At a time like this, it’s important to stay connected to others. We might not be able to go to the gym and train with our martial arts instructors and training partners in the way that we’re used to — or the way we’d like to— right now, but that doesn’t mean we have to lose the sense of community that we’ve developed in our dojos and teams. We just have to get a little more creative and proactive about staying in touch. Through sharing each other’s stories, frustrations, achievements, and training tips, we can continue to provide encouragement and accountability to our martial arts family members from a distance. It might not be ideal, but as all martial artists know, we learn more from our losses than our victories. Some day we’ll be training together again and stronger for what we’ve been through. Until then, we still have each other.
In that spirit, we reached out to some members of our martial arts community to see how they’re doing, how they’re training, and whether they had any words of encouragement they wanted to share. Here’s what they told us:
Sandy Scordo
How is your at home training going?
Actually my quarantine is pretty good. Since the beginning, I came to my dojo and I took a lot of equipment and my indoor bike. That’s my thing, doing biking or spin classes. I love it.
Have you come up with any creative alternatives to your regular training?
So because I have my own equipment at home I’m training when I want, I did only one online Training for my followers and my friends. They ask me to do it. By the way, I’m giving a private to my students by FaceTime or Zoom app. One of them is from New York. His name is Caio Da Silva.
What is your favorite solo exercise or drill?
I’m practicing Bike, ABS and Plank, that’s my routine.
Do you have any advice for martial artists who might be finding it hard to stay motivated right now?
For everyone it’s hard, but you have to tell yourself than the entire world is on Pause and you have to keep focused on yourself. To take care of your family and eat healthy. The time doesn’t matter really if you don’t answer how long it’s gonna be. Day after day become the person you would like to be because now you have enough time to think about who you wanna be.
52 Thoughts, aka Diallo Frazier
How is your at home training going?
My home training is going well doing a lot of stand up and weapons training with my daughter.
Have you come up with any creative alternatives to your regular training?
My creative alternative has been using our heavybag as a grappling dummy and using FaceTime to train with different training partners.
What is your favorite solo exercise or drill?
My favorite solo drill is knife and stick drills with my heavybag.
Do you have any advice for martial artists who might be finding it hard to stay motivated right now?
If any warrior finds it difficult to get motivated at this time they must remember that this time is like going off to the mountains like a monk to study yourself and your combat craft. This is the time to create your personal physical philosophy.
Destiny Vergara
How is your at home training going?
Home training took some getting used to. I am fortunate enough to have a space in my garage dedicated to my karate training. I zoom with my sensei and train through my computer screen along with my other team mates. For some drills I call my siblings to my tiny garage dojo so they can assist me with the training and sometimes even act as a stand in partner. It’s adorable to see them try and keep up with the training.
Have you come up with any creative alternatives to your regular training?
One creative alternative to my regular training is that now I connect with my teammates and sensei on zoom. This is a little bit of a different experience, but I do have to say whenever we are on a call I still feel encouraged and pushed to new limits.
What is your favorite solo exercise or drill?
My favorite solo exercise is either hitting my Proforce hitting bag or using my resistance bands while throwing punches. I also enjoy doing my own circuit exercises that consist of basic exercises that improve my muscular strength, endurance, and cardio.
Do you have any advice for martial artists who might be finding it hard to stay motivated right now?
It is understandable to feel unmotivated especially now when we are all up against one of the hardest and most important fights of our lives. However we also need to help ourselves by trying to maintain good mental, physical, and emotional health throughout this crisis. The world will overcome this and better days are ahead. When that happens our martial arts lives will resume and hopefully return to what they used to be. We as athletes should strive to return in great shape. Try to establish a routine/schedule for each day to create some sense of normalcy. My days mostly consist of school work, exercise, and social time with my family. Stay inspired and most importantly stay inside.
Mike Chat
Have you come up with any creative alternatives to your regular training?
There are many different creative alternatives that I’ve been implementing, being at home. I only have access to a couple different dumbbells, a 10lb, 20lb, and a 35lb, so not exactly what I would have access to at a gym for my weight training. So doing much higher reps with lower weight is something that I’ve been getting creative with. Also varying the exercises tremendously, because of the lack of equipment. I don’t have a long bar, I don’t have a bench. No pull downs. No pull-up bar. So doing exercises that require just my body is what I’m focusing on now, in addition to just actually doing a lot more martial arts training. Because of the Superhero Training series that I’m doing daily, every day of the week, I’m training all of the basic punches and kicks‚ and in such a dynamic way, it really is a total full body workout. And doing them on both sides is helping me to stay balanced with everything.
What is your favorite solo exercise or drill?
I’m gonna break this up because with my physique training, my fitness training, we do what we call jet reps. These are push-ups, wide hand position, elbows out, where the toughest part of the pushup is from the ground up to about one and a half to two inches. So jet reps is when you do them really fast and you touch your chest to the ground, your legs are spread apart, knees slightly bent, and you allow the weight of your body to push down onto your chest, but you only go about two inches off the ground. This helps to create the dinner plate effect where it widens your chest and connects your chest to your shoulder, and that really helps to create a great physique for guys. So that’s one of my favorite exercises.
But then for martial arts training, what I love is just running my forms. Running forms, running hand combinations that build into kick combinations. It’s not any one technique in particular, but it’s exactly what you would want to do if you were going to demonstrate to a class, film something for social media, audition for a TV show or film, or a stunt project. Showing off great combinations is the key, and practicing those together vs individual techniques is definitely my favorite.
Do you have any advice for martial artists who might be finding it hard to stay motivated right now?
More than ever now, we have less distractions and the opportunity to really explore the things that we normally don’t have time for. So what I would recommend is, if you are a martial artist of a particular style, maybe do some research and see what else there is that you might be interested in when it comes to styles, philosophies, training methods, maybe sister styles to your style, or you might even look at other styles and going more into the history or training techniques. There might be interests on the competitive side, the self defense side.
For example, I’m a traditional Japanese Okinawan Shōrin-ryū stylist, but I also am a master in Tae Kwon Do, and I’ve trained in Chinese Wushu, Capoeira, Kung Fu, many different styles. Boxing. Kickboxing. Muay Thai. What I find interesting is [going to] Martial Tribes, a great platform on Facebook where they post videos of all different kinds of stuff. It’s random, from actual martial art technique training, to street fighting, self defense application, and comedy, entertainment, movies, TV, films. You might challenge yourself by watching a fight scene, or some moves from a TV series, or a superhero movie and trying to copy that. Let’s say you don’t know how to do a certain jump kick technique, or you don’t even know what it is, then you can go onto YouTube and there are amazing tutorials that will take you through the basic steps of how to do many of these jump kicks, aerial kicks, acrobatic tricks.
But even on a basic level, learning different things like taking your martial arts… if you do Karate or Tae Kwon Do, then [you can try] doing something like Krav Maga, military training for civilians, where you might learn a gun disarm, or knife disarm, arm lock, wrist lock, arm bar, a takedown. You might not be able to practice this on somebody else, but you can practice the moves and follow along with the video and/or focus on the solo techniques.
So there’s no shortage of information that’s out there and with the world wide web. It’s really an incredible opportunity to expand your horizons, learn more about other martial arts styles, and how they’re all interconnected. Then actually connect with some of the gurus and masters and the teachers that are out there. You see a video, you see a movie or TV show, connect with them online. Go to their Instagram, go to their Facebook or YouTube pages. Connect with them on social media, and this way you can actually ask questions, get answers, and really take advantage of the time right now.
Looking for more at home training ideas? Check out our blog posts:
- At-Home Workouts: 7 Types of Cardio Training You Can Do At Home
- Solo Martial Arts Drills You Can Do At Home
- Four Boxing Drills You Can Practice at Home With No Sparring Partner
- 5 Workouts You Can Do in the Comfort of Your Own Home
- How to Spar With Your Mattress and Other Home Workout Tips From MMA Fighters
- Martial Arts Training At Home: How To Build and Use Your Own Makiwara
- How To Train With A Focus Mitt Stand
