Randomize Your Training

By Bart Scovill

Ever walk into the dojo and spend half your training time trying to decide what to do, or you have a workout plan that you just don't feel like following. Here's a suggestion to help you deal with these situations. Randomize your training. That's right, let fate decide what you should do.

All you need is some way of randomly generating suggestions for things to train. I like to use my palm pilot. I installed a flashcard program and entered techniques, exercises and stretches. The flashcard program randomly returns these and helps me decide what to train next in a fun and interesting way.

But you don't need a palm pilot, you can use dice, playing cards or any other way of creating random feedback, such as the table on this page. For Example, with dice, just predetermine what the dice numbers mean such as: 1. Jab; 2. Reverse punch; 3. Hook punch; 4. Front kick; 5. Roundhouse kick; or 6. Side kick. Roll the die a second time to get the number of repetitions. Playing cards are especially nice because you can use suite, color and number to increase the number of variables.

Click button to change number & technique

If you're the kind of person that never deviates from your routine, this type of training may not be for you. But if you're like me and every now and then you need a little boost, this type of training can provide it for you.