Archive for Martial Arts
From the Octagon to the Street, Part 2
Posted by: | CommentsAfter re-reading my MMA sucks posts and then “From the Octagon to the Street“, I’m coming to the point where there doesn’t seem much left to say on this topic. I’ve tried to argue my points clearly, citing my reasoning and how I come to those specific conclusions. At this point, like Austin Powers says “I’m spent”.
The sad thing about the Internet is how people read two sentences and then pass judgment on an entire article, forming conclusions based on limited information. I guess it’s something to do with short attention spans or information overload because it seems to become more prevalent as time goes by. It’s like looking at the first two minutes of a movie and then feeling qualified to praise or bash it…
In the real world, there often aren’t any easy explanations. Topics are complex and so are the answers to the questions regarding them. That means you have to put a lot of things on the table to give an accurate reply, show both the forest and the trees. And then explain how they interact.
I like that approach. When I’m interested in something, I want to know all about it and especially the “Why?” part instead of only “How?” That’s just how I am and it probably shows in the way I write. I absolutely loathe the elevator pitch mentality. Sure, it has some benefits but it needs to be followed up by research and study to see if your original assessment is even in the ballpark. All too often, that’s just not the case.
I guess I’m getting older because I don’t have much drive anymore to explain the concept of “Debate” to those who are only interested in screaming “It is so because I tell you so!” Or worse: “It is so because my great-mega-ultra-grandmaster says so!!!” What I have even less patience with is spouting off an opinion while being too lazy to even think it through or research it: Read More→
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From the Octagon to the Street
Posted by: | CommentsThis is an article I wrote for Black Belt Magazine and it got published in the January 2009 issue. I edited it a bit to make it more blog-friendly and cut it down in size. As always, feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments section.
“From mixed martial arts to the street: Practical grappling skills for real-life self defense”
by
Wim Demeere
The first Ultimate Fighting Championship in 1993 started a revolution in martial arts competitions: Very few techniques were prohibited:
- Vicious elbows to the face.
- Joint locks carried out to the fullest.
- Strikes to the back of the head
- Even kicking a downed opponent.
But the biggest upset was the fact that having a ground game and solid grappling skills proved an absolute necessity to leave the Octagon a winner. The Gracie family proved the effectiveness of its ju-jitsu ground techniques by placing one of their lightest fighters (Royce Gracie weighed a whopping 175 lbs.) against primarily heavyweight opponents. More often than not he managed to submit or choke out his opponents with an almost disheartening ease.
Nowadays, MMA competitors no longer fear the ground and are well-rounded professional athletes. They are masters of full-power striking techniques, grappling, groundwork, and most of all, they flow effortlessly from the one to the other when the situation demands it. This makes them formidable opponents and places MMA as one of the most well-rounded combat arts in the world.
The sport itself also changed; it turned into a multi-million dollar industry, eclipsing boxing and other martial arts in popularity. With the increased public awareness came a rise in misconceptions about not only the sport but martial arts and violence in general. The cage is viewed by many practitioners as the ultimate proving grounds for martial art styles. They argue that if exponents of any given system cannot beat an opponent in the cage or Octagon, then that system is worthless. They reason that MMAs have proven they can take down anyone fighting solely with traditional martial arts and then beat or submit them with ground fighting. The seemingly obvious conclusion is that the Mixed Martial Artist is the ultimate fighter in both the cage and the street. But is this statement true?
To a certain extent, it most certainly is: Read More→
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Share this Post[?] Martial arts basics, Part 2
Posted by: | CommentsIn the first part of Martial arts basics, I talked a bit about how I like to teach my students the importance of basic techniques by making them do loads of repetitions. The key is, once they have a good enough grasp of the techniques, making those reps challenging and fun by adding slight variations and tweaks. In this video, I’ll show you how I personally like to train and what my students have to do too.
A couple of things:
- I’m not focusing on speed or power. Those two aren’t my goal at all. My focus is on working those basics and feeling the differences between each variation.
- I picked the four basic punches because that’s what we were working on in class. It could have been other techniques, so don’t get hung up on that part.
- The bag was hanging a bit too low and as a result, moved around too much. Instead of stopping it with a technique (which requires a different type of timing from what I was working on), you’ll see me slow down or even grab the bag. Which is something I don’t often do. Usually, I time a technique to to stop it in it’s tracks. Ideally, you have a partner holding the bag for you.
- Obviously, you need to do the same drill with a partner for the best results.
- This is by no means the only, or even the best, way to train your basics. I’m only showing a possible example of how you can go about it so it’s fun as well as productive. I could have done it in a hundred different ways than this or chosen tons of other variations.
- The main thing isn’t how I do the techniques of what particular sequence of variations I chose. It’s the fact that there is such a progression instead of just hitting the bag with whatever you can think off. There’s a place for free style heavy bag training but also for more structured training like in this clip.
Next time I’ take my camera to class, I’ll see if I can show some more partner work instead of always beating up the heavy bag. 
For more info on making these kind of progressions:
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Share this Post[?] Martial arts basics
Posted by: | CommentsNeil got the ball rolling and asked me to join in. I gave it some thought and here’s my take on it.
His premise was that people often neglect the basics of their art because they either don’t understand the importance or think they’ve already done enough of them. Odds are these two reasons form the bulk of what causes the problem. On the other hand, I think that to a certain degree the main fault is always with the teacher. If his students don’t have good basics, he’s the one who failed to teach them. Though there are exceptions to this.
An example
In my Sanshou class, there is a specific progression when a new student starts:
- Fighting stance
- Basic footwork: forward, back, left, right.
- Straight punches: jab and cross.
- Straight knees: left and right.
- Hook punches: left and right.
- Push kick: back leg and step up with front leg.
- Round kick: back leg and step up with front leg.
- One basic throw and takedown.
The student starts by working in front of a mirror, doing ten reps before switching to another technique. As he won’t know many techniques in his first couple classes, he’ll do hundreds of straight punches before he even gets to the infamous round kick. Which is the whole point; I want to drill the basic techniques in first.
Back in the “good” old days, we’d do hundreds of reps of the same technique, non-stop. That’s just the way it was. In Asia, this still seems to be the way it is done in many styles. In and of itself, that’s not a bad thing, on the contrary. I’m a firm believer in doing your reps and the quality of movement in a traditionally trained martial artist is often light years beyond what modern practitioners can show. So this method does work.
The other side of the coin is that in Asia, people seem to accept the fact that you have to train the same thing over and over. And those who don’t aren’t allowed to protest and have to do it anyway. In the West, we want to know why you do things a certain way and want to have our say in the matter. Try the Asian way over here and you usually end up with very, very few students.
Some people say you should never adapt your teachings to your audience in the name of tradition. I think that’s bullshit. I strongly believe you get better results by a combination of ingraining basics with reps but also by adding slight variations as soon as a student performs them well enough.
Back to the example.
It takes about three months before a new student in my sanshou class is ready to join the group. However, that doesn’t mean they can only practice the seven points I listed before. As soon as they have a basic mastery of those, they also practice: Read More→
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Share this Post[?] Guest post: “Be open to Learning” by Loren W. Christensen
Posted by: | CommentsLoren just sent me this, after reading my post on Unusual places to train and teach. An empty Saigon street during the Vietnam war certainly qualifies as “unusual”! Enjoy this guest blog post.
I was a brown belt when I went to Vietnam in 1969 as a Military Policeman. Many Vietnamese soldiers as well as Korean soldiers wore small, black squares above their green fatigue shirt pockets denoting how many black belts they had earned. Those with two rows had earned belts in two fighting arts.
Some of the ROK (Republic of Korea) Marines had three rows of black squares, anywhere from three to five squares in each row. Often, the more black squares a soldier had, the more chiseled his features and the harder his physique.
On one occasion, early into my tour, I was assigned to guard a building on an empty Saigon street at 2a.m. (curfew was at 1a.m.) with a rather dignified South Vietnamese military policeman who had two rows, three black squares in each, over his fatigue shirt pocket. To break the ice, I indicated that I had also trained in the martial arts, at which his face brightened and he pointed to the squares on his shirt. For the next several hours, my new friend and I swapped techniques, mostly by pantomime, and with what little English he knew and what Vietnamese I had learned.
Loren and me, a couple years ago.
At one point, he stepped over to a traffic sign that was attached to a tree about a foot above my six-foot-high head. He looked at it for a moment, then spun like a top, his kicking leg shooting out before it hooked back to slam that sign with the heel of what had been his rear foot, a foot wearing a heavy combat boot. I remember jumping back, probably with my mouth hanging open, going, “What was that?”
Although at that time I had been training in the martial arts for four years, I had never been taught the spinning hook kick. I had learned the spinning straight back kick, but not the spinning hook. I didn’t even know it existed at that time until I saw my Vietnamese soldier friend nearly rip that high sign from the tree.
So for the next couple of hours he taught me the kick. We leaned our M-16s against the tree, stripped off our flak vests, pistol belts and shirts, and commenced to train. He was most patient with me as I stumbled about, but by the end of our session, I have to say that I could do a pretty good spinning hook. Of course kicking as high as that sign was a ways in the future, but that night I could hit the trunk like a bandit.
The point of this story is to recognize that you can learn from anyone, anywhere. Over the years, I’ve learned from white belts, from things non-martial artists have asked me, from the school of hard knocks on the street, and once, many years ago, from a Vietnamese soldier on a sticky-hot, Saigon night, as artillery rumbled in the distance and shook the windows of nearby buildings.
You learn something every day if you pay attention. ~Ray LeBlond
Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere. ~Chinese Proverb
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