May 21, 2010
Understanding knife fighting helps your empty handed defence as many of the techniques and concepts are similar and you get to understand the knife from an attackers viewpoint. If you want to be a great Martial artist I think the knife is an essential way for you to learn principles that would take much longer [...]
In the last class this Thursday we just covered sparring. This was done with bag gloves as this most closely represents street fighting and you have to work on being highly skilful, there’s no hiding behind big pillows. The aim of the session was to use the stuff that we’ve been practicing so student made [...]
This week we’ve been covering some of the grading syllabus. In last nights class we just concentrated on trapping. The first thing that I covered was: Why Trap? As I explained your main intention should be to strike your opponent supposing a scenario where if you don’t strike them they’ll strike you. I said that [...]
Last night we spent a lot of time on defending against front kick from either leg. We started off using a simple retreating strategy. Either using a drag step to move your whole body back out of distance. In jun fan you’d call that retreating your horse stance then we did retreating the lead leg [...]
Being a martial arts instructor has to be one of the best jobs on the planet. You not only earn an income but you gain respect, help people grow, develop yourself physically and mentally and get to meet people from all walks of life. It’s incredible that helping others opens doors in your own life [...]
The recent Grading went really well with students taking belts up to green. The standard was really high with a number of people passing with distinction and getting a first class pass. A couple even jumped a grade they did that well. Many thanks to all who took part for their determination and hard work. [...]
The term passing the guard is well known for BJJ and grappling/ mma practitioners and there are a large number of variants you can use on the ground. However you can use this same approach in stand up to either grapple or strike or mix the two. The aim of lots of the trapping methods [...]
One of my old friends and sparring partners and one of the Academy old guard Black belts Peter Dunne showed me this today. It’s his daughter Stephanie and friends recording a song she wrote. This is just a rough edit but it sounds great. Hope you like it too. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlHJnHYty_c The band is called scarlet [...]
Sundays memorial seminar to Honour Roger Barnes went really well. . It was mothers day so we were really pleased with the turnout. Teaching was done by Grand Master John Harvey who turned up to support plus David Onuma and myself. John is an old academy member and trained with me for about twenty years [...]