Mike Lee Kanarek Blog

Mike Lee Kanarek Annual Combat Fitness  Boot-Camp pushing strong into week 7….

On October 10th 2011 eight people, including myself , kicked off my annual Combat Fitness Boot-Camp. Typically this is the training regime leading into the conference and that is how I personally gear up for it physically. If you have witness out HaganaH Black Belt test , you have seen it is in no way an easy task. And months of physical preparation is required, even out of me!

The first 4 weeks of the Boot-Camp were “Loading” weeks, or what I call Great White Shark weeks. Then we had a week of rest and kicked up back into training on week number 6. The current three weeks, week 6/7/8 , are “Agility” weeks, or what I call Tiger Shark weeks. Concentrating the training on specially designed circuits putting emphasize of a 60% to 40% pulling to pushing ratio and a 70% to 30% two hands exercises to single handed exercises. After that it will be a one week of eating only Green, our Detox week. On that week we only do steady low impact cardio. Then finally it will be our last two weeks , the “Speed” weeks, or what I call the Mako Shark weeks.

Its that time of the year, my annual Combat Fitness Boot-Camp is less than a month away from Kick-Off!

10 weeks of hell……less sleep, more work load, less calories, more soreness and less mercy. This boot-camp is going to be savage, I am stronger than ever, but I still want to turn it up a couple notches. I stand 200lbs solid right now at about 15% body fat. My goal for this year at the end of the boot-camp is to stand solid at 205lbs at 12%body fat. Can’t wait!!!

I made friends with him loooooooong time ago,  8 years ago to be exact, I knew him decades ago but it was James Cooper who re-introduced us!

He has been there from the very beginning and has always been around since then : Pain!

Pain is my validation………………….if I feel today the workout of yesterday, it was a good workout. I am still sore from Saturday’s morning Combat Fitness workout-it was Savage!!!

Tomorrow is Monday…..grinds starts all over again

to all that were in the storm this weekend, I hope this one passed you safely

In this Armour I follow a very simple principle:

“Logistics dictate Strategies,

Strategies dictate Tactics

and Tactics dictate Attributes”  which at the bottom of this principle, Attributes, it connects it to the previous Armour I talked about.

In Israel we say “you can’t fight the ocean, but you can fight the fish” , it is related to crowd and riots, in other words no operator can fight the entire riot, he has to pick and choose who he fights in the crowd per objective of the overall mission at hand.

Personally to me Combat Strategy has always been related to the game of Chess. The piece in the game to move first is never the King or Queen….its a simple pound, however, that first movement has a specific objective: to occupy the center of the board. Every move there after will become a sequence of events!

Strategy in Combat is also related to understanding “Odds” or what Randy Coutoure relates as “The Risk VS Reward” concept. When I took his Xtreme Coutours Camp in Las Vegas a couple years ago , when he said “Risk vs Reward” on shooting for a takedown, I smilled. Made me think of how I think in numbers about odds and possibilities of approaching each attack- it was the same principle in different words and different combat arenas- but still the same principle!

For “Odds”, which is related to luck, I play Backgamon. Or Shesh Besh as us Israeli call it. It is my favorite game since in Israel it is literally the National board game of choice by the Israeli people. Shesh Besh forces you to calculate the odds on the board and makes you manage the risks you take. It is a game of luck as much as it is a game of wit.

when I am in pain it reminds me of my goals, it fuels me…in the last few months I pushed real strong with my Combat Fitness training, literally to the limits, I had one goal in mind : My Conference!!!  Today I can Truly say that I am Stronger Than Ever (and faster)

Tomorrow will be my last workout before the conference, then with the exception of light cardio to keep my metabolism high, I will let my body completely  rest and recover so I am at Peak performance at the conference. Should be a much less painfull 2 weeks lol

to see more about how others are preparing for the conference visit : www.haganahblog.com

have a Kick Ass wekend

On August 30th the FIGHT Instructors of the NYPD Police Academy received a “Continually Enhanced” training clinic.

Assisting me teach this session were 3 HaganaH Black Belts : Jack Krystek from NY, Sam De Jesus from NJ and Dave Feirrera from NJ as well.

The training was intense and the guys did great pushing through the drills. I deployed 3 Stress Drills with finishing each drill with a suprise gun-disarm under pressure from an un-expected direction. After a few hours of intense training the level of functionality of the guys was truly put to the test!!!

After the training session the LT. took us for a tour in the academy and showed us a few locations (Including the main cadet training room) where FIGHT training posters were hanging on the wall for cadets to have as a point of refference for their training. “You truly changed the way we teach defensive tactics in the NYPD Police Academy Mike, you made a big impact”….I must say, I was proud

As a Joe Lewis Black Belt I had to sign a Pledge the day I past the brutal test with him in 1996. One of my favorite parts on that pledge reads ” The welfare of my students will be my first consideration”

when you train people , you Must have the sensitivity to know at what level they are and build them slowly and surely. If you ignore that fact you will break themmentaly, or worst hurt them physically!

Great Instructors who didnt know how to adjust to teaching beginners and breaking them too soon, versus if they had the patience they would have build awesome Black Belts

Great Instructors who only can teach beginners (because most of the time all they care is getting new students in) and have never taken the time to invest on developing themself high enough to be able to teach higher level students.

A good “TEACHER”, and to me Coaches/Instructors/Trainers/Black Belts are all teachers, will mold himself into his student so he will TRULY know how much he can push him/her each time a little bit more to have safe and constant development.

To those who know me, I am a Hardcore type of teacher, but I Always adjust to the student in front of me…it is my job the student entrusted in me to do…hope every one is having a strong and productive week of training

If you know me long enough you know that I am a strong believer in cross-training to sharpen your own major topic of training and your primery discipline/style of Martial Arts!

To me Martial Arts has always been about their true original objective, Warfare!

I was first introduced to Martial Arts when I was only 6 years old, like many other people of my generation  my first exposure to Martial Arts was the legendary Bruce Lee. Since I am Amer-Asian by birth Bruce Lee was the perfect fit for me to be my role model as far as the Asian side was concerned. From the first time I saw him on the big screen as a kid I was hooked on Martial Arts. Almost every weekend my father would take me to the book store in Brussells and I would buy books on Bruce Lee and any Magazine that had him on the cover.

Then one day , on the cover of the Martial Arts magazine  there was someone else, he wasn’t Asian , he was American with blonde hair. The guy on the cover was muscular doing a flying side kick, it was Joe Lewis!     I asked my dad :  “who is this guy?” my dad said : ” I don’t know Michel. just get the magazine and read who he is”   That same weekend I read the article about Joe Lewis and said to my dad : ” Joe Lewis is better than Bruce Lee dad” my dad said : “why?”  I said : “Because he is a live, and one day I will be able to meet him, not like Bruce Lee he just died” ….my dad laughed, I wasn’t joking.

I was about 8 or 9 years old then, in the center fold of the magazine was a poster of Joe Lewis doing the flying side kick. At that time my entire bedroom was covered with Bruce Lee Posters, but that weekend I hung my first Joe Lewis poster/pic on the wall.

Last weekend my son, Blake, and I drove 12 hours up to High Point NC to train at the Mid Year Joe Lewis Conference. It was the first time Blake actually trained on the mat with Joe Lewis, he has known him all his life but never trained with him until last weekend. At one point Joe grabbed Blake because Blake was not doing a drill properly and Blake almost shit in his pants lol Ten minutes later Joe came back to us and said : “He’s good , he listens” …at that moment I smilled real big, Joe probably thought I smiled because I was proud and Blake probably smiled because he thought he made me proud. But , the real reason I smiled was because at that moment I realized my father planted the seed for that exact moment 35 years ago!!!

To me and my students here at the National HaganaH Headquarters the Joe Lewis Fighting System is  our way to cross train in Kick-Boxing. Especially sparring. I have been with Joe Lewis for about 17 years now and I have learned so much from him both on a personal training level and on a teaching method level. He is truly my beacon and my students have benefited tremendously from him being part of my school. I believe you must spar to be a better HaganaH practitioner, while sparring has limitations due to the safety rules and has little to do with reality fighting and self-defense it is in sparring that you will build true confidence. Not to mention attributes development such as timing, distance control, trigger squeezing, counter attacking, intercepting ect….

If you want to be  a true Self-Defense warrior and stay true to what the Martial Arts are, cross training is essential. If you only train in your “One” discipline or style , then you are only accountable to that one discipline/style. If you cross train then your skills will be tested on a different angle and skills that are tested are skills that are proven…and the skills you have proven in your cross training will multiple your skills in your own discipline/style!

Train Hard, Train Smart, Train Like Your Life Depends On It….

this weekend I was teaching a seminar in NY, it was a great seminar, great people and great energy on the mat!

As always I started with a solid 45 minutes Combat Fitness workout, what I call “paying your taxes”      during that session I explianed that to me Combat Fitness is like the ammo you have for your machin-gun, doesn’t matter how good your machine gun is if you have no ammo!

Then we moved on to advanced FIGHT materials…this is where I introduced the concept of ” a book versus a machine”. If you are learning more and more techniques but your body is not combat fit and can not perform those techniques, in other words you only know the technique, you don’t own it. Then, you are a book that constantly adds more pages to it. Now, if you learning more and more techniques and you are Combat Fit, in other words you can perform them in training and where it counts the most : under pressure. Then, you are a fighting machine that keeps on getting better!!!

so the question is :  Are You A Book , Or Are You A  Machine???

***on the other hand: did you know that it only take 2 table spoons of machine/engine oil to contaminate an entire drinking water supply for a full size combat ship?

And that only includes my personal training, not me teaching classes!

One of my motto’s here at the National HaganaH Headquarters is ” Where The Young Get Strong , And The Strong Stay Young “…to get strong is one thing, but to stay strong is a completely different story!

On my last travels when I was in Columbia MD one of the guys that attended the Combat Fitness Workshop I did at Juan Ponte’s Max Muscle nutrition store asked me : ” Are you really 43 yrs old? ” I said : ” Yes” …then he said : ” It must be genetics lol ” I said : ” Oh Nooooooooooo….wasn’t easy to get where I am, and its even harder to stay here , its all about discipline and Knowing where to focus your training ” that naturally lead to his next question : ” What do you do on a regular base for workouts ? ”

here is the answer :

I do cardio on an empty stomach monday, tuesday, thursday and friday first thing in the morning. One week 2 HIIT sessions and 2 regular pace sessions and then alternate the days of those sessions the week after. Only then my day starts…

Monday mid day I lift heavy: 4 weeks chest, 4 weeks back and 4 weeks arms cycle.

Tuesday evening Combat Fitness – Module1

Wednesday morning Kettlebells heavy : 300 Swings , 100 Snatches and 20 Turkish Get-Ups in preparation to my RKC

Thursday evening Combat Fitness – Module1

Saturday morning Combat Fitness – Module2 including a S.U.B. add-on outdoor module

the above is my Combat Fitness and Conditioning weekly training with taking every 13th week off to rest and restart/retwig the next 12 weeks cycle

FIGHT monday morning with training partner

FIGHT wednesday morning with training partner

the above is my FIGHT personal weekly training , that does not include Kick-Boxing/Muay-Thai, BJJ/Ground Survival-Fighting, ITK/Combat Shooting

those who have been around long enough can tell you I was not always at the level of conditioning I am now at….actually, far from it. Took me 4 years to get it right and get where I am….but now , I will ALWAYS stay where I am!!!

Hope this helps some of my students or Instructors design their training routines….have a Kick Ass day