Before fitness training, one must give importance to doing warm-up or stretching exercises to prevent accidents or to enhance the output during the training. There are also a number of precautionary measures and tips to serve as guidelines when doing fitness exercises. Here are some of them.
1. To increase your flexibility and to avoid injuries, stretch before and after workout. Almost everyone knows that stretching before workout prevents injuries during the exercises, but only few people know that stretching after workout, when muscles are still warm, can increase flexibility.
2. Hold your stretching position for more than 60 seconds to increase flexibility. While holding your position for 20 seconds is enough for warm ups, holding each position for at least 60 seconds will develop the body’s flexibility.
3. Do not go into a stretching position then immediately return to the relaxed position, and do it repeatedly. This is more appropriately termed as bouncing while in a position. When stretching, hold that position for several seconds, and then slowly relax. You may do this exercise repeatedly this way. Bouncing or forcing yourself into a position during stretching can strain or damage some joints or muscles.
4. Work slowly in increments instead of immediately proceeding to doing the hardest exercise or position.
5. Make sure that you have stretched or warmed up all muscle groups. For some people, even if they have strong bodies, they tend to neglect the neck when working out of stretching. Stretching the neck muscles can be as simple as placing the palm of one’s hand against the front of the head and pushing it. Then, do the same to the sides and the back of the head.
6. Stretch regularly to continually increase your range of movements and your level of flexibility and strength.
7. Workout considering only your capabilities and not of others. Do not force yourself to do exercises that you are not yet capable of just because there are people who can do it. Increase your limits slowly. Listen to your body. There are days when your body may be too tired that you may have to consider reducing your range of motion.
8. Learn to rest. Rest in between sets and stations to make sure that the body has enough time to recover its energy. Also, it is advisable that you don’t work the same muscle groups consecutively for two days. The muscles grow during the period when you rest and not when you are working out.
9. Do aerobic exercises to strengthen your heart. Aerobic exercises are those physical activities that much oxygen for fuel. This includes cardiovascular exercises such as skipping rope, running or swimming.
10. Music may help you when you want to train for longer periods or to increase your intensity. You can use mp3 players, CD players or lightweight am radio receivers for this. Just make sure that you brought your headset with you so you wouldn’t disturb people who don’t prefer music while exercising.
Apart from preventing injuries and increasing one’s limit, it is also said that stretching is good for a tired body and also for a stressed mind and spirit.
Author: wpmasterlogin
7 Diet Secrets of the Stars
Celebrities always look fabulous. Whether appearing in television or films or strutting down the red carpet during movie premiers and awards, they never cease to fascinate us with their larger than life presence. The truth is, it takes a lot of effort to look the way they do, and being the public figures that they are, they cannot afford to slack off when it comes to taking care of their physical appearances. Their livelihood largely depends on how they look. Aside from the clothes, the hair and the makeup, celebrities have to take good care of their bodies.
So it is no surprise that these stars have their own secrets when it comes to staying fit and gorgeous. Their health agenda can range from extreme workouts to well-planned meals. Who doesn’t want to know their secrets in staying absolutely sexy? Here are some of the diet secrets of seven women celebrities.
1. Jennifer Aniston
The star of the phenomenal television show Friends not only mesmerized audiences with her adorable comic sense and her famous hairstyle, she was also known for having one of the sexiest bodies in Hollywood, as she appeared in countless magazine covers. To stay trim, Jennifer follows the 40:30:30 diet method. The diet consists of:
40% Low glycemic carbohydrates
-Foods such as beans, fruits and vegetables, legumes
30% lean proteins
-Tofu, fish, chicken, turkey, beef and low fat dairy products
30% essential fats
-nuts and seeds, fish and olive oils
It is essential that every meal should contain macronutrients to attain the balance of hormones and maximum weight loss.
2. Kate Hudson
The gorgeous daughter of actress Goldie Hawn gained 60 pounds during her pregnancy, which she needed to shed quickly before commencing on her next film. From her previous eating plan, she switched to a higher protein diet. She consumed high protein meals in smaller portions, and she combined this diet with an exercise program that includes weight training and cardiovascular workouts. After getting a lot of flak because of her post-pregnancy figure, Kate removed all that baby weight in only four months and has gained abdominal muscles that gained the envy of many in Hollywood.
3. Oprah Winfrey
As one of the most successful talk-show hosts in the world, there is no question that Oprah needs to maintain her physical appearance for her millions of audiences. Known as one of those celebrities who are constantly battling weight gain, she has recently toned up her figure and has never looked figure in age 50 by combining a regular exercise regime and diet plan. Oprah works out five days a week, spending 30 minutes on the threadmill and doing free weights. Her eating plan consists of legumes, fish, nuts, fruits and vegetables, chicken and dairy products that are lowfat. She limits her consumption of white sugar and flour. Oprah also credits her trim figure to her habit of not eating anything after seven in the evening.
4. Gwyneth Paltrow
A lot of people may find it hard to believe that the perpetually slim Academy award-winning actress actually needs to diet. Gwyneth actually follows a healthy eating plan that resembles Oprah’s, avoiding sugar and white flour. She usually follows a macrobiotic diet, eating foods like vegetables, brown rice, and lean meat. She also eliminated dairy from her diet, and does yoga everyday.
5. Madonna
The pop star known as the Material Girl has always flaunted a body that is to die for, and has become a true fitness paragon over the years. She keeps herself in tip-top shape by having Ashtanga Yoga, and follows a strict diet that mostly shuns junk foods. She adopted a macrobiotic eating plan that includes organic foods rich in lean protein.
6. Claudia Schiffer
The bodacious German supermodel eats salad and steamed vegetables for dinner and eats only fruits before the afternoon. While on locations, she prefers to eat black grapes and drinks tomato juice and herbal tea.
7. Christie Brinkley
Long-time supermodel maintains her all-American good looks by being a vegetarian. She does not keep junk foods of any kind inside her home to make sure that she does not eat them when cravings occur. She snacks on sweet potatoes in place of candy bars, and she adopts a liquid juice diet when she needs to slim down fast.
Celebrities are just like ordinary people. They need to maintain their figures just like anyone else, and there is more pressure on their part since they are constantly in the public eye. Ordinary folks can have celebrity-like bodies, too, and by following these diet and fitness plans, they can also look like red-carpet worthy.
5 Myths About Fitness
1. Sport is for professionals. This idea applies only in the case of performance sports. The native qualities required for professional sportsmen (speed, skills, specific height, etc.) can only be developed, they can’t be formed by training. As long as the aim of a regular person is not performance, almost all sports can be practiced for keeping the body in a good shape. It’s all about dosing the training you chose, so that the benefits are bigger than wear and tear. Even the sports considered tough can be practiced in a ‘soft’ way (tae-bo, mini-triathlon, jogging, etc.).
2. Training is tiring. This idea is true as long as it refers to consuming all your energy (muscular and hepatic glycogen), but it doesn’t mean that training gets you into that state of exhaustion which would slow down the process of recovery of the body. Even in performance sports, the purpose is to have rather effective than exhausting training, so that the body can get the stimulation necessary to qualitative progress from one training to the next.
Even more than in other sports, in fitness the sportsman is spared overexerting. However, the training must not become ineffective. People can come to the gym tired after a work day and leave relaxed (physically and psychologically) and not more tired. This is extremely useful for people with sedentary jobs, but also for those who make physical effort at work. They could use the training by choosing a type of effort meant to compensate the one involved in their job.
3. Training takes too long. Again, this idea is true if applied to performance, which can only be obtained by working a lot. But also in this case short and very intense training or training for relaxation and recovery are often performed. In fitness, you can get to 20-minute training, working only super-series of fast exercises, which could involve, directly or indirectly, all the muscles. Anyway, regular training shouldn’t take longer than an hour and a half. Otherwise, the body will get into the catabolic faze, when the cortisone secretions ‘cannibalize’ the muscles.
4. Any type of exercise is good for solving your problems. What’s true in this refers to some particular cases like excess of adipose tissue. This tissue can be ‘melted’ by any kind of aerobic exercise (running, cycling, swimming) if this is continued long enough. Even in these cases it was clear that some exercises are more effective than others. There are situations when only a combination of exercises with a certain amount of each, can provide you with the results you expect. More than that, repeating the same exercise all the time can have as a consequence not only losing balance in the antagonist muscles and in the joints involved in training, but also stopping progress or even regressing.
5. You’re older? No more exercises! This is true only if we refer to extremely demanding efforts (really heavy weights, fast running, jumping, etc.). There are lots of exercises adapted to different ages. Their purpose is to keep and improve health and also to improve physical shape. The development of movement parameters for older people refers especially to muscular and cardio-vascular resistance as well as mobility of the joints. Because the final purpose of training is not preparing for a competition, the exercises can be organized gradually according to their difficulty, eliminating the risk of accidents. Because it’s based on perseverance, fitness can be adapted without problems for older people and even for people suffering from different affections specific to old age.
Cheap Home Gym Setup
Training at home could prove as a good solution for the ones interested. The effectiveness of this type of training could compare to the one of working out in the gym, as long as some factors are considered.
The first, and at the same time the most important of these, is owning the necessary equipment. If, besides this, you also have a partner who trains with you, the exercises can be as effective as the ones performed in the gym. Of course, we are talking now about the ideal situation of affording a gym in your own house.
Even with these conditions fulfilled, some practitioners, especially the more extrovert ones, might lack the stimulating atmosphere, the sharing of experience, the communication that they can find in the gym.
In most of the cases, what you can do at home is improvise a room or just a corner of a room, for fitness. Besides, most of the times you have to train by yourself. As these are the most frequent situations, we’ll deal with them now. Anyway, it is preferable to have constant training at home, rather than interrupt it a lot because the gym is too busy, too far, too expensive, etc.
The minimum of equipment necessary for training at home includes: an adjustable bench, a set of two dumbbells, with increasing weights, a barbell, with free weights and a fix bar for pull ups. This equipment will enable both executing basic exercises (squats, bench presses, pull-ups, sit-ups, etc.) and diversity of exercises, necessary for avoiding routine.
The main disadvantage of not having a partner to train with is reflected in the amount of loading in some exercises, which cannot reach its maximum. There are many exercises which can be loaded to maximum without any risk, even if there is no partner to assist you (pull-ups, dips, shoulder presses, barbell curs, dumbbell curls, etc.).
An advantage which comes from training at home is that you can choose the training time without any restraint. Moreover, the speed of exercising can be increased a lot if the practitioner chooses to execute supersets, tri sets or giant sets. You can also save time, as you are not distracted by casual conversation, by waiting for the machines to be available, by having to change the weights for every personal series of exercises, etc.
In the extreme case when we can only afford as equipment a mattress, chairs and a towel, we can focus on exercises using the weight of the body (push-ups, reverse push-ups, between chairs push-ups, squats, sit-ups, crunches, hyperextensions, lunges, plyometrics, plunks, etc.).
All the exercises involving the body weight are considered as really demanding, because they mobilize more stabilizing muscles that ensure coordination and balance. The body-weight exercises are often introduced in the programs at the gym due to their proven effectiveness. They are also used in training and testing people in special troops, as these need a lot of force and discipline in their training.
25 ways to get a 10min workout part 2
Around the House
1. When you go outside to pick up your morning newspaper, take a brisk 5-minute walk up the street in one direction and back in the other.
2. If you’re housebound caring for a sick child or grandchild, hop on an exercise bike or treadmill while your ailing loved one naps.
3. Try 5 to 10 minutes of jumping jacks. (A 150-pound woman can burn 90 calories in one 10-minute session.)
4. Cooking dinner? Do standing push-ups while you wait for a pot to boil. Stand about an arm’s length from the kitchen counter, and push your arms against the counter. Push in and out to work your arms and shoulders.
5. After dinner, go outside and play tag or shoot baskets with your kids and their friends.
6. Just before bed or while you’re giving yourself a facial at night, do a few repetitions of some dumbbell exercises, suggests exercise instructor Sheila Cluff, owner and founder of The Oaks at Ojai and The Palms, in Palm Springs, CA, who keeps a set of free weights on a shelf in front of her bathroom sink.
While Waiting
7. Walk around the block several times while you wait for your child to take a music lesson. As your fitness level improves, add 1-minute bursts of jogging to your walks.
8. Walk around medical buildings if you have a long wait for a doctor’s appointment. “I always ask the receptionist to give me an idea of how long I have left to wait,” Cluff says. “Most are usually very willing to tell you.”
9. While your son or daughter plays a soccer game, walk around the field.
10. Turn a trip to a park with your child into a mini-workout for you. Throw a ball back and forth and run for fly balls.
25 ways to get a 10min workout part 1
Experts recommend working out 45 minutes to an hour a day (30 minutes for beginners) for weight loss and fitness. But if you’re like most women, you don’t always have a block of 30 to 60 minutes a day to devote exclusively to doing your workouts.
You can still exercise–you just need to sneak in the equivalent in resourceful ways. “The idea is to keep moving,” says fitness expert Ann Grandjean, EdD. “Get a cordless phone or put a long cord on your regular phone, and walk when you talk. Find whatever works for you and just move. Park half a mile from the mall and walk. Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Those little, itty-bitty things add up.”
Every Stolen Moment Adds Up
Lest you think that short bursts of activity have a negligible effect on your fitness program, think again. One study found that women who split their exercise into 10-minute increments were more likely to exercise consistently, and lost more weight after 5 months, than women who exercised for 20 to 40 minutes at a time.
In a landmark study conducted at the University of Virginia, exercise physiologist Glenn Gaesser, PhD, asked men and women to complete 15 10-minute exercise routines a week. After just 21 days, the volunteers’ aerobic fitness was equal to that of people 10 to 15 years younger. Their strength, muscular endurance, and flexibility were equal to those of people up to 20 years their junior.
In yet another study, researchers at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore found that for improving health and fitness in inactive adults, many short bursts of activity are as effective as longer, structured workouts. “It would be useful for people to get out of the all-or-nothing mind-set that unless they exercise for 30 minutes, they’re wasting their time,” says Gaesser.
Breaking exercise into small chunks on your overscheduled days can also keep your confidence up, says Harold Taylor, time management expert and owner of Harold Taylor Time Consultants in Toronto, who has written extensively on the subject. “Skipping exercise altogether is ‘de-motivational’–you feel depressed and guilty,” Taylor says. “If you skip it, you tend to figure, ‘What’s the use? I can’t keep up with it anyway.’ Yet as long as you make some effort each day, that motivates you onward. Success breeds success.”
Keep in mind, though, that short bursts of exercise are meant to supplement, not replace, your regular fitness routine. Here’s a roundup of practical ways to work exercise into your day even when you “don’t have time to exercise.” (You don’t have to do them all in 1 day; select what works for you.)
10 Tips fir Getting Fit
Getting fit is on the minds of most people. However, many people are not consistent and fail in the first three months of an exercise program. But if it becomes a habit and they stick to it, something magical happens after four months. You are finally getting the results you expect and chances are you will continue with the exercise program.
Here a 10 simple tips to help you with your fitness success.
1. Get Moving. Resolve to be active in a variety of physical activities on a regular basis that will develop strength, cardiovascular capacity and flexibility.
2. Prime the Pump. Resolve to participate in physical activities that involve the large muscle groups of the body.
3. Let Your Muscles do the Work. Resolve to lift weight or use resistant exercises to place demands and challenge your muscles.
4. Loosen Up. Resolve to stretch regularly – before and after or during exercise. Remember to move your muscles through their full range of motion on a regular basis.
5. Win the Losing Game. Resolve to maintain your weight at an appropriate level. If you need to lose weight, a general rule to follow is to eat less and exercise more (both in moderation).
6. Watch What You Eat. Resolve to eat a healthy diet. Good nutrition equates to good health. Good nutrition involves providing your body with the required nutrients in appropriate amounts.
7. Chill Out. Resolve to keep matters of your life in proper perspective. Know what factors you can and cannot control in your life. Don’t “stress out” over those things beyond your control. See change as an opportunity, not a threat.
8. Get Plenty of Rest. Resolve to get enough sleep. The basic guideline concerning how much sleep you need is whatever enables you to feel refreshed, alert and in relative good spirits the next day. Sleep helps to rest and restore your body – both physically and mentally.
9. Keep Your Focus on the Task at Hand. Resolve to make time to exercise on a regular basis. Consistency gets results. Focus on the muscle you are exercising. Don’t just go through the motions.
10. Keep in Mind that “There is no Free Lunch.” Resolve to commit to sound lifestyle choices. For example, don’t smoke. Maintain an appropriate level of body fat. Avoid the latest fitness and diet fads, magic potions and exercise gadgets that seem too good to be true (they always are).
What Are Muscle Building Steroids
Steroids are artificial compounds linked chemically to the male sex hormone ‘Testosterone’ that is responsible for the maturation of male features falling out during puberty. Steroids were first developed in 1930 to help men who were incapable to produce sufficient testosterone in their bodies.
However, steroids are widely used by jocks that engaged in power sports such as power-lifting, muscle building, baseball, football, and rugby to boost their performance levels, and build up muscles. Anabolic steroids are often called muscle-building steroids, because the offer great results in muscle building.
The muscle building steroids cause the body to raise the tissue amount and to metabolize fat within the body. That’s why body-builders make use of muscle building steroids to their advantages. However, according to the 1988 federal law, the supply & use of muscle building steroids for non-remedial purpose is against the law. The muscle building steroids are restricted medications in the United States, Britain, Canada and many other parts of the world.
Today, the majority of athletes abuse steroids, which is completely erroneous and unlawful. The use of muscle building steroids for competitive purposes is legally banished. The muscle building steroids are available in form of tablets, capsules, gels and injections. There are lots of muscle building steroids available in the market. Some of the highly abused muscle building steroids include Dianabol, Winstrol, Testosterone, Danocrine, Anadur, Anavar, Andriol, AndroGel, Anadrol, Cheque Drops, Oxandrin, Winstrol, Deca-Durabolin, Durabolin, Equipoise, and Depo-testosterone.
There are many risks involved in using muscle building steroids. The muscle building steroids may have serious side effects and dangerous consequences. Some of the common side effects of muscle building steroids include dizziness, early hair loss, sleeping problems, vomiting, sadness, mood changes, pain in joints, hallucinations, mental illness, urinary problems, jaundice, stroke, heart disease, trembling, high blood pressure, and increased chance of injuring muscles and tendons. The muscle building steroids are also responsible for causing aggressiveness, gloominess, nervousness, and uncontrolled bouts of anger.
The One Hit Knockoit part 2
Using it in a real fight:
Many pressure point systems focus a lot of attention on where and even when to hit. Where to hit is important but it should not be the first priority. It doesn’t do you any good to know where to hit if you can not manage to hit there in a real situation when you need to save the life of yourself or a loved one.
One of the basic problems shared by many people who study pressure point hitting is that they are unable to use their knowledge in a real fight. My personal belief is that if you can not use your self-defense art in a real situation then you are wasting your time. One of the basic problems is that in a real fight the action is to fast for the average person to hit a specific point or area on an attacker even if the thought crosses their mind to do so and because the targets are constantly moving the situation is quite different than the way most people practice pressure point hitting in the kwoon or dojo. Also, when adrenaline kicks in fine motor movement tends to diminish to less than 40% of what it is normally which means that it is very difficult to hit any one half dollar sized spot on another human being with any accuracy and most pressure points are smaller than a half dollar. Another problem is that many people are what are called non-responders or partial non-responders (I have personally seen indications that this is more than 1 out of 10 American people) to pressure point attacks and if a person is under the influence of drugs or alcohol and they are out of their mind they won’t be affected by a hit or they won’t feel it until much later. So, although where to hit is a very important body of study, where to hit should not be your primary body of study unless you are seriously interested in acupuncture or the medical side of pressure points.
I believe that it is good to get exposed to as much as possible while focusing on really learning essential techniques that can be used in a wide variety of situations and circumstances. Learning (by which I mean practiced to the point of excellent proficiency) about 12 to 36 good places to hit along with 6 – 10 good entries is plenty for a beginning (first 3 years) practitioner. The 6 – 10 good entries should be versatile enough to handle hundreds if not thousands of different scenarios and the places to hit should be readily available on the average person most of the time. By engage I am not recommending that you strike first in a situation because if you seriously injure or kill the attacker then you may have serious legal problems and if and when it is found out that you hit them first you may have actually broken the law (according to my attorneys), so, I always recommend to students and I recommend to the readers here that you should exhaust every possible option to escape and deter an attacker before engaging them. It doesn’t do you any good to win the fight and then spend the next ten years in jail. I consider my freedom to be a part of my reason for studying self-defense. Unfortunately, I have been attacked on the street over a dozen times. Because of my training method I have only had to hit a few (less than one out of three) of those attackers. All of the fights where I or a student has actually had to hit another person have been over in less than 30 seconds and most of them only lasted 1 to 3 seconds.
I have found it to be common that when to much attention is placed on where to hit that not enough attention is placed on how to hit. By how to hit, I am referring to things that are really essential to having a good ability to deliver a fast and powerful knockout hit in a real self defense situation.
Essential to achieve 1 Hit KO’s:
Some of the essentials to throwing a good 1 Hit Knockout are Proper Body Mechanics, relaxation, positioning, whole body movement and power, Knowledge about breathing and safely generating Explosive Force and using physical principles such as gravity and compression. This includes moving in a way that protects your own joints, wrists, elbows, shoulders, back, and neck. Our system also trains Iron Body and Golden Bell techniques to help protect the student and so that our more advanced students can not be affected by the majority of pressure point techniques.
To achieve a good 1 Hit Knockout it is also necessary to have some understanding of the body. This can be in the form of pressure points, internal body organs and structure or ways to strike the eyes, throat and groin or/and knowledge of vulnerable areas such as the knees and other joints of the body. In our system of Kilap Kilat Kun Tao Silat knockout hitting is one of the main areas of study with the emphasis always being on practical self-defense. Dim Mak and more advanced palms such as various levels of Poison hand, the Iron Palm, Vibrating Palm, Cotton Palm, Burning Palm and the Delayed Death Touch are taught later in the system. I hope this article has given some insight into 1 Hit Knockout Strikes and hitting methods.
In this article, I have briefly touched on the subject of 1 Hit Knockouts. It would take volumes to be able to explain all of the possible techniques in full detail. In addition, I would like to thank my teachers Masters Tyrone Jackson and Uncle Bill from whom I have obtained some of my information on this subject. I would also like to thank all of my teachers for the wonderful knowledge they have bestowed upon me. Any errors made in the writing of this article are strictly mine and should not be taken as a reflection of any opinions other than my own. This article was written with the greatest respect and admiration for all of my teachers.
The One Hit Knockout part 1
Warning: Do Not Practice on Living People
Do not practice these techniques on other people. These techniques can cause serious injury and have a high potential to be lethal. Do not use these techniques unless it is to defend yourself in a serious life or death situation. Also, do not practice these techniques at full speed or power or with real intention on another human being or on any other living thing.
For example, a serious knock out hit to the jaw can shatter the jaw and if the intent of the force or the physical force is driven upward with enough power then the strike can break the small bones of the cheek or and the connecting eye ridge causing such massive trauma that the injured person will die from the shock let alone the trauma.
One of the dangers of learning a true method of 1 Hit Knockouts is that quite often, at first, the practitioner can’t tell how much power they are generating and assume that since they don’t feel much power that they don’t have the hit yet or that they are not generating a knock out hit. However, once true knock out power is learned it is generally easier to do a knock out quality hit than it is not to do one. So, students have to be seriously warned to be careful not to really hit their training partner(s) when practicing. There is, of course, the liability issue but even more than that is the real possibility that someone can get seriously injured because the practitioner doesn’t realize their own power. So, we never hit another person with even a medium hit and certainly not with a fast speed or penetrating strike. We limit our hits to air strikes or striking on boards, bricks, bags and pads and will only demonstrate very limited hits to a person on rare occasions.
When one of my senior students first learned “No Distance” hitting he did not understand how serious these hits really are and consequently he broke 2 different training partners ribs by mistake before he realized he could not even moderately practice on people. Fortunately, he was not hitting any major pressure points or he may have done much more than just crack a rib or two. He honestly didn’t think he was hitting with any power. I have always warned my students about the dangers of these hits but ever since his experience I have always EXTRA stressed the importance of not practicing these hits on people and that is why I am sharing his experience with you.
What is a 1 Hit Knockout:
There are different kinds of knockout hits including but not limited to pressure point hits that require a series or combination of hits to achieve a knockout. This kind of knockout hitting is very popular today in Okinawan and Kenpo Karate. The series combination pressure point method is also the way that I was originally taught to apply the moves in my Kung Fu forms. Kilap Silat is an art that usually hits multiple pressure points all at once with the same strike causing a system overload that causes a knockout. Fa Jing or explosive energy hits emanate from the entire body and tend to be whip like. Most real Tai Chi and Internal Arts instructors know or have a version of Fa Jing in their art. Whole body power striking is typical of the hitting method in Poekilan and Tji-Mande Silat. Some advanced hits include Poison Hands, Shock Power Hitting and Vibrating Palm Hitting. These skills can be found in most Internal Arts but are much less commonly known. Other advanced strikes include 1 Touch Knockouts and short distance knockouts including heavy hand techniques.
A 1 Hit Knockout can be as simple as a finger jab to an eye, a punch to the throat or a light slap to the testicles. A 1 Hit Knockout can be as sophisticated as a light tap underneath the jaw at the correct angle and direction such that the person just drops, a whole body power hit, to snap the arm, that is done in such a way so that the person who receives it goes into shock from the trauma and passes out, or a specialized frontal or side strike that causes the heart to fibrillate and then the blood circulation stops temporarily or permanently causing death. In Kun Tao and Pentjak Silat there is a study of striking the joints to disable an attackers ability to physically move in case the attacker is crazed (or in today’s world on drugs or heavily under the influence of alcohol) so that the attacker is unable to continue. I place this body of information as a priority along with my study, practice and teaching of knockout hitting because I believe that the average attacker on the street is not in their right mind to begin with.
Description of 1 Hit Knockouts:
A properly executed 1 Hit Knockout looks like the person throwing the hit barely did anything. One of the simpler and more advanced 1 Hit methods has been described by one author (Gilbey) as a just a dinky little poke. From watching the film footage I believe that this is the kind of hit that Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) used to hit Sonny Liston. Also, when a 1 Hit Knockout is done correctly the opponent typically falls like a sack of potatoes.
Once a good 1 Hit Technique has been trained in it is common to feel like you aren’t doing anything to make such an enormous impact when delivering the strike. To the person who is executing the strike the hit feels like nothing. To the person receiving the hit it is game over! Several people that I have trained have had to use this technique in a real situation. The vast majority of the time, the result of the strike was that the attacker was instantly knocked out. In one case the student hit the attacker on the arm and the hit was so powerful that it instantly snapped the attackers arm.
Properly trained 1 Touch Knockouts (Tai Chi, Shaolin & Petjut Silat) have an even much less feeling of impact to them than 1 Hit Knockouts and are usually done very quickly. In fact, typically they are done fast enough that the point of impact can not be seen by the average person. When someone really has the 1 Touch technique perfected they usually will not feel any impact at all from delivering the hit. However, when done to a 1 inch thick pine board the effect to the board is shattering.
One inch hitting is similar to that of a highly refined 1 inch punch and tends to have a shattering effect on boards although different kinds of energy can be applied for different effects. A good shock hit can be practiced by holding two boards in your hand and breaking only the second board. On a person the effect can be manifested in different ways including but not limited to the recipient moves or flies 8-12 feet or more or the recipient feels a deeply penetrating hit but is hardly moved at all. A large heavy bag (over 120 lbs.) with someone who knows what they are doing and what they are feeling for holding the other side is a good and safe way to work on manifesting the different kinds of power. Another good way to train one inch hitting power is to break patio blocks with it. I only recommend trying this under the guidance and or supervision of an instructor and I highly recommend easier breaks before advancing to the kinds of breaking I have been describing in this article.
No distance hitting at an intermediate level tends to look like the person doing it shrugged or let go of something very quickly or sneezed. At an advanced level the person doing the hit looks like they barely moved. The recipient feels a jolt go through their body. At a really advanced level the energy of the hit can be directed through the recipients body and sent out through anywhere on the recipients body or it can be made to stop so that serious trauma is caused. Our students mostly practice no distance hitting on boards or on a heavy bag. The first level of this hit can be done on a heavy bag such that when the bag is struck it does not move and the person who is holding the bag gets knocked away from the bag.
In the past I have had friends and students in the construction business and was granted access to a few houses, to practice on, prior to them being torn down. In my practice of no distance hits I have broken doors that were slightly ajar including taking one off of the hinges and by directing my energy I was able to hit a wall and caused a window to break that was over 8 feet away. I am not trying to brag here. One of my primary instructors is Willem de Thouars (Uncle Bill) and his striking ability is much greater than mine. Several other teachers I have studied with are also very impressive pressure point and energy power hitters. In this article I am simply stating what I have personally experienced with this kind of hitting.