On 08 September, City Connect celebrates the birthday of English actor Martin Freeman who was born on this day in 1971. Martin Freeman is known for his roles as Tim [...]
Author Archive for Massimo Gaetani
Massimo is a professional coach certified by Results Coaching System. He works primarily with business owners and senior managers in organizations to boost their performance, set powerful goals about their business and careers and he supports them on their path to ensure successful outcomes. His clients to date are professionals, entrepreneurs, C role individuals and senior managers spanning a broad range of industries. Massimo supports his coaching qualifications with 15 years of management experience in small to large enterprises working in various senior positions in sales, marketing, IT and business consultancy. Find out more at www.profitdojo.com
Martial Arts and the Subconscious
Have you ever heard expressions like: Practicing martial arts without thinking? Going with the instinct? Thinking is too slow in a fighting situation? The main purpose of learning complicated moves and combinations during most martial arts practice brings two main advantages: improving the muscles, tendons, ligaments and joints involved in that move building connections in [...]
How Realistic is Your Training?
Considering that martial arts are, in essence, methodologies for fighting I always consider paramount to perform a reality check of each application. This is to assess if and when a technique or combination can be useful in a self defence or real fight situation. Please notice that some styles, like kick boxing, tae kwon do [...]
An Encounter That Made Me Think
The other day I bumped into MT, a former student of mine. He joined my club years ago and trained with us for at least a couple of years. MT is a guy in his late thirties, over 6 foot tall and well over 200 pounds of weight. When he arrived he had a reasonable [...]
Contact Training for Self Defence
This post is discussing the importance of contact training in martial arts, particularly in view of their effectiveness in self defence situations. Once I welcomed a new student in my club: he stated to be nearly at Dan level in his club back home. He practiced a style of Korean martial art, derived from Tae [...]
How Strongly Do You Wish to Succeed in Martial Arts?
When you see a person who is active and among the top performers within your school or club have you ever asked your self what took that person to be where he/ she is now? We surely cannot assume that anybody was born capable of punching, kicking or performing any other martial art move in [...]
Hook Kick: 5 Good Reasons to Hit with the Ball of the Foot
Different schools and styles of martial arts teach the hook kick (also called reversed round kick) in different ways. Main differences manifest essentially in the way the movement originates, how the kicking leg is moving during the kick and what part of the foot hits the target that can be the hill or the sole/ball [...]
Understanding Strong Posture
Different martial arts teach and instill different postures that have been designed to offer the ideal position(s) to best use attack and defend actions for that specific style. Although what works for Aikido is so substantially different from Kickboxing or Wing Chun they all make sense when you apply the techniques from their particular repertoire. [...]
What Experience Gives You
Recently I was running a lesson with the Cambridge University Kickboxing Society and I was pointing out to two beginners young ladies how one was not hitting has hard as she could while performing a simple exercise. Her partner was surprised of my remark and she stopped asking how I could tell she was not hitting “as [...]
The Importance of Speed in Martial Arts
In order to be a good martial artist you must aim at excelling in a number of different skills and having at the same time: Strength Agility Coordination Reflexes Balance Endurance Speed The last but definitely not least one in the list, speed, is to be considered of extreme importance because it affects most of [...]
Powerful Strikes: My Top 5 Martial Arts Punches
Martial artists and sport fighters with some level of experience are aware that some punches or kicks are stronger than others; some people just accept that as a fact, some of us try to understand the reasons behind by studying the human anatomy, how the body works and how biomechanics actually apply to these techniques. [...]
Knife Defense
Whenever you a guy fighting in a movie one or more attackers armed with knives don’t believe what you are seeing: most of the times it is unrealistic. I have seen lots of knife defences that simply won’t work when, in the street, a random guy (or girl) pulls out a knife and tries stabbing [...]
Two Good Ways to Avoid a Fight
I am convinced that getting involved in a fight is something that should be avoided at all times. There might be circumstances where fighting is absolutely unavoidable and I repeat something I have already expressed before: in a fight or flight situation the latter should be preferred if you are sure you can run faster [...]
Differences Between Kickboxing and Thai Boxing
Many people, too many people, confuse Kickboxing with Thai Boxing (also called Muai Thai). Perhaps it is because of the generalisation that many schools do in defining any fighting sport that uses upper and lower body strikes (e.g. punches and kicks) as Kickboxing. I used the term fighting sport to indicate a martial art that gets practiced [...]
Levels of Competence: the Martial Arts Case
One of the models I used during my Professional Coaching Training describes competence in four broad steps or levels: I found this extremely useful and practical because it helps identifying very quickly at which stage a person is with her competence toward a certain subject. I’ll add an example about driving a car that I hope [...]
Disambiguation About 5 Styles Called Kickboxing
For somebody who has been practicing kickboxing since before it was given this name I find somehow irritating when people confuse it or, worse, deliberately misuse its name for commercial reasons. Most martial arts, despite attracting some time interesting numbers of keen followers, failed to attract the real interest of the masses in terms the [...]
The Paradox of Hidden Simplicity
If you look around you, if you think about the world surrounding us simplicity is where everything starts and ultimately where the main goal for most is: this is described very well in John Maeda’s “The Laws of Simplicity” that I encourage you all to read. We have today devices that somehow make our life [...]
Tao of Jeet Kune Do
I have been toying with the idea of writing book reviews for a long time. Have an extensive library of martial arts and Eastern philosophy books that cover a broad range of subjects. I hope that what I am going to write about each of them will be enough to inspire some readers to read [...]
My Thoughts About Karate
I practiced Karate Shotokan for 2 years in the early eighties; I had a go at Wado Ryu in 1994 for less then a year and I then trained in many occasions with experts, dan level, of Goju Ryu, Shorin Ryu and Kyokushin kaikan. I find it an interesting martial art(s) that brings, in most [...]
Getting Started in Complementary Health
An increasing number of people decide at some point in their life to get the necessary qualifications and become a complementary health practitioner. The recession and job losses of the recent years have somehow inspired many people to make the big step and, sometimes without other choices, start their own private practice. The challenges which [...]
10 Reasons Why Martial Art Are an Effective Alternative to Gym, Aerobic and Lifting Weights
Although martial arts are not team activities there are many elements of cohesion that motivate martial arts practice more that any other sport. Let analyse why this is true: Practicing a martial art is a long time investment in your health and well being: the time to proficiency is often long enough to establish good [...]
Differences Between Aikido and Tae Kwon Do
I once met a guy and our conversation drifted very quickly into martial arts (surprise!), specifically about self defence. I was confused when he stated that he wanted to learn Tao Kwon Do for self defence because a friend of his is a highly ranked student of the discipline. My first reply was: “Tao Kwon [...]
Salus Wellness Clinics – One Year of Successes
Building a business from scratch can be challenging and, at the same time, very rewarding when results are outstanding. Salus Wellness Clinics celebrated this week its first anniversary; the complementary health centre is now a well established business that fits well in the local community, offering a rich variety of top quality complementary health services [...]
Ask City Connect
Can Hypnosis Help Me?
Thank you very much for your question. We often get asked if hypnosis can deal with this type of health issue so I thought it best to clarify what hypnosis [...]
Style
Swarovski Adds Sparkle to Mirror Mirror
Swarovski once again adds depth and dimension on the big screen– this time, one of the most beloved stories of all time comes to life in Relativity Media’s live-action motion [...]
Relationships
What Kind of Singleton Are You?
Being single is something we all seem experience at some point in our lives; regardless of how we end up being alone its inevitable for most. But like most things in life being single has [...]
