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 … Continue reading
I am convinced that a proper warm up is an essential part of any martial art session: I see around many clubs that are quite informal about this part of training and they resolve the issue by telling students to “warm up”. People therefore chat away for 10-20 minutes while … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
Martial arts were developed to help people fight, being it for attacking people in battle or for defensive purposes. If we look at China and Japan, two countries that gave birth to some of the most famous martial arts in the world, they have profound differences in the way martial … Continue reading
We define combat sport a sport application or expression of a martial art where we set and impose rules to limit and control the amount of damage that can be inflicted to the opponent. Ranging from contactless Karate tournament, via Boxing and all the way to MMA fighting sports usually … Continue reading
If you ask a person with no experience in martial arts to throw a punch or a kick you might get some kind of result that will be, in most cases, very inefficient and inconsistent. Having a foundation based on some kind of martial art ensures the application of a … Continue reading
Practicing martial arts, as well as any other physical activity and sport, can cause pain due to accidents or simple practice: this post discusses some of the aspects of pain and my view of dealing with it. What is pain? Wikipedia states that: Pain is the unpleasant feeling common to such … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
Finding a Tae Kwon Do class is usually very easy, in most places and for this reason I have practiced Tae Kwon Do (TKD) in a number of locations around the world (UK, Indonesia, Antilles, Spain) and I was lucky enough to train several times with some top experts, exchanging, … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading