01.12.14
Today’s session dealt with agility and changing direction during the warm-up, attacking offline in the technical section and active recovery in the strength section.
Warm-up
Exclusively using cones and mats we went through various footwork and groundwork movements. This began with simple running then moved onto taking angles and then v-step, in particular. We then added “whip tails” and shin-blocks to work balance in motion, the Ali shuffle and basic shadow boxing between cones to begin coordination work. The agility area was then increased with my client using side-steps to reach two rows of cones arranged diagonally. We then brought in directional changes and some clinch exercises, sprawl/double leg takedown movements between the cones. Going to the ground we did side-stepping using bear crawls followed by snaking/shrimping forwards and backwards. This latter exercise forced my client to continually change direction with his hips to each individual cone, promoting betting core stimulation and twitch muscle action.
The technical section began with slipping the jab. This is a great way to introduce students to better upper body mobility and instinctive yet proactive defence. Having an active upper body makes for a more difficult target to hit and allows the fighter more opportunities to attack. We then went through three different attacks offline following the slip. These were the overhand cross, the rear leg round kick and the single leg takedown.
The strength section focused on pressing exercises with mid to heavy weights and pulling exercises with resistance bands for active recovery. We covered both upper and lower body. The first consisted of four sets of incline and flat dumbells presses. The first three sets were straightforward presses with heavy weights and the final set was an incline superset, involving single arm presses. Active recovery for this exercise was single arm horizontal rows with a resistance band. The second set consisted of three Zercher squats. The active recovery exercise between these lifts was a butterfly guard pull with a resistance band.
The session was finished with some PNF stretching.
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