Today's Training

My day started early at 5.30am with some joint mobility, yoga and light stretching. I usually also practice hitting the makiwara in the morning, but I have a knuckle that's still recovering from a tough session a few days ago. Even though it's pretty uncommon now that I fail to pitch the severity of my training correctly, I always make sure that my hands are recovered and free from cuts before striking again - otherwise its counter-productive.

I always enjoy joint mobility training in the morning. It really helps to keep your body healthy and awakens the mind for the day ahead. A focus on joint mobility is rarely emphasised in much of modern day training, but I consider it to be a integral part of my daily regime and essential to the long-term goals of karate.

This evening I performed a kettlebell conditioning session. usually I go fairly heavy, but this time I decided to drop the weight down to 24kg and I set my timer for 1 min rounds with 30 sec rest. I completed a total of 30 rounds covering exercises for the whole of the body. I mixed up dynamic with static, push with pull and focussed more towards the end on specific exercises to help develop the attributes associated with the application of karate.

Soon I will be releasing a kettlebell training video download especially for karate practitioners that will cover how I personally integrate this tool into my dojo practice - to find out when this will be due for release, be sure to sign up to my mailing list...the sign up form is on the home page!

That's all for now - time for bed :-)