Most intense training session?

[Jack]

Hi everyone,

 

I was just thinking perhaps we can all share our stories on some of our toughest lessons we've endured. I'll go first.

 

My toughest lesson, I was alone on a large field and I had come here to train. The sun was out and it was feeling pretty hot. So I go through some basic warm up techniques, then go for a short jog then stretch out. I decide I am going to go through my syllabus for my next grading and finish it off with some conditioning work. Doesn't sound too bad, does it?

 

I started by drilling groin blocks/lower section inner block, whatever you want to call it. (I do Taekwondo, by the way) I go the length of the field drilling groin block, thats about half a kilometer of coming forward doing groin blocks. I jog the distance back and go the length doing chest block. Jog/run back then head block, then outer chest block, then knifehand head block, X block, etc. Every move taking at least 10 minutes each.

 

So after an hour of this I've finished the first of seven sections. Seeing how I would like to sleep tonight, I push myself faster to finish the distance with each move and I finish the bocks in back stance quickly, even though it seemed like an eternity. For some reason after I finish this some little voice inside my head says 'sprint to the end and back', so, I sprint as much as I can of a kilometer, I end up running, then jogging, then sort of staggering back. After collapsing on the floor for a few seconds, I dragged myself up and started my hand striking techniques, front, reverse, knifehands, etc. After this I go into horseriding stance and drill 300 punches as fast as possible, my arms felt like complete jelly after this. Which was handy since my next section was kicks. So off I go down the field again with my front kicks, roundhouse, side, hook, axe, crescent, turn hook, turn side, slipstep hook, slipstep side. As I do my last few slipstep side kicks I feel rain trickle onto my nose and look up at the sky to see that the pretty sun has been replaced by a large, blanketing black cloud. I drilled my patterns several times and then get my combinations over and done with as my lungs burn in heat despite the freezing air and grass. Finally, its over.

 

Wait no, I promised myself I was going to do conditioning today and I don't like to let myself down. So I try to run 2 miles but I simply cannot, I have to break every other minutes. After an emotional 30-40 minutes I finally finish the 2 miles. I get down to do pushups but I am so exhausted I collapse after my first fifteen. I literally collapsed and lied down in the rain for five minutes before pulling myself up to cool down, stretch, and limp home.

 

The most strange thing about this is that afterwards it felt as if a great weight had been lifted off of my shoulders, it's difficult to explain but I looked into this and found that what I had done is referred to by Japanese warriors as the act of Shibumi, which I'll explain later.

 

This post wasn't at all ment to brag or anything, I'm sure we have all done something similar to this before at some time or another. I just wanted to share my experience with you, and I would like to hear about some of yours so that we may all enjoy what we have in common.

 

So, post away my friends.

 

 

[Eye of the Tiger]

Seperating the mind from the body you can acheive your limitations. The US Navy Seals do this in hell week when you are are constantly doing physical activity for a whole week without sleep, with small meals. This is to test that they can push them selves through anything and will not give up no mastter what happens. If you think of the pain you are enduring you have already lost. You have to be somewhere else. This what I do when I train. I just simply don't think of anything and can push my self to the limits. I also think of how much I will grow from each workout and if I dont train hard enough someone is going to have that much more adavantage in beating me so that gives me motivation to push past anything until my physical body gives up.

 

 

[Pacificshore]

Ok, here's one of mine. It was when I was tested for my black belt. My instructor and his instructor are military people (U.S. Marine Corp). My test along with my buddy was held in the Eastern Sierras. It was during the winter time too. Our instructors and senior students basically woke us up at zero dark thirty, or in the middle of the night/morning after driving to get there all day.

 

They had us drilling, doing katas, running, excercising throughout until sunrise. Mind you this was in the snow too. We'd be barefoot in the snow part of the time, then running back to the camp fire to thaw out, and then back for more.

 

We continued on throughout the rest of the day breaking up our training sessions with rappelling excercises, and other stuff that I can't rightly recall at this time. The rappelling came to mind because I about fell off the face of the rock, not knowing what I was doing. Plus we were all like jello after all the constant drills, katas, etc.

 

After all the extra cirricular stuff, we went back to the karate stuff until the sun went down. Luckily for us there were some natural hot springs nearby which we sat in to soak our aching muscles.

 

That was one of the toughest training sessions I had ever been involved in. Plus, I'm not use to the cold snowy weather cause where I grew up was tropical

[--]

The Night of a Thousand Kata *shudder*

 

It seems to be some sort o cult tradition among Shotokan senseis.

 

 

[SaiFightsMS]

I think the hardest and most demanding workout I have done was actually my 5th kyu test. I had been fairly sick and gave everything that I had that day doing the drills the kata, the sparring. And I had a weapns test that day too. If that test had gone on for 2 more minutes I would have been in a heap in the floor.

 

That was the one test I really regretted not having my nice secure wheel chair to crawl into when it was all over. Getting to the car to get home was a real challange. It took me like three days to recover after that one.

 

 

[Jack]

Very interesting stories, and I'm with you both PacificShore and Sai on the difficulty and sheer exhaustion associated with a good grading.

 

Would anybody else care to share some tales?

 

 

[BlueDragon1981]

My most interesting training session would have to be the night the highest rank in the GJKJA came to our dojo. (not the grand master then next highest) He is a very good martial artist.

 

Other than that one my most interesting would have to be the night I fought 3 people in the ring at once and learned 2 new katas and some self defense. That was definatly a night I learned a lot. (only five people attended class that night I think)

 

My toughest lesson is always when I step into the ring with one of three people. All blackbelts. One is a no holds barred fighter. He always knocks me around. I do learn from it though.

 

One lesson that comes to mind as being the most painful was standing in one stance for 2 hours. (horse stance). Talk about pain in the legs.

[AnonymousOne]

The hardest time I ever had was doing a 200 man fight in Japan in 1981. Fighting 200 other Dan grades one after the other was so incredibly draining.

 

 

[karatekid1975]

So far, mine was the first MA class I took. I was outta shape, and I was huffin and puffin LOL.

 

Or maybe it had to be the day I "volinteered" to be the "dummy" at a women's self defense clinic at my school. Fellow students were there. They could hit hard, but I was holding targets, so it wasn't so bad. Until, the ones that weren't trained in MA ..... eeeekkkkk. I almost got scratched in the face, punched in the nose (I turned my head and got it in the side of my face instead, and if I was a guy, I would have dropped from getting kicked in the balls ..... ouch.

 

Or the class (in TSD) that we trained a lotta kicks. Very intense. One kick after the other, and we covered every kick in the book. I almost puked, had an athsma attack, and lotta bruises, but I kept right on going

 

_________________

 

Laurie S.

 

Green belt TKD

 

(formally 5th gup blue belt TSD)

 

[ This Message was edited by: karatekid1975 on 2002-07-12 22:36 ]

 

[ This Message was edited by: karatekid1975 on 2002-07-12 22:37 ]

[tsdstud]

wow, and I thought some of our workouts were hard.... Our hardest was probably last weeks. We're getting ready for that big world ITF tourney in Panama. (18 days, I'm so nervous) Anyway, the air conditionor was broke and it was 95 outside. With the humidity and body heat from an earlier class the dojang was 105. We spent 2 hours doing forms and weapons forms with the "bands of joy" Rubber bands that connect the ankles. So of course, we concentrated on the kicks. Then after that we went outside (with our now 20 pound doboks) and ran two miles. Another hard one was the last one before Y2K. We did 2000 kicks in 45 minutes.