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'. 

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:

Run and kicks

Just done a light run on this bright day and half way round worked on Ee dan ahp chagi (two-step front kick) and Deah ahp chagi (direct jump kick). 

My main aim in deah ahp chagi was to drive off the back leg and jump at the same time without unnecessary preliminary movement or telegraphing of the technique. This guy illustrates how NOT to do it:-

You'll see he brings his legs together and prepares his body to jump which I feel is no good. Maybe he's trying to close someone down then finish with a powerful jump front kick but for me it's best to practice a seamless deah ahp chagi from fighting stance, straight up and thrust. None of this getting ready..ooh,.... right I've stepped up now...erm....jump....and kick. Jump and kick off back leg. End of story.

Finished off training with some stretches and sit ups. Drawing the bow and propping up the sky.