Should You Train Both Sides Equally?

"1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10!  Switch feet!  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10!"

    - Every instructor ever

The most common way to train basics is to practice a technique for some number of reps on one side, then switch feet and do the same number of reps on the other side.  But there are a couple other schools of thought out there.  And which one is best depends largely on what your goals are.

Approach #1:  Train Your Side

One school of thought is that you should prioritize the side that you are most likely to use.  You see this a lot in sports.  If you're an elite sparring competitor, you've probably come across this idea quite a bit.  Almost everyone has a "strong side," which is especially easy to see in, say, boxing.  Fighters are known for being orthodox or southpaw.  If you're not likely to switch your stance, you'll get more benefit for your training time if you practice from the stance that you're going to use.  

And while that is a great idea for winning, it's not such a great idea for overall health.  When you train asymmetrically, you condition your body asymmetrically, which can lead to muscle imbalance, posture problems and injuries.  This phenomenon is especially obvious in fencing, which is an extremely asymmetrical sport.  Fencers typically hold a weapon in one hand without ever switching.  They also spend a lot of time in what is basically a back stance.  If you think about where you're sore after some intense stance work, you can imagine why elite fencers tend to have larger calf muscles on one side.  But often they'll also have more developed muscles on their entire back leg and on their weapon arm, and even on one side of the torso.  Muscle imbalance, besides looking kind of freaky, can give you some pretty significant joint pain and even interfere with your movement.

Which is why a lot of martial artists, including myself, prefer...

Approach #2:  Train Both Sides

If your conditioning is symmetrical, your body will develop symmetrically.  (This is kind of a lie.  There are other things that can cause muscle imbalance, and in fact most people have some minor asymmetry, but for the most part this is pretty safe to say.)  

So if you throw the same number of punches on both sides, you'll stress the muscles on both sides of your body equally and strengthen them equally.  Same deal for kicks and throws and stance work and anything else we do.  

But there's one downside to this, which is why some people prefer...

Approach #3:  Train Your Weak Side

Very few people are truly ambidextrous.  You probably have one side that's more coordinated than the other.  If that bothers you, the natural solution is to give the other side a little more practice.

And there are some good reasons to do that!  But here I would caution people to be careful and think about what exactly you NEED your weak side to do.  If it's just a dislike of the idea that one side is more skilled than the other, maybe consider that it's not that big a deal.  No matter how much you train, you're unlikely to ever have exactly equal skill on both sides of your body.  And if you try, you could end up training your weak side disproportionately enough that you develop some of those muscle imbalance problems.

One way to get around this is to work your technique in an easy, relaxed way.  You can fix very many technical details without physically working all that hard.  And since you're not pushing the limits of your strength/speed/flexibility/etc., you're not forcing your muscles to adapt.  Don't get me wrong, you need to stress those muscles some.  But doing some very light finesse work and then blasting a target 10 times on each side will cause a lot less muscle imbalance than blasting a target 500 times on one side and 10 times on the other.

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Good luck with whichever approach is right for you!

Solo Training Resource List

In the face of a global pandemic, martial arts instructors all over the world are looking for ways to help their students train at home while classes aren't being held.  My own tiny school is doing this as well.  But that does little for the instructors who are also stuck training at home.  During these trying times, we have an opportunity to come together and support each other.

In that spirit, I'm offering up the lessons that I created for my students for anyone who wants to try them.  Those who read this blog tend to be more advanced than the students these were created for, but you may enjoy them nonetheless.

If you have created exercises or workouts for your students to do at home and want to share them with a wider audience, please leave a comment on this post with the link.  I will add them to the official list as quickly as I'm able.

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The List:

Martial Journeys of Madison At-Home Training
Leigh Simms Progressive Karate
Clubb Chimera Martial Arts Shadow Sparring Workout
Karate Nerd 10-Minute Karate Workout
IMOK Karate Class Video
Iain Abernethy's Applied Karate Kata Bunkai App
Taekwon-Do Senior Instructors Class
Solo Training Dos and Don'ts

Happy Life Martial Arts Home Workouts
Northampton Martial Arts Online Classes

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Fine print for those contributing links:
1.  Please, only one link per school.  If you want to offer multiple workouts, please use a link to a tag or a playlist or some other format that will allow for a concise single link.
2.  Please only submit your own content.  That way I know I'll only post links with the permission of the person who created it.

Martial Movement Seminar

Hi everyone!

Most of my seminars are part of the 50 States Challenge, and I teach at them for charity.  But this one is something different.  I've been invited to do a joint seminar with fellow martial arts blogger Pat Bolton of IMOK Karate.

And you're invited, so save the date!

Saturday, March 7, 2020 from 1:00 to 3:00

We'll be at 55 South Gammon Road in Madison, Wisconsin, which is the Lussier Community Education Center gym.

If you'd like to come, drop Pat an email at imokkarate@gmail.com.

We're trying hard to make the seminar style-agnostic, so it doesn't matter what kind of martial art you do--just bring your enthusiasm.  We're going to cover biomechanics, joint health, power generation, applying forms/kata in self defense, and conditioning.  And just because it seems somehow impossible or just morally wrong for me to be involved in a project like this and not introduce a little Martial Journeys weirdness, we're also going to do some of this nonsense.

Here's the official flier, which you're welcome to print out and display if you like:

Please come!  I would love to meet you in person.  Email Pat to register here.

Two Approaches to Mental Strength

Like most martial artists, I've been punched.  Aside from a few that were particularly hard or unusual in some way, most of those punches were pretty forgettable.

But the other day, I got a punch I will never forget.  The kind that has you standing in line at a grocery store two days later pretending everything is okay when it Definitely. Is. Not.  This punch came in the form of four words:

"I canceled my chemo."

My instructor proceeded to tell me about how he had to work outside in the cold this week, and if he had his chemo treatment, it would be too painful for him to complete the work.  He explained that he couldn't take the time off because he needed the money, so he canceled his chemo appointment instead.

So that was my punch, and I'd trade it for a dislocated jaw any day.  But as hard as this is for me, it is obviously much worse for him and his family.  I have the mental strength of a martial artist.  I can be everyone's rock, right?

How To Maximize Mental Strength

When we talk about physical strength, having a strong body can mean being able to lift heavy things, excelling in physical workouts, being resilient to illness, and so forth.  Mental strength also encompasses a lot.  It's the discipline to crank out those last few reps, the motivation to force yourself to go to class even if you'd rather stay home and relax, and the focus to keep your mind from wandering when you need all your attention in order to get a job done.

Just like a serious physical ailment can destroy all aspects of your body's strength, hardship can kick your discipline, focus, motivation, patience, and so forth, to the curb.

The good news is, mental strength trainable.  The even better news is, martial arts can be a great vehicle for training mental strength.

So what do you do when you need all your mental strength?

1.  Reframe your stressor as a challenge. 

If you never challenge yourself, you'll never improve.  If you're never failing, you're not challenging yourself.  So as insurmountable as your stressor may be, in some ways it's not so different from the heavy weight at the gym, or your nemesis sparring partner, or whatever other physical challenge you're trying to overcome.  Just like those physical challenges, if you've chosen a goal that is so easy that you have no chance of failing, you have chosen a goal that will not help you improve.  And just like practicing martial arts will make you better at martial arts, practicing with your problem will make you better at dealing with your problem.

Once you understand that whatever situation is giving you a beating is ultimately not that different from your regular training, you can approach it with a healthier mindset.

2.  Let the little stuff go.

There's science behind it, but it's also just common sense that when you are enduring hardship, it makes no sense to make it even harder on yourself.  If you put a lot of your mental energy into the proverbial deck chairs on the Titanic, the actual sinking ship is going to be that much harder to face because you're mentally fatigued.  Focus on what's most important, and cut yourself some slack if you're not perfect in other areas.

3.  Train your mental strength.

Hopefully you started this one before you need it.  Just like your physical conditioning, it takes time.  Very hard training that makes you dig deep to find the strength to finish will condition your ability to finish things you don't want to finish.  Ignoring distractions in your training space will condition your ability to control your focus and direct your mind back to the task at hand when it wanders.  Focusing on your next technique when some corner of your brain is telling you to feel embarrassment or pride about the last one will bolster your ability to spend your effort on things that can actually affect the outcome of your struggle.

4.  Manage your energy levels.

As trite as it sounds to include "self care" in a list like this, it's a cliche because it's true.  Taking care of your health and getting quality sleep will absolutely help your mental strength.  Beyond that, whatever boosts your energy is as individual as you are.  Spending time with friends, cuddling pets and getting lost in a book, splurging on a snooty dinner out, watching a movie, getting to class... all of that has a cost in time, money, or both.  But if it gives you the energy to jump back into the fight with gusto, it also has a lot of value.

So that's my toolbox.  Here's how I've used it lately.

I put on the biggest lie of a smile for the students who come to train.  No one is going to get the class they need if I'm not strong for them.  Focus now, despair later.  Make jokes about stances so that everyone is laughing while they're pushing themselves to improve.  Don't give the elephant in the room even an inch.  Make sure no one uses a particular 6-letter C-word.  Model excellent mental strength for students who still need to learn those skills.

Everything is just fine.  Actually, that's an old picture, so everything really is fine.

Off the training floor, I do everything I can to help out financially and logistically.  Try to give him a little more freedom and means to focus on his health.  That requires a measure of mental strength, too.

But that's me.  I'm not at the center of this turdnado, and the person who IS at the center has trained a lot longer than I have.  I wondered, does a lifetime of martial arts make you strong enough to face this?  So I asked.

Here's what he had to say.

1.  Stay positive.

"When someone hears you have cancer, they always say, 'I'm sorry.'  But I don't feel sorry for myself."  He then proceeded to talk about some good things that have come out of his experience with cancer, like learning from the experience, being more connected to the people around him, and increased spirituality.  He emphasized how important it was to stay positive in order to have the mental strength to keep fighting.

2.  Maintain self control.

It's easy to imagine what he's going through and think that he must be stressed out, irritable, in constant physical discomfort, and on the edge of despair.  But interacting with him, you'd guess none of those things.  He credits his martial arts experience with giving him the skill of calming himself and maintaining that calmness, for the mental strength it has instilled in him, and the physical strength as well.  Because, as he put it, "You can only build so much of your mind without considering your body."  I'm sure no doctor would disagree.

3.  Keep learning.

He specifically mentioned "drawing strength" from learning from the experience.  He talked about how the experience has made him more aware of the connection between his mind and body.  He says he has also learned to open up as a human being, and is now more conscious of his own feelings and the feelings of others.

4.  Keep being you.

Actually what he said was, "Always remember to keep giving."  But he has a GoFundMe, and I was afraid it would sound really self-serving, so I changed it.  But "always keep giving" is such a pure reflection of who he is as a person.  This is someone whose generosity has exasperated business partners by giving away so much for free to people who couldn't pay.  Someone who has given so selflessly to his students and to the community that there's not enough left for himself, a martial arts retelling of It's A Wonderful Life.  This is someone who swooped in like the mentor figure in some saccharine after-school special and helped me regain my footing after my own really awful story.

And I'm one of his less dramatic stories.  I know about ex-felons who turned their lives around because of his help.  I know of at-risk kids who he put on the right course.  I know of kids who were bullied to the verge of suicide who pulled through in part because of him.  His life has been a series of Quantum Leap episodes, minus the time travel.  How many of us see our lives that way?  If we could travel to the past, we say we'd try to make small changes that had heroic consequences for the present.  But who tries to make small changes in the present with heroic consequences for the future?

I've lost track of how many times I've heard him say some variation of, "I didn't train for X years so I could keep it, I learned it so I could give it away."  That variable X has increased over the time that I've known him, and is now up to 47 years as he said it to me again today.

Friends, I don't ask for much.  Sure, I appreciate the likes, shares and subscribes, but I don't have a Patreon, a paid content section, DVDs or books or supplements or snake oil for sale.  Even my seminars I do without a paycheck.  But right now I'm asking.  If you can help, please do.  https://www.gofundme.com/ken-bent-cancer-fund

Kicking the Snot out of Cancer and Other Arkansas Stories

For my second stop on the 50 States Challenge, the kind folks at River Valley Martial Arts agreed to host me.  The dojo is in Russellville, Arkansas, a town of less than 30,000 people, few enough that I got teased for being from the city.  That was funny to me, because being so near Milwaukee and Chicago, Madison seems small to me.  But later I realized they weren't joking--Madison has a higher population than any city in Arkansas.  It was a bit of regional culture shock that I didn't expect.

Kicking in the How To Learn Any Kick event.

Their main program is faith-based, which had me curious.  I wondered what a faith-based program would be like.  The first thing I thought was that so many of my martial arts friends and students were not Christian, and how I would never have met them at a specifically Christian school.  The idea of religion in martial arts is as weird to me as doing martial arts during a church service.  But here is a whole school of people who specifically signed up for religion in their training.  And the whole point of this project is to see and experience other ways of doing things, and Sensei Kyle Bennett offered me a great opportunity to do exactly that.

Sensei Kyle Bennett (right) and some weird blogger (left).

In a striking coincidence, Sifu TW Smith released a KungFu Podcast episode about Christianity and Asian martial arts only a few weeks before my visit.  I was eager to listen, but I waited until the return trip because I didn't want his perspective to color my experience at River Valley Martial Arts.  Now that I've listened, I don't think it would have influenced my visit.  He gives a really thoughtful and well-researched account as always, which I can strongly recommend to anyone interested in exploring the idea of Christianity in martial arts more deeply than I will cover here.  Also, it was cool to hear him reference my Training is an Engineering Problem blog post.

I drove into Russellville after a day of sightseeing and arrived at the dojo just as the youngest students' class was starting.  The center of the training floor was set up with a huge pile of training equipment arranged into the shape of a life size car, complete with seats, seat belts, and swinging doors.  After a warm up, the meat of the lesson was about how to get out of an abductor's car.  The religious element was not pervasive--it was obvious in the beginning of the class and later during the occasional bible-referencing joke--they weren't praying in between sets or anything like that.  At least in that class, I think a non-Christian could have participated with a minimum of discomfort.

After that class ended, I was up.  Sensei Bennett introduced me to the students and handed the class over to me.  It was a wide range of skill levels and ages, which makes the class a little more challenging to teach, but not insurmountably so.  The topic was How To Learn Any Kick, and I went over kicking theory, balance drills, and conditioning exercises that can help people kick better regardless of their age or experience level.  My goal was to make sure everyone got something useful, to make sure everyone felt like they got their money's worth, even though that money wasn't going to me.  It was going to St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital.

Karate and Krav Maga students learning the nuances of pivoting.

There are lots of good reasons to support St. Jude's, but the main reason is because they efficiently turn money into kids not dying of cancer.  We asked attendees to make a donation instead of paying for the class.  The very kind representative at St. Jude's set up a website for us to take donations, but most of the donations ended up being made in cash, which River Valley Martial Arts sent in by check.

Hundreds of dollars worth of cancer treatment and research.

With only $20 being donated digitally, and $437 being donated via check, we ended $43 short of our goal.  Maybe a few generous readers would like to chip in a few bucks and get us up to that $500 mark?  You can still donate on behalf of the 50 States Challenge here.

Either way, it's easy to feel good about raising $457.  That money goes directly toward treating young cancer patients, but the research is freely shared throughout the world so that other families can benefit from new treatments as well.  Each donation to St. Jude's is effectively helping twice.

After that it was time to train.  The school's main program is karate, but they also have a thriving Krav Maga class, which is the one I took.  This was my first Krav Maga class, though I've had some exposure just by casual training sessions with martial arts friends who cross train.  I was looking forward to trying something new.

The first part of the class was an intense workout of exercises that could be found in general fitness classes.  This was very welcome because I had basically been sitting in a car for a week leading up to that class.  My workouts on the trip had been limited because I had to train outside, and there was only so hard I was comfortable pushing myself in the oppressive heat.  It was good to finally do a real workout in real air conditioning.  I suspect that was one of the main draws for most of the people there.

After we were all reduced to quivering puddles of sweat, we were paired off to work on knife defense drills.  All of the specific techniques were new to me, but they all made sense from a general martial arts perspective.  Basically I relied on my understanding of the underlying principles of movement, timing, balance, etc., to keep up with the people who actually knew the techniques.

You're not going to get hurt, but it's still uncomfortable to get poked, so don't mess up!

My absolute favorite part, though, was when we were paired off to wrestle over training knives.  One of my partners (primarily a BJJ student, I think) specifically sought me out.  I instantly felt like I understood him, because that's the kind of thing I would do.  Visitors, if they've trained before, always behave unpredictably.  Visitors present new challenges, even if they're not very good, because they'll spar/roll/drill differently than anyone else you've trained with before.  That day I held my own against some partners, but not him.  He soundly bested me every time.  But I did surprise him a couple times, like it seemed he was hoping I would.  One of those surprises was when I used my foot on his wrist to push his hand off the training knife.  Then he turned around and did the same thing to me, only better.  And I thought, this is how training is supposed to be.

I really enjoyed my visit, and I left feeling a little sad that I was so unlikely to see any of these people again.  But I still have the Statebook, at least.

Thanks for signing my book, guys!

Conspicuously absent from this post is my Takeaway Technique that I learned in Washington and taught in Arkansas.  That's because I'm saving it for the next post.

How to Make and Train With a Jegi

A jegi (roughly pronounced "jay" like the bird and "gi" like the karate uniform) is a traditional Korean toy, similar to a shuttlecock.  It's used to play a game called jegichagi (literally, "jegi kicking").  Legend has it that the game was developed from martial arts training.  No one knows if that is actually true, but there's some evidence for it.  Either way, there's no reason it can't be part of your training today.

Traditionally, the jegi was made with a 100 mun coin and hanji, handmade Korean paper.

100 mun Korean coin (photo credit)

Even though 100 mun might sound like a lot, this coin had so little value that in order to buy anything, you needed a lot of them.  People would thread them onto strings like beads and tie off the ends, then they could drape the strings over their shoulders to carry them around.  So even poor people had a lot of these coins lying around.

To make a jegi, the coin would be placed in the middle of a folded sheet of hanji paper.  By poking a hole though the paper to match the hole in the coin, the paper could be torn into strips and pushed through the hole in the coin, resulting in a paper-wrapped coin with feathered paper strips coming out of the hole.

Making a Jegi

In the spirit of the people who played jegichagi so long ago, we're going to make them out of whatever materials that we have at hand.  I like to use plastic bags, coins and string, but you do you.  Like a Jedi's lightsaber, you will design your jegi to be one-of-a-kind, perfectly in tune with your connection to the Force, from only the purest Kyber crystals... wait, where was I?  Oh, right, making a jegi.

If you don't have a cat but want a similar challenge level, you can toss your plastic bag into the air and cut your squares with a samurai sword before it lands.

1.  Cut squares.

You want two squares of plastic, each about one square foot.  For those who live in parts of the world that use a reasonable system of measurement, you get to make your squares 30 cm x 30 cm.  You don't have to be exact, and in fact I encourage you to experiment with bigger or smaller squares and see what you like.  Bigger squares means longer strips, and more air resistance, so the jegi will move more slowly through the air.

2.  Pick your coin(s).

You can use any coin you like, or really any small object that has a little weight to it.  You can also use multiple coins.  The important thing is that you get the weight right.  Too much weight, and your jegi will fall really fast and be difficult to use.  Too little, and it won't move easily through the air and it will be difficult to kick it high.  You can experiment to find your personal sweet spot.

I'm using a single penny.  I like the weight it gives my jegi, and also we should get rid of pennies whenever we can.  I should mention that this makes for a very light jegi, which will be difficult for traditional play but easier for martial arts training.


3.  Fold everything.

There are easier ways to do this, but if your art is usually practiced barefoot, it's nice to have a little extra padding.  If you want even more, you can wrap your coin in a tissue before following these steps.

a) Fold your squares in half and place the coin in the center.

b) Fold your coin into its own little strip along the folded edge.

c) Fold the strip a second time.

d) Roll it up.

4.  Tie it off.

Take your string and tie the plastic down near the coin, so the coin is secure and can't slide out.

5.  Cut the plastic into strips.

If you've been careful with your folding, it should be easy and quick to cut the plastic into strips, about 1 cm (half an inch for my fellow Americans) wide.  If, like myself, you have the craft skills of a drunk toddler, you'll probably have to cut each strip individually.  But success is a journey not a destination (or something) and eventually you will have a jegi.

Qapla'!

6.  Feather out the strips.

You've got it!  Even if you skip all this arts and crafts nonsense and just buy a jegi, you will have to do this step, which is to separate the strips from each other so that they can catch the air individually.  Wait, you can just buy these things?  And I'm here with my scissors and string like a sucker?

At this point, most humans would also identify this thing as a cat toy.

Let's Play!

So you have your own jegi!  Now what do you do with it?  Traditionally, jegichagi was played by kicking the jegi with the instep of the foot, trying to keep it from touching the ground, with the winner being the player who kicked it the most times before it finally fell.

I play it a little differently.  My method is picking it up, kicking it once, chasing it to wherever it fell, and trying again while some old Korean guy starts laughing on the sidelines, proceeding to demonstrate how easy it is and offering some advice that is beyond my language skills to understand.  Anyway.

Certainly you can play the traditional version of the game and use it to develop your hip muscles (or you can do that without the jegi).

There are also variations where you have to keep the jegi in the air using only a specific kick, or where you can't put your foot down between kicks, or where the jegi is kicked between players in a group.  Have fun with it!

Let's Train!

If you're training barefoot, I recommend doing a few light practice kicks so you know how your jegi feels before you go nuts (or before handing off your jegi to a young student).

Pick a striking technique.  Any punch or kick will work.  Toss your jegi into the air and try to hit it with the technique you chose.  Don't worry about where it lands, just try to make your hand or foot connect with the jegi.  If this is your first time playing with a jegi, you will probably find this plenty challenging.  Experiment with which techniques are easy and which are difficult.

Here are a few ideas, in order of difficulty:

Reverse punch
Front kick
Roundhouse kick
Side kick
Spin hook kick

I've never met a student who can reliably hit a jegi with all of those techniques.  Even so, it's great for developing fast and accurate strikes.

Here are a couple of my younger students working their kicks on a jegi:

Lets Play AND Train!

Ever played a basketball game called Horse?  You can modify the rules to play with a jegi.

One player issues a challenge.  It can be anything from "I am going to punch it and not miss," to "I am going to kick it with a flying spinning roundhouse kick with my eyes closed and make it land perfectly balanced on your head while reciting Funakoshi's 19th precept in Klingon."  The player then attempts whatever challenge they issued.

If they succeed, the jegi goes to the second player, who must attempt the same challenge.

If they fail, the second player does not have to attempt the challenge and instead creates their own challenge.

If you fail a challenge you didn't create, you get a letter.  Your first letter is H, then O, then R, and so forth.  Once you spell HORSE, you are out of the game.  The last player in the game is the winner.

Happy training!

Training is an Engineering Problem

On April 13th, 1970, an oxygen tank blew up aboard the Apollo 13 spacecraft.

This caused a quadruple system failure--something the astronauts hadn't been trained to handle because it was assumed that if four systems failed at once 200,000 miles from Earth, it would be impossible for them to survive.  But on their doomed lunar mission, that is exactly what happened.  The astronauts and ground crew had to find creative solutions to problems no one had anticipated.

This is not where you want to be when everything around you starts to break.

At one particularly dramatic moment in the Apollo 13 movie, the engineers on the ground are given the instructions, "We need to make THIS fit into THIS using nothing but THIS."  The actor then dramatically dumps a box of junk onto the table, and everyone gets to work.  (I'm paraphrasing, the actual quote from the movie is here.)

They needed to make round lithium hydroxide canisters fit into holes designed for square canisters using only what they had with them in the spacecraft.  You can read all the gritty details here, but for now just understand that if they could not do this, three people were going to die of carbon dioxide poisoning.

This was one of several engineering problems they had to solve to get the astronauts home safely.  The academic solution would have been easy.  Just design and manufacture an airtight seal of the appropriate dimensions and place it over the hole.  Of course, that wasn't an option for the crew of Apollo 13.

That is the quintessential engineering problem--making something work despite far less than ideal conditions.  But even though we usually think of engineering problems in terms of technology, it's often useful to apply the same thinking to other problems.

Apollo 13 liftoff.  It was a marvel of engineering to even get this far.

My broad use of the terms "engineering problem" and "academic problem" come from The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch, (which is excellent reading or watching, by the way), where he explains raising his kids after being diagnosed with terminal cancer.  His professional background was split between academics and engineering, so those were the two ways that he knew how to solve problems.  He said that if he approached raising his kids as an academic problem, he would certainly fail.  He would objectively be a terrible parent because he would disappear from their lives at a young age.  But by approaching it like an engineering problem, knowing that he won't be there for most of their lives, how can he plan for it and give his family as much as possible for the future before he disappeared?

I find this thinking to be very valuable because most problems are engineering problems, but very often people approach them like academic problems.

One example that comes to mind is when a coworker complaining to me about one of our bosses.  He had a laundry list of faults about how this boss was terrible at his job and bad for the company, but there was no one higher up in the company willing to take any action against him.  My coworker complained to me that he should not behave this way.  And he was right, no one in that role should behave that way.  But oxygen tanks shouldn't explode, and fathers shouldn't die when their children are young.  Sometimes you have to deal with things that should not be, and build a solution under less than ideal circumstances.  My coworker and I had to make a round peg of a boss fit into a square hole of a company using nothing but the tools and skills at our disposal, because it was an engineering problem.  Was it fair?  Of course not.  But neither are quadruple system failures or pancreatic cancer.

Most workplace problems are engineering problems.

Once you start classifying problems as either academic or engineering, they become a lot easier to solve.  In my case, I started seeing engineering problems everywhere.  Difficult training partner?  Engineering problem.  Opening a school on a shoestring budget?  Engineering problem.  Siblings not getting along while I'm teaching?  Engineering problem.  Scheduling issues?  Budget issues?  Personnel issues?  Engineering problems.  As an added benefit, once you start looking at your engineering problem in terms of the tools you have to solve it, it becomes less of a problem and more of a puzzle.

Applying this thinking to your training can help you improve more efficiently.  The first time I encountered this, it was before I had ever considered academic problems or engineering problems.  I was a high school student on a volleyball team.

There were a couple star players on the team, but most of us were beginners and our coach had to teach us all the basic skills.  At one practice she showed us how to dig for a ball that had gone flying off away from the intended target.  It was difficult--dive after the ball, propel yourself along the ground with your free arm, let the ball bounce off your hand instead of the ground--for the small chance that someone else would be able to rush in and return the ball over the net before it hit the floor.  Long before we felt comfortable with the skill, we stopped working on it.

It's really hard! photo credit

Our coach explained that she was only introducing us to the skill, that she didn't want us to get good at it.  She said that at our level, our practice time was far better spent on core skills, learning our basics well enough to prevent the ball from flying off unpredictably in the first place.

It made sense.  We were (mostly) novice volleyball players with a limited amount of practice time.  Approaching it as an academic problem, we would have been doomed to failure--objectively unskilled players at the end of the season.  We could certainly get better as the season progressed, but it was not realistic for us to master every single skill.  But our coach approached it as an engineering problem (although I doubt if she would have called it that) and looked for how to make the team as successful as possible using only the players, tools and time available to her.

Martial arts training is also an engineering problem.  Real life violence is infinitely more complex than a volleyball game.  Even dedicated students seldom practice, say, five hours per week.  But even with that much training, it is not possible to master every single skill that might be useful in a violent encounter.

Here is a very incomplete list of potentially useful skills:
- the punching skills of professional boxer
- the kicking skills of a taekwondo Olympian
- the throwing skills of a judo master
- an equivalent mastery in every weapon, improvised weapon and firearm
- an equivalent mastery in awareness and de-escalation skills
- an equivalent mastery in active shooter and bomb threat situations
- an equivalent mastery in crowd psychology

That is the academic solution--to prepare for everything you might need.  But it's not possible.  Even if you did not sleep, there would not be enough hours in the day to attain all of those skills to that high of a level.

Training doesn't look like an engineering problem, but it is.

So how do we look at this like an engineering problem instead?

1.  Define the goal.  

If you are training to win a judo tournament, you can probably skip all that boxing stuff.  If you're training purely for self defense, there's a lot of footwork and complex kicking that a high level taekwondo athlete would need but you can safely ignore.  If you're trying to pass your next belt test, you can put other skills on the back burner while you focus on promotion requirements.  Being clear and honest with yourself about what the goal is should help a lot.

2.  Prioritize what is common.

If you've got a tournament coming up, maybe it's legal to throw a kick to the head in the middle of a double back flip, but you are far more likely to face a garden variety roundhouse kick.  So practice defending and countering a roundhouse kick.  Depending on the rules of the tournament, roundhouse kicks are usually more common than other types of kicks.  Punches are usually more common than ridgehands.

Self defense training, in my opinion, is where this goes wrong most often.  It's easy for us as martial artists to fall into the trap of thinking that certain techniques are widely taught, so we stand a reasonable chance of facing them in real situations.  The fact remains that no matter how widely an arm bar is taught, we are far more likely to face a push or a punch than an arm bar.

3.  Prioritize based on the progression of the event.

Just like when I was playing volleyball, there are decisions to be made about how much time to train for preventing a bad situation and how much time to spend on recovering from that bad situation.

This is going to make some people mad, but it's true.  If your goal is self defense (again, see #1), you are better off prioritizing preventing bad things from happening.  Prevent going to the ground by learning to end the fight before it goes there.  Prevent getting in a physical altercation by learning to de-escalate.  Prevent needing to de-escalate by avoiding a situation before it has the chance to turn tense.

Not getting into a fight is a skill!  It might not be as fun to work on (Is your goal to have fun?  Nothing wrong with that!), but if you are training because you are truly concerned for your safety, this is where you need to spend the bulk of your time.  Don't ignore your physical skills of course, but your training time is better spent learning how to not need your physical skills.

4.  Work on principles.

You can train more efficiently by working on principles rather than techniques.  If you understand what you can do when an arm is extended toward you, it will matter a lot less whether the person is trying to punch you, push you, grab you, and so on.  If you deeply understand how a hinge joint works, you can exploit its limitations whether you are manipulating someone's arm, leg, finger, or toe.  It is a more difficult way to teach and learn, but ultimately it is more efficient than trying to ingrain a myriad of specific techniques to handle different but similar situations.  That's the academic solution--to know the exact answer to the exact situation.  Violence is just too complex to learn that many techniques.

The 3 Ways to Strike Effectively

Everyone wants their strikes to be effective, by which people usually mean "hitting hard."  But it's possible to have a "hard" strike that is ineffective, because what happens when a punch or kick lands is more nuanced than just how much muscle and effort is behind it.  To fully understand this, it's helpful to think about exactly what happens during an impact.

When something runs into something else, one of three things will happen:
1.  Something is going to break.
2.  Something is going to bend.
3.  Something is going to move.

When you strike water, will it break, bend or move?  It depends.

Actually you're very likely to get some combination of those things, but usually whatever happens will be primarily in only one category.  Which one you get (like almost everything in the martial arts) is just a matter of physics.

To paraphrase Dr. Dick Solomon from 3rd Rock from the Sun, "Kicks don't hurt people!  Physics hurts people!"

I was going to get mathy about this, and then I found this article by Dan Djurdjevic.   That article is objectively better than what I was going to write in every way, except that mine would have definitely included cat pictures.

I pass a million physics classes to get my degree, and yet my competitive edge as a martial arts blogger is still cat pictures. 

Striking vs. Pushing

If I throw a kick (or any striking technique, for that matter), I might be striking and I might be pushing.  It is impossible to tell just by looking at the technique thrown in the air.  It depends not only on how the technique is thrown, but also what is being hit.

Let's say you're doing a front kick to a large practice pad.  If you are striking, even if your strike is excellent, it probably won't impress many onlookers.  Take that same technique to a human body, and you'll break bones (Category 1: Something breaks).  But against a pad, the foam inside deforms a bit, and very little comes of the impact (Category 2: Something bends).  The pad is doing its job--protecting the pad holder from injury--at the expense of making the kick appear ineffective.  Oh look, Dan Djurdjevic did an article about this, too!  He even used front kick as an example!  I DON'T EVEN NEED TO BE HERE!

Where was I?  Right.  It looks ineffective.  It actually IS ineffective, against the pad at least.  The kicker was throwing a technique intended to break something, but the pad only bends.  Nobody went to the hospital, so it didn't work!  That's the price of safety.  Everything has to be modified so that it doesn't work.  That doesn't mean it's bad training or bad technique, only that you need to be aware of how and why it didn't work.  In this case, it didn't work because a pad was used for safety.  The kinetic energy has to go somewhere, and somebody thought it would be better for that kinetic energy to go into bending a pad than into breaking a person.  (I know, crazy, right?)

Now let's say you're throwing a very similar kick against the same large practice pad.  This time, you throw your kick and the pad holder staggers back several steps.  This looks impressive to onlookers, and they applaud you for your excellent technique, all except for the guy who immediately calls his agent to jump-start your career as the next Chuck Norris.  Impressive, sure, but this is not a strike.  It is a push.  (In fact, in our style, we call this a push kick instead of a front kick, and maybe in yours as well.)  Without the pad, this same kick would deliver very little damage to the pad holder, but still move them roughly the same distance (perhaps a little farther, because none of the kinetic energy being transferred would have gone into deforming the foam in the pad).

So, which is better?  That depends entirely on what you are trying to do.  If you are trying to do damage, you need to strike.  If you're trying to create space, you need to push.  It's important to train both.

Training strikes and pushes

Heavy bags and practice pads are great for training pushes, because you get a lot of feedback as to your effectiveness.  If your pad holder takes two steps back instead of one from your roundhouse kick, you know you are delivering more kinetic energy into your push.

Strikes can be trained on pads, but you get more performance feedback from board breaking.  If you can break a one-inch pine board with your technique, great!  If you can break it while it is only held securely on one side, even better!  If you are pushing instead of striking, that board is just going to move (Category 3) instead of break (Category 1).  Breaking a board that is completely unsecured (being dropped and punched out of the air, for example) is even more challenging.  But if you can do it, you know you have a good strike that is not pushing at all.  Again, though, if you take that same technique to a heavy bag, the onlookers will yawn, except for that one guy who calls his agent to say never mind, that he was wrong about you being the next Chuck Norris.

Plus when you put your foot through perfectly good lumber, you tend to feel pretty good about yourself.

Striking and Pushing vs. Deforming

So, Category 1 (breaking) and Category 3 (moving) both have their uses, but what about Category 2 (bending)?  Bending is more complicated.  Bending can be as simple as squishing a pad, or as nuanced as changing an enemy's structure.

If my kick to the knee twists his leg such that it is no longer supporting his weight and he falls over, he has neither been pushed back (Category 3) nor taken substantial damage (Category 1).  I've changed his structure (Category 2) to create an advantage for myself.  The same is true if I strike the groin and he doubles over, putting his head at an ideal height for a knee.  (Technically he's probably driving that motion rather than being moved into that position by my kick, if you want to split hairs, but the bending happened all the same.)  If I strike to the face and he leans backwards with his groin unprotected, that is also beneficial bending.

Strikes involved in joint locks and escapes from joint locks will be mostly bending impacts.

The other side of the coin

Having an understanding of how a strike can break, bend or move is helpful for optimizing your techniques, but it's also helpful for keeping yourself from getting injured.  You can use the same idea to defend yourself.  This comes in two flavors:

- If someone is trying to strike you, and you know what their goal is (break, bend, or move) you can manipulate your own structure and movement to try to make their strike fall into a different category.

- If you're the one initiating the strike, some of that kinetic energy can still go into you.  You generally don't want to be the thing that is doing the bending, moving, or especially breaking.

Here are some specific examples of how managing these three types of strikes can keep you from getting hurt.

1.  Protective equipment of any kind is meant to turn breaking (Category 1) into bending (Category 2).  Heavy bags, handheld targets, sparring protectors, floor mats, foam padding on weapons, etc., all exist entirely for that purpose.  (Well, and to appease insurance companies, but that's another topic entirely.)  When the impact happens, the majority of that kinetic energy goes into deforming the pad instead of deforming the person, making everyone a lot happier at the end of training.  This is also why car hoods are designed to crumple in an accident, why you would rather slip and fall on a carpeted floor than a marble one, drummers don't like to hit concrete with their sticks (crediting Casey Grillo with this observation--never tried it myself!), why gym shoes have rubber soles, and why buildings in earthquake-prone areas are designed to sway.  Bending is just plain healthier than breaking.

Protective gear takes your percussive kinetic energy and uses it to squish the pad instead of injure your partner or yourself.

2.  If you've been trained to exhale when holding a bag for a strong kick, that is another example of making something bend instead of break or move.  In this case, the thing that's bending is your lungs and your stomach, and it hurts a whole lot less than getting the wind knocked out of you.  (Actually, there's a lot more to it than just converting kinetic energy into Category 2 here, but that's definitely part of it.)  Learning to time your breathing can absolutely help protect you from the bad kind of impact.

3.  Once when I was training in Korea, I was sparring against a guy with the stereotypical taekwondo build--tall, skinny, long legs that can hit you from clear across the room.  It was full contact rules, so I didn't hold back when I knew I had him lined up for my side kick.  That would have been fine, but I didn't anticipate him moving forward into my kick at just that moment.  For a moment I thought I was going to snap him in half like a twig.  But in an impressive feat of athleticism, he completely reversed his momentum and went with my kick.  He tumbled a comical distance across the mat, halfway across the fairly large training floor.  But he stood up completely uninjured, having converted my striking impact (Category 1) into a displacement impact (Category 3).  Being able to "go with it" can prevent a whole lot of damage to your body.

Because the other option is just trusting your pads.

4.  Grandmaster Park cautioned me about teaching punching too early because of how difficult it is to punch well.  Ideally, when you punch, you're delivering your kinetic energy into your target.  But if your technique is off by even a little bit, that kinetic energy can go into you instead.  The most common examples I've seen of this are when the thumb is not positioned correctly or if the wrist is not straight.  If your thumb is protruding out in front of your knuckles so that it hits first, that kinetic energy is very likely to just break your thumb instead of breaking the other guy.  The same goes if you have your thumb tucked inside your hand.  If your wrist isn't straight and your arm isn't aligned properly behind your fist, your Category 1 breaking impact can get turned into Category 2 bending impact, which can be really awful for the tendons in your wrist.  There are lots of reasons to make sure your technique is correct.  Just because something seems like an inconsequential aesthetic detail doesn't mean that it actually is.

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I hope this has been helpful for understanding the different ways that striking techniques can be effective.  If you are properly categorizing your movements as breaking, bending or moving techniques, you're already a step ahead of those martial artists who see no difference.

Motivation, Martial Arts and Video Games

Remember in that last post when I said I once wrote and lost an essay about what martial arts has to do with video games?  Well, I found it.  I wasn't even looking for it.  But here it is, cleaned up a bit from its original form.  Enjoy!

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Teaching Martial Arts and Making Video Games Aren’t All That Different (2011 Essay)

In 2005, I signed up at a new martial arts school shortly after starting a new job as a scripter and gameplay programmer at a video game company.  I spent my days crafting engaging gameplay experiences among young, eccentric and irreverent creative minds, and I spent my evenings sweating in the reserved structure of the taekwondo school.  At work I went out of my way to be just as irreverent as my coworkers, making sure use some spicy language for the benefit of a few coworkers who felt it necessary to curb their language and expression in my presence.  After work, I had to flip a switch and turn it all off to be respectful of the martial art and the dojang where I trained.  In the mornings, everything revolved around creativity and discarding old ideas just because they had been done before, but in the evenings old ideas were revered because they were traditional.  I felt like every day I was living in two separate worlds that couldn’t be more different.

Several years later, I find myself thinking the opposite.

The project I was working on at the time.

Despite the many and obvious differences, teaching a martial arts class and scripting a video game level are both done with a goal of providing a fun and rewarding experience.

What most people outside of the game industry don’t realize is that like martial arts classes, video game levels are also learning environments.  For each game on the shelves, the rules are slightly different.  Those rules need to be taught to the player, or the player cannot enjoy the game.  It must be obvious to the player that doing A will result in B. Since lengthy tutorials can be tedious and not fun, game developers find themselves in the same situation as martial arts instructors.  Material needs to be taught, and it has to be rewarding or the student/player will not continue.

The first game I ever worked on.  Let's just say it would be an example of something.

Immersyve, a consulting company that works with game developers (among other things), explains the psychology of what makes good games so engaging.  They point to three key factors:  autonomy, competence, and relatedness.  They argue that when players can direct themselves and make meaningful decisions (autonomy), play the game with a high degree of skill as taught by their earlier experience with the game (competence), and enjoy interaction beyond themselves either socially or within the fictional world (relatedness), the game is engaging and players will return again and again.

In Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us, Daniel H. Pink argues that whether we are in the workplace, at school, or in a recreational environment, we are most motivated when we have three key components:  autonomy, mastery and purpose.  He explains that when people are given the freedom to pursue things the way that they see fit (autonomy), can work toward being better at doing it (mastery), and are able to work toward something larger than themselves (purpose), they are most motivated and most productive.

Either that, or maybe it's cheesy corporate posters that motivate us.

While reading Drive, I couldn’t help but notice the similarity.  (It was no surprise to me when later I found that the minds behind Immersyve and Daniel Pink both cite the same sources in psychological literature.)  Moreover, I couldn’t help but think that it very accurately reflects my martial arts experience.

Autonomy is emphasized with every new open-world game that hits the shelves.  But when we think about martial arts, we usually think about discipline and rigid compliance over autonomy.  Even so, autonomy is successful in the dojang.  Allowing students to choose their own goals, whether it is a rank, or a trophy, or a fitness level, or whatever else, is much more motivating than goals that are imposed by an instructor. (Or a parent!  Great example of that here.)

On the other hand, mastery/competence is easy to see in both venues.  Doing something well, or even just getting better at doing it, is rewarding.  It’s true in practically every recreational activity in the world, but in martial arts, it’s not only true, it’s also often considered a particularly noble goal to do something well purely for the sake of doing it well.

Of course, getting a new belt is usually pretty cool, too.

As for purpose/relatedness, that is equally important to game developers and martial arts instructors.  Players and students want to feel like they have gained something for their efforts.  They want to be part of a community.  They want to believe that their time was well spent and the result has value.  This is much, much easier for martial arts instructors than it is for game developers, who are confined to virtual worlds.  But the idea is the same.

I find this stuff fascinating.  I hope some of you do, too.

Drumming Inspired Martial Arts Drills: Martial arts and Drumming Part III

This is the third and final part in the Martial Arts and Drumming series, which began with How to Teach or Learn Any Physical Skill and 11 Ways Drumming Can Improve Your Training.

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To wrap up the Martial Arts and Drumming series, I'd like to share some training ideas that came out of this project. Some of these have very specific uses, but mostly you'll probably find the most value in them if your regular training starts to feel like a never-ending chore and you need to shake things up. Keep the fighting spirit! No one is holding you back! Train hard and have fun!

If you don't know how to read sheet music, it may be helpful to introduce yourself to the basics before getting too far into this section. As long as you know what quarter notes and eighth notes are, you should be fine for 90% of this. If those are nonsense terms to you, you may want to click here.

And if you're a drummer and not a martial artist, please, for the love of Lingadua, do not try any of these without an instructor who can teach you the proper technique. Injuries happen, and they are much, much more likely without the supervision of a qualified instructor. It is simply not possible for an online article to include everything you need to know to try it safely.

Ready?  Let's hit stuff.

1.  Kick to a Metronome 

Great for: balance, speed, agility, cardio, making your hip flexors cry.

First you will need a metronome app for your smart phone. This is my new favorite training tool. It is so much more useful than I ever would have guessed. If you want to go really old school, you could get an actual physical metronome, but with the quality free options available on any smart phone, I can't really recommend a physical one. I use Tempo Lite, but there are other good options out there.

Once you have a metronome on your phone, you can adjust the settings however you want, but try this to start. If you picked a different app it might not let you do exactly this, but do the best you can: 4/4 time signature, quarter notes, 130 bpm, with the first and third notes accented. Start with roundhouse kicks. On the accented notes, your kicking foot should touch the bag. On the regular notes, your foot should hit the floor. Adding a little hop between kicks can help you maintain your pace, and also help you stay light on your feet. Make sure your technique is correct (especially your pivot, as I have ranted about in the past), and be sure to do both sides.

One student commented that the metronome helped him stay light on his feet—something he has struggled with since white belt. He also seemed to be sweating a lot more than usual, and having a lot of fun.  For me, it's nice to have the metronome keep me honest when I start unconsciously slowing down, as tends to happen when fatigue sets in.

Metronome kicking drill at 130 beats per minute.

Variation #1: Set the metronome exactly the same except slow it down to about 60. Pivot (but don't hop) in between kicks. This is great for working your balance and control because it’s uncomfortably slow. If you just let your foot drop down to the floor, your foot will hit the floor too early and you'll lose the rhythm.

Metronome kicking drill at 60 beats per minute.

Variation #2: If you've got a good solid pad for this, go ahead and blast it. See if you can make the sound of your kick completely drown out the sound of the metronome.

Other variations on this drill—try different kicks, try adjusting the tempo, try going for longer or shorter amounts of time.  You should be able to go faster than 130 and slower than 60 to make it more challenging.  You can play with the settings on your metronome app to facilitate double kicks or kicking combinations. There are lots of possibilities here.

Technically you could instead kick to music, but the metronome is nice because you can set the tempo to be exactly what you need it to be. Then once you have it down, you can push the speed incrementally to make it more challenging. The other benefit is that with fewer sounds, there's less distraction and it's much easier to match your kick to the rhythm.

2.  Balance Work 

Great for: balance, strengthening your hips, making yourself feel better after how badly that last drill went.

If you're like me, the first time you tried that metronome drill at 130 bpm, you could only make it about 30 seconds before drifting off the beat. I was shocked that I was able to iron out my drumming technique and play to a metronome faster than I was able to reliably kick to a metronome. (I'm not really a drummer, I'm a martial artist who likes hitting things enough that it kind of bled over into owning a pair of drum sticks.) It came down to a balance problem. As I was kicking, when the smaller muscles that control balance became even a little bit fatigued, it took just a fraction of a second longer to push myself upright after kicking. It was subtle enough that I had never noticed it before in all my years of training, and in fact I thought my balance was pretty good. However, it wasn't good enough to do that metronome drill for very long. So I supplemented my training with these drills.

Most balance exercises involve just trying not to fall over from some unstable situation. That is certainly valuable for some things, but I needed balance while I was moving. These drills are modified from Loren W. Christensen's excellent Solo Training book, which really should already be in your library.

Balance work is really just picking a fight with gravity.

Start by lifting your leg into a roundhouse kick chambered position. Do it however your style suggests, but make sure your standing foot is pivoted correctly (please!). While in your chambered position, keep your eyes fixed on something that isn't moving. This will get your brain to help keep you steady, and you're going to need all the help you can get. With your leg off the ground chambered for roundhouse kick, shift your weight back and forth between the ball of the foot and the heel. Practice on both sides, and do each leg for 30 seconds to 1 minute at a time.

Variation #1: Lift your leg into a roundhouse kick chamber. Try to keep your raised leg perfectly still and move only your upper body by bending at the waist. Shift your upper body forward, then back to center, backward, then back to center, left, and back to center, right and back to center. Again, do each leg for 30 seconds to a minute at a time.

Variation #2: If these are too challenging, you can make it easier by putting your hand on the back of a chair or some other steady surface. Be sure not to put any weight onto it, just use it to help you keep your balance. Alternatively, you can just try to hold the position without moving your weight around. This is valuable but the goal here is to work the muscles that will pull you upright after you start to fall away from upright. Those muscles don't work as hard if you don't let your center of gravity move.

3. Experiment with Combinations

Great for... well, it depends.  

Go onto Google and search for "drum stick control combinations." You might get better mileage with an image search, but either way you'll get a dizzying number of results with various patterns of L's and R's written over and over again. Many of them are written with specific rhythms, but you can ignore that. Pick some combination of L's and R's, at random if you like. The nice thing about these combinations is they generally have a good balance of working your right and left side. (If you want to go crazy with it, much ado is made of this book, which consists of nothing but this.)

For this example, I'll use this combination:

R L R R    L R L L

I am told this is called a paradiddle, and I'm also told that there are rudiments called pataflafla and flamacue and sometimes even stranger sounding things, but I'm pretty sure this is just a joke that drummers play on the rest of us. I imagine them snickering to each other, "Heh, I got another one! She thinks a chumbly bumkinsteen is a real thing, and she's even going to put it in her blog!" Nice try, guys. Not falling for it.

But for now, we can work with this paradiddle thing. If you wanted to be a technically proficient drummer, you'd try to play those as evenly as possible, and I'd also recommend using drum sticks, but we're not going to do either of those things. Instead you're going to experiment with combinations that match our pattern of L's and R's. Don't try to match the suggested rhythm. Your rhythm needs to be dictated by the flow of whatever combination you choose.

If you're a beginner, any combination will do. If you're intermediate or advanced, try to choose a combination that makes sense for whatever your training focus is. If you're interested in tournament sparring, choose something that would score in the ring. If your focus is self defense, make sure your combination does damage efficiently. If you're practicing for show, choose something that is technically challenging and looks really cool. And so forth.

Variation #1:  Paradiddle for Light Contact Sparring

There are plenty of options here, but in this example, she uses a right punch, left punch, right kick, right kick. That fulfills the requirements of the drill, to use our R L R R stick combination. For bonus points, she's trying to craft a combination that will score in a light contact sparring match.  The first punch goes to the head, hopefully drawing her opponent's hands up and leaving the body open for the second punch. The two kicks go to the body and to the head in quick succession, since that can be difficult to defend against.

Paradiddle (RLRR) for light contact sparring.

Variation #2:  Paradiddle for Self Defense

Now the goal is to do damage.  The combination she opts for is a right hand palm strike to the face, maintaining contact while the left arm comes in with an elbow to the head. Still maintaining contact (this target doesn't have shoulders so you'll have to use your imagination) she drives two knees into the gut with the right leg.

Paradiddle (RLRR) for self defense.

Variation #3:  Paradiddle Just For Fun

This time she built a combination with no larger training goal in mind. The names of those kicks are different depending what style of martial art you practice, but you can see that she uses the same pattern--right foot, left foot, right foot, right foot.

Paradiddle (RLRR) just for fun.

The goal here is to explore outside of your go-to techniques and combinations (let's be honest, we all have our favorites) and to be more creative in your movement. Have fun with it!

4.  Play a Song

Great for: balance, control, speed, accuracy and timing.

Ready to go really nuts? Pick a song, preferably one where the drums are fairly simple. You'll probably have to slow it down a lot.  I don't care who you are, your hip is not going to be as fast as your wrist. And if your hip is as fast as a professional drummer's wrist, congratulations on medalling in every single event in the 2018 Olympics, and good luck with the PED scandals.  

Once you've got a song and a tempo you like, you can try to "play" it on martial arts equipment. Try to find a few things that sound different when you hit them.  I despise xray paper as a training tool, but I bought some for this project after grudgingly admitting that it makes a pretty cool sound when you hit it, and it's a very different sound than that oh-so-satisfying thump that comes from hitting most training pads. If you're hitting anything that was not designed as martial arts equipment, you probably want to wear shoes. Safety first, martial silliness second.

Insufferably silly drum cover! Stop laughing, it's harder than you think.

You will probably get more mileage out of this drill if you keep your contact light, but it will depend a lot on what you are hitting.  Trying to get a similar volume of sound out of your various targets is an excellent way to practice your control, to make sure you have the precision of movement to hit with the exact amount of force you intend.

Variation:  If trying a song is too intimidating, try a few combinations based on simple rhythms. Practically any sheet music will do.  Pick a measure and assign each note to a target, and strike the targets according to the measure's rhythm. (This would be one of those times where if you can't read sheet music, it might be helpful to get a quick and dirty introduction.) Use your metronome app to make sure you're keeping steady.  My students especially enjoyed this one.  Experiment with it and have fun!

5.  Your Turn

Great for: deeply understanding your art, having fun, crossing things off your bucket list.

This project has been incredibly rewarding on many levels. I learned to play the drums a little bit, and that's cool, but it's the smallest benefit of everything that came out of this. I met new people, challenged myself mentally in ways that helped me grow, came up with some drills that will help me be a better martial artist and a better instructor, and my understanding of rhythm as it pertains to martial arts has expanded so much that I can't believe I ever thought I knew anything about it.

So now it's your turn. Go try something. It can be anything, as long as it has nothing to do with martial arts and you've never done it before. Then look for the areas of overlap. Jesse Enkamp, the original Karate Nerd, says, "Sometimes it's important to look outside of karate to improve your karate. I have this philosophy that karate is like a mountain. … If you want to see your own mountain better, sometimes you have to climb the mountain next to your mountain. Looking from over here gives you perspective, meaning you see karate and its relationship to other stuff more clearly. … I try to connect the dots and see how this relates to what I'm doing, to give me new ideas and try to remix them into the karate mindset."

So what have you been meaning to try someday, but never did? Now you have the perfect excuse because it's part of your training. It really can be anything. I once wrote (and subsequently lost) an essay about how teaching martial arts was similar to making video games. How is martial arts like fishing? Writing a novel? Breeding cats? Juggling geese? I look forward to hearing everyone's adventures in bilingual slam poetry, geriatric skateboarding, aerial cello playing, x-treme crocheting, jetpack snorkeling, and whatever else you ever wanted to try.

How is making Internet memes like martial arts? Photo credit.

Seriously, go try something and tell me about it in the comments. I'd love to hear from you.