Guide to Practicing Martial Arts at Home Alone or with your Child

Sometimes you miss your training at the dojo, gym or academy due to work, emergencies or a busy life. So what do you do on those days when you really want to get a workout in no matter what? Here is a short guide to training at home!

Suggested Equipment

Fortunately, you don't need much equipment to get a great workout at home. A couple of kicking pads or a heavy bag will do the trick. Then you just need a couple items like a jump rope, some dumbbell sets up to 30 pounds, maybe an AirFit, a BOSU ball, 10lbs medicine ball, stability ball and a long, thick resistance band. With just a great imagination you can literally have millions of combinations of workouts for any martial art or sport.

What to Train

When you are training at home the first thing to realize is that you want to train the techniques you actually know. It would be counterproductive to train a move on your 10,000 times just to find out it is completely wrong. Please don't spend hours on youtube trying to become a master. There are a lot of nuisances to training which an instructor can share with you in class, that they won't and usually can't through a video. Also, an instructor can make on the spot corrections to help you progress faster. As a teacher I encounter a lot of people who do improper home training, so they spend the a lot of time unlearning bad habits once they join our academy.

How Long to Train

One of the most common misconceptions about training time and frequency is that you have to train for a very long time... well that is correct. Actually the misonception is that you have to give 100% muscular and cardio effort to get a great workout. Well, let me tell you, not only do you not need to train all day 7 days a week, but you do not have to try to kill yourself every session.  I work out pretty hard, but I also take breaks in my routines, proportionate to that effort. Futhermore, the difference is training with 100% mental focus. There are so many skills, drills and techniques you can work on with a partner or by yourself. You have to make up in your mind that you want to get better no matter what and train with what equipment and surroundings you have available.


Don't Overdue It


The worst thing that pro athletes do is overtrain. The worst thing that those wishing to be a higher level athlete do is over train. Think of it like a train, since that is the root word for over training. You can load a train up and take it to a destination sure enough. However there will be times along a long voyage where the train worker may have to take a minute to grab more fuel from storage or maybe the Conductor will need to rest and let the Assistant Conductor take over the nexf shift. All I am alluding to is that we all need breaks to refuel and rest our bodies.

I hope I addressed some of the concerns you had about how to train when you absolutely can't make it to class. Remember as well, martial arts is about discipline and the most important part of this is being disciplined in showing up to class when at all possible.

vr/

Benjamin Moriniere "Sensei"
www.capoeira-okinawa.com
www.facebook.com/CapoeiraAcademyOkinawa