Five creatures, five fighting styles

The karate students at Villari's Self-Defense Center of Somerville, Mass. practiced techniques associated with five animal fighting styles -- dragon, crane, tiger, leopard and snake -- on Thursday night. These techniques ranged from powerful tiger thrusts to swift leopard strikes to slithery snake moves to in-flight crane swoops to mighty dragon movements. It was quite a menagerie of techniques!

Burpee Battle

Defying gravity!

Our warmup during karate class on Monday night included squat thrusts, which are a little like burpees. Both involve starting from a squat and jumping. With a squat thrust, when you land, you add a plank position and a pushup before going airborne again. We did 10 of them. I'm not sure I won any style points!
I have also done burpees in the Great Woods Road parking lot at the Lynn Woods Reservation with the Stone Tower Spahtens obstacle-race training group on Sunday mornings. For the cartoon, I thought I'd add a crane, as the jump sort of fits in with the motions of the crane. Daisy the Westie watches in the middle.