Level Six (Green/Red) - JLFS Student Curriculum All previous skills as well as the following Movements: 1. Step Across and Pivot for Spin Techniques Upper body Strikes: 1. Spinning Back Fist 2. Spinning Hammer Fist 3. Shovel Punch Kicks: 1. Step Across Spin Back Kick 2. Pivot Spin Back Kick 3. Slide up Forward Leg Axe Kick Defensive Skills: 1. Drop step 2. Snap back Practice Modules: 1. Benny Briscoe 2. Short Punch 3. 38 4. Shotgun Warm-ups: 1. Crunches – 2 Minutes 30 Seconds 2. Push-ups – 2 Minutes 30 Seconds 3. Stretching – 5 Minutes 4. Shadow Sparring – 2 minutes 30 Seconds Sparring: 1. Full Contact Sparring 2 Minutes (2 Rounds) Full-Contact Training No-No’s In recent years, mixed-martial arts competitions and cross-training have become popular. Two good things have resulted from this trend. It has served as a wake- up call for all martial artists regarding what works in a fight and what doesn¹t, and it has taught students the importance of being physically fit. Many instructors have jumped on the full-contact cross-training bandwagon and are having success teaching their students how to mix different fighting arts. However, wearing a black belt for more than four decades has made me cautious about which drills best teach students how to combine arts. Only if an instructor chooses his drills wisely does cross-training offer many advantages. The most popular form of cross-training involves mixing kickboxing drills with classical karate. The following are five things to avoid while you engage in the training trend of the decade. 1) The forward hand strike that is often used in tournaments produces no significant contact and can cause you to develop a bad habit. The real purpose of your lead-hand punch should be two-fold. First, its primary purpose is to stabilize the target. Secondly, it can be used to support a tactical maneuver such as "blinding" your opponent just before his trigger squeeze, or to make him lose his balance by forcing him to step backward, shifting his weight onto his heels to make his techniques useless. This is a great tactic to use against a hard kicker or someone with a solid straight right punch. 2) The overly wide stances and backward-leaning postures that are often seen in point tournaments can set you up to be leg-kicked, and also encourages lazy hand positioning. Hopefully, when you have experienced practicing safe leg- kicking and leg-defensive drills during your preparation for real combat, you will realize how unrealistic some of the tournament stances are. And, once you learn how weak your neck is as you play with some kickboxing neck-wrestling drills, you will become fascinated with a previously never-before-used weapon, the knee strike. Practice throwing three- and four-point hand combinations against focus mitts to make your hands more active. Most martial artists develop a habit of only firing single strike hand techniques. These drills will be not only a new experience, but additionally, they will also make your martial arts classes more exciting. Learning how to duck, slip, weave, or any other head rhythm skills, and any of the pivoting maneuvers such as turning an opponent are important, useful boxing skills that are rarely taught in traditional settings. 3) Most black-belt instructors do not realize that the so-called "safety" gear or foam equipment that is used for sparring can be very dangerous. Foam is used for flotation purposes; it was never engineered for insulation or protection. A smart instructor will make sure his students are safe by ensuring that they wear equipment that is designed to prevent injuries. Students do not come back to class when they have been hit too hard or get injured. There are many contact drills that should be taught and practiced; however, many mainstream instructors avoid integrating them into their curriculum. Some never allow any sparring in their schools for fear of loosing students. Simply change the words that scare members such as boxing, kickboxing, full- contact, or even the word sparring to the term interaction drills. The poor quality or non-existence of safety equipment at most martial arts schools often results in these skills being omitted from the curriculum. Wearing 14- or 16- ounce gloves and good headgear when you work on something simple such as your jabbing drills will produce a sense of confidence you probably have never experienced before. For example, the type of proper gear that is used to block leg kicks insulates the shin so well that the bone could absorb a strike from a baseball bat. To know if you are using sufficient protective gear, ask yourself, "Can I punch a brick wall with the glove I use and not hurt my hand?" 4) Point-fighting type lunge-kicks or lunge-punching develops bad habits. The correct way to land a punch is to make sure your elbow is directly behind the knuckles at the point of contact. When you throw a straight right or reverse punch, your elbow should be at the exact same height as your knuckles at the point of contact. When you punch from the hip, as with a reverse punch, or when you fire a lunging back knuckle as we see in tournaments, your fingers will always make contact with the target first, not your knuckles. If a fighter punches off the hip instead of the chin, he will lose both speed and power. Overhand punches are faster and stronger than underhand ones. Punches off the hip use primarily the triceps and pectoral chest muscles for power. As you trigger a shot to your opponent’s head, rotate the hip through the center line before you release the punch. Rotate your elbow outwards, “abduction,” as you release your punches so that the elbow is almost on the same level as is your fist. This angle is the correct mechanics for power punching; this abduction movement with your elbow activates the use of your lateral deltoid and rhomboid muscle groups for greater power. Karate punching skills are not being properly taught this discipline of execution. When you are lunging, your base or pocket position looses balance, and there is too much hang time at the end of your punch or your kick. This offensive gap, “waiting for a receipt,” will allow your opponent to time his counter with ease. Numerous recovery drills, reaction-timing drills and counter-timing drills are used in kickboxing to prevent this problem. Mixing the full contact with your classical drills will help prevent you from throwing your shoulder forward of the knee on your leading leg when you punch. 5) Long-term practice of classical karate sparring drills which teach you to only use a linear type pursuit when you attack. This unchanging practice prevents you from learning how to use pivoting and slide steps to turn your opponent. If your opponent is about to throw a straight right at your chin, you can step slightly outward (through the “side door”) with your left foot. Then, using your rear foot, slide slightly clockwise to create a "pivot slide step," called “pivot out.” This movement will turn your opponent slightly away from you, allowing you to slip his right punch and counter over the top with a left ridge-hand or hook punch. If this opponent is a taller foe, you could side step and pivot out and then slip to your outside. This movement is called “step out slip.” In our classical stances we tend to put too much weight on our heels, but in this drill you distribute your weight evenly on each foot with the majority of your weight (about ten percent more) on the balls of your feet. This makes it easy to explode quickly, to block or intercept an incoming leg kick, or to pivot inside or outside to turn your opponent. Instructors begin by teaching the correct posture of a fighting stance, and then they work on proper bio-mechanics. It is not possible to develop these effective mechanics with confidence without incorporating the training with gloves, doing focus mitt or bag work, and making sure you do simulated sparring drills with a partner. .