***

Bujinkan Shidoshi, Josh Sager – 10th dan, and Jon Haas – 9th dan, team up once again to bring you a unique and extraordinary presentation of weapons retention and deployment using the knife and pistol!

You will learn:

 Tactical use of weapons retention & deployment

 Proper methods for pistol draw and aim

 Movement with weapons in the tactical space

 Protecting others

When?

Saturday June 23, 2012

What Time?

1 PM to 5 PM

Where?

Warrior Fitness Gym * Hainesport Business Complex * 4004 Sylon Blvd. * Hainesport, NJ 08036

 How Much?

$50 per person payable at the door or in advance through paypal link below.

For more information or to register, please email jon@warriorfitness.org or call (609) 556-8712

Related posts:

1. Ninja Weapons Seminar
2. Combat Conditioning Seminar
3. Women’s Self Defense Workshop

Knife and Pistol Seminar is an original post on the Warrior Fitness blog. If you are not reading this on WF, please visit today to support the content's creator.

Saturday, March 24, 2012

***

Bujinkan Shidoshi, Josh Sager – 10th dan, and Jon Haas – 9th dan, team up to bring you a unique and extraordinary presentation of small and hidden weapons used by Japan’s legendary Ninja Warriors!

You will learn strategies, tactical movement, and techniques utilizing:

•  Ninja Sword
•  Shuriken
•  Kunai
•  Edda Koppo
•  Shuko
•  Nawajutsu
•  Kyoketsu Shoge
•  And More…

When?

Saturday March 24, 2012

What Time?

1 PM to 5 PM

Where?

How Much?

$50 payable online (click paypal link below) or at the door.

For more information or to register, please email jon@warriorfitness.org or call (609) 556-8712

Related posts:

1. Knife and Pistol Seminar
2. Preparing Ninja for a Mission
3. Combat Conditioning Seminar

Ninja Weapons Seminar is an original post on the Warrior Fitness blog. If you are not reading this on WF, please visit today to support the content's creator.

In the past I was one of the top operatives for my clan successfully completing dozens of missions all over Japan.  I went by many names, played many roles, and brought great favor to our clan.  My exploits are “legen- wait for it -dary” among ninja warriors.  Today have retired from active duty and assumed a position where I am in charge of the physical preparation training of our up and coming ninja recruits.

Based on my background and experience, one of my goals as an operative turned trainer is to completely revamp our ninja fitness training program.  My main concern is – What Does a Ninja Need?.  What I’ve done is put together a sample training program for you to get a glimpse into my world and see how I am training the new recruits.  Remember, this is just a snippet of the complete training package, based on my decades of operation and training experience that I have put together for the ninja in training.  There is much, much more….

So, how does one prepare ninja physically for a mission?

• Pulling and grip strength are an absolute must for scaling castle fortifications,
• Anaerobic and aerobic endurance,
• Burst-recover-burst ability for escape and evasion,
• Not to mention power-  a unique blend of strength and speed to enhance technical ability and fighting prowess should a ninja come face to face with a samurai intent on doing him harm.
• Jumping ability
• Agility
• Core strength/activation since power is generated from core out to the extremeties

If you decide to attempt this sample workout, make sure you begin with a good warm-up.

I’ll tell you about the super-secret dynamic warm-up that we do here in a future installment.  Keep an eye out for it!

Ninja Warrior Physical Prep Workout

5 Towel pull-ups

10 Rock-up Deck Squat and Leap

10 Fingertip Pushups

10 Hanging Leg Raises

Repeat as many times as possible (AMTAP) in 20 minutes (rest as needed).

Finisher – Heavy DB farmer walk or heavy sandbag carry x 3

There you go, an officaly ninja warrior workout direct from the 16th century!  How well do you stack up?

Related posts:

1. What Does a Ninja Need?
2. Ninja Endurance – Part II
3. Ninja Stars and Strength Training

Preparing Ninja for a Mission is an original post on the Warrior Fitness blog. If you are not reading this on WF, please visit today to support the content's creator.

The Dynamic Warm-up

• mobility work,
•  jogging forward and backward,
•  side shuffles,
•  high knees,
• butt kickers,
• bear crawls,
• crab walks,
• walking lunges,
• bodyweight squats,
• push-ups,
• and leg raises

Strength in Motion Workout

The main body of the training was a fun study of strength throughout a 3 dimensional range of motion.

1)      Suspension Trainer Push-ups: 5-7 reps

2)      15# Clubbell Mills: 10 reps each arm

3)      15# Clubbell Reverse Mills: 10 reps each arm

1-2 minutes active recovery between rounds:

• Light jog / vibration drills
• Throw rubber shuriken for target practice (hey, it’s a ninja thing!) – 9 throws each arm

Repeat 5 rounds

Both the Clubbell Mill and Reverse Mill work on rotational and angular strength at an extreme range of motion while the Suspension Training Push-ups work the hell out of the stabilizer muscles.  The combined synergistic effect of these 2 exercises creates an awesome workout for strength in motion!

But what happened to the shuriken thows?  As predicted, the lactic acid build up in my arms had an adverse effect on my ability to hit the target during my shuriken throws as the rounds increased.

However, the more I was able to shake out the residual tension and relax, the better my throw.  But when I failed to do so my accuracy was horrible!  This is a very important idea for all you shuriken throwing ninja out there!

The ability to control the balance of tension and relaxation in the body is essential for performance.  Learn more about how to do it with these resources HERE!

Related posts:

1. Preparing Ninja for a Mission
2. Ninja Weapons Seminar
3. How to Train for the Endurance of a Ninja

Ninja Stars and Strength Training is an original post on the Warrior Fitness blog. If you are not reading this on WF, please visit today to support the content's creator.

There is no middle ground. 

No room for wavering or debating. 

No having your cake and eating it too. 

When moving towards a goal, there must be no hesitation in your actions.

In the Bujinkan martial arts that I study, there is a similar saying, “Hell gapes beneath the upraised sword, step in to heaven.”  This may seem like crazy advice, after all who in their right mind would step forward when faced with an opponent armed with a 3 foot razor blade?!  But in training, through experience, one comes to understand and realize that the safest place when facing an upraised sword, paradoxically, is to move forward and step closer, thus finding “heaven”.

Again and again throughout warrior cultures, from ancient Greeks to Japanese Ninja and Samurai, we see this idea of complete and utter commitment, 100% determination in moving forwards towards our goals, no matter what they are.

So how about you?  How committed are you?  How much do you talk about taking action rather than actually taking action?  Do you step forward into heaven and achieve your goals when confronted with difficulty and adversity?  Do you walk the razor’s edge in life, or just in your mind? 

It’s time to step forward.  Take action.  With it or on it.

Click HERE to take action on your health and fitness goals today!

Related posts:

1. Ninja Walking
2. What Does a Ninja Need?
3. Unlocking Flow in Your Taijutsu Practice

With It or On It is an original post on the Warrior Fitness blog. If you are not reading this on WF, please visit today to support the content's creator.

Ninja fitness needs were much more multi-faceted than most physical pursuits.  They had to be as they were at once a combination of Olympic decathlete, Navy Seal, and martial arts master rolled into one.  Let’s examine this a little more closely though, what kind of qualities did they possess and what did they need to be able to do?

Ninja Must Possess …

• Strength
• Agility
• Coordination
• Excellent balance
• Flexibility / Mobility
• Whole body power
• Endurance

Ninja Must Be Able to….

• Move silently
• Run fast
• Walk far
• Leap high
• Climb trees, walls, castles fortifications, etc.
• Wield weapons
• Fight unarmed – striking, kicking, grappling, locking, choking, etc.
• Roll / fall / dodge / avoid
• Crawl
• And more…

As you can see from the 2 lists above, the ninja had a wide range of skills and abilities that had to be supported by a comprehensive fitness program keeping him at the top of his game.  Remember that for a ninja, fitness wasn’t just a nice to have; it was an absolute necessity to accomplishing his mission and getting him home safely.  And the kicker is, they did it all with little to no fitness equipment.  Certainly a 16^th century ninja did not possess a Gold’s Gym membership.  Nor did he own an Olympic weight set or have a stair master at his disposal.  And, while kettlebells and dumbbells would have been great, he most likely had never laid eyes on either one.  So here we have one of the most highly trained and fit agents the world has ever seen created without the use of modern training equipment or modern training methods.  What might some of this training looked like?  I’m glad you asked.  One of my favorite scenes in Hatsumi Sensei’s early Bujinkan training videos (DVDs now for you younger folks!) comes from Shinden Fudo Ryu.  Here’s a short clip I found on Youtube.  This stuff is seriously old school!

 “One trains using the things of nature to make the body strong” – Hatsumi Sensei

What if we were to take the spirit of historical ninja fitness training and combine it with a little modern sports science and know how?   Modern methods allow us to take advantage of periodization, or programing and organizing training, to create a comprehensive fitness plan which will apply logical sequences to get the most out of each session.  Protocols like HIIT, high intensity interval training, will be utilized to maximize both aerobic and anaerobic endurance in the same short, high intensity session.  Advances in recovery work from such sessions will allow us to recover faster thus making gains greater, and increasing our overall general physical preparation (GPP) will allow us to push higher into more sophisticated training.  Effectiveness and efficiency will be combined in order to allow for shorter training sessions which maximize the use of one’s time.  As the ancient ninja did, we will create a strong, supple, highly conditioned warrior and accomplish this with little to no fitness equipment.  We will, as Hatsumi Sensei says in the video clip above, use the things of nature to make the body strong.

If I were able to point to just one resource for the warrior that combines old school training with modern sports science, I’d look here at the book, Warrior Fitness: Conditioning for Martial Arts.

However, keep your eye on Warrior Fitness because what we have coming out in the next few months will blow your mind!

Related posts:

1. Preparing Ninja for a Mission
2. Ninja Endurance – Part II
3. Ninja Walking

What Does a Ninja Need? is an original post on the Warrior Fitness blog. If you are not reading this on WF, please visit today to support the content's creator.

It’s amazing how much walking you do on a daily basis at Disney.  Whether it’s with Mickey, Donald, and Goofy in the Magic Kingdom, or walking through 11 different countries in Epcot, exploring Hogsmeade and Hogwarts Castle at Universal Studios, or hanging with the mammals over at Animal Kingdom, you are walking or standing in line literally all day long.  So, the question for the warrior is, how do you put all this walking and standing to good use?  Train while you do it, of course!  While the walking alone is good enough for most ordinary folks, warriors require a little more.  So here’s a little sample of what I did to enhance it:

•  Push a child in a stroller as you walk.  Add a backpack to increase the weight.
• Carry that child intermittently while walking or standing in long lines.  A child is an odd object – who needs kegs, kettlebells, or sandbags when you can carry a kid!  They constantly move, squirm, change posture or position while being carried!!

• Focus on moving and pushing the stroller from the core (hara) and not from the shoulders.
• Balance – stand in line on one foot.  Do it while holding your odd object (child).
• Grip training – crush grip the stroller handle for 5 seconds.  Rest and repeat.  Do left, then right, then both hands.  Contract the core, exhale hard and crush the handle.  Also, isometrically try to “bend” the handle – first make sure it’s sturdy enough, your wife will kill you if you actually succeed!
• Breathing – there are tons of opportunities to enhance walking and carrying through breath training.  Match your breath to your steps.  1 step inhale, 1 step exhale.  Try to make it up to 10 steps on an inhale followed by 10 steps on an exhale.  Or, 5 steps inhale, 5 steps hold full, 5 steps exhale, 5 steps hold empty.  Try to see how many steps you can take carrying your child on an empty breath hold.  Do the same on a full breath hold.  Don’t forget to ride a rollercoaster too – screaming and laughing are great breath training!
• Bodyweight squats while holding your child in line. 

These examples above will help keep you focused, training, entertained, challenged, and present while your kids have a magical time in the parks.

If you have any energy left when you get back to the hotel room, bang out a few sets of push-ups to round out your workout for the day.  And, lastly, joint mobility and yoga asana are a great way to prepare your body for the rigours of Disney.  Don’t neglect your 10 minute warm-up in the morning before heading out.  It’s a life saver!!

Trust me, there are ample training opportunies outside of your regular workouts.  You just have to be a little flexible and creative. 

Related posts:

1. Ninja Walking
2. A Day in the Life…
3. Push-ups as Breathing Exercises

Walking with Mickey Mouse is an original post on the Warrior Fitness blog. If you are not reading this on WF, please visit today to support the content's creator.

by Jonathan Haas, founder of Warrior Fitness Training Systems

• Specific Physical Preparedness for ALL striking arts from old school Traditional Martial Arts to modern MMA!
• Learn how to build a powerful structure to stabilize punches, kicks, and martial movement!
• Discover how to use low-tech, high yield tools to strengthen strikes throughout a range of motion!
• Sledge Hammer for force production, rotational strength, grip strength, and old school conditioning!
• Medicine Ball for explosive strength and rotational strength!
• Resistance Bands for force production, rotational strength, increased stabilization!
• Bodyweight Exercise and Isometrics for structure and stabilization!
• Discover how to use Intelligent Tension rather than general tension to power strikes!
• Learn Breathing and vibration exercises for recovery and restoration!
• Over 50 pages of pure, 100% actionable content – no fluff, no BS, no filler!

• Sample Workouts!

Buy Now for only $15 USD!!

Warrior Fitness Guide to Striking Power is a downloadable e-book. No physical products will be shipped. After you order, you will get INSTANT ACCESS to download the e-book and all the bonus reports onto your computer. The e-book format is adobe acrobat PDF, which can be viewed on Mac or PC.

Related posts:

1. 8 Reasons Why YOU Need Striking Power
2. Sample Exercise from Warrior Fitness Guide to Striking Power
3. Ukemi Flow Conditioning Workout

The Warrior Fitness Guide to Striking Power is Here! is an original post on the Warrior Fitness blog. If you are not reading this on WF, please visit today to support the content's creator.

What is Endurance?

Endurance is defined as being able to keep going without fatigue setting in, or being able to push oneself through fatigue.  Essentially, it is the ability to resist or bear fatigue.  What is fatigue?  Fatigue is weariness or exhaustion from exertion, or the temporary loss of power to respond.  An equally critical corollary to the definition of endurance, especially for the warrior,  is that your level of endurance also determines how quickly you are able to recover between bouts of activity.  Combat, like life, does not happen at one constant rate of speed.  It is multi-faceted in nature.  There will be periods of brutally intense activity followed by lulls in the action, again followed by another flurry of activity.  Being able to use those lulls in action to recover is a critical ability for the warrior.

Steady state cardio, Long Slow Distance (LSD) training simply will not cut it.  Running on a treadmill may be appropriate for a hamster in a cage, but human beings require more.  Long distance running can be beneficial for mental toughness and/or active recovery, but it should not be the primary focus of a warrior’s endurance training.  So then how should we train to maximize our ability to endure?

Warriors Need to HIIT!

High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) is one of the best ways to train for endurance.  It will enhance all 3 energy systems in the body (2 anaerobic and 1 aerobic – see here for an overview), as well as prime the nervous system to recover automatically during lulls in activity.  Simply put, HIIT alternates periods of high intensity exercise with periods of rest and recovery.  It can be performed with almost any exercise and can be utilized both with and without equipment.  The variety and adaptability of this style of training is second to none in results.

How else does improving your endurance through this type of conditioning aid your martial arts training?  I’m glad you asked!  If the benefits discussed above weren’t enough, consider that having a high level of conditioning also aids in learning new skills.  How’s that possible?  To put it simply, when the central nervous system (CNS) is fatigued, the body cannot effectively process new skills, especially technically advanced skills.  So, in essence your lack of a general level of fitness and conditioning will actually impede your learning process as you will tire more readily and not have the ability to recover quickly enough during training.  Want to train more, at a higher level, for a longer period of time?  Want to get more out of your training time both at home and in the dojo?  Want to build new skills and enhance your technical arsenal?  Get yourself in shape!

There are several sample conditioning workouts here on the Warrior Fitness site.  Here are a few examples:

Workout of the Week #1

Workout of the Week #5

Stay tuned for more Warrior Fitness style conditioing workouts to help you get and stay in fighting shape!

Related posts:

1. How to Train for the Endurance of a Ninja
2. What Does a Ninja Need?
3. Preparing Ninja for a Mission

Ninja Endurance – Part II is an original post on the Warrior Fitness blog. If you are not reading this on WF, please visit today to support the content's creator.

Is Your Cup Already Full?

Another way we limit ourselves is by equating knowing with being able to do.  For example, when your teacher demonstrates a fundamental principle of movement for the hundredth, or maybe hundred thousandth time, do you smile smugly to yourself and think, “I know that already”?  Maybe you have.  I know I have.  I admit it.  But this type of attitude makes us lazy.  It lowers our skill level because it allows us to hold fast to the superficial without the hard work of plumbing the depths.  It lets us check those basic movement(s) or principles of movement off our mental list and move on to something more advanced; more worthy of our time (we may think)… big mistake.  If we were truly honest with ourselves, we’d be asking a different question.  The better, more appropriate question to be asking ourselves is -”how well can I do that?” or “How well do I truly understand those movement(s) bodily, not intellectually?”   This is hard though because most often the most authentic answer we can give ourselves is, not well enough.   Watch your teacher closely.  Look deeper.  Pay attention because there’s always more.  Be careful.  Practice.  Practice.  Practice!

Related posts:

1. Ninja Endurance – Part II
2. Unlocking Flow in Your Taijutsu Practice
3. Your Sanshin No Kata Under a Microscope

Knowing is Not Enough! is an original post on the Warrior Fitness blog. If you are not reading this on WF, please visit today to support the content's creator.