Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Do 1,000 of Something...Anything!!!

Jack Lalane was famous for his feats of fitness. Even in his 60's he was still doing things men 1/3 his age could only dream of doing. One of these feats was the 1,000 push up-1,000 pull up challenge. He did this in 82 minutes when he was 45 years old.

Drilling for wrestling and judo that magic number again is 1,000. 1,000 of a single throw or take down done in one sitting with a partner alternating sets of 25 or 50 was key to developing muscle memory and recall.

The whole point is to reach a place where you didn't think about the movement. Where you were too tired to care and you just stop thinking about it. You reach a point where your mind gets out of the way of your body and let's your body perform the movement efficiently.

Technically, we're all lazy. Our bodies want to perform an action as efficiently and effortlessly as possible. however, our conscious mind works against us. Anxiety over whether you are doing the move correctly, being self conscious about mistakes you're making will literally short circuit your body and create wasted movement and undue stress that inhibits performance.

We've all been there, trying to learn something new, worried about making a mistake and what we look like in front of our peers and our self. But you need to get past those anxieties to really start the learning process and the easiest and simplest way to do that is to fatigue your mind through physical exertion.

The more experienced you are the less time it takes to reach that point of "not caring". In the beginning, it may take several hundred reps to reach that point and you may only get a handful of good techniques out of 1,000 reps. But once your body figures out what to do, it remembers and the next time you may triple that number until it becomes easier to get to that sweet spot.

Once your body figures it out you can repeat it with new tasks so the process grows shorter each time. Some people call it "knowing your body". Athletic people have the ability to get to this point sooner than others. They naturally understand the letting go process because they can manage the anxiety of learning. Most children can do this easier than adults because they don't have all the mental baggage grown ups carry. Most kids simply "don't care" what they look like until that day comes when they do. To get to that point, you must trick yourself into not caring through physical exhaustion.

Start with something simple, like a horizontal Edge of Hand from Module 1 of The Self Defense Training System. Do this 1,000 times and note when you stop thinking about it and just do it. Then the next time you do 1,000, note the number when you stop thinking about it and then compare the two, I'll bet you dollars to donuts the second number is significantly lower than the first. Once you can get that number below 15 or 20, it's time to work on another technique.

You need only do this with your core techniques (edge of hand, chin jab, tiger claw/ heel of hand and whatever other main techniques you feel fit your tool box best). After that you train to apply those core techniques to any situation and guess what...you're done.

How many techniques in your main tool box? You only have room for about 6. That doesn't mean you can't recall dozens, it's just that five or six is all you can commit to instinct and train to be convulsive.


Train Honestly,
Damian Ross, CEO The Self Defense Company

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