Had class this morning and it felt good. With the competition last Saturday, the whole dojo was closed because most if not all our instructors were either competing or officiating at the Open.
My Saturday morning instructor, for some reason we don't call our instructors sensei, is a 57 year old gentleman who's been doing martial arts forever it seems. And I say that with a lot of respect. He's a fourth dan black belt in great shape for a man his age. There's a reason why he's in great shape, and it could only be found in the kind of workout he gives us. Seriously, his classes are renowned for being very demanding on the cardio-vascular side. Some people avoid them because of that reputation, me, I kind of enjoy them because of that...
One of his favorite warmup kind of exercises is what he calls "popcorn jumps" and the way he says it, simply "popcorn" followed by the number he wants us to do, well it makes us groan everytime. Maybe you know them by another name, but here's what one popcorn jump entails. First from a standing position, do a frog leap, so butt needs to touch the heels. Then drop to the floor and do a pushup, then back up to frog leap again to start popcorn number 2. This looks like nothing, but 15 of those and well, my little heart gets to beat way, way fast. For a couple of months now, since he saw some people kind of doing their pushups only halfway, i.e. not bending their arms to touch the floor, he's decided to change them jumps. Now he asks us to completely drop down, lay face down on the floor, put our arms in a cross, then do the push up. Niiiice... :)
But you know what, I never, ever miss a class with him. When I was able to attend his Thursday night class, I was going to that one too. Thing is, not only is he hard on you, he's also very generous of his knowledge and that is just great. Also, I think he is partly the reason why I've lost the weight I have lost since last September, so I'm not about to stop. :) This morning, when the call came, "popcorn, 15!", I groaned, then went to do them. I was kinda proud of myself, since usually, I get to maybe 13 when everybody's been done with their 15 for a little while, but this morning, I was able to do all 15, all in time with the others. :)
Maybe this is a little thing that BlackBeltMama will want to introduce in her adapted workout ;)
FM
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5 comments:
I'm hurting just reading that! Let me master my girl push-ups first!
Black Belt Mama
We do those too. Not often enough, but we do them too :) They're nice.
We have what Sensei calls the Bakuhatsu. (litteraly : explosion)
100 push ups
100 sit ups
100 squats.
I can't get to 100 for now. We do 20 of each in turn. at about 60 push ups, I'm on the floor :)
Have fun.
ouch, that explosion sounds like something special.
You're "They're nice" makes me smile. We do popcorns every Saturday mornings, without fault. Some people only take classes on weeknights and sometimes that instructor is replacing the regular weeknight instructor and when he says "popcorn, 15!" on these classes, us regular of the Saturday morning classes don't really groan, we smile, looking at all the other people :)
Another sequence he likes to have us go through is the quadruple 25:
25 jumping jacks
25 pushups
25 frog leaps
25 situps
we'd do this sequence once, then do a couple katas, then do it again, then back to finish with another couple katas. Good for a nice sweat, and boy do I sweat, like a pig :)
FM
I've done "popcorns", but we call them "burpees". I think that Popcorn is a nicer sounding name.
I'm amazed that you are allowed to groan in class. I've experienced a moment when the class groaned at the amount of exercises that Sensei called out, and he responded with the words "Oh.. I'm disappointing you.. o.k.. I didn't realize you wanted more than that.. We'll double it to 200 then.. GOOD! Start.."
well, groan might have been a strong word (you know French brain talking to French fingers who type in English ;) ) as I don't think I've heard any audibly groan per se, but also, our instructors are not really the type to "punish" the students. I tend to agree with that. To me, it's better to ask only slighlty more than what people can do, so that maybe once one of them will get it, than to ask 70 times more and nobody can achieve it.
FM
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