Tag: Martial Arts

Saturday Krav and Striking…Reaper, Inosanto 18 count, Southpaws are SOL

After roughly 4 hours of martial arts training, I am pooped. Today was fantastic, and I got to learn a new 18 count routine. Writing down what a Soutpaw has to do to change the counts to work for them is mind bending and I don’t have the capacity for it tonight. =)

Krav – Reaper Sweeps

Today we made it to Krav Maga on time, and we got to work on Reaper Sweeps. I have had some late nights at work so I have not been able to make it to the Krav classes. The reaper sweep is a dump where we gain an entry after an attack and do a modified T position. We cinch in your arms off balance the opponent and leaver pull your leg up while levering forward. We got to do outside reaper sweeps, and inside reaper sweeps.

My back was not happy with me this morning so I let my instructor know and we modified the dumps for me, where my training partners, performed the moves, and I would get on the ground although not so gracefully. We learned how to follow up with more hits to the head and posting off of their wrists to jump up and get out of harms way. I try not to let my physical impairments get in my way of training, and try to work around it. Just be honest with your instructors and I find they are understanding. If they are not, then perhaps they are not the instructors for you.

Between class we worked on Muay Thai training to keep warm and to hopefully get better. Here are some of the things we worked on.

Here I am practicing my Muay Thai double kick. I start by placing a leg kick so as not to hurt my partner/pad holder, and then throw in the torso round house kick. We are working on timing and changing levels. This is because you are not always going to kick just the leg or just the torso in a fight.

Below I am practicing just my Muay Thai round house kicks. These hurt on the right side cause I have three bruises on my shin. Those bruises are from shielding a kick and a person ending up kneeing my shin instead of getting a kick in. These are normal bumps and scrapes that happen Muay Thai but it does not mean it does not hurt. =) Although I can say I have gotten more used to them.

Striking – Inosanto 18 count

Today we got Kru Krysta back! I was excited to see her, and she wanted us to work on the Inosanto 18 count.

For the whole class we broke the 18 count into digestible chunks, then we strung them together so that we could do all 18 count at once. I just realized I had not described what a # count means. An 18 count means 18 individual strikes. Below are the individual strikes in the Inosanto 18 count.

Inosanto 18 count: (note: Sorry you southpaw fighters are SOL right now. Cause that stuff is confusing. If you really want to know the southpaw Inosanto 18 let me know. I will ask my husband to translate to southpaw for me.)

  1. Scoop the incoming teep
  2. Right leg kick
  3. Left torso round house kick
  4. Cross
  5. Hook
  6. Right torso round house kick
  7. Cut Kick as opponent Right kick comes in and land a Left leg kick
  8. Right leg kick
  9. Left torso round house kick
  10. Cross
  11. Hook
  12. Right torso round house kick
  13. Scoop incoming cross
  14. Cross
  15. Hook
  16. Right Elbow
  17. Right pushing knee
  18. Right torso round house kick.

This 18 count was a lot of fun. I could be wrong but it feels like I picked this combination up quickly. When we first started almost a year ago I had trouble remembering more than 4 strikes in the Thai 15 count or the Boxing 20 count. So when I would come home to try to write it down so I could practice it I was stuck. However, today we learn a 18 count and I can mentally move through each strike/counter and see what we did. Now I think there are a few things going for me on this. One being I understand the moves much more clearly now. I would say that this is marked improvement. So yay!

Thank you for reading and I hope you have a great weekend. Let me know if you have any questions and I will try to answer them.

Thursday Muay Thai and Kali… Encouraging the body, Puta/Basset from Pummel

It has been an interesting week to say the least. Sick kid, turned to emergency allergic reaction to meds kid, all while I am trying to keep the household in order, and work life going. I had my own yearly check up. Which I am happy to say I am healthy, but had some miscommunication so I was a little concerned.

Muay Thai- Encouraging the body

In Muay Thai today, we had a blast. I was sweating up a storm. I don’t know if you can see how soaked I am in this picture. Anyway, we worked on the 8 version of 4 count today again. Video of the full 8 are on this weeks previous Tuesday Muay Thai and Kali post. We then worked on clench work with a take down, where you off balance a person so they fall down. This is where our Kru Kristen, also shows us how to “Encourage the body”, where if they are not going down you kick the knee. sweep the leg, kick the ankle. In training we do not do that, but we place our foot in the correct position. If we did it in training, we would be hurting our partners and that would be bad.

We did ladders as well, where you start at one kick on each side, up to 5 kicks on each side. Those are brutal and fun at the same time. I will add these to our Wednesday training sessions.

Kali – Puta Kapala and Basset Dal from Pummel

So today in Kali, we worked more on Silat and take downs from the Pummel entry. We worked on “swimming” with our partner where we move back and forth trying to get underhooks in. We are working on feeling our partners energy. By energy I mean, when we can feel where our partner is going to based on the movement of center of gravity. When I can feel it change, I can get a better handle on when it will be advantageous for me to move them and get them off balance. Then I can put their bodies where I want them to, and can do the most damage.

This was fun, because we have now done Puta Kapala, and Basset Dal, from the shield block entry, from the striking entry, and now from pummel entry. I am starting to see where all of this connects and it is awesome. When I make that mental connection it clicks more for me.

Anyway thank you all for reading. I am amazed I have readers from all over the world, and I want to say hallo/hello to you all. Have a great night, I need to be better about getting to bed on time.

Thursday Muay Thai and Kali…Hop Kicks, Puta Kapala from Jab Cross entry

I just got done with 2 hours of Muay Thai and Kali, and boy was it nice to get to do my training. Doing something that is normal in my life. Because this morning did not start off normal. I had one of those cringe moments that every parent has, when the dreaded pink eye mentioned.

Waking up to find that your son has pink eye, will throw off your day. So today my son woke up and told us that his eye was crusty. I had been keeping an eye on him… haha, no pun intended. I had been keeping an eye on him, because he was around another kid who’s eye was red and crusty on Monday of this week. I got him into the pediatrician at 8 am, and we promptly found out that he has pink eye. He has medicine, and as of tomorrow will not be contagious any more.

On top of doc appointment, getting the medicine from the pharmacist, and dealing with every day family stuff. I also bleach bombed my house. I bleached and disinfected every surface of my house that I could think of that would have been touched. Everyone’s sheets and blankets, and his winter coat as well. So I am and was tired getting to the gym, but ready and raring to go. I needed this.

Muay Thai : Hop Kicks

Let me just hop… (hahah that was an accidental pun as well)… into the Muay Thai. Today both Kru were away at an Inosanto instructor camp. So we had a guest Thai teacher. He had us warming up with stations, jump rope, teep to kick on bags, shadowboxing, and then mirror movement to teep.

We worked on partial Thai 4 counts, where we teep with lead leg, right kick, then cross. The reason this was emphasized is that it is a different rhythm to what we normally do. You see in Thai a lot of the time if you do a right kick you return with a hook or cross, because you will have set up your body to do the opposite hand hit. So when you kick with the right leg then hit with the cross as an orthodox fighter, your opponent will not expect it.

The other partial Thai 4 count we did, is the front teep, left kick, to cross. What was emphasized on this one was the teep to cut step quick left kick. Because the habit or what your body wants to do is to teep and then put your foot down right in front of you. However, doing this drill we try to work on our balance bringing the foot back to do a quick cut step and left kick. It changes the rhythm again and my take your opponent of guard.

After all that we worked on Hop Kicks. Man trying to make the lead leg do a hop kick my brain is telling my body to do this thing, but either my leg is stupid or there is a miss fire/miss communication between my brain and my leg. That is what it feels like. We have to bring our knee forward and up, with momentum going forward place the foot down then do the kick. Yeah… I am going to have to work on those on my own, in front of the mirror. I have to get my brain and my body to synchronize.

Kali: Puta Kapala from the Jab Cross Entry

In Kali we had another guest teacher, because again both our Kru are at an Inosanto Instructor camp. He had us doing Silat again. We worked on the Puta Kapala again, but this time from the Jab Cross entry.

There were 4 entries we got to 3 of them that we were able to rep out.

  1. Outside Deflect from the Jab Cross to Puta Kapala
  2. Slip the Jab Cross to Puta Kapala
  3. Inside Deflect from the Jab Cross to Puta Kapala
  4. Reverse slip/Scissor/Gunting from the Jab Cross to Puta Kapala

We did 1 through 3. It was all clicking and I was not have a brain melty moment.

What you are seeing here is the instructor showing the first two, number 1 and number 2. I thought you might like to see some one who knows what they are doing instead of me. =)

Here I am doing the outside deflect entry of the Puta Kapala.

Here I am doing the slip entry of the Puta Kapala.

I did not get video of the 3 rd one. This one we deflect the cross with the right hand and mouse the bicep, followed with control of the other arm, eye sweep, throat punch, elbow, knee, to the Puta Kapala.

This was a fun class, and things were clicking. The Puta Kapala we were doing Tuesday and last week we were doing from the shield of kick. So this is the Puta Kapala with different entry. Either way you get your opponent on the floor, and then you can deal with them as you need to. Goose necking the wrist or submitting them, or hitting them and running away.

I got home was a little hungry so I made a snack of yogurt, fresh fruit, and a small bit of granola. It is important to refuel your body. Especially when it is telling you that it is hungry. Just make it something that your body can put to good use.

Thanks for reading again. I hope you have a great rest of your week.

Saturday Striking…Pak Sao Da, Violent Rainbows, and a kick for good measure

I missed Krav today because I got home from work at 1130 pm. I was exhausted and really did not want to wake up. I decided sleep was more important. I only did 1.5 hour Striking workout today. We focused on JKD, or Jeet Kune Do.

Today we worked on dealing with a jab, and returning a strike. For instance we worked on what to do when some one was throwing out noise, or just crappy jabs that were not committed. We need to watch the body movement for when they commit to a jab and put their body into it. One way is the Violent Rainbow. Where when they jab you perry, grab the glove pull them in, and elbow them. I then like to grab a hold of the person and then knee them or kick them for good measure.

We worked on slipping the jab, and then hitting them with a gut shot. Coming up with a uppercut, hook, cross, and then a nao tek. Or what is referred to as a nut shot.

The hardest part is watching the other persons body, and realizing when they are actually going to commit to a shot. You have to do this analysis all while you are parrying incoming hits, and trying to avoid getting hit in the face, or kicked for that matter.

It seems to me that a lot of people do not realize how much brain power goes into these arts/sports. When you see a person get into the ring to fight it just looks like two people going at it. You don’t see what they are actually doing internally. You have to:

  1. protect yourself,
  2. you have to block hits
  3. you have to return hits
  4. you have to look for openings
  5. you have to also look for committed shots so you can use their momentum against them
  6. you have to learn to read people
  7. you have to look for minute shifts in their stance

These are are hours taken to learn, and so many more hours spent training your body to have a reflexive response. This allows for lightening fast reactions.

I am not at that level yet. I have to actively remember to protect myself/block, I have to consciously look for openings, and I am still studying people. I have however, seen times where I block as a reflex before I knew what I was doing. I have also returned shots/kicks, that surprised my training partner, that I did, because I have been training to get those in, when I get the opportunity to. I assume its my training starting to seep through.

One of these days I hope to have some skill. Alas for now I will just keep training. I had a great day, and it was a fun class.

I hope you all have a great rest of your day. As always thanks for reading.

Thursday Muay Thai and Kali…Conditioning Kicks, 7 Weapon Rotations

I had one of those bad days… you know the ones that are epic in their badness? I am not going to go into great detail here, but suffice to say that Company A that I purchased a good/service from, made 3 accounting errors in two days. We caught one yesterday and thought we dealt with it. We were understanding and were fine with their reversal and their apology. We wake up the next morning
to them having pushed through another duplicate payment. They tripled charged us for the same good/service. We don’t know why they did. Our credit union has a fax from Company A saying sorry we made a mistake, from yesterday. So we had to deal with that, and in the mean time even though they made a mistake we have to wait till those charges are reversed. It was not an insubstantial sum of money either. If it was I would have taken it in stride.

I digress though. It was hard to get into the head space to workout. It would not have been as much of a problem, but I had other things go wrong today. I came, I have shown up and I worked through the problems during the day and I have worked through my workout. 2 hours of Muay Thai and Kali.

Muay Thai – Conditioning Kicks

We worked on more Thai 4 counts. I worked a fantastic sweat and it was well needed. I did not realize I needed to just kick the crap out of pads today, and it was very cathartic. We then did conditioning kicks. We were supposed to do testing today, but due to the fact that one Kru was out of town, and the other got a horrible cold they postponed the testing till Tuesday. Hopefully we will do it then. I got to work with a friend that I had not seen for a while. She was impressed with the quality of my kicks. She was around when I had my horrible back injury. So she is finally getting to feel my true power in my kicks.

I need to remember to breath. I am getting gassed cause I am not breathing. That is why we make sounds, or make a chhhh sound. Where you put your teeth together and pressing your tongue to your teeth exhale.

I got to use my new gloves, and I will do a full review of them in a later post after I have had about two weeks to break them in and get a feel for them. But here is what they look like. Are they not pretty? But after my first use of them for this class. I love them.

Kali – 7 Weapon Rotation

Kali was interesting today. We had a guest instructor today, cause our Kru was out of town. He had us doing a number of things one of them is in the video below. Where we start with a cob cob, and pie pie, then high low high, and low high low.

The most interesting and hard part was when we did the full box drill but had to switch between 7 combinations of weapons and open hand. For instance we had to do the full box drill up to 20 moves:

  1. Open hand one stick
  2. 2 sticks
  3. 1 stick and one knife
  4. 2 knife
  5. Staff
  6. Double handed sword
  7. Stick/sword and shield

This was interesting, hard, and wonderful at the same time. I realize what he was going for. He wanted to get comfortable with using all of it and transitioning between the different weapons. We have done the full box drill 100 times before but we would focus on say double stick then double knife. This gave us perspective about distance management and also forced us to think through our moves, when you had a completely different weapon then the last time we drilled this.

It is 11:38 pm here, and I have to be up in the morning at 5 so I am going to stop here. I am tired, and had a rough day. But I am glad I got into the gym. I am glad I pushed through even though I just wanted to hide my head under a pillow and ignore the world.

If you have read this far, you deserve a reward. Lol…Get yourself a nice fru fru coffee, you know one of those $4 dollar ones that have some special sprinkling of spices on it. Yeah one of those, you have my permission. =)

As always let me know if you have any questions, or just want to say hi.

Saturday Striking… Thai 4 count and South Paw stance

1.5 hours of Striking class. I have had a really busy week and I really needed the sleep. I worked till late last night and was up till 12 am. So I slept in and missed Krav today. I am glad I did. My body needed the sleep.

Today in Striking class we worked on the Thai 4 count. However, to mix it up our instructor Kru Krysta Scharlach made us do it with right lead leg. Meaning in the South Paw stance. Just like in Kali, when you have to do something on the side of your body that you don’t normally work with it melts the brain. For instance if you are right handed and you train and make yourself write with the left hand. You have to stop, slow down, and consciously force yourself to make the moves. It is weird to try to force your self and watch your partner go through the same problem. In my case it is my brain telling me to throw my hook with my right hand instead of my left hand. Doing this you will notice several things, or at least I have noticed these things for me:

  1. Your punch, in this case the hook feels less powerful, and it is because you are not rotating correctly. Your body is used to throwing the hook with the left hand and you know how to throw your body into the hook.
  2. Your brain will say to throw a hook, and you will automatically with muscle memory try to throw it with the left hand. The problem with that is the way your body is positioned you will not have the power or the torque with witch to throw it properly so it will feel off.
  3. When you start to throw the hook with your left hand, and realize you are doing it, you stop, so you see yourself and your partner make a jerking motion stopping yourself from throwing it. As your brain says “no no no use your right hand. ”
  4. Because of the jerking motion you end up doing you lose some of the flow you have.
  5. When you go back to your original stance, in my case Orthodox or left lead leg. It takes a minute for your body and brain to sink back up, but then it feels right and you can throw in your hook in a more accurate way. It makes you hyper aware of your body and its movements.

It was a great class and I had fun. We all went out as a group to get tacos at a local taco bar, and it was great fun. The waitress had to bring many carafes of water cause we were all sucking down the water after our workout. We tipped her well for being so understanding, and putting up with 12 of us thirsty people.

Keep being awesome and get out there. Move your body, and do the things you love. Thanks for reading.

P.S. I was talking with one of my friends. I wanted to let people know that I post my info on workouts, my feelings, and such about my workout journey, not to fish for accolades. I am documenting my journey. I hope it does not come across as fishing. Don’t get me wrong like anyone it feels good when people say nice things to me and an about me. But I feel like it might be helpful for people to hear/see that they are not the only one that struggles through their journey. I am not perfect, never will be, but I will try to be the best at everything I do. I try to give 110%, but there are days when I can’t. My body says no, and I am becoming better about understanding that. I am becoming stronger, faster and a little better all the time. =)

Thursday Night – Muay Thai, and then Kali Running Saint Gabriel



We just got home from Muay Thai practice and Kali, and I can tell you no other sport, or physical activity can melt my brain faster than Kali.

I sit here after class trying to type up what I wanted to, and I have a combination of tired body, and exhausted mind.

So, we worked on sparing in Muay Thai, where we were learning some of the entries that we could use to get into the “box” and be able to get our hits in on our opponents. You will get hit in the face and other parts of the body. This is not negotiable. It happens, and it teaches you to get your hands up and block, parry, or move (slip/bob and weave). I got hit twice in the face today. It was not hard, and I am totally ok. But that makes your body and head tired.

Now after Muay Thai we did Kali. Kali ask you to use both your right and left brain at the same time. It asks you to use your right and left hands at the same time. It is both an art and a… I was going to say science, and while there is science, to it… it’s more of an art and a deadly dance. A DANGER DANCE!

Anyway, I am rambling on. For today I did a 30-minute warmup/workout before Muay Thai.

  • 1 minute stretching
  • 200 kicks over a foam roller
  • 100 # 3 knees, which are the side in knees
  • Then 10 minutes of ladder work to work on foot work and getting faster in my transitions.

One hour of Muay Thai:

  • We shadowboxed/jumped rope to warm up
  • We worked on parry jab, while coming in with a jab entry, then getting out of the box.
  • We worked on outside parry where I slip under the jab and hit a jab into the midsection of my opponent.
  • We worked on the boxing 20.
  • We worked on using the entries to get into the box, then a upper cut, hook, and cross, bob and weave to get out
  • We then worked on sparing and using what we know and have learned to avoid getting hit.

I can tell you I got hit a couple of times, but I am getting more used to it.

1 hour of Kali:

  • We started with heaven figure 8s then earth figure 8s
  • We then worked on Running Saint Gabriel, the right side first
  • We worked on the Running Saint Gabriel right then left
  • Finally we worked on the heaven box.

I am tired and should go to bed. Its 11:39 pm right and I have to be up at 5:30am tomorrow. This is a bit of a rambling post, but this is what I do on Tuesdays and Thursdays. =) If you like hearing about what I am for my workouts let me know. I am still figuring out how often to put out content to my blog.

Also see below, me practicing the Running Saint Gabriel. This is about the 30th time worked through it. I did it about 30 more times till the end of class after this.

Running Saint Gabriel