Internal Training Exercises

Here are some of the basic internal training methods I have developed and been working on. I am not so good at them yet but they may be useful for some of you out there looking for internal training

The devil is in the detail with all these of course and over the coming months i will take each of these 5 exercises and put a detailed description of what they are and how they should be trained online.

1. Body cross
2. Body row
3. Pushing mud
4. Slapping water
5. Horizontal coil

Slow training for increased awareness

Awareness is one of the key points of IMA training, be that situational awareness, awareness of our body state or awareness of the moment in combative encounter. How can we really train to enhance our awareness in a free fighting / sparring setting?

Here is an interesting idea for increasing combative competency  through increased awareness.

Higher Speed >lower awareness of force and lines

Lower Speed < higher awareness of force and lines.

This principle of slowing the real fight down to increase our awareness of the nuances’ of the movement encounter may seem somewhat strange to some of the MMA or Sport fighting guys out there but lets examine what slowing the encounter down during training helps us with.

1. Increased ability of the mind to calculate angular change and movement
2.  More opportunity to become ‘in tune’ with the attacker
3.  Longer opportunity to pattern the attacker or break/change rythms.
4.  Awareness of the moment becomes more prolonged

The overriding difficulty with slow mo training is our ability to control ourselves. It is very easy to get excited and change speed. When you see a gap you shoot a fist through it 4 times as fast as the partner was moving!

It is ok, even good, to be quicker than your partner but you will never be 4 or 5 times as quick at real speeds so we need to keep our excitement in check.

Training at slow speeds should be a mutual ‘game’ of stratergy and awareness of the moment. If we work slowly with this idea of ‘play’ then the problem of ‘winning’ can disappear.

Try some slow sparring and see how you get on, after 20 – 30 minutes speed up to full speed and see whats changed. Your overall awareness and movement skill should have increased dramatically.