This is part of an Academy reboot over the coming months with more articles, more pics, more video and more training tips.

In club we’ll be doing a curriculum reboot to make it more functional, easier to learn, and more fun for you. Plus a cooler season of hot competitions. Standup, Stick and more.

This new integrated total combat system will also be taught at the  BIG (Breen Instructor Group) seminars.

Keep looking, Keep training hard. Keep in touch, Keep up!

Martial arts should aim at developing all types of bravery but sometimes is used as an armour to hide who you really are. The aim is to make you strong so that you can open yourself and not be in protection mode. Holding your body defensively but free in movement and in spirit. In California they’d call it self realisation. Whatever it’s called it’s about pushing your envelope even if it’s only to know where you’re boundaries are. Renowned Yoga teacher Eric Shiffman talks about doing the corpse pose (savasana) as if you are the corpse of a cow in the desert. The aim is to open yourself and let go of protection, letting the buzzards come and pick at you. The mental quest Shiffman says is to realise you can let go, open yourself until there’s nothing there but gold. Abandoning protection mechanisms lets our body flow, strangely controls fear by embracing it and is often a huge emotional release.

A similar but simpler step is used in JKD and other arts where you have to go with the flow. Not knowing the outcome but trusting or believing that it will all be ok. It’s going with the flow. Being brave but not even seeing it that way just an abandonment of expectation of good or bad but just accepting what is. For my own part I realise I’m quite brave in certain aspects of my life yet not so strong in others. So like most people I have yet more work to do. Art, Yoga, Music, Fighting. Performance and creativity in all of these areas is first about doing your work, your basics but the great people are truly brave. Prepared to look stupid, prepared to lose, going with the flow and being creative. When we look at other people who aren’t fighters we should have the humility to realise that maybe these people aren’t physically brave but they may be braver than us in every other aspect of their life. The physical is one place to start. How great that no matter where you are there’s always more to do/be or let go of. Enjoy the trip and embrace the force.

Many of us have the work ethic but are trapped by it. I’m working hard, therefore I must be getting better, seems to be the concept. So what’s the answer to this problem of putting more in than you are getting out? These problems of slowness, lack of power, tiredness and inability to hit the target tend to fall into four categories. One; using the top of the body to do the work. Two; Not compounding levers together. Three not spiralling through the body and four getting in your own way.

Firstly for the boxing/ kickboxing aspect the key thing is work the base. Most people are used to working with their hands and arms therefore that’s where they do most of their work with the top half of their bodies. Instead you need to concentrate on leveraging from the bottom. Look at good boxers shadow boxing there is very little arm movement and it’s all very snappy if it’s there at all. Think of Bruce Lee coaching you and saying- ‘ I will turn your body into a weapon’ That means your body not just your arms, your whole body.

I always jokingly describe working with the top of your body as similar to manufacturing in Germany. Good but expensive. Working lower down your body is like producing in China the costs are lower. Work the base. Lower down never gets as tired, doesn’t complain as much and is also good at it’s job. Therefore it’s important to work the base in particular the feet. The rear heel should always be up. Do what the Thai’s do and put a little stone under your heel or imagine a drawing pin in your shoe. In my own club anyone with their feet flat is doing pushups. You’ve got to associate the heel down with pain. Sometimes, you’ll have both heels raised so it’s easier to keep the hips up and engaged making kicking easier but the rear one is always up. Then, you can move easier, It acts as a shock absorber and the leverage in the foot makes your strikes more powerful with no telegraphing. A flat back foot means I can see you coming as there’s a start up time as you load the foot. Think of it like having to cock an automatic pistol. You really only want to pull the trigger. A small thing but huge.

Think about the levers in the foot. You’ve got toe joints then a nice span of arch (a great lever like a trampoline) then all the joints in the ankle. If you think of all of these working together each multiplying the force of the previous joint you can understand the power. Flexible feet work more efficiently so simple mobility exercises help. Then take this power (think of a number) then multiply it by each joint as it goes up the body. Then you get to the back if you’re punching. How many joints there? And all to help you punch harder. Sometimes punching is taught like opening a door with a hinge down one side. That’s a good way to teach beginners but a better way is to think of a central pole like a spiral staircase with each joint going round a little further. Think of a helix and you could almost say it’s based in DNA. Line the knee and skeleton up so they are aimed at the target. Make sure your hitting with your skeleton not with your muscles that will fold or collapse. Work it on the heavy bag to check.

Don’t get in your way by being tense. In my Karate days you could always feel how strong your punch was. I loved the feeling, but when changing to boxing in the early seventies I realised that if I could feel it, then it was still in my body! I was fighting two people, myself and the other guy. You’re arm should feel empty like a hose with power flowing out the end or a whip with a rock on the end. Good punches seem effortless – Opponents just go down.

A big thing that reduces your effectiveness is getting in your own way. Think of it as two people trying to go through a narrow doorway you can’t both go through together, it gets jammed up. Like a wide equal triangle it becomes easy to block or easy to see because it’s wide.. Make it slimmer. If hitting you can either let the arm go first or the body with the arm following. This gives you two types of timing that is hard for an opponent to read. In classes I often joke with students and tell them to imagine they’re punching someone who’s got one of those old megaphone loud hailers they have on sports days in old movies. You want to put both punches down that and hit the person in the mouth. A hated school teacher perhaps?. You’re body has to spiral with one hand going first, then your body, then the second punch, all as far as possible down one line otherwise you can’t fit them in. Think of your opponent with a tight guard. You want to put your jab and straight right through that hole not let them get stuck or jammed on his arms. Successful striking is a great buzz. Why would you plan or train to miss? Once you’ve got the jab and straight right down then you can loop the cross around his lead arm. It’s called a cross so it goes across. With the cross you’ve got two options. First the hand can go first and the body follow. Like a Ferrari the engine is in the back. The skeleton lines up on contact-POW! Or second move the body first so he doesn’t know where it’s coming only that it’s been launched. That can be a horrible feeling, you know it’s going to hurt, but don’t know where.

Successful striking is all about the basics. Work the footwork and lower body. You won’t get as tired so you can use your work ethic to develop more skill or train for longer. Don’t use the arm in shadow boxing, work your body it’s less trained and needs educating. Mix and integrate the feet and the body with spiralling through the body all working together. Then add the big muscle groups like the abs to pull you in or stabilize you so you punch ever harder. Apply the same concepts, ease of use and doing less with levers, not strength, to your kicking and ground game too. The principles are the same. The martial way is one of constant polishing. Like Karate’s Master Funakoshi Gichin you want to realise you’ve got a great punch when you’re at the end of your life. Good training.

Copyright bob breen 2010

However the tentacles of the Academy reach a long way. Jamie is training at ‘Five points fitness’ a great Thai boxing and Kali centre in Manhattan which is surprise, surprise, owned by a close friend of mine Simon Burgess, a Brit, who was also Academy trained and part of the team we took to the first World Championship in the Philippines in 1989. This was an all academy team and we bashed everyone.

Simon is a leading Thai boxing promoter so there’ll be plenty of hard training. Additionally, Barry Danelian another close friend, a real warrior and expert in Pekiti Tersia Kali, Thai boxing ( and one of the Worlds leading trumpet players ) will also be on hand to give Jamie similar treatment to that he’s received here plus he’s big so the Bear will have another Bear to play with.

I’ve asked them both to be tough but fair, but if it comes to it to forget the fair part. I’ll personally miss the Bear greatly as will the kids he’s helped teach over the years and his training partners through the years. It’s always been challenging sparring or training with him and we’ll be lesser in many ways, but maybe less bruised. We wish him well.

Though everyone thinks their style is the best we all get along and are old friends having fought plenty of battles along the way. It’s a great day for students as you get to see Masters of differing arts show their stuff. You get to see the similarities and also the unique differences that make Filipino Martial arts so interesting.

Many of the instructors (Pat O’Malley, Simon Wells, Shamin Meenal) to name a few were old Academy black belts or seniors and now masters of their arts showing what an impact on Filipino Martial arts we’ve had over the years. I got to meet Jay Dobrin, the person who introduced me to Eskrima and Brian Jones who was a senior in that initial group. I spent most of the day talking to Simon Wells and Pat O’Malley old academy black belts who’d fought with me in the early days of stick competition. I’d forced them to learn stick initially but they are both now masters of their art. For me it’s great to go back and learn from them and others what they’ve picked up on the journey. I had a great day where I got to see lots of old friends. We’ll be there as a club next year and I’m booked to teach. This time they’ll notify me.

For those who came to the knife class here’s a reminder on what we covered. We did a number of counters from a running or lunging attack at the mid section or upper chest.

First we scooped or ripped with the knife in Icepick grip against the thrust in hammer grip. This is often called Palusut. A good way to think of this and get over the language block is to think of it as pala-scoop. We did this and initially followed with a descending pick thrust to the arm then did it with both a slash to the biceps when on top and a slash to the gut if under his arm. Both of these were followed by a stab to the kidneys. Important in both of these is you have to use the other hand to stop the opponents knife coming back online or you have to use your own arm (which has the knife) to ward it off whilst you slash.

We then covered Panastas or slashing counter attack. Think of this as pana-slash and it sticks in the mind easier. We did this to the biceps, lower arm or neck depending on timing and distance. Important here is to tuck your body and post on his arm with your left arm so his arc of attack is changed.

Finally, we covered Segun where you block his attack with the blade of your knife-this we then rolled as if stuck in the bone and slashed either below or above the arm as above.

In the class we covered disarms from this flow drill afterwards and a number of key points. Knife class is every thursday. Hope to see you there next week where we’ll be covering the same thing in great depth and putting both the techniques and principles into your fight DNA.