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Zoran -> Solo Training by John McSweeney (Mar. 5th, 2007, 6:17:04 PM)
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At some point in your life, you may no longer be training in a class or even with a partner. Training on your own will then become your only way to maintain your self-defense ability. For such solo training, you must create your own daily training routine, one that you will stick with right through the years. I'm seventy, yet I still train every day.
Your routine should have the following characteristics: - It must be short, ten to fifteen minutes maximum. Any longer and you’ll become bored, and then discard it completely.
- It must be simple. Simplicity breeds automatic response.
- It must be non-strenuous. A strenuous workout will wear down the body, especially in your later years. (Remember that self-defense is a lifelong thing-violent criminals don’t respect age.
Pick a small number of strikes that appeal to you and work them against a heavy bag or merely through the air. Be sure to include punches, chops, circular and linear heel-palm shots, upswings, elbows and knee shots. Other than knees, kicks are only moderately useful, but if you work them, be sure to slow them down as you age, because they can be harmful to knee and hip joints, and may eventually enfeeble you.
As you train, visualize the target of each strike, and keep in mind that there are only a handful of key targets on the human body. In descending order of importance, they are the: 1) throat, 2) eyeball, 3) side and back of neck, 4) head, 5) sternum/heart, 6) bladder/groin.
Concentrating on the most vulnerable key targets is extremely important, especially as you age. May strong men have been kicked in the groin, kneed in the bladder, or hit in the sternum, and still kept fighting. However, very few can continue fighting, no matter how strong they are, when their larynx is ruptured by a chop, their cervical vertebrae fractured by an upward heel palm to the chin, their eyeball pierced by a finger-poke, or their brain jarred loose from its moorings by a circular palm strike or looping elbow to the skull.
Be sure to include Tiger Moves as part of your daily routine, as they will help you maintain the muscle and joint strength that is essential for effective hitting power.
Start your solo training regimen now, even if you’re a twenty year-old brown belt. Not only is it a good habit to get into early, but it will also train you to focus on the best targets and the best strikes, which is, after all, what "last resort" self-defense is all about-self-defense when your life is on the line.
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