MacDonald Academy of Martial Arts
Kenpo Karate, Krav Maga, and Fitness for the Boston / Watertown area
Don’t forget that classes resume Monday, 7/11!
Here’s an online Tabata timer. There are also mp3 downloads.
Because friggatriskaidekaphobia / paraskevidekatriaphobia just don’t have the same ring…
To help perpetuate the fear of Friday the 13th, we did workout last night that made Jason’s torturous acts pale in comparison. The following was completed in pairs, partners counting each other’s reps. The exercises could be reordered and partitioned as desired. Eight hundred thirteen reps were performed once the list was completed.
| • Burpees | 100 |
| • Push-Ups | 100 |
| • Squats | 150 |
| • Sit-ups | 200 |
| • 4-punch burst | 50 |
| • Front Kicks | 50 |
| • Knees across the room (trips) | 13 |
| TOTAL REPS | 813 |
I often get the question (typically after a grueling drill that leaves students gasping) “How do I improve my conditioning?” More often than not, the answer is “Train more Krav.” But sometimes your personal schedule doesn’t align with the class schedule, or maybe you train every day and still feel your fitness isn’t where you’d like it to be. For the former, some of the ideas in this post can “fill the gaps” in training. The latter case can use this post to strengthen weaknesses for an overall training improvement.
For the great majority of practitioners, Krav Maga alone will more than meet their needs and desires for fitness. Krav Maga will certainly get you faster, stronger, and develop a bigger gas tank, but having a solid base level of strength and conditioning makes all of those attributes in the context of Krav easier to develop. Once you’re strong and fast in general, you can focus on coupling those attributes with the specific skills of Krav Maga instead of just trying to catch your breath between front kicks.
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Don’t forget that classes resume tomorrow, Saturday 7/10 at 8:30am!
Here’s an online Tabata timer. There are also mp3 downloads.
No rest between rounds.
Here are directions from the Academy.
1:00 rest between rounds.
Over the weekend Danelle and I attended a strength and conditioning seminar by Kevin Kearns, S&C coach to many big-time MMA fighters. While he didn’t delve as deeply as we would have liked into programming and “bigger picture” stuff, we did come away with a lot of new and neat ideas to incorporate into Krav classes.
Now, do you need the conditioning of an MMA fighter to be proficient in Krav Maga, or self-defense in general? Following the One Rule of Krav Maga (Don’t Get Hurt / Go Home Safe), we want to end an altercation as quickly as possible, not outlast our opponent in a three-round sport fight. So technically, no, we don’t need to train like those super athletes. But why take the chance? As goes one of my favorite of many quotes from expert strength coach Mark Rippetoe, “Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. I’m working on an in-depth post about metabolic conditioning as it relates to Krav training, so much more on this later…
We instructors have a pretty good idea of what’s needed to effectively train for self-defense, but let’s hear from you. A big reason for creating the new blog-based site was to get students more involved, so give us some feedback in the comments below. Here are some questions to get you started:
