Connections

We’re getting ready for the upcoming MDP camp in may – it’s titled “connections” this year.

We started with Mo Yee Do (it means second martial way). It’s a beginners form. It teaches grounding, basics and power. To help the students make the connection between power and Mo Yee Do, we worked four different angles today.

The first angle was simply doing the form in the air. Do the strikes feel connected? Are the hips moving with the arms? Is the body moving as a unit? It’s hard to move in a connected manner with no exterior feedback loop and yet that’s the form – doing techniques on your own.

The second angle was to have the students pair up and do the form against focus pads. How loud is the impact of the strike on the bag. As they demonstrated the form into the pads, their hips began to move with each attack. They wanted to get a nice loud thump, so more than just their arms started moving.

The third angle was to hit the heavy bag. Much more weight, much more resistance. If your lat muscles aren’t connected in and you strike the bag – it hurts! It feels like your shoulder is going to come loose. If your hips aren’t connected in the bag barely moves. Again, the students began to put more of themselves into each strike.

Finally, the fourth angle was the workout – 15 Push presses, 10 box jumps and 5 pull ups. To execute each motion you have to connect the body together. For the push press, you’ve got to connect the hip thrust to the shoulders or the arms burn out quick. For the box jump, if you connect each rep together and establish a rhythm, the 10 reps are done in no time. And for the pull ups , it’s essential to clamp down the lat muscles or you lose out on a massive assist from the core of the body.

After the workout, we went back through doing the form in the air. Hips were moving. Lat muscles were pulled down. Hopefully, long term connections were made.