Formosa Fitness

Now that I've said I won't post much more about IMA, let me post a few recent push hands clip. Hypocrite!! Yep. :)

This is from the INBI guys that translated Chen Xin's book. Hope you made your investment and got a copy. I'm going to be funding my son's tuition with mine. :)

Anyway, this clip is very nice and look at the blend of judo/sambo in the clip. Hmmm.....where have I heard that idea before? :)

Lots of good movement and glad to see I'm not the only one who's doing this.

This is a really, really good example of taiji in usage. Granted it's a student and a teacher. Granted the student doesn't throw punches but he does kick a lot. Granted everything else people will say. But the power and sensitivity are there in spades. And through boxing gloves even. I didn't think this could be done through boxing gloves. I tried and it really screwed up my sensitivity big time. This teacher has some seriously good skill. That comes through loud and clear. Love how everyone stops and looks. They were obviously impressed. He does Yang style, too. Good to see someone from that side of the fence instead of only the Chen guys having a clue.

Speaking of Chen guys having a clue, here are two that do and they're competing against each other: Chen Bing and Chen Er-hu. Now most everyone knows Chen Bing by this point. He's the cool kid in the Chen clan these days for those great clips of him throwing a student in an MMA cage during a seminar in Miami. But Chen Er-hu is also very skilled and has a lot of Chen style usage VCDs and DVDs, all worth getting.

This clip is good because it shows Chen Bing is a bit more realistic light than the ultra popular clip of him throwing the student. Er-hu isn't a light-weight so we have a very skilled interaction here. And by all means, please check out 8:30 in the clip.

BTW, anyone looking to get good at what's in the clip could do a lot worse than Karo Parisyan's excellent Judo for MMA DVD series. Enjoy.

Got a bad, bad case of 'em. Some have commented that they're happy seeing me write more IMA-related posts and I appreciate the feedback. Unfortunately, that isn't likely to last -- the posts, that is. I haven't been very happy with my IMA practice for some time and that doesn't look to change much. A small wave of nostalgia hit a few weeks ago but I was surprised at how quickly it disappeared. I'm just past that point in my life.

My personal evolution towards martial fitness is, however, progressing without a hitch. I'm starting to see more and more that I can teach in this new framework and be a much happier teacher than I was with trying to teach IMA. Teaching IMA was ....umm...."less than fair" shall we say. I'm SOOOOO much happier using martial fitness to get people in shape and fix their bodies. And you have to do what makes you happy.

Truth be told, most of the IMA crowd still wants to "party like it's 1899" and that's how it will always be. Nothing will ever change for them. On the other hand, people who want fitness are very happy to learn an approach that values their joints and teaches an Asian, balanced way to health and harmony. Of the two communities, there's no room at all in one and a vast, open space in the other. Hmmm....Go West, young man. :)

I'm about to order powerclubs for the school and this will likely accelerate these tendencies even further. I see practically endless possibilities for using the clubs from a martial fitness perspective. Circular and spiral strength add a lot of comlexity to the usual strength training paradigm. And IMA people are always looking for heavy weapons that they can never find, when this similar tool is readily available. Finally, shoulder rehab should be a real possibility with the clubs -- something I'm very interested in.

Hmmm....strength building, finesse adding, rehabing capability, no traditional baggage -- starting to see the benefits of this approach?

The new IKFF forum is up and running and that was perfect timing. I've been looking for a place to talk about kettlebell training for a long time. Let's hope there're some good mods in place so the info quality will be high. Sign up and join us for what will hopefully be some great discussion. And while you're there, check out the new website. Very nice.

Lots of good movement here. Enjoy.

This post covers the whole spectrum of personal training, rehab, and martial arts. Over the years, I've talked about "Fixing people before they do IMA," "Yang style disease," Yang family bow training, and lately I've talked more about fixing people's postural problem through personal training. Today you'll see where all that meets up.

Opening the shoulders is something I'm finding almost universally applicable. Very few people walk through my door with healthy shoulders, MA people included. We just don't take our shoulders through a full range of motion even if we exercise often. The problem with nearly every martial art or exercise program is that even if you do them, they often prefer certain motions over others. This favors certain types of movement to the detriment of others, building muscle imbalances. And that's not even talking about folks that don't exercise much. For them, range of motion drops off very quickly because they aren't using much of it. Then one day they need to use that range of motion they had in the past and...

For IMA, the ability to open and close the body is very important. The incorrect idea of holding static postions like chest sunk, shoulders rounded, tailbone always tucked, etc. while doing every single movement virtually guarantees you'll screw up your entire body. I can't think of a worse way to train IMA or move, in general. You're virtually losing any sense of power you might have. It's like trying to accelerate while having the other foot jammed firmly on the brake all the time. Training like this, you'll lose your natural range of motion very quickly. This leads to the "old man posture" also known as Yang disease.

Fixing this in the upper body is relatively simple but pretty painful. I have a series of movements that I use to free the range of motion in the shoulders and I try to give these movements to everyone at some point. The most useful and easy to teach movement so far has been the shoulder dislocation exercise:

As you can see, it can be done with a staff or a belt. The belt is easier for beginners. I recommend that people do 50 of these everyday. The trick is to start with your hands far apart at first, KEEP THE ELBOWS LOCKED AT ALL TIMES, and go for a full range of motion. DO NOT unlock the elbows!!! This is usually the first mistake people make. As you get better, walk the hands in on the belt or staff.

This will be very painful for some of you but stick with it. The results come over about a month. You'll feel very relaxed and open in the chest as you walk and stand eventually.

This last part is also important for IMA guys. For example, I noticed a bit of confusion here in the comments about this type of training. We use this exercise to expand the chest and pull the shoulders through their natural range of motion. But we DO NOT use force to pull the shoulders back during normal standing or practicing. You won't have to. This exercise opens you up so that you fall into a more natural posture automatically as a result of training. We aren't replacing one bad posture habit with another. We're using the exercise to restore natural range of motion.

Almost everyone can benefit from this but you have to be diligent about it. A month minimum is needed. Also this is just step one. :) There's a progression beyond this as well as martial arts exercises that utilize this movement.

Add this to your daily routine and your upper body posture will improve dramatically. Enjoy.

These are two concepts that are important for beginning kettlebell students to understand. Increasing the size of the gas tank is pretty easy to grasp. Think of a Crossfit workout that leaves you lying on the floor. If you can recover from that (and that may be a big if), then your capacity to tolerate hard training will hopefully increase. Your gas tank will allow harder and harder training as you work with the raw muscle aspect of training. (However, leaving you lying on the floor isn't the best way to achieve this attribute. A gradual increase in volume and intensity is the way to go.)

But increasing your fuel efficiency is sometimes difficult to grasp at first. This isn't necessarily intuitive, especially to people that have external motivations for training. Increasing your fuel effieciency means improving technique, increasing joint mobility, etc. These things allow you to lift more weight, go for a longer time, etc. but they work on a more subtle level than just increasing the size of the gas tank.

It just makes sense, right? The better your technique, the more reps you can lift. And yet, the pathway is different than just muscling the kettlebell. Just trying to kill yourself with the kettlebell will work for a while, right up until you get injured or at least reach a plateau. Then the benefits of muscling it will decrease and you'll be forced to improve technique anyway. 

It's the delicate balance between quantity and quality -- without quality, the quantity doesn't matter.

This is where treating kettlebell training as a type of martial art comes into play. Think of improving your lifts the way you would improve your armbar or side kick and you'll see the benefits quicker. 

This is the best documentary of Taiwan MA that I've ever seen. It's coverage of the southern styles here was especially good and much appreciated. The crane guy in grey is quite skilled. I love his power and I miss that type of movement. The fifth part below features one of Taiwan's judo legends, who studied IMA and was also a professional wrestler. He's still going strong at age 80 and looks to be in really good shape. His students are very lucky to have him. Enjoy.

"It is sickness to be obsessed with winning, it is sickness to be obsessed with using the martial arts, and it is sickness to be obsessed with putting forth all one has learned. It is sickness to be obsessed with offense, and it is also sickness to be obsessed with defense. It is also sickness to be obsessed with getting rid of sickness. To find the mind obsessively on anything is considered sickness. Since all various sicknessess are in the mind, the thing is to tune the mind by getting rid of such afflictions."

"The elementary level of removing sickness is when you get into thought to be free from thought and get into attachment to be free from attachment."

-Yagyu Munenori, The Killing Sword (1632)

You hear a lot about "shocking fat loss secrets" but this one from nutrition expert Leigh Peele is real, and NOT at all comforting. If you like to lick the spoon after getting peanut butter, then don't watch this short clip. You won't be happy. This is a harsh reality but for fat loss, this is what we have to deal with.

I'm seeing more and more of anti-marketing sentiment in the fitness blogosphere. The idea is that maybe too many trainers are focusing on marketing instead of providing quality service. The unspoken assumption seems to be that if you provide top quality service, the clients will just flock to your door. I agree with providing quality training for clients, and my guess is that people who care enough to be reading trainer blogs and otherwise are trying to stay informed also care enough to provide quality service.

But the fact of the matter is that you can't be a fantastic trainer without clients. You could have the best service in the world, but if no one knows about you, then it won't matter. So marketing is essential.

Second, a lot of this sentiment is coming from the strength training community that have had fixed programs in place for a long, long time. Training athletic teams requires a hell of a lot less marketing than personal training. Working for high school, university or pro teams isn't the same. You're likely part of a team of coaches and the program is attached to an institution. You have a fixed salary. Most personal trainers are on their own.

Third, personal trainers must compete with all the other distractions that could attract client's discretionary income and that's where client's gym fees come from -- discretionary income. That means we have to compete with the marketing those other distractions use and they have much larger budgets. We personal trainers often have to compete with the new PS3 the client may be eyeing or the new set of wheels they want. And I think we can all agree it's a media-saturated marketplace.

These limitations can hinder promising trainers from setting up quality programs because they can't attract enough clients, let alone quality clients. So the relationship between marketing, clients and quality is a complex one.