Here is Jukucho doing some padwork in a 3 minute round with my youngest daughter, 13 years old. It gives you an idea of what to aim for with pad work.

From tomorrow on we will start with the Muchimi course in book club fashion. You can find it under the classroom tab. Who's in?

Most of you have access to the free courses, but did you already go through them? We want to know: - Did your strikes get harder? - Did something inspire you? - Did you use something recently? - Is the course structure and quality what you expected? Maybe we should add a raffle for a paid course or video feedback to everyone who comments. What do you think, @Filip Swennen ?

When doing combat sports, it's bound to happen. Accidents never happen on purpose. They're never clever. Always stupid. A moment of fooling around. A slip of attention. And bam. An injury happens. What should you do then? The doctor said 6 weeks of rest. You're taking it easy. Fall out of the rhythm. You eat a bit more of what you shouldn't. You skip your strength and conditioning. And you fall of the wagon. What if it doesn't have to be that way? Most of the times you can still work on something. Footwork at a slow pace after a concussion. Grappling with a fist if your thumb is bruised. Shadowboxing. Kihon. Kata. The possibilities are just as endless. Keep training. Talk to your coach and teammates. Keep going. You can do this.

This is the tl;dr version. I am in no way qualified for the advice I'm repeating here and would advise working with a professional s&c coach and consulting a medical professional before starting anything related to this kind of programming. That said, here’s the basic framework I’ve learned so far: The body relies on multiple energy systems, and different types of conditioning train different systems. A good starting point is building a solid aerobic base first. Better baseline cardio improves recovery between rounds, between exchanges, and even between training sessions. It essentially gives you a bigger “engine” to support everything else. You can start with 3x 8 minutes with one minute of rest between rounds. And work your way up to 3x 15 minutes of your preferred zone 2 cardio. (Jogging, biking, swimming, assault bike, bag work, ...) Once that base is established, you can start developing: - Lactic capacity → the ability to sustain hard efforts while dealing with fatigue and acid buildup - Alactic capacity/power → short explosive bursts with high output and relatively low fatigue accumulation You can train these systems with tools like: - Assault bike - Row machine - Elliptical - Treadmill Personally, I’d prioritize them roughly in that order because they tend to give a strong conditioning stimulus with lower impact and lower injury risk compared to a lot of road running. One concept that really changed how I look at explosiveness is understanding the ATP-PC system. The body can only sustain maximal explosive output for roughly 6 to 10 seconds before those immediate energy stores are largely depleted. After that, power output drops and the body starts relying more heavily on other energy systems. That’s why true explosive training often uses: - Very short bursts - High quality output - Longer rest periods than people expect The goal is not just “being tired.” It’s training the ability to repeatedly produce high power while recovering efficiently between efforts.