Do 3 sets of each round with a one minute rest between rounds. Enjoy your workout!

For this article, I am going to cover some vital points. It is especially important to focus on striking vital points if your opponent happens to be stronger than you. You do not want to get into an exchange of blows but rather strike points that do lasting damage buying you time to escape.

One martial arts technique I like to adopt, is to divide the body into six gates. The division is made by drawing a line down the center of the body, or basically thinking of the spine. Now each side of the body is mirrored. To draw the horizontal lines, draw one line across right below the chest and another beneath the hips. This will leave 6 boxes which represent the six gates. You can get a better understanding for the six gates by researching Wing Chun Kung Fu.  Here is a simple diagram of points to focus on.

Besides where to strike, you also want to practice how to strike. Let’s start with the first vital point, the eyes. When striking the eyes, it is not very effective to use a punch or kick. You want to either use a finger jab, or rake through the eyes somehow such as with a Tiger claw.  Try different ways to see what feels the most natural for you. The more natural the movement is, the easier it will be to defend yourself with it.

The next target is the throat, and although a punch would work, it is still not the most effective strike. The punch could get caught on the chin, which luckily has a knockout point of it’s own, so it is easier to us a chop or a half fist (a.k.a the leopard’s paw). The most effective strike for the nose would of course be either a punch or a palm strike. To learn to defend yourself well, you want to practice being able to strike these various targets from different positions in an efficient manner. Keep the strikes simple and quick. Fancy looking movements generally are not very effective. Even when they do work, they often take a high amount of skill to pull off against an aggressive opponent.

You will want to work various drills to make your techniques effective. Get with a friend and have them try to grab or strike you in various ways. See what the closest vital point is to strike, and how best to strike it from the position you wind up in. It is also worth noting that it does hurt some if you are not use to hitting things. It would be a good idea to practice these strikes on a heavy bag so that you can conditions your fist, forearms, and shins for striking a little bit.

One final tip is to never depend on a single strike to do the job. Try to string together two or three strikes all aimed at vital points so that if one fails, hopefully the next will hit it’s mark. If you can not hit multiple points, try to at least hit the same point multiple times. You want to make sure to do enough damage to buy you the time you need to get away, other wise you risk simply making them mad and making your situation worse. Strike fast, often, and it in vital areas and you should be able to escape most street situations.. Practice the same techniques often to build speed and work the heavy bag to develop power. Good luck and Thank you for reading the 3rd article in our Women’s Self Defense line up!

For this workout, only do the run for a warm up. Drop the run 5 minutes after the first time it is done. Other then that, Finish out a round being explosive on the ascending motion of the workout, and take it slow on the descending portion of the workout.  Move through the round as quickly as your physical ability allows (not rushing the individual workouts). Rest for 90 seconds after before going onto the next round. Finish 3 sets

This morning I kept it fairly simple.

Crunches 100x

Twist Crunches 100x

Bicycles 100x

Leg Raises 100x

Front Stretch Kicks 20x

Side Stretch Kicks 20x

Rear Stretch Kicks 20x

Cresent Kick 20x

Reverse Cresent 20x

Horse Stance 30 seconds

Bow Stance 30 seconds

Cat Stance 30 seconds

Drop Stance 30 seconds

Twisted Stance 30 seconds

The morning routine will stay fairly close to this over the next month! Enjoy your workout!

Monday through Saturday will also include a morning routine that will work on core strength, flexibility, and perfecting stances. 

This will be the base training schedule for the month of January. I kept the workouts short so that they would not take up to much time. Do to the fact that they are short, the workouts will be quite intense. For strength training sessions this month there will be a lot of super sets and calisthenics.

The cardio training will mix in a lot of basics from various styles of martial arts and may contain complete martial art forms. The training will include work on punching, kicking, and various jumps.

For Saturdays I chose to focus on the staff for this month. Feel free to follow along with any weapon of your choosing. I like staff because it is the grandfather of all weapons and I personally find it to be the most practical weapon. The techniques for the staff also translate to many different weapons, and to perfect flexible weapons you often need to learn it on the staff first.

As I said in the previous article, there is a tournament coming up and whether Arkansas Wushu winds up going or not, we sill still prepare as if we were. I like competition because it motivates you. When people know they are going to have their skills put to test, they seem to step up their practice a little bit. By finding competitions you set a deadline on bringing certain skills to a higher level and are can see improvement in that area in a more expedient manner.

What are you goals for 2019? Let us know in the comment section. Thank you for reading!