Did you get your tickets?

To the gun show? I do. And it’s not a gun show, its a gun defense seminar on Saturday led by John Whitman, the author of this book, and according to Paul, the trainer for Matt Damon on the Bourne movies. I’m totally psyched about it, and hope to learn how to avoid getting shot.

Yesterday’s workout was T O U G H, but I hung in there like an out of shape champ. We did a lot of arms work: straight punches after 5 sets of 5 sets (that’s not a typo, we did 25 sets) of push-up/triceps drills. Try doing a whole bunch of pushups (like 100), and then throw some punches and see how great that feels.

It’s the BEST! It’s fanTASTIC!

Then we worked on some basics for about a half hour. At the end of class we did the following torture: you and 4 others take turns doing pushups till you get to 20. First guy does 1. Second guy does 2. Of course I was #5 so I also got to do the last set (20), and almost didn’t make it. Oh yeah, the whole time everyone not doing pushups is holding themselves on their forearms and toes, keeping their bodies off the ground. There’s a lot pressure on you at this point, cause everyone is dying trying hold themselves off the ground, and your arms are trying to give out on pushup number 16 and you still have 4 STUPID PUSHUPS LEFT. Fun for the whole family!

While my conditioning isn’t the best, I feel like I’m starting to get basics down pretty well. Fighting stance, straight punches, hammer fists, palm strikes, elbows, knees, front kicks, defensive front kicks, round kicks, groin kicks, ground back defense, ground side defense. Wikipedia says round knee is a level 1 technique (they call it yellow belt) but I haven’t seen that yet. I’d say round kicks are my weakest thing, because my flexibility is so bad. My eventual goal is the Bas Rutten jump splits (demonstrated in this video about 15 seconds in (cussing in the soundtrack)), but that’s a ways out.