This is the last T.I. in the September focus of grappling, so this week we’re going sop up every bit of our grappling gravy before we move on to October.
On left is a shot of my 5’1″ and 105 lb daughter in the grip of a Scarf Hold. One of my favorite escape hatches from this attack is known as a Valley Roll. Read on and watch the video below.
And by the way, if you like the kind of thing you find in these weekly T.I. you’d probably love one or both of my ebooks. Click here to download them from Smashwords!
And now on with the show…
Fairy Tale Valley: Martial Arts T.I. #227
- Warm-up thoroughly for at at least 8 minutes. Do 2-3 minutes each of (a) jumping rope (b) light calisthenics and (c) shadowboxing, forms, or light heavy bag work, or 8 minutes of MBF.
- Grappling Conditioner #1. Set timer 10 mins. Grab a medicine ball, slam ball or sandbag in the 10 – 30 lb. range. Pretend it’s an attacker’s head or neck and lay on the choke, lock or hold of your choice with maximum squeezing power and complete 10 Rear Lunges. Then relax your grip and complete 10 Sprawls (beginners put the ball down for this, advanced folks take it with you). Then place the ball on the floor, put your hands on it, and complete 10 Smearing Push-ups (beginners hands in diamond shape, advanced with hands overlapped in an “X”). Repeat until the timer beeps.
- Do 25 Valley Rolls. See video below. If you have a partner, great. If not, get out your floor bag, take a nice grip on it, and start rolling.
- Run fast, walk quiet. Set a timer for 5 minutes. Run as fast and as you can for 3 seconds and then get down — take a knee, baseball slide to your side, dive to prone position, etc. — as if avoiding gunfire. Stay down for a 3 to 10 seconds, then run again. This is called an IMT run — I learned about them from Mark Hatmaker here. For frontier flavor and to keep track of your three seconds, say “Messanik kakew!” (mess-AH-neek ka-KAY-ow) which is Powhatan for “running squirrel.” When the timer beeps, spend 5 more minutes practicing your silent walking. Make sure your feet are properly oriented, knees are flexed just right, and you are rolling your feet. Purposely pick varying surfaces — grass, sidewalk, gravel, leaves — so that you can experience the varying dynamics, and make sure that you are habituating good foot placement choices.
- Fairy tale reading. Fairy tales are not silly, made-up fantasies. They are stories washed free of every unimportant detail by millennia of re-telling — 100% pure and refined meta-truth. Read one (if you can’t find one, read the one from Issue #9 of SHIFT). This month’s internal focus is journaling. So after you read that fairy tale, get out your journal and write your personal fairy tale. What have your challenges been? Where are you going? How are you going to live happily ever after? And then jot down your training activities — if it ain’t in the training journal it didn’t happen!
TWO MARTIAL ARTS DISTANCE LEARNING PROGRAMS AVAILABLE. 100% free and operated through my non-profit, Cabal Fang is a martial arts for personal development, self-defense and fitness. If Frontier Rough ‘n’ Tumble — the fighting arts, survival skills, lifeways and ethos of the colonial and indigenous peoples of North American during the frontier period (1607 – 1912) — is more to your liking, check out Bobcat Frontier Martial Arts, my for-profit martial art project. Click either photo to get started today!
Is there a relationship between the surge in female superheroes in movies and on TV and what’s going on in the culture?
