy to digest. There's a great description and graphic of how the swords are made.

An introduction to Japanese swords

An introduction to Japanese armour

Both by Ian Bottomley available from the Royal Armouries website.

Sunny run and jumping kicks

I went for the lake run on Friday and as I was jogging round I tried spicing it up with some knee raises to prepare for a jumping front kick (ee dan ahp chagi). Little did I know that these exercises have a name! I was mooching around on YouTube and found this, it's pretty much what I was doing (although not as sharp) and called the Quick Step Drill :

And today I was playing with ee dan ahp chagi in the garden and was looking at distance covered. The distance I covered in a non-forced jump front kick was 2metres 25 (2 metres 50 with a walking prelude-this is more aggressive but not running). That's the distance covered over the ground (which I was going for), not in height. I was also trying to see whether getting the knee higher would make the kick higher, but my experiments seem inconclusive: I was kicking ~1metre 80 for both the normal knee raise prelude and the high knee prelude. Oh well. I think more importantly is the speed of this first action (the step up with the non-kicking leg).

Plus there has to be a fluid motion right through from the first step through the leg change and into the kick. It's ok to break it down for beginners but fairly soon they should practice the entire movement to avoid a: knee raise-pause-lurch upwards-kick off back leg. The momentum really helps. Sensei DD made a good point in that the first 'feint' should be convincing. It's pointless to make a cursory flash with the first foot raise. Maybe this is the important reason for raising that knee high in the first place. Who wants to kick higher than 1metre 80 anyway!?

Another interesting running drill to try from Jabari Pride, which may help out with kicking:

Stay on target!

Thought of this while doing some work: I was flitting around all over the place. Needed to stay on target...

Gold Two: [the Y-wings are running the gauntlet toward the Death Star reactor-port] The guns - they've stopped! 

Gold Five: [realizes why] Stabilize your rear deflectors... Watch for enemy fighters. 

Gold Leader: They're coming in! Three marks at 2-10! 

[Gold Two is slain by Darth Vader and his wingmen; Gold Leader starts to panic] 

Gold Leader: It's no good, I can't manouever! 

Gold Five: Stay on target. 

Gold Leader: *We're too close!* 

Gold Five: Stay on target! 

Gold Leader: [shouts] Loosen up! 

[he too is picked off by Vader and Company; Gold Five tries to escape but is fatally winged] 

Gold Five: Gold Five to Red leader, lost Tiree, lost Dutch. 

Red Leader: I copy, Gold Leader.

Kiai in the zone

Check out this crazy kendoka who seems to be in the zone emitting some strange kiais and delivering one-handed cuts. I don't know how common one-handed cuts are in Kendo-certainly his opponent doesn't seem that bothered about it. Great example of aggressive focus though. Reminds me of a competition I had where, before the bout, I could see my opponent felt upbeat and dismissive of me. Actually though I was all over him. My kihaps were clear, strong and I dominated the match. Afterwards he was gracious enough to congratulate me and made particular note of the kihap usage. 

If anyone knows more about one-handed kendo strikes, please comment!