January 30, 2017
The following are important things, some little, some major, that lend themselves well to simple drills or exercises. Backing up is almost never the answer. Unless you are excellent at reading and remembering tactical terrain, you might not know what or who is behind you.
October 31, 2016
I get especially annoyed with weapons. Unarmed defense against a weapon sucks. Never, ever, ever practice dying and do not train to be killed. The stakes are too high to blindly imprint a habit, even a habit as simple as handing a weapon back once you have disarmed someone.
October 24, 2016
I'm not a big fan of most drills. There is a fine line, but conditioned reflexes are crucial in a fight and habits will get you killed. Conditioned reflexes are things you do without thinking about it. They are essentially trained flinch responses. If something suddenly comes at your eyes you WILL do something: block, move your head or, at the very minimum, blink.
September 12, 2016
The following aren't actually tricks. They are exercises that you demonstrate once to show a deeper truth. Most will not work on people a second time. Some will learn to game it.
August 29, 2016
The one-step arose as a useful accident. Many years ago I was reading George Mattson's The Way of Karate and I completely misunderstood his description of ippon kumite. I thought, "That's brilliant—unscripted but safe, just looking at this whole thing as a meat geometry problem…"
Grandmaster Li, Mao-Ching (李茂清) was born in Qingdao city (青島市), China, on July 5, 1927. He first began training martial arts in 1934 when he was eight years old, under the instruction and guidance of his father and his cousin Shang, Huan.
While sticks and stones can break your bones, your words may actually kill you. They can also save your life. Having to be right despite the cost, reacting indignantly in the face of a threat, or insulting an adversary often guarantees that a conflict will escalate to violence.
I purchased the wrong type of coffee yesterday, a ground drip blend rather than the whole bean variety that I normally buy. When I popped the top of the vacuum-sealed can, a blast of grit exploded into my face and left eye.
The following article is an excerpt from an upcoming book by Rory Miller, tentatively titled 7. It will explore the seven aspects that are critical to self defense, giving you a few hints on staying alive, or if you teach self-defense, some critical information you can pass along to your students.
The goal of self defense is not to win a fight, but rather to avoid combat in the first place. After all the only battle you are guaranteed to walk away from unscathed is the one you never engage in. Taking a beat-down can seriously mess up your life, yet winners have consequences too.
Lawrence A. Kane supervises employees who provide security and oversee fan safety during college and professional football games at a Pac-10 stadium near Seattle, Washington. This job has given him a unique opportunity to appreciate violence in all forms. Along with his crew, he has witnessed, interceded in, stopped, or prevented hundreds of fights. He has also worked closely with the campus police and state patrol officers who are assigned to the stadium. Here is what he says about aggressive behavior as well as the escalation process that precedes violence in crowd control situations.
Training does have to be adjusted and changed for modern day, but the principles and essence should remain the same. We are constantly striving to preserve the teachings of our masters, and we should be very cautious when to modify them.
There has been a clear and obvious downward shift in the average skill level of students, and even masters, of today compared to the masters and students of old.
In ancient times, many students would unconditionally sacrifice their lives to their training and beg masters to take them, often striving to prove themselves worthy for many weeks, months or years before they were accepted.
My Long Fist grandmaster, Grandmaster Li, Mao-Ching, spent 23 years and 1 month in the Chinese military during harsh wartime conditions while he trained everyday, under Great Grandmaster Han, Chin-Tang, one of the foremost traditional martial artists and graduates of the Nanjing Central Guoshu Institute
Recently I watched "Felon", a movie that makes some realistic and valuable points about self-defense. In most jurisdictions a person can only resort to deadly force to escape imminent and unavoidable danger of death or grave bodily harm.
People are weird. They have an almost infinite ability to learn and communicate. At the same time, this amazing ability is used as much for fantasy and entertainment as it is for information and survival. Take, for example, the rhinoceros and the unicorn.
Traditional martial arts is not supposed to be glamorous, and conditioning is not a very glamorous process, being a very repetitive and monotonous type of exercise requiring many years of training.
Traditional martial arts is not supposed to be glamorous, and conditioning is not a very glamorous process, being a very repetitive and monotonous type of exercise requiring many years of training.
Through many years of history, experience, and practice, martial artists realized that in a fight, there are generally three factors that determine victory.
Through many years of history, experience, and practice, martial artists realized that in a fight, there are generally three factors that determine victory.
- « first
- ‹ previous
- 1
- 2
- 3