On padwork…
I was reading a post over at EPIC Martial arts on padwork earlier (I’m trying to finally get back to reading up on what my fellow MA bloggers have been up to, they’ve been busy!), and it got me to thinking – padwork is awesome 😀
In my current style, we haven’t done a lot of padwork, but Sensei has mentioned introducing it a bit more recently. In my previous style we had the opportunity to do a bit of padwork, but it was mainly working on focusing/learning targeting for kicks and punches. Jon’s post discusses the effectiveness of training with doing padwork with real intent on both side of the equation – not just one person hitting a target continuously, but moving around, applying pressure, making you fight on both sides.
I see this as having plenty of benefits – first up, it helps train stamina, which is an essential attribute you need as a martial artist. It teaches you to target and focus under pressure. It makes you learn that fights are two-way interactions with your opponent, you can’t just fire out technique after technique without considering all the variables involved otherwise. And finally, it lets you practice heavy contact in a sparring scenario with relative safety.
Hopefully with all this I haven’t missed the point of Jon’s excellent post, so please drop by and have a look, it makes for great reading! I’m going to make a mental note to talk with my Sensei about this later on this week to see if we can do it, as I reckon padwork is awesome 😀
