I hope ya’ll are doing well. This is going to be an update on what we have been doing lately.
The first thing on the list is outdoor training and new members. We are ready for more new members. The weather has gotten us out of the basement and we are very happy about it. Worse case scenario, that’s rain, and we will just go down to the basement and do some unarmed vs unarmed or some palm stick training. Once the weather really warms ups, we will try to meet at the beach and other spots. So spread the word! The Latosa Concepts Escrima group in Copenhagen is opening it’s doors to more people.
We had our After Easter Chow Down. Some of us had our ladies with us so it was much more civilized. We old farts like the female company. They kept the combative talk to a minimum and made room for normal conversation. I have to say/write it again; we have a fine mix of people in our group. Not every member could make it because of work, but that is life.
Before the eating started we had to get some training in. After that we got cleaned up (my shower is not a virgin anymore!) and started getting the food ready. It ended up being a late night with some more food before the remaining people went home. Once again, thanks for all the fine food and conversation men and women.
As you can see in the video below, there is a lot going on lately. We have two men going up to the 2nd grade very soon and the men training for the 1st grade are moving along very quickly. Open-8 with sticks and unarmed have been a common subject for all members to some degree. We are starting to introduce some aspect of catastrophe training to the group as well. You can see one drill in the video. Point foot work is a part of the warm up sometimes to start the men for the 1st grade used to it. It’s good for their balance among other things. Finally but not least, the men training for the second grade have started training semi contact to help get used to more honest attacks. The problem with training with out helmets is people teach them selves to never hit the target as hard as they should. We should be able to show control, but let loose when the chance shows it’s self.
That’s it for now. I’ll leave you with the video. Remember to spread the word… Latosa Concepts Escrima is accepting new members now! Ya’ll have a great day.
I hope ya’ll are doing well and I hope the weather gods are kinder to you than they are to us here in DK. We started looking forward to the group training outside but the snow started to fall and the freezing weather returned. Oh well, we’ll just wait a bit.
As you can see this is a What’s Happening with LC Escrima Update. As I have written before we have a full house until we move training outside or we find a bigger place to train. Let’s hope the cold weather skedaddles. I imagine MA will write a little bit about the tournament he fought in when his arm heals up. I’ll be posting a terminology entry about balance/weight disruption and our training. It should not be to far into the future.
Any Hoo! … Here we go with the video below. The men training for the first grade were all away at work the other day, so we focused on the basics for the 2nd grade. For the second grade the men should start to develop a feeling for reading attacks before the attacks are completely started. The sparring drill they worked on with single sticks (do you remember the fma term for that?) is an arranged or planned sparring drill. The twist is the first person decides what the technique is and the second person performs the same attack. When it’s time for the first attacker to strike he decides what the next attacks will be again. The men simply take turns starting the drill. The objective is the development of the ability to believe in a more free action or reaction. No bad guys on the street tells us what they are going to do before they commit an assault. I didn’t have the camera out for that so you will just have to take my word for it.
We did have the camera out for the unarmed training the other day. We worked on unarmed training ( Do you remember the FMA term for that one?) For the first grade the guys have to use the outside live hand to control a straight punch as well as some other variations. For the second grade they have to punch over the straight punch while moving off-line. It takes more timing, so It still doesn’t have to be perfect but I want to see a certain flow balance and power when doing it. There are other requirement for the second grade but I have mention them before. You will also see a foot work and attacking leg drill we use. It has many functions. One should be understood when you watch the video. You will also notice that I free style on my attacks to see how they cope with unexpected attacks in our planned drills. To be honest, this is big in my judgment of when they are allowed to test for the Latosa Concepts 2nd grade. And yes, I wrote that I let them know when they are allowed to test for the second grade. The second grade test is not far into the future if they continue to improve at the present rate.
This brings up something that might as well be said. A long time ago when GM Rene still worked with the German org, an instructor went on a tirade about elite clubs and how they are bad for the system. I never understood his opinion. It would be great if Latosa Concepts, FMA was in every town, but that is not my ambition. I want to look at people who train under MA & myself and know, that they are going to be the person standing if/when something happens on the street/battle field. We are teaching people to be elite! MA understands my thoughts and feelings on this subject. If we continue to only be 10 people in DK that train the way we do, I will be very happy and proud. MA went to a tournament alone and won. The police club that I had went to a tournament and was the smallest club there. We won the club division. Students have thanked us for how our teachings have saved them. That is the way I want it to be.
I am proud of my kids and I am proud of our group in many of the same ways. The men will never be my kids but the pride MA & I have will always have an element of the Proud Daddy! We are elitist.
The rant is over with. I’ll let you get to the video. Enjoy and have a great day.
I hope ya’ll are doing well. It’s time for more information about supplementary strength and conditioning for combative training. This post contains the 6th video on this subject. There are other videos about the subject which have other titles. Unless plans change, future videos and post in this series will be more kettlebell and the like. I’m doing more KB and sand bag training now. That means rings and trx are in the mix as well. Any Hooo, enjoy!
With all that aside, here we go. It’s great to do exercises and drills that mimic our combative movements to become stronger and faster at the movements. It is even better and more important to do general supportive and corrective exercises when doing strength training. What do I mean? If you do push training a lot in your daily combative technique training you need to make sure you pull in strength training to avoid a pattern overload and end up with problems. I could write about motor training and long vs. short muscle and many things but we’ll keep it simple.
When we look at how the body moves, there are planes of movement and basic movement patterns. Bending, and squatting are some examples of movement patterns. We can also look at common actions (or common factors) that we perform in both examples. When I do my deadlift/”health-lifts,” I make sure my core is locked into place to start off with. I lock my lats down and hold my chest up. For the most part I keep my feet pointed forwards unless it’s a variation that demands otherwise. This engages the glutes more. The glute muscles are part of the DL’s as well as part of the squat movement. If you look at the people lifting obscene amounts of weights you will see the squat movement pattern incorporates the glutes in order to create more power. We want to do it for more stability and explosive abilities as well as creating a balance to the movement patterns that we get extreme volume from. By training several joints in an exercise we train the muscles that are needed. Neurologically, we are teaching our body parts to work together to create power. As combatives, we want power before strength. One way to create power is through the use of several joints in a movement. Raw strength is great if you have tons of time as well (and you are not an old fart ).
If we were talking ( instead of writing and reading ) you would probably think… stop bending my ear and tell me how to make my squat better. Well, here we go.
1. Do front squats not back squats. Most people have rotten thoracic mobility and shoulder mobility / stability. This gets in the way of doing the squat correctly. Do corrective exercises for the thoracic/shoulder mobility for a while. Doing front squats will help work on core strength and stability.
2. Learn to exert force with your chest up and your core locked. Do the supportive exercises when needed.
3. Locking the lats down helps keep things stable.
4. Pay close attention to how I hold the bar with my hands gripping the bar and how the bar rides my shoulder. Many people don’t have the wrist mobility as well as other factors to do a good front squat. Holding the bar the way I show will help pull your chest up and keep the bar on your shoulders.
5. Keep the largest part of the weight off the front part of your feet. There are arguments for full foot contact and heal force theories. In order to avoid a very long post, I’ll just say knee pains can come and go depending on the amount of force you place on different parts of your feet. By putting more weight on the heel or the whole foot will activate different muscles. The knee angle will change as well. The amount of weight you are squatting also plays a part here.
6. Do your technique training in front of a mirror to start with. Make sure everything is working the way it should. One thing to watch is knee, foot and hip alignment. This technique training can take a while. Is your core tight and locked in, is you chest up?
7. There are other tips but this post is becoming too long. find some help for more tips. If this information is new for you. Get some help!
8. Listen to the weakest link in the chain. If you can not hold the locked core or any other part of the squat stop!!! If you want to train deep squats use light weights to make sure your technique is up to it. I started ass to the grass squats with 12 kg. Mobility and core training were part of the building up process as well. Be aware of what your body is doing, proprioception, is important.
9. If you are not sure get some help. Find a pro who can really help you. Too many people say they understand when it’s not true. Case in point: too many people get a weekend, one day or half day course to become a trainer and then they tell a beginner to focus on a naked squat and keeping the core tight. The result is a person that hunches over in every day life reenforcing that pattern in a squat. I’ve seen it too many times. If a person can’t lock their core into a hard and strong position away from the squat, they will never do it while learning a new skill! If the pro can not walk and talk, we have a problem Houston. Another case in point: I would never teach anybody olympic lifts. I don’t have the training. The same for obscene amounts of weight, in other wards powerlifting. I only teach general strength and conditioning, kettlebells, sandbag training and a little sprint training. The trainer should be honest about their knowledge bank.
10. Know if you want to do squats for general strength and conditioning, power lifting or olympic techniques. Go from there. Base your plan on this first step.
You might have to do quite a lot of supportive training to get to a good level of power lifting and olympic lifting but it’s worth it. I use overhead lunges to get me to my goal of doing overhead squats the right way. Having my shoulders twisted out of joint means hard work to get there, but it’s worth it. I like the feeling, I have in my body after a push day with overhead lunges in it.
Power lifting(click to see video) has all sorts of tips and tricks for lifting the heavy weights. If that is your wish, find a good coach in that area. If you are looking to improve your squat to be more athletic, a normal trainer that knows what he’s doing can help you. Just don’t be dazzled by a young man who has the young years on his side. They can do things that don’t work for us other mortals and old farts. I was a tank when I was young. Today, I am happy when I get up to a 100 kg front squat. We’ll see what my back squat is when I feel my shoulders are ready.
Last but not least, I use a bracing technique when the weight starts to get heavier. We can cover that another time. If you do it as well, practice it with light weights to get better at it.
As a reminder, train strength training as a supportive part of your combative skills and throw a few sport specific drills in the mix.
Hello once again. This post is the 4th part of the strength and conditioning series for Latosa Concepts and combative sports. In this blog entry and video we’ll be looking at some specific exercises for escrima.
Note there was a warm that is not shown in the video. I forget what it was for this training session. I would recommend a boxing bag warm up, just to stick with the escrima and combative nature of the exercises. Btw, this was a pull day for me.
When we look at ways to create power, balance and speed we have to look at the pushing back leg. This is one of the power mechanisms that the Latosa Concepts 1st graders have to know about and use. In the first exercise you can see that a complex movement is being trained. This supports/reinforces the neurological pathway that we use when we train. You get explosive training, negative/stability training and a little quad work as well as the calf muscle activation. Do them in flat shoes. The running shoes most people train in are worn down and create bad habits. A varus / valgus foot can be reenforced in its way of moving if the shoes don’t keep your feet supported correctly. Stretching the achilles and calf muscle can help with a varus (outward rotation in simple understanding of the subject) foot. OOP! the shoemaker in me jumped in there.
Please note that this exercise is not for beginners. Normal jump rope sessions would be a good start for a beginner. As with many drills and exercises I stop while I have a rep(s) left. When the explosive feeling starts to feel weak I stop. If you have knee problems controlled negatives are a good idea.
The cable crunches are the next exercise in the video. A very simple,version would be to hold your arms in place and do crunches. I don’t recommend this. we are doing the crunches to train a complex movement. Not that the arms pull down first before crunching. This simulates the same reaction order we use in some escrima strikes. You have heard me talk about high triggers before haven’t you?
In the last version shown there is more tricep work. You might as well put this in there if you have been training for a while. This can be done with heavy weight (low reps) and with lighter weights for high reps. I would recommend a mix. If you have to choose one, do the high reps. The core is slow twitch in large part.
Hitting sit-ups are a part of an array of exercises that Latosa Concepts Escrima students should get used to. They taint goin’ away people! Learn to love them! They are something that GM Rene show us many years ago and they are staying. In the video I show some variations of some strike combos that can be used. On days when this is the only ab work I do I like to use small hand weights. Two 2kg hand weight will burn your shoulders and core up. It’s a good kind of stiffness. Lactic acid training gets the HGH going, we old farts like that sometimes! Sometimes I do them with a large variety of strikes, it depends on my mood.
We want to train speed here. Remember that when doing hitting sit-ups.
That’s it for now. I’ll try to give ya’ll some squat tips in the next video.
I hope ya’ll are doing well. Extra strength and condition is the topic for today. This is the 2 nd post/video of the series. I write extra and supplementary because that’s what it is. You don’t have to do this but it could give you an edge that other people don’t have. In any case it can help many people with some typical imbalances that start to show themselves and / or help to make you more aware of how to control your body better.
In the video below you will see another way to warm up that pertains more to the combative art side of what we do. I added a few clips from the beginning of my warm up to the video. Besides free forming, I like to practice specific combinations and techniques. An example could be kicks and knee strikes. Regardless of what you do, take it slow in the beginning and set the tempo up as you become warmer. There is no need to be macho in the first 5 minutes and pull something because you had to show off for the brunette on the dreadmill … Oops! … treadmill. The list of possibilities is long, padded palm sticks are one of my standards. I write padded because real palm sticks destroy the bag.
How to make a padded palm stick: Get some pipe insulation. Shall we say ca 15 cm long. Run some tape around it length wise, tape the center tightly to form a smaller section for the handle . Not having a hard core, it should not damage the bag you are hitting.
Now for the work out. You saw some of what I did in the first video and blog entry. It was a push day. The bag work in this video is from another day, other wise this video is the rest of the first push day in part 1. This brings us to something important. It doesn’t help to press a heavy training session out when you are not feeling 100 %. I recommend doing a lighter workout or just doing one or two full body exercises. Example are front squats, overhead squats and lunges, dead lifts, clean and squats etc. Walk away from them with some energy left over. It’s better to be safe and come back physically and mentally ready another day.
The overhead lunges are good for activation of the muscle on the backside of the shoulder area and the core. An important tip is to pinch the top of the shoulder blades together. If you can not do this you need to work on that ability before starting this exercise. Is your core the weakest link? can you hold your stomach synched in tightly while doing it? If the answer is … yes, it’s a problem, then start with your core before doing the overhead lunges.
Why Lunges? If you can’t hold your core stable, your chest up and your “scabs” pinched together, you will never do a good overhead squat (if you want to). Lunges work well with what we do in Latosa Concepts Escrima. Your knee will love you when the supporting muscle required to do a good lunge are working in tandem with the quads and core. Think of your shoulder blades as a second set of hips. If you have no stability and power there you are going to have problems down the line. When I did shadow boxing with heavy weights, I needed the extra work for my back even more. You will too! Getting back to the lunges in the video. A friend died a while back and I went nuts with the weights. I hurt my shoulder and my back. The stability work (around the shoulder blades and shoulder joint) in the overhead lunge were most important for me. My legs didn’t really get much out of them. I am starting a kettlebell training program again because I worked on things like the lunges for a few months. The stability of the bar in the smith machine allowed me to focus my concentration on the muscles around the shoulder blade.
The dumbbell press is good because it demands each shoulder works harder at stability. It also allows the shoulder area to work in a more natural movement pattern compared to the bench press. I haven’t done a bench press in 10+ years. By rotating the arm in the dumbbell press, we kan work on a variation of one of the ways we punch.
If you are sharp, you will have noticed that the two exercises in this blog entry work different parts of the shoulder region. Promoting balance is the best way to avoid injuries. Once again, that is one of the reasons you might want to do some supplementary strength and conditioning. The overhead lunges promoted stability on the back side and the dumbbell press promotes stability and strength on the front side. On top of that, you get a little chest thrown in for good measure.
The next strength and conditioning for escrima video & post will have to do with some exercises for a pull day. In other words hip extensions and pulling arm movements.
Remember to speak up if you want to come try a training session. We only have so much space and there is another new man. We can take 2 more people max! Be fast or wait until we find the right place for our club to put down roots. I’ll be handing out a few more flyer’s soon.
I hope ya’ll are doing well. We hope you all had a great Christmas. As you can see, it is time for a LC Escrima update. The title says it all. We have started a new tradition. Every club needs traditions. We say let them be fun! The Zombie melon Apocalypse is just around the bend and we had to make sure we are going to be ok when the chaos starts. And!! Boys have to play! We have also started a short video series that is supposed to be some inspiration for people who do strength and conditioning training besides escrima or some other combative sport. We’ll see how long it ends up being.
We are still adding on to and changing the basic sparring drill for the LC second grade. The drill it’s self has all the basic strikes and counters that we use. The passing techniques will be started with the third grade training. I put together an unarmed feeding drill years ago because people kept letting the BG weapon come to close ( a collapsing buffer zone )… That’s bad. The drill can be adjusted to focus on footwork as well.
Now for the fun part. The last training session of 2012 was the Latosa Concepts Escrima Zombie Melon Bash. It took a while to contain the mess with a “Plastic Dexter Room”. If you do this yourself, make sure you have a lot of small garbage bags. The big ones get heavy real fast. The video is just some clips from the session. But you should get an idea of what a bunch of kids can do with some fruit and some time on their hands. They have fun!!
NOTE! There is a serious side to this video. We need to know what can happen to us if a stick meets with our head or other body parts. Even more critical, we need to know what happens when a knife cuts and how fast it really is. One of my first cuts was on a pineapple. It stayed on the stand about a half a second and then fell over in two parts. It looked like I missed at first. I didn’t, the knife went through so quickly that the two parts of the pineapple just sat there. Not getting in a weapon fight is the best defense. If you can’t avoid it make sure every strike / cut counts!
I hope ya’ll are doing well. This is going to be the first of a series of entries and videos about the strength and conditioning aspects of combative sports/arts. What we’ll be showing is ment as a supporting aspect of escrima. Let me repeat, it is a supporting aspect of training escrima and other combative systems. Strength and conditioning training does not make anyone good at escrima.
The next blog entry her on the Latosa Concepts Escrima blog should be about testing our abilities in the possible Zombie Apocalypse Boys have to be boys! He HE!
Back to today’s subject. To start with if you are going to train something athletic ( Combative sports fall into that grouping), you are going to experience muscle imbalance because the sport or combative art that you do builds up specific movements patterns. Some movements are left on the wayside in many cases. That might mean weak stabilizers for the shoulder blades as an example.
M. Andersen (group leader for LC Århus ) & I have been training partners for a while now. We have helped each other with training ideas and done a lot of weight training together. At one time, we had a routine of warming up with escrima for 30-45 minutes and then doing som ARRRG lifting. To name a few, we have done basic and advanced strength drills ( example: deadlifts and variations ), kettlebell training based on high reps and low reps, and explosive training that helps to build general speed when doing escrima ( or other self-defense arts and sports ) The list is too long to write all the training forms here.
In this first entry of the series we’ll look at one of the warm ups that I do and one box exercise for the core and legs (quads) and the supporting muscles.
To start with, I like to follow a planned subject for a while then switch up to something else for a while. An example could be barbell training for a month then kettlebell training for a month or so. Lately, I’ve been doing a push day and a pull day, understood as squats and lunges are part of the push day. Deadlifts and hip extensions are seen as part of the pull day. This way the whole body is worked each time I train. This helps with the hormone response because large muscle are used each training session. I am an old farts now!
Once you understand what’s going on in the human body you learn that the muscles, hormone ( Endocrine ) system, nervous system and digestion system are all tied together in much the same way as described in the previous blog entry about the body and mind.
The video below shows a barbell complex that I like to use as a warm up. It’s not the only type of warm up that I use, but it is one of 4 or 5 standards. It’s good to have some different warm ups to match your mood and the training you will be doing. Range of motion and the combining of different joint movements helps dial the body in to make it work better.
Complexes are a great way to help teach a person how to tie movements together. The most simple example is the thrusters exercise, they are a good example of letting the energy from the leg movement transfer to the arms and help push the barbell over head. For people who do not know what a thruster is … start with a squat and when you feel that you are generating speed, push the bar straight up over your head. Make sure you can do overhead press with out problems before doing this.
If we look at an escrima movement there are situations when a pushing movement from the legs releases an attack with the arms. All this happens because the core is capable of letting the energy transfer from the legs to the arms/fist/stick/etc.
A word about the sprinters step ups, I do some times. It takes a while to get your end range strength up to this variation. Beginners should start with a lunge position with both feet on the floor. Do them naked! Yes I wrote naked, That means only with your body weight. You may even have to start from a normal standing position.
The last note about the way I recommend people train is this: Mix the explosive exercises in with the strength and normal hypertrophy exercises. Don’t forget to think about stabilizers. An example could be what I did on my pull day yesterday.
Deadlift single based on a ladder (the weight gets heavier w/ each set) for strength,
A cable pull version that I’ll be showing latter for core, stabilizers and hypertrophy,
A glute-ham exercise for explosive training
A Pull-ups version for the correction of my back
Well that was a lot of writing to lead into the video. My fingers are a little tired!
Stay Proactive in Life and Training
CW & MA
Click on the link below to see the video. Youtube or WordPress is doing something strange right now.
I hope ya’ll are doing well. It’s Sunday morning and there is a cup of coffee with thick coconut milk in it beside me. YUM!
MA, the Latosa Concepts instructor in Jutland (Det Mørke Jylland !) , and I are working on standardizing things behind the scenes. There is always more to it than you think, when there are the training groups. As I wrote before the labels for the beginners are in and they will be handed out when the guys in the group pass the first grade test. Another subject that needed some attention was a little more order in the video playlist. We have quite a few videos now. To stream line things a little, we have created a Latosa Concepts Syllabus Playlist. We have off topic videos like Strength and Conditioning and the Update Videos and more.The idea behind the Syllabus Playlist is students and other people thinking about training with us can learn about syllabus subjects and only syllabus subjects. We old farts (that’s me Thomas!) tend to mix videos depending on the wind direction and desire. The playlist is by no means a complete example of what a person has to know to get a grade. It has examples from different levels/grades.
There have been some inquiries about correspondence training and testing. I have said no to them all, because the control freak in me will not let go of the reins of the horse. FMA is not like a correspondence reading course, sorry folks! Time is also an issue as well. I have a job as well as teaching the LC group. PT courses is closed now.
Just for good measure I have put the playlist below. It will also be found in the Latosa Concepts Media Section. Remember the Latosa Concepts Youtube account as well.
I hope everybody is doing well. It’s Sunday ( w/ coffee in hand! ) morning and I thought it would be a good time to let ya’ll know what we are doing and what’s coming up. My wonderful wife is making breakfast, so I can do this. In the update this time around you will see one way to train suppressed power (and control) and a way to work on putting striking power into different parts of the stick / weapon / device that you might have in your hands. As you can see by the picture to the left I will be writing about the Latosa Concept grades and some labeling. The “Da Boss” label is for me and I’ll send one to Grand Master Rene. I have always tried to keep my feet on the ground and not become an instructor with an inflated ego. A little irony and humor in my own label is intended to remind me of that fact.
We are still starting up. There is a club here in Gentofte / Copenhagen and MA has a club/group in Jutland. People who train with us can be tested (for a grade) as part of the normal training session when it is a little test: What is a little test? …You might ask. When a student starts another grade division /phase, they will be tested at a seminar. When we start testing people who train with another instructor, all grades will be tested via a seminar.
The grade divisions are as follows:
LC Beginner / LC Bg …. 1-3
LC intermediate / LC Int … 4-6
LC Advanced / LC Adv … 7-9
LC Apprentice / LC Appr … 10-12
When I was with Weapons Combat Escrima and Latosa Escrima ( the old org. in which GM Rene worked with the Germans), there was a patch for each grade. I’ll be keeping it simple. You can see that in the t-shirt design. There is not a large logo on the back and the LC logo is smaller on the front of the t-shirt. This will promote a discrete design. We will be discrete power in as many facets as possible. We will prove our selves through our actions.
Now to the video. As always we started with a warm-up that was related to the subject for that day. We went straight to strike-pad work after that. The guys started with suppressed strikes and then moved on to combining putting power into different parts of the stick in the same drill. I added to the drill as always and you get what you see in the video and much more. We don’t record all the time. As part of the physical training section of the training session we did one of the drill I put together to help the with knee strike. The personal trainer in me came out with this one. The jump-squat-knee drill helps promote speed and knee stability, much like box jumps do. It’s not some secret technique … sorry guys!
A note about the suppressed training. GM Rene and Master Bill ( back in the day) always promoted the power and control effects of doing it. It should be part of every escrimadors training. Switching between contact and suppressed strikes is always a good way to do it.
That’s it for now. I’ll be posting more information as time goes on. Breakfast is almost ready. We old farts need to eat!
more civilized. We old farts 
like the female company. They kept the combative talk to a minimum and made room for normal conversation. I have to say/write it again; we have a fine mix of people in our group. Not every member could make it because of work, but that is life.
