and you get to work on anything you want.
One of the complaints I’ve often heard from students is that training alone is boring. How can that be? If you go into your solo training with the right mind set, that is, you picture before you an ugly, salivating beast of a human being who wants to rip your head off, how can your desperate fight for survival be boring?
Use your imagination when you train alone, just as you did when you played by yourself as a child. Make the imaginary attacker your boss, ex-spouse, the guy who cut you off on the freeway, the punks who threw trash in your yard, or that mean school teacher with the bony fingers. While this might seem a little sick, psychologists say it’s actually a healthy (and legal) way to let off steam. It doesn’t matter who you see in your mind’s eye, as long as the image brings out your warrior spirit to enable you to train intensely and get a good workout.
Here are 10 ways to make your solo training interesting, challenging and make you a better fighter.
1. SHADOWBOXING
I have always felt that students who don’t incorporate shadowboxing in their training are missing a valuable aid to their growth. As the name implies, shadowboxing involves your moving about the room punching, kicking and blocking an imaginary opponent who is throwing punches and kicks back at you. Here are just a few of the things you get from it.
Cardiovascular Benefits
If you want to improve your wind for sparring, then spar. Don’t jog, climb the stair master, or swim laps down at the creek. Instead, work to develop your cardiovascular system doing the very thing you want aerobic conditioning for - in this case, to be able to spar without getting weak in the legs and blue in the face.
To get in good cardio condition, you need to shadowbox for at least 20 minutes two or three times a week with your heart rate sustained at about 75 to 80 percent of your maximum. Here is how you determine your maximum heart rate and then your training heart rate.
Males, take the number 220 and females take the number 226 and subtract your age. The difference is your maximum heart rate. Multiply this by the percentage you want to train at and that will give you the heart rate you need to maintain throughout your shadowboxing session. Here is how it looks if you are a 20-year-old male.
220 - 20 = 200 X .75 = 150 beats a minute
If this male is out of shape, he should reduce his training percentage of his maximum heart rate to 60 percent and then progressively increase it as his aerobic condition improves. Even when you are in good shape, it’s never a good idea to sustain a rate or 85 percent of higher.
Your pulse sites are at your wrist and the side of your neck. Stop sparring and check one of them for six seconds and then resume sparring. Multiply the number of beats you felt by 10. If you felt 15 beats, 15 multiplied by 10 is 150 beats per minute. If you are 20 years old, you are right on target. If you counted 10 beats, you need to pick up the pace, but if you counted 20, you need to slow down.
Improve your Timing with Music
Select music that has a pronounced rhythm and then block, kick and punch to its beat. You will find yourself moving about rhythmically and launching your techniques reflexively to the beat as if responding to openings and attacks with a real opponent. A nice side benefit is that music has a way of camouflaging your fatigue, enabling you to train longer and harder. But watch out, when the sounds stop, fatigue will hit you like a truck.
To find your pulse, use your fingers to press at the hollow between your ear and jaw, or along your wrist
Coordinating Footwork with Combinations
It’s one thing standing before a mirror and throwing your combinations, and it’s quite another shadowboxing combinations as you move about the room without entangling your feet. The latter provides you with the opportunity to launch your combinations from constant motion as you move forward, backward, sideways, bob and weave.
You Always get to Win
You always come out on top when you shadowbox an invisible opponent (unless you are a masochist and deliberately lose). All your techniques get to the target without being blocked, you are always successful at blocking your opponent’s kicks and punches, and your match always ends with you as the victor. Savor the moment as few wins in life are this easy.
2. ENVIRONMENTAL TRAINING
As a former police officer who has been in dozens of physical force situations, I can tell you that not one of them ever took place in a nice, wide-open space or on mats like those in your martial arts school. I’ve fought people on roof tops, on the edge of a dock over a river, in a slimy skid row bathroom, on stairways, inside of a car engulfed in flames, and many other places I had never thought of when I was learning my techniques.
Training in different environments is a fun and beneficial way to learn more about your favorite moves. Consider conducting your solo training in the following places around your house.
Stairs
It’s a whole different world trying to defend yourself on 12-inch wide steps as opposed to a wide-open floor. Do your rep practice and shadow boxing while moving up and down a set of stairs, while leaning against the wall with one foot on a high step and the other on a low one. Evaluate your favorite techniques as to what you can and can’t do while trying to maintain your footing.
Cluttered Room
Practice your techniques in your cluttered basement or in your crowded attic. Don’t move anything out of the way. Move around those boxes, kick over that stack of tires, jump over that collection of newspapers and move around that pile of unwashed clothes. If barefoot, look out for mousetraps.
Small Room
I’ve fought people in restroom stalls, clothes closets, and phone booths. Once I thrashed around with a man in that narrow space between a bedroom wall and the bed, on which his wife laid with a knife protruding from her throat. You quickly realize that you can’t do your techniques in these places the same way you do them in your school. Train in a small room, like your bathroom or pantry, to learn more about your punches and kicks.
* See Training Outdoors, #9 for another fun and beneficial way to train in the environment.
3. REPS
Everyone in karate is looking for the secret that will make them faster, stronger and an overall better fighter. Well, there is something that will do it, but it’s not a secret.
It’s repetitions, lots and lots of reps. If you are a disciplined hard trainer, you already know this. But if you are one of those students who is under the impression that doing a new technique a half dozen times is all that is needed, here is a revelation: You need to do lots more.
The concept is simple: The more times you correctly repeat your kicks, punches and kata, the better you will be at them. The trick, however, is to make the reps interesting. The way I practiced when I began in the 1960’s - sitting in horse stance and executing punch after punch after punch - just doesn’t get it in the new millennium. You still need to do reps, but there are other ways
