Martial Grit: Real Fighting Fitness (On a Budget)

By Robert Mitchell, Jr

Have you been chasing fad training programs and expensive gimmicks but not getting stronger, faster, or more skilled? Does it seem like your pocket book keeps getting lighter but your punches aren't getting any heavier? Fighting fitness isn't about fancy tools or beautiful gym space -- it's about about training with proper focus in a measured, healthy, and efficient way.

Learn the three things you must do to establish proper mindset. Start improving right away using the "S.A.F.E. M.P." protocol to ensure that your training focus and assessment tools are always on track. Establish a fitness foundation in calisthenics and "MBF" a.k.a. "Martial Base Fitness" and then build a training program to meet your individual marital arts goals choosing from a vast menu of razor sharp training methods. Includes proper use of heavy bags, floor bags, and grappling dummies, double-end balls, and slip balls; how to use resistance tools, like auto tires, chains, sandbags, dumbbells and barbells to get stronger; six conditioning runs that really work; and old-school sledges, pipes and mallets. As an added bonus, there is a chapter filled with DIY instructions for making your own equipment for pennies.

Honed by thirty years teaching martial arts in inner city programs on shoestring budgets and in public parks for a non-profit, this book is as real as it gets.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Mitchell, Jr
• Release date: Aug 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463289549

Robert Mitchell, Jr

Robert Mitchell is a writer, martial arts expert, and archdeacon in the Old Catholic tradition from Richmond, VA. A martial artist for over thirty years, he is the founder of Heritage Arts Inc., a 501(c)(3) federally-recognized non-profit educational charity providing free instruction in martial arts, fitness, outdoor skills, and spiritual development. In 2011 he was awarded the rank of Master by the Combat Martial Arts Practitioners Association, and in 2019 became an authorized instructor of Mark Hatmaker's Frontier Rough & Tumble Martial arts program.On the subject of martial arts and related topics he has penned "Martial Grit: Real Fighting Fitness on a Budget" and "The Calisthenics Codex" which has been in Smashword's Top 10 fitness books since its publication in 2015. His fiction works include the novels "Chatters on the Tide," "Ghilan" and "The 14th Mansion," as well as numerous poems, ‘zines, comic books, and short pieces. His work has appeared in the Journal of Asian Martial Arts, Hulltown 360 Literary Journal, and more.He graduated from the University of Virginia in 1983 with a B.A. in English. He and his wife are the proud parents of four children and five grandchildren.

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Martial Grit: Real World Fighting Fitness on a Budget

by Robert Mitchell Jr.

Copyright 2020, all rights reserved. Smashwords edition. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except by critics wishing to quote brief passages in connection with a review. Thank you for downloading this eBook.

All words, pictures and sketches by Robert Mitchell Jr.

Your support and respect for the property of this author are appreciated. See what he’s up to by visiting his virtual office at

remitchelljr.com

ALSO BY ROBERT MITCHELL JR

* The Calisthenics Codex

* Cabal Fang: Complete Martial Arts Training Course from Querent to Elder

* The Wildwood Workbook: Nature Observation and Survival

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DISCLAIMER

See your doctor before beginning any exercise regimen. Neither author, publisher, seller, nor distributor are liable if you get injured or killed doing the exercises in this book. If anything goes wrong, it’s on you.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1: Getting Your Head on Straight

Chapter 2: S.A.F.E. M.P.

Chapter 3: Calisthenics

Chapter 4: Martial Base Fitness

Chapter 5: Heavy bags, Floor bags, and Grappling Dummies

Chapter 6: Double-end Balls and Slip Balls

Chapter 7: Weight Training

Chapter 8: Conditioning Runs

Chapter 9: Sandbags, Chains and Medicine Balls

Chapter 10: Auto Tires

Chapter 11: Sledges, Pipes and Mallets

Chapter 12: How to Design a Training Program

Chapter 13: Do-It-Yourself Fitness Gear

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Chapter 1: Getting Your Head on Straight

Fad workout programs blow through the public consciousness like tumbleweeds. Some hang around longer than others. But mainly they rumble on by, here and gone, headed who knows where. Sometimes they constellate around a common concept, but often they have only one thing in common: a significant outlay of your hard-earned money.

Pardon my cynicism, but I’m betting that many of these programs, tools, apps, downloads, and DVD sets do not perform any better than the tried and true methods of yesteryear. I’m wagering that some of them don’t work at all, and that at least a few of them are designed solely to separate us from our paychecks.

But I wouldn’t know a kettlebell from a training mask, an HRV app from an HRM tracker, a smartwatch from a smart-ring. Some of this stuff might be great. Some of it might stink. But I wouldn’t know because I don’t own any of it. You know why?

Because for the last thirty years or so I’ve been going in a completely different direction. After I got my black belt in 1989, I got the fitness bug. But I was poor back then, and I couldn’t afford a gym membership. Even if I could have, there just wasn’t time. I had a job (and sometimes two or three), kids to raise, and martial arts classes to teach at the YMCA or Recs and Parks. Time spent packing up my gear, toiletries and changes of clothes, driving to a gym, showering and dressing in alien territory, and then driving either back home or off to work, was too much time to waste. Plus, the mere thought of all that packing, hauling and driving was so daunting that I knew there was no way I’d ever get off the sofa and go through that. I figured out that training at home, either in the apartment or outside in the yard or on the patio, was far more expedient and efficient. A one hour training session on my patio actually took one hour. Not one hour plus another hour for driving. I learned a lot about hard-boiled fitness during those years.

And then, in 2009, I started a non-profit martial arts program in Richmond, VA called Cabal Fang Temple, Inc. For the last ten years we’ve been training at a local park, outdoors, 12 months a year, rain or shine. Since we’re a non-profit and our programs are completely free, we can’t afford expensive equipment, and because we train at the park, we don’t have anywhere to store it even if we could. We’ve had to figure out cheaper and simpler ways to train.

In February of 2019, in addition to Cabal Fang, I started Bobcat Martial Arts -- my Frontier Rough & Tumble martial arts and Vigny-Lang walking stick self-defense school. At Bobcat Martial Arts we do things in a trimmed down, pragmatic, workmanlike way, using a mixture of historical, tried-and-true methods and modern re-interpretations thereof.

As you can see, no matter where or what I’m teaching, I’m thinking about saving money and time while preventing wasted sweat and effort. I could put a fad-like spin on what we’ve done at my clubs. I could call it scientific research and you might believe it. But the truth is that our discoveries have been plain old garden-variety necessity mixed with a healthy dose of common sense. What you hold in your hands is thirty years of sweat-soaked experimentation and decades of heart-pounding aspiration on a shoestring budget. And I’m here to tell that you can get as fit as a fiddle on pennies.

You don’t need money. What you need is gumption, grit, and good old-fashioned get-up-and-go. You have to have the want-to.

But you know what? The world is full of people who aren’t self-aware enough to know what they want. They think they want to get learn self-defense -- but what they really want is to swagger around town in a cool martial arts t-shirt. They think they want to be strong -- but what they really want is to look good with their shirt off, pretend to be cool, show off, or otherwise feed their egos.

Step One: Disconnect fitness from appearance.

Do you dream of washboard abs? Do you fantasize about getting ripped, shredded or swole? If that’s your goal, this is this is not your book. If you want to get shredded, all you have to do is calculate exactly how many calories your body burns each day and then eat slightly less calories than that until the fat burns off. That turns out to be harder than it sounds, and it has nothing to do with strength or speed. Not sure who said it first, but as the saying goes, Bodybuilding is a competitive sport that takes place in the kitchen.

Focus on what you can actually do, not what you look like you can do. This book is not about getting shredded – it’s about getting fit to effectively defend yourself and practice martial arts. Will this program work? Definitely. One of my students, who earned a green belt from me when I was teaching Taekwondo, thanked me for giving him a firm fitness foundation after he graduated from Navy Air Rescue Swimmer School. Those guys are some of the most functionally fit human beings on the planet, and they know what fitness is and is not.

Now this is no training program for combat sports athletes, although it will give you a solid foundation if that’s the direction you’re looking to go. To break into the pro fighting arena you’ll need a combat sports coach to create a program specific to your game. Pro fighting camps are way beyond the scope of this book, and include all kinds of requirements not addressed here, like cutting weight and rehydration cycles (perhaps the biggest key to success in modern combat sports), periodicity and peaking, training camp structure, diet, and much more.

What this book is about is getting strong, very inexpensively and very safely. As a play on the phrase full contact martial arts, we sometimes call my Cabal Fang program "full context martial arts." In my world, you can’t afford to get hurt. We’ve got paychecks to earn, bills to pay, and retirements to save for. We’ve got yard work to do, kids to play with, and families to protect. And we want to be strong and healthy into our old age, not broken down wrecks by age 40.

So let’s be clear before we start. What I know about – whether it’s Taekonwdo, my eclectic my Cabal Fang non-profit, or my Bobcat Frontier Rough ‘n’ Tumble martial arts business – is self-defense and practical fitness. There are no weight classes where we

Reviews for Martial Grit

[Rj Perales music · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Classic old school I formation...much needed but seldom heeded in the modern age!! True fitness for combat sports and life!!