Blog Article/Post Caveat (Read First Please: Click the Link)
I have come to call them X-tream push up bars while one professional, expert, called his version the “Challenge Push Up Bars” and the Karate Luminary of note calls them, “Chinkuchi Push Up Bars.” In a nutshell, they all do the same thing in challenging one to do push ups that focus on the forearm, wrist and hands as to strength and stability.
The strength and stability of the hands and fists is important if you use them for self-protection because simply any failure on their part can reduce your abilities drastically. Just one more reason, as you probably already know or surmised, to diverge your skills in the hand arts, like karate, so that you skill-sets span multiple methodologies and tools to stop an attack and ensure your safety and security.
All too often the focus in karate, and other martial disciplines, is on strength and the truth of it is, as taught by three professional experts, “Jimerfield, Rory Miller and Marc MacYoung,” you really need, “structure, range, power generation and movement,” where the express in addition that movement, motion defeats strength. Most karate-ka cannot wrap their heads around this because in this social reality strength is preached and proselytized as the defacto trait one needs to be successful in their respective systems, arts or styles whether competitive or defensive as to training intent.
Marc MacYoung, an expert in many things especially self-defense and defense, gives us the equation to a triangle for effectiveness being, “Mechanics (that I refer to as fundamental principles like structure, alignment, etc.), knowledge as to how they are applied, and our ability to apply them in a situation (often in my perception a case of self-protection and defense).
He expands on this idea with the following:
- You need to have good mechanics to generate and receive force.
- You need to know strategies on how and when to use them to achieve ends.
- You have to be able to do both in a situation (tactics and on the spot problem solving).
These three things are NOT synonymous. And by having one, you do not automatically get the others. That's a huge hole and blind spot in most martial arts training. - Marc MacYoung, No Nonsense Self-Defense on July 6th, 2018 FACEBOOK Wall.
One of the most interesting yet often not known by most martial and karate practitioners who feel they are learning how to fight and protect in situations requiring self-defense is that, “Motion defeats Strength (No Nonsense SD by Marc MacYoung).” I would add strictly for discussion and testing by the reader, “Mind-set defeats strength,” because it is the mind properly conditioned and trained toward appropriate concepts that must be triggered to make the mind and body move creating that motion. One reason, a few years back, I started changing the way I trained such as in kata, I find kata valuable as many other karate-ka do, where I removed a certain type of focus so that my body would continually move not just in the set patterns that are currently taught for kata performance competitions but how the body needs to move in what I feel makes movement in a reality based way.
Rory Miller, an expert on these subjects, mentioned once that he viewed the performance of kata where, in one example, the practitioner is taught to move in such a way as the head remains steady and does not move up or down, etc., and that is not the reality of being in a self-defense situation realistically speaking. He is right, long ago one of Mr. MacYoung’s comments such as the above quotes on movement opened my eyes to how karate kata tend to bind you rather than set you free so I needed to make the kata more realistic for me.
Kata with changes in movements, once the pattern and rhythms, etc., are learned as a novice ergo why you learn the basic kata patterns exactly, are necessary to implement in your kata training where your body leaves the pattern moving up and down, left and right, angling and adjusting and visualizing scenario’s that put you in a position where you, “MOVE” so it becomes a bit more realistic when you move into the adrenal stress-conditioned realistic training methods to help you make it work, in reality-based way. If you must, look at as a way to make in both karate and kung-fu/Tai Chi like movements, expand on the basic foundation of kata to help make it a more realistic tool for self-protection against nefarious evil doers who want either a resource or process objective involving you and possibly others.
As you can see, the x-tream push up bars are a very small part of achieving the ability to keep stability of the forearm, wrist and hands so they can achieve effectiveness when you need them most. It demonstrates an ability to deliver hand methods while creating power and reducing, just in this one area, power and energy loss or bleed.
The following graphics provide you a picture to put in your mind to create your own x-tream push up bars and it is important to stress that if you want to provide this to your students you put out, as these other experts did, caveats as to the dangers of performing x-tream push ups.
In short, you assume full and complete responsibility for the purchase of or creation of your own x-tream push up bars as well as their use because failure to take the time and learn how to do these gradually, until you build the skills, stability ability and strength, you can get hurt, bad. Slow, easy and help from these experts is REQUIRED!
Marc MacYoung of No Nonsense Self-Defense states/wrote as to his challenge push up bars, “In 30 years I (MM) have not found more than three or four other people that are able to perform this push up. I do believe that the improvement in grip, wrist and forearm strength is worth the effort and improves your martial technique. I don't even ask my students to do this one although I used to do it regularly as an exercise. If you attempt this one, you accept all risk and liability if you're not prepared physically.”
I want to personally not that his challenge push up bars appear to me to be the most challenging simply by their very design. Especially since his bars take the added stability of the two legs you see in the other bars and put it all into just the one centered leg of his bars. His seem, since I have not made a set yet, on analysis in the photo seem to add a higher level of challenge to using his over the others. This DOES NOT mean the others don’t provide a huge challenge, they do as I have the home made set, they just do have the extra stabilizing ability in the two legs and don’t take my or their word for it, test it out SAFELY on our own and assume all the risks on your own or DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME UNSUPERVISED BY A PROFESSIONAL!!!!
WARNING! THIS IS A DANGEROUS DEVICE; THIS IS A DANGEROUS METHOD OF PUSH UP; THIS COULD CAUSE GRAVE HARM TO YOUR ARMS, WRISTS, HANDS AND ESPECIALLY YOUR FACE! PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!!!!!!!
Those curious as to why the term, “Chinkuchi” is used can read the following topics on that subject with the understanding they are my perceptions and beliefs from both study and experience.
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