Starting Points

OSU!

Welcome to Yoshukai Strong. I'm very excited about this post, as it's the first vlog in a series I hope will be a regular occurrence. I hope that you all enjoy the videos and can integrate them into your routines, practice, training sessions or what have you. One rule, though -don't feed the trolls.

This post is going to cover a few drills that fighters can use as a "go to" for training. Each drill can both scale and adapt for various reasons such as number of people available and so on.

3-5-7

The first drill, I call "3-5-7". The purpose of "3-5-7" is to get the fighter accustomed to throwing combinations in bunches. A lot of times we see fighters on the mat throwing punch here, kick there (I'm guilty too...). We want to work towards being effective with technique and ensuring each technique gets us somewhere.

Basic description as follows:
Set a 1 minute timer
Throw fighting combinations of three moves first, then five moves, then seven moves
Complete as many sets as possible.
For each time the fighter cannot accomplish the specified number of moves in the combination, accumulate 10 burpees.


The drill can be scaled (up) for both time and number of combinations. The drill can be done on a heavy bag or kick shield with a partner; this too can be scaled to a partner exercise without the kick shield.

10 Good Ones

We usually do this drill with the mawashi geri, but most any technique will work just fine, and the name says it all; 10 good techniques.

Use a kick shield (with a partner) or heavy bag, and as hard as you can muster WITH GOOD TECHNIQUE, execute a mawashi geri. Try to kick harder and harder each time. If you execute with bad form, it doesn't count. Didn't land the technique, it didn't count. You want the 10 best techniques possible. Switch sides and repeat. There is no time component, and the goal is to get accustomed to adapting to power output.

Move the Holder

With this drill, your goal is to physically move another human, around the same size weight using a technique. With hiza geri, for example:

Partner or pad holder holds pad, kick the pad with good form aiming to move the pad and its holder.
Pad Holder: you will want to stand in a good fighting stance, and move with the force; don't resist (channeling Yoda I am not).

This drill works great with hiza geri, mae geri, ushiro mawashi geri and ushiro yoko geri.

All of these drills are fairly basic and easy to do. Students at any level of ability can perform these drills.

Hope this helps!
OSU!