Krav Maga Clearwater

To do the best you can at anything you have to have some measure of relaxation within that. To punch as quickly as you can, there needs to be relaxation in much of the movement. But it has to be measured and precise in which muscles are relaxed and which are not. The fist itself, for instance, needs to be very tight before it hits the target. Pretty obvious, right? Otherwise you’ll break your hand. All the muscles must be relaxed before the explosion of movement that pushes the fist towards the target. But the explosion itself is not relaxed. By definition it’s a very forceful explosion of movement. Most of the arm cannot be tight within the movement going out to the target. It has to be relaxed. So you see there is a certain timing to tightening up the muscles and certain muscles are tight at certain times.

Relaxation becomes even more important in stretching. Stretching is very important. Do not sacrifice your stretching. Sports physiologists that I have been most impressed with describe it as relaxing into the stretch. There is a very good book by that name. On your way into the deepest stretch you have to strive to relax the muscles. Yes it is uncomfortable and yes they will want to fight back. But to get the most out of the stretch you have to relax. In getting out of the stretch, you do not use the stretched muscles to force yourself out of the stretched position. You have to release those stressed muscles out of their stretched position first with some other part of the body and then you can use them to get yourself back into a normal position. Otherwise you risk tearing a muscle. You can build strength and power in the stretch position but I’ll leave that topic for another discussion. 

The other day a student was working on a balancing exercise. The student remarked how easy it became to balance when the student relaxed. This is partly because the body can then move in subtle ways quickly to be able to compensate for any imbalance.
So there you have it. If you want to improve your movement, your balance, and your stretch – relax.

Couple of new pictures in our small but growing archive under the Pictures and Video menu item. Check it out.

So what are the best ways to train the reflexes? Short answer: sports and games (I include martial ‘games’ in here). These things test the reflexes like no other, unless you have some very serious and scary job. Of course, the best games and sports to train your reflexes with would be the ones that you want to do well in. Although a video game that depicts fighting will train your reflexes, it will not train them as well as sparring. Unless what you want to get good at the video game itself. Simple enough, enough said.

Again, keep in mind there are different pieces within reflex that you can train. There is the pure reflex and the subconscious result that you want to program. Pure reflex can be trained with something as simple as a random noise setting you in motion to point at where you think the noise is coming from. Even with this, you are training more than the pure reflex. More complex reflex would be trained by the more complex movements associated with, for instance, a sport. Some of the better ones that I found are training in a fight system, auto racing, mountain biking and competitive tactical shooting. Certainly sports like basketball, football and wrestling should also be very good in training both the mental and physical reflexes. 

Other aspects of reflexes are important to be trained and understood. Awareness, coordination, physical strength and agility are some. These are all part and parcel of what makes a good result to your reflex. Training different combinations of tactics or results will develop a more well-rounded repertoire.

Have some comments on my reflex postings? Some things you’d like to try for training in particular? Let me know.

From Webster: an automatic and often inborn response to a stimulus that involves a nerve impulse passing inward from a receptor to a nerve center and thence outward to an effector (as a muscle or gland) without reaching the level of consciousness. 

Why do some of us have faster reflexes then others? Is there anything we can do about losing them with age? Is there anything we can do to control the subconscious nature and results of the reflex?

To answer these questions I think we have to get a little better idea of why the reflex happens as opposed to what it is. Yes the reflex is a response to a stimulus that makes us do something, but isn’t what we do even more important than the reflex itself? If we are one 10th of a second faster in our reflex but we freeze instead of flight or fight what good was the time savings? If we swung a fist instead of freezing and that created the wrong conclusion, then what was the time savings worth?

In anything that happens we have a reflex that is both natural and to an extent genetically predisposed. We also have the piece of the reflex that is socially taught and/or trained. These two mix. You can train the natural or what I like to call pure reflex to be faster and to stay faster with age. We can also train the reflex to do the right thing at the right time. 

The pure reflex is pretty easy to train and the good thing is that you can train it while you’re training the subconscious movement or result of the reflex. Training in a reality-based martial art or fighting system is one of the best ways I’ve found to train both the pure reflex and the subconscious result.

The specifics – More later…. Got to get to class now.

We all push ourselves or want to think we do. If you’re not, why would you be in a martial arts or fitness class of any sort? So what is it to push yourself? What do you want to achieve? How do you push yourself? How much should you push yourself and how do you measure this?

Obviously these are very personalized questions, but there are some simple and often overlooked guidelines to follow when pushing yourself, questioning, and monitoring.

First off, I am a big proponent of erring on the side of caution. If you hurt yourself, which is common when people push themselves, you will not be able to defend yourself on the street as effectively as you could if you were unhurt. Isn’t that why we do this? Why would you want to take a chance on walking with crutches? Even though crutches might be considered a good weapon. So you have to feel out what you are capable of doing in a smart way. You have to know your objectives and have a realistic set of expectations and move towards them in a somewhat objective way.

Having said that, pushing is all about finding those limits and getting better and stronger. So you have to PUSH. You have to DO. And as you get better you have to push more, otherwise you stay at the same level. People who are more advanced need to push very hard just to stay where they are.

You have to be very attuned to your body and abilities, and having a good guide helps. Because there is a balance. This points to why I say ‘somewhat objective’ in a paragraph above – because it’s not all about numbers. It’s just as much feeling as it is numbers. People get accustomed to hurting a lot. Major soreness, reoccurring injuries, etc. MMA fighters are always fighting with injuries. But they get paid to do what they do and there is a fairness in the ring. Someone gets hurt too bad and the fight is stopped. Your life doesn’t stop.

So next time you think ‘I can’t do anymore’ or on the other hand ‘I have to get to 100’ or ‘I’ve got to go harder’, ask your body what it thinks and either suck it up or slow it down. The price for ignoring that balance is either not progressing, or doing something you may regret for a long time. 

Leg day on Tuesdays. Worked up a good sweat. 

And a good exercise at the end that we hadn’t done before. Each of us simply running to each bag, kicking it once and then running to the next and kicking it. Then kicking each bag twice. Then once on the entrance to the bag, and once on the exit from the bag going to the next bag. Then each bag four times.

So though this might be considered a fun ‘game’, how relevant is it?  Well, would you rather get tied up with multiple attackers, or get into a boxing match with them, or just kick them out of the way?