SW Portland Martial Arts Blog

Stringing Together Hang Power Cleans

March 4th, 2022
Stringing together hang power cleans for CrossFit

If you find yourself doing a workout that calls for hang power cleans or hang power snatches, check out the downward path of your barbell. Is it close to your body? Does it glide smoothly back down to the hang position?

Odds are pretty high that if you’ve never drilled multiple reps of your hang movements with smoothness in mind, you’re probably curving the bar away from yourself on the way down, smacking your thighs, and wasting precious seconds.

Some folks will claim that the bar is too heavy for them to have a smooth downward bar path. My polite answer is that if you can’t achieve a smooth downward bar path, then the weight needs to drop down until you can.

Watch the video. Get smooth.

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The Shoulder Roll

February 27th, 2022
3 different ways to learn the shoulder roll

If you’re planning on learning martial arts, you’ll want to know how to fall and roll safely. Even if you’re not doing a grappling or throwing focused martial art, at some point, you’ll throw a high kick and fall, or someone will hit you and knock you over. It happens. Like all things, it’s better to have prepared in advance rather than face the situation with no idea how to keep yourself safe.
The shoulder roll is, in my opinion, the easiest entry point when it comes to learning how to tumble safely. Watch the video and see which, if any, of the three rolls comes easiest to you. If none of them are easy, pick the least difficult one.

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The Lead Hook

February 12th, 2022

The lead hand hook is tough to learn for a lot of reasons, but the piece that seems to burn most beginners is the pivot. To generate the most power, it is important to shift your weight from the front foot to the rear foot as you throw the punch. The most efficient way to do this is to pivot your feet. Learning the strike from stationary helps. Start with the majority of your weight on your flat front foot. Be up on the ball of your back foot. Then, as you punch, pivot. After striking, you should be up on the ball of the front foot and flat on your back foot. Practice this a ton from stationary first, and then when you feel like you’ve got it, add in some footwork.

 

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An Introduction to Falling

January 30th, 2022
How to fall safely

Falling is one of the most practical skills you gain from training martial arts. It’s not particularly glamorous, but you’re much more likely to slip and fall than you are get into a fistfight or a grappling match out there in the wild world.

So what about folks who want the benefits of learning to fall with all that extra martial arts business? Can you extract the practical falling techniques without having to learn all that other stuff? Of course. Help yourself to the video.

It’s easier to learn to fall if you already know how to squat and have a soft floor but having neither of those things won’t stop you if you are determined and patient.

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Moving the Armbar from the Dummy to Real Humans

January 22nd, 2022
Moving from the dummy to a person with your beginning armbar

When we teach our youngest students how to do an armbar, we show them on a grappling dummy. It’s safer. It’s quicker. You don’t have to be patient with your partner. However, it leads to a problem: how do you take this skill you’ve learned on the dummy and transfer it to an actual human?
The best bet, I think, is to have the young student practice it with an adult who is (at least) minimally familiar with the armbar. We hope that this video can help parents learn the basics of the movement so that the students gain a deeper understanding of the technique. Who knows? Maybe practicing the drill back and forth with your kid will even have some parents considering doing some martial arts too!

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