1-1, take two

Knife draw x 55, Grand Total: 665
200 situps workout, week 1, day 1

Today was 1-1 day for situps. And it hurts already. Seriously. I'm going to have a hard time getting out of bed in the morning.

For knife draws, I did 45 just standing and drawing. I experimented with various movements for my left hand, like vertical shield, bringing it in to my chest, and guarding my neck. The last 10 I mixed it up a little and did the first part of the draw as normal, then rolled the knife in my fingers as I closed my fist, facing my blade in the opposite direction. As in, the knife was still reverse grip (pointing out the bottom of my fist), but the sharp edge of the blade was toward my elbow, as opposed to being in line with my knuckles. This grip is called pikal (or pakal, depends on who you ask). It's favored by some smart, experienced people, so I thought maybe I'd give it a try.

For the last week or so, as I start to add to my training movement, I've been wrestling with where to take the training. Essentially, if I want to groove certain movements, which set of movements will it be? I have some Filipino Martial Arts training (mainly Inosanto Blend, but a little Sayoc as well), but what bits of that do I want to emphasize? Should I adopt Southnarc's pikal methods? It's somewhat like an identity crisis. I'm comfortable with the concept of training the art for it's own sake, but I'm kind of doing this to emphasize real potential self defense skills. I don't know what I'm going to do. I don't even know if I'm framing the question properly. Questioning things is good, though, and I wouldn't even be having these thoughts if I wasn't starting to do the work, so to speak. So I've got that going for me, which is good.