One of the main aims of martial arts training is to enable a smaller opponent to beat a larger opponent through the use of technique and skill. This is obviously composed of a number of factors: Placement, timing, experience, speed, and efficient technique. One of the most important though is leverage. Give me a lever and I can move the World Archimedes is supposed to have said. The original concept of Kano’s Judo system was just this; that a clever technically competent player could throw a much bigger man. The greatest embodiment of this was Mifune who had one of the softest styles,  yet could throw you as you were throwing him. Mifune went with the flow and used leverage to the maximum. A slight man he couldn’t fight his opponents using strength but had to use their strength against them. Helio Gracie the leader of the Gracie Jiu-jitsu family as we all know was also a very slight man. Everyone I’ve spoken to who grappled with him said he just used leverage to the maximum. Setting his body so you couldn’t crush him and using the stronger parts of his body in unison against weaker parts of yours. Both these men embodied the true martial arts way. Sparring and training against all comers until a very old age. Wisdom and leverage are a potent component.

Lauding leverage as I am doesn’t mean that strength isn’t to be sought after and used. It’s great to have strength and conditioning but these are easier for everyone else to also attain. The downside is it requires hard training and lasts only as long as you keep up the conditioning and strength programme. Training with strong people you realise that they don’t use half of their potential because generally they can power their way against less strong or less big opponents. I’ve been working with a number of large strong opponents lately and we’ve been sharing our experience. They’ve blasted through some of my tricks and I’ve been showing them how they can be stronger and make their techniques more painful by just focusing on improving the leverage of their techniques.

Initially this can just be making the lever arm of the technique longer. Think of an arm bar where you’re grabbing the wrist then move it up an inch or so towards the hand and you’ve almost doubled the force. Similarly use the whole of your body to put on locks not your arms. Standing arm wrenches and arm bars are much more effective when you rotate the whole body and on the ground using the hips and legs to do the work rather than the arms turns you into a superman. Even hitting or kicking I see people just hitting with their arms or legs and not their body as a unit plus not using gravity to help. Think of gravity as free bonus leverage points

There’s also lots you can do by hitting at the leverage sweet spot where you get the most power. (Think of a tennis player on his serve and you’ll know the sort of place) Distance makes a big difference as your lever arm is longer as does bringing more levers to bear on the problem. When using arm bars it’s also important to use the fulcrum well. Many people have a sort of blurred fulcrum using all of their chest to do a two on one instead of focusing your power on his joint by rotating and making the shoulder a sharp fulcrum. Where you put the fulcrum in relation to his joint is also hugely important. Do it in the wrong place and he can counter or power out of it. Do it right and it’s like turning on an electric light it’s so fast, and painful too.

You can see that it’s not more technique that’s important but understanding how to get the most out of what your doing. Above all look at, and polish, everything you do to see if you can make your levers more effective. If you have to work hard or use lots of effort thats not it. Feel the grain in the wood and go with that, not against it. Going with the flow is leverage in another way. You’re leveraging the moment. This approach makes training very Zen like. Is this easy? No but that’s the art.

Sometimes you have to have it done on you or be shown the way to appreciate how great it is when done well, but once shown you have to do your own research. When you can, use leverage principles in other areas of your life. Where can you get the most for the least effort?  Above all don’t beat yourself up about any of this the most important thing is to enjoy your training and enjoy it’s ebb and flow. Like all arts, it only takes a lifetime!

We’ve been working lots of sparring lately concentrating on simple direct attacks like the front kick and generally working kicks more. What’s profound here is how many different things you can do with just front kick and a jab and cross. I taught the concept of boxes. First and nearest you have the punching box, if they step back out of that they’re in the kick box (if at the front then use your rear leg if at back then step and use your front leg.)  Here’s just a few of the things you can do. Fake the punch and then kick, try and hit them with the jab cross and when they step back out of that box kick them in the kick box they’ve just arrived in. Alternatively, Kick (kickbox)  and then follow them by stepping in and you’re in the hands box where you jab and cross. Start with different hands so there’s no fixed start point. Play with the timing or feint to draw their eyes upwards then kick underneath. Think about how many variations you could do here and then practice them a little and then do them in sparring. Keep the ones that work.

Fighting and music have lots of parallels so I always sort of cross train by listening intently. It’s all art. I’ve been listening to lots of Scarlatti classical minor key piano music lately and he does the same JKD thing there. A simple theme then just variation after variation showing how much he knows his stuff. Modulating through subtle changes. Sonny Rollins the jazz saxophone player does the same thing on ‘saxophone collossus’. Check them out if you’re into that sort of music. The thing with JKD is to realise it’s not about more but about deeper. Surprisingly, then you get more.  Do less and be more-how strange is that.

Recently in the Classes we’ve been working on clinch techniques and using the same techniques throughout all of our training whether we’re doing MMA style clinch, Filipino boxing, stickfighting or knife defence. In this way you get to see the same shapes constantly and then learn them in more depth. By doing them in  different contexts you’re sort of viewing them in different colours. In this way you’re on the path to integrated combat where you are formless and can go with the flow because you see certain constants all the time. Once you’ve got some of these shapes down then you need to spar them to find them in real time. Firstly we just play free flow with a couple of variables and then add more and more. Finding it for yourself is the gateway to truly knowing it. You’ve got to test your knowledge in a real situation. Like all testing and sparring it shouldn’t be too challenging but be progressive so that everyone gets to get better not just the ‘hard boys’ The more training partners you’ve got to train with the better.

We’ll be continuing in this field with a much more sparring related approach over the coming months. Less technique in terms of number but more understanding and facility. Training this way you learn to have a more subtle, fluid and changeable game. As a Tai chi master I know well says.’ If they’ve got a shape I can break it-I look for the guys who are formless/ shapeless and fluid. They’re the ones to train with’. See you there!

For the last three weeks we’ve been working on changing leads and on understanding the southpaw or unmatched lead where you are in the right stance and your opponent in the left. Bruce Lee’s JKD was in many respects just a southpaw style. As I remember too well, most of the fighters back then were Karate and Taekwondo fighters so favoured hard hits from the rear leg or hand.

Being in a southpaw lead you’ve go all the advantages of the closer tool set, and as Bruce put it your strongest tool to the front and his strongest far away on the other side of his body. Bruce of course added to this advantage with hard training a quick mind and devastating timing. Plus he was playing out of the box, not conforming like the others he fought. It was great being there and fighting in that time as you understand the mindset of fighters at that time. Of course if he’s also in a southpaw lead then you’re back to matched leads.

So far we’ve studied how to counter this JKD setup and also methods to change stance. Many of the traditional styles like karate and silat and kung fu work both stances both for the wholeness of combat and also as its good for the body. However all the Filipino masters I trained with who did lots of fighting didn’t seem to change stance. It’s an 80/20 thing you’re never going to be equally good in both leads. Have your main stance and then a restricted game in the other side. In real combat you’ll have to fight opponents coming form all sides so it pays to have some game on both leads.

There are a number of ways to change lead. Firstly we change at distance just like the circling the pad drill we do for beginners. You retreat a little and then circle the other way hiding behind your jab. This is highly effective. Second is to kick and step through or just step through much like Oi-tsuki in Karate. I remember seeing Oishi do this in the 69 all Japan championships and he smashed everyone. In Kali you can crash through with a stance change hiding behind your elbow or by manipulating his head off line or just extend your cross by stepping through. As you’re hitting or crashing it’s very hard for them to counter. My friend Andy Norman has utilized this Kali concept a lot in his Keysi style. Once your in unmatched leads there’s a limited amount of options but there are certain rules. Keep your foot outside his if possible and keep your hand higher than his. Then you’ve got leverage advantages and dominate his hand. Simple beats on the lead hand or jerks (jut sao) give you a host of options from hook kicks to simple hand traps. Kicks and punches from the rear are easily countered and this is a great place to throw if you attempts to round kick you. We’ll be working on this for a further three weeks then rotate onto something else and come back to it later. The thing is to mix and match training methods from all the arts and pick the best. You just have to understand the conceptual framework. Good training.

This week in classes I’ve been focusing on showing the guys how just making small changes forwards and backwards can totally upset your opponents rhythm. What most people do is stand fairly statically and let their opponent or partner do their thing. This is most evident when doing pad work. This is essential at first as you need to know what good striking is. Static stuff lets you work your body mechanics and power generation. The next thing to do is keep this power and mechanics but do it moving around. Then when you’ve got this then you can add other things. This week I’ve been concentrating on showing how sliding or snapping back out of distance before his attack totally throws his stance and balance off. Similarly, doing the opposite and closing with your partner means that he has to change his balance and footwork so that he isn’t too close. He wants to keep your pads, or your chin, right at the ‘sweet spot’ where he generates the most power. Your aim is to thwart this or to challenge him to adapt quickly. Once you see the mayhem this simple in and out movement does to your opponents setup then you know you’ve got to do it in sparring. A word of warning: when holding pads don’t take them too far away so that he injures his elbow rather just use it to challenge his distancing and footwork so that he learns to read you and learns how to keep you in the ‘sweet spot’ whatever you do. Make sure he still hits the pads and doesn’t overextend. Importantly realise how devastating this simple changing of distance is to your opponent. Practice and get comfortable on the pads then apply the same principles in Sparring. Good luck

Knife Defence is obviously the new game in town. We have our very popular Knife Day on September the 6th. This really is the cutting edge of martial arts. Our monday Knife Defence class is also doing great and one of the most popular classes of the week and the standards very high now due to incessant drilling and training hard. Knife is the most difficult area to get down so it needs lots of work but the attributes rub off onto everything else you do. Positioning, awareness, speed, footwork it all gets worked hard plus you learn to have a killer instinct. Check out our clips on Youtube. We’ve got some basic stuff there and a little ad hoc video of Steve Wright and I playing disarms but we’ll be putting lots more up real soon. See you on URBAN KNIFE DAY.. 6TH SEPTEMBER!

The best form of defence is evasion. You can evade passively or  you can hit at the same time as evading. This is the beauty of boxing in that most times your hitting your opponent whilst evading his attack. There are basically two types of evading. First with footwork and then with body movement. Becoming good at evasion takes time and a bit of courage as the natural thing is to use your arms to block or ward off blows.

The thing is to work hard at it so that it becomes natural and you can evade under pressure. For the body you’ve got four types of evasion. First left to right slipping. Think of this like a metronome going left and right. Practice this standing in front of a mirror first and raise and lower your body as you do it. Then add punching between the beats.

The idea is to be mobile so that they can’t hit you. Then slip or bob forwards as if putting your head near their armpit. Again start by doing this rhythmically in a mirror or against a partner attacking slowly. Eventually you’ll be doing it at full speed but you need to start slow.

Third you’ve got bobbing and weaving. Bob and weave under their blows in particular hooks and wide swings; those that come around from left and right. Use your feet to move and let your body follow. Think of making your body twist like a helix. Eventually the head does hardly any movement you just disappear. Do bobbing and weaving and slipping pro-actively don’t wait until you see the blow. Think about having a slight bounce in your knees so that it’s easier to get started.

The last form of evasion is snapback where you use your rear foot and bounce back out of range using a rearwards step or just by bouncing on the back foot. Keep your leg fairly stiff and think of it like a little trampoline that you’re going to bounce of off. Normally you get about eighteen inches extra distance without doing a step and can get almost a meter if you do a six or eight inch step backwards. Remember to do the small step and then bounce back. Drills like the jab-catch drill are great for teaching this.  This is one of my favourite ways of evading.

Do the drills first slowly in a mirror and then in shadow boxing. Ring the changes and don’t stay still or in one place for two long. The secret if there is one is to overdo the evasion in training so that you’ve got the body knowledge when you spar.

Start using it in sparring by going slowly or having it as a theme. Getting your opponent to hit the air around you is the ultimate aim. To hammer the point home give them a nonchalant look.

I’ll cover the footwork part of evasion in the next post.

Watch great boxers like the early Roberto Duran fights to see a master evader at work.

Next time you are in a sparring session consider how often you throw the jab in contrast to how often you throw crosses, hooks, uppercuts etc. This will give you some idea how important  a weapon the jab is in your armoury; try to think of it as a spear, thrust like a bayonet at your opponent, never merely a prod or a limp pawing action. The jab gets you into the action, working as a set-up punch for its big ugly brothers the cross, hook and uppercut, but it also gets you out of trouble when the going gets hard.
The best way to develop a devastating jab is to continually work on your technique, trying to improve power and accuracy, I hope the following drills may help you develop a fearsome jab.

1. A few 1-2 minute rounds on the heavy bag using only your jab. Hit the bag as it swings towards you helps to increase power. Aim waist high as well as head high, never underestimate the value of a solid jab to the body.

2. A few rounds of pad-work using only the jab but getting your partner to make you jab going forward and backward, high and low.

3. Imagine you are going to punch not “to” the target, but “through” it, a rehearsal for those times your opponent is unreasonable enough to retract their head from the incoming punch.

4. Get somebody to watch you working the bag and the pads to see if you are using a fully extended jabbing arm; jabbing with a bent arm will serve to diminish your reach, and if your arms are as short as mine, this is unwise.

5. Work a few rounds on the floor-to-ceiling ball as it will help to improve your accuracy, don’t worry about missing it frequently, everybody does initially – you only get better at judging its erratic movement.

6. Reinforce the basic ingredients of the jab, sliding the front foot forward as you drive forcefully off the ball of the rear foot, hitting with a slightly downward action to ensure you make contact with the rear knuckles (the hardest part of the hand).

The main let-downs of jabbing are letting the back foot lift off the floor (looking like Eros at Piccadilly Circus) or over-reaching (letting the shoulders get ahead of the hips). Remember never leave your backside behind and you won’t lose power.

Happy jabbing, Ian

If you want to be tested then the Academy is the place to do it. Last Sunday the 16th we had one of our famous Black Belt tests. There were only three people taking the grading this time. Austin Plunkett, Kim VanDoren and Greg Woods. Unfortunately for them this just made it even harder than normal.

Though there were only three doing it there were over twenty black belt veterans there to test them plus lots of senior students watching. JKD and Thai boxing veteran Gordon McAdam tested them rigorously on the Thai pads and signaled his approval.

Then they had to show techniques from Kali, JKD and MMA.  In addition to the huge technical knowledge that they had to have, there’s always the sparring. As in all black belt gradings the aim is to first check your technical knowledge but also more importantly check your fighting spirit and heart. For that you need to be taken to the edge.

Academy Veteran Tim Harding led the challengers to make sure that they had what was needed. Tim was assisted by Paul Clarke and Julian Gilmour the candidates had to fight these fresh opponents numerous times plus fight between themselves. Then they had to do two against one to exhaustion and then finish with bouts of stickfighting. Kim seemed to dislocate her finger in the stick but had it put back by Osteopath Savash Mustafa (who won bronze at the Kent Open BJJ Tournament) then; back to the fray.

A great day, with all agreeing it was one of the best gradings in a long while and of a consistently high standard. Greg Woods was partnered all the way through by Black Belt veteran Stephanie DeHowes who took every bash and wrench with quiet stoicism and said she really enjoyed the experience! All three passed and we all decamped to Zigfrid’s the local bar where it seemed to be whisky all round.