The week before last the Friday night’s adults training was rather tiring to say the least, purposely so. Actually tiring is an understatement, exhausting would be a better description. 
Many of us get used to training at a certain level and find a comfort zone that we tend to stay within. Friday was all about being out of that comfort zone and also being incredibly tired, too tired to continue in fact, but still having to do that. Occassionally when people aren’t expecting it, we’ll pull out of the hat a really tough session to test their mental fortitude, their stamina and their ability to perform under pressure whilst incredibly tired and this was the night we did it.
Friday’s session started off at a high intensity straight away with conditioning drills designed to tire everyone out:- squats, pressups, gecko pressups, situps, footwork drills with ladders, Plank, side plank, situp variations, more squats and races carrying the grappling dummies, (they are quite lightweight only about 6st) and then having to toss the dummies end over end and then the same with some ground and pound. By the way did I mention that we were using interval training techniques, so there was no rest during these drills, just exercises at a slightly lower intensity.
Straight onto bag work with punching combinations, followed by heavy roundhouse kicks and then side kicks to finish off. Everyone got a break of a minute or so to rest, whilst we put the equipment away and then it was back to work again.
By this stage everyone was either running out of steam or had run out of steam and were working on energy reserves, so the time was ripe to increase the tempo by moving onto grading combinations at full speed and power, one after the others, no teaching as such, just practicing of the techniques themselves. Partnerwork followed, nothing fancy, but designed to keep people focussed on their opponent and on their toes to ensure they weren’t going to get hit because they were too tired to defend themselves. We finished of with their grading kata, everyone had to perform their form 25 times, to the best of their ability at full speed and power.
Finally some stretching to finish them off, sorry I meant to finish the class. Some nice deep Yoga stetches for a final work out on those tired and aching muscles. Most people were able to get up and walk away immediately, some took a minute or two to compose themselves. Not many could talk for a while though.
By the time we had finished the warm up, people were at the stage of being shattered and you could see that several wanted to sit down for a rest, you could also see the ones that were going to get through it, no matter what happened. For the former, the rest of the session was quite a revelation, they found that actually they could dig a little deeper and find the physical and mental reserves to keep going and keep performing well. The class was designed to be stressful and tiring with people expected to perform even though physically exhausted. Without beating each other up, it was a great way to simulate a combat situation and the ebb and flow of stresses within it. The euphoria when a tough drill has been finished, only to be replaced seconds later, when the realisation hits that you have to do it again and then again. Try this type of training, its a real eye opener to see how mentally tough you are.
