Martial Arts classes in Wiltshire, Somerset and Dorset – 20.9

Another great week for all of us at The Warrior Academy! We were focusing on striking effectively, with speed and good technique. This brought about lots of fun lessons focusing mostly on pad work. Students were pushed to perfect a selection of kicks from their grade learning speed, accuracy and how to apply with power. These drills were also a boost to our young warriors confidence and leadership skills, because as pad holders they needed to provide feedback and encouragement to their partners. We then moved on to some more sparring focused drills, using punch combinations, footwork and blocks to build an understanding of how to box effectively in sparring. Once they had smashed this drill we added in kicks building up to putting on some gloves and pads to put what they had learned into practice. I saw massive improvements in students using their guards and footwork effectively, hit but don’t be hit being the aim of the game! We continued this theme into the Leaders Advanced class where we worked on complicated footwork drills and jumping techniques, you can see some evidence of this on our Facebook page where there is a video of Oscar landing a jumping back hook kick on the paddle! Its always worth taking a look on either Instagram or Facebook because we try and upload as many pictures and videos as we can to keep you all updated on what your young warrior has been up to in class!
I have had a lot of parents saying that their young warrior has been absent from training due to feeling tired after school, especially if they have made the jump from primary to secondary, and is this normal? My answer has been that although they may feel exhausted as the expectations and work load at secondary is far greater than that of primary its important to come to training even if you don’t feel like it. I have always found that the best training sessions come from dragging myself out of the door and forcing myself to go because training makes you feel good! Regular exercise also helps boost energy levels, helps deal with any anxieties that may have surfaced around the new school year and you will get a better nights sleep after training which will give our young warriors a good start to the next day!
This week we will be focusing on self defence. As we work towards the next grading we have implemented a stripe system for belts so we can see which students are ready for grading. Red is for Self Defence, Yellow for Leadership, Green for Linework, Purple for Fitness, Black for Sparring and Brown is for Junior students who can tie their belt. Look out for the stripes on your warriors belt over the next term!

Life is 10% of what happens to you and 90% of how you respond to it….. so is your training…
This week has been focusing on technique, honing those skills and defining their uses and applications toward better response and agility, we’ve utilised pad work; smash pads and paddle for turning and more advanced kicks and focus pads for hand strike techniques and blocks working in pairs to practice and respond, move forwards and backwards and create a flow of movement and reaction as the students’ progress into the Warrior Academy Sparring Programme (WASP).
As the students keenly practiced in pairs with the instructor observations, guidance and confidence building it was apparent that there were some extremely positive changes happening; the way in which students started to react quicker, moving backwards and forwards as they either were striking or blocking as well as visible improvements in the specific techniques as the session progressed, it is true that practice of techniques is key to all aspects of the Martial Arts life, this builds the muscle memory, the speed, the skills and in turn leads to greatness, but it’s important to practise those individual skills, those strikes and those kicks many times over, don’t just do one or two and say I’ve nailed it, truly practice it many times, the results will be amazing…..
Bruce lee once said….
‘I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.’
There are many elements to the path with the Warrior Academy programme and this week we gave students the chance to shine and build their confidence through leadership; choosing students randomly and asking who would like to lead the class through combinations and even the initial warm up,…….needless to say there was no shortage of hands up or keenness to jump out the front and lead!!……. I remember asking the same questions of the new recruits in the same newly started classes of the past and I think if they could’ve buried their arms and hands into the ground they would have just to avoid having to come out in front of everyone…. But …oh my…. how things have changed, in fact they started to change very quickly in the new classes as the confidence grew and now look at you all..….
Well done to all of you and see you in class!!