MMA or Traditional martial arts? If I had a penny for the amount of times people have said to me that MMA is more realistic than Traditional martial arts and that Traditional martial arts would not work in UFC. So before I get lots of love mails, texts and keyboard master warriors writing to me, […]
A mistake is just a lesson in progress Are you the type of instructor that does not want to make a mistake or worse still are you the type of instructor who is scared to make a mistake? In martial arts when we first learn new principles or techniques we will not perform them to […]
Knife disarms a romantic notion? Just finished watching Jason bourne, you have to love the way he dispatches the baddies, they have knifes, machetes, karambits but it’s no problem for Jason he takes them all on and still is able to sprint to the next encounter, I wonder what martial art he studied? Are we […]
Don’t let space invaders win! Strange title you may think but if we take that literally from a self defence aspect we do not want to let aggressors invade our space. If you allow aggressive people into your personal space violence will surely ensue. What do we mean by invading your personal space, well if […]
Are you self defence ready? Are you self defence ready or do you go around like the masses with your head stuck in your phone? If something happened would you be ready to take action? These are important questions you have to ask yourself. The other day I was walking towards home and on my […]
State of mind There has been a lot of interesting ideas by some martial arts instructors when using thoughts or intentions in the use of nerve striking/pressure points. We won’t go into them as we prefer to keep it at a more realistic self defence level at this time. The goal of your intentions or […]
Slow and smooth and smooth is fast Slow down! My instructor would say as I tried to replicate the martial arts movements as fast as him. Now I am repeating the same things to my students. We have a tendency always to go as fast as possible whether this is to hide the lack of […]
THE FORGOTTEN ART OF STRATEGIC LEARNING One of the challenges of any martial arts teacher, sensei or instructor is to get the best out of your students without it being too difficult, too easy yet still making it interesting so that the students will want to learn and become fully engaged in the process. Just […]
Forget Breath Control Forget breath control and you will fail to master any martial art movement, but let’s take it further than that if you don’t have breath control you will not master any martial art movement or body action/function. Students when learning any new skill will naturally hold their breath and this is a […]
Chinese spine tail There is an old Chinese proverb ‘‘you are as old as your spine.’’ Meaning your actual chronological age is less important than your health and the way that body can and should move. I call this ‘‘body movement potential.’’ (BMP) It’s no surprise that the spine is in the centre of the […]