M!k3's b7oG: July 2009

Week 7 was all MCMAP (Marine Corps Martial Arts Program). One word comes to mind when trying to describe MCMAP...OUCH!
The program was established in 1999. The Marines had a program before MCMAP (the name escapes me at the moment) but it was basically a program that taught how to disable the enemy in a fight. Marines soon learned that if fighters were high on pcp or lsd or other drugs a broken limb would not stop their attack. MCMAP was introduced to kill the enemy.
There's 5 levels, tan, grey, green, brown, and black. The past week we covered basics for the tan belt. We test next week. The first lesson we learned was body hardening, that was real fun (can you hear my sarcasm?). Body hardening consisted of pairing up with a "buddy" that you would share blows with in various parts of your body over and over and over again. Forearms, back of the arms, outer and inner thigh, stomach and hands. The worst for me was the blows to my thighs. Each kick to the same spot made my leg want to buckle and fall to the ground but you had to keep standing and return the favor to your buddy. The only major bruise/welt i had was on my left thigh. After all that body hardening we proceeded to some body aching workouts. Nobody felt like moving much less running around with weights and doing pushups but we complained and moaned and pushed through it. The rest of the week we learned puches, kicks, unarmed manipulations (like armbars), a few body throws, chokes, and how to counter each one. Our bodies were sore all week, walking was laborous. But that week is finally behind us thankfully!

One of my favorite sayings our Staff Sergeant told us when we were complaining was, "they sell cans of suck-it-up at the exchange, go pick some up after this!"

We're finally headed for week 8! All the hard stuff is behind us and now we're closing up our time here. I think this will be my last blog about CREST! Hope you enjoyed it as much as i did!