17.12.2022 I met Iain Abernethy 18 years ago at a seminar run by “The Way of the Spiritual Warrior”. After writing review of the seminar for a magazine, Iain and I became fast friends. He appeared on two of my DVDs and we’ve had some great discussions on our respective podcasts, not to mention endless epic length telephone conversations. It seems ironic that out of all my martial arts colleagues I found the most shared common ground in terms of […]
01.05.2022 Sunday afternoon saw the culmination of my client’s hard work in attaining her fourth dan under Iain Abernethy. Over the past couple of weeks, Mary Stevens, head teacher of Athena School of Karate, has booked me to help her cover the pad-work and sparring aspects of this particular test. It’s great to see a fellow teacher make such huge improvements in both their own training and the service they provide for their pupils. During the time I have trained […]
28.09.2021 Tuesday night’s lesson was also a teacher consultancy class. This time it was a break from our usual “Learn from the Fight” session and we worked face-to-face on combinations used in a karate in syllabus. My client has a series of combinations that exist in the grading syllabus she teaches that need reappraisal. They appear to be a mixture of sport, kata-based application specific conditioning exercises (i.e. balancing for kicks). We went through them and began to devise a […]
28.07.21 After two private lessons/rehearsals with Forest School of Karate, I was live-streamed into their class. With Covid restrictions having been lowered I was able to coach their class directly on focus mitt work. This hybrid lesson also used inspiration from highlight videos I was able to share with all attendees. The videos, as per the previous blogged private lessons, were: Alexis Arguello – Straight Right Joe Louis – Cross Thomas Hearns – Chopping Right Rocky Marciano – Overhand These […]
04.05.21 The third part of my course on “Rhythm and Flow” combinations for stand-up fighting for Keiryu Practical Karate continued on Tuesday. This is a Zoom training experience for adults and teenagers. Tonight we went through the punch and footwork dominant combinations five and six. Combination five is very much a switch-hitting combination. After the initial jab/cross the fighter switches to southpaw and lands with a cross before using shuffle step to throw a right hook/left hook/right uppercut combination to […]
24.04.21 I was invited back by Ryukyukan Shorin Ryu Karate to teach a webinar on the muay Thai clinch. We warmed up with dynamic stretching, footwork and basic short-range weapon introductions. Then we moved onto the following areas. Elbow and Knee Strikes – We covered horizontal, slashing, spear and smash-down elbows as well as spear/long, diagonal and curve knee strikes Plum Position – Hand positions, forward, backward and pivoting footwork to break posture. This included a set up for a […]
30.03.21 Monday night’s lesson concluded my online course with Athena Karate focusing on boxing principles for cross-training. Each week we have put the spotlight on individual techniques and also shared that light with several noted experts in this field. Tonight we went through 6 x 3 minute rounds. The first four rounds alternating between outside and inside boxing. For the outside boxing we looked at the jabbing skills of Muhammad Ali, Joe Louie, Lennox Lewis, Thomas Hearns, Sugar Ray Leonard […]
23.02.21 My teaching consultancy on Tuesday night was mainly concerned with discussing where to go with a progressing practical karate school’s sparring programme. One point that should be remembered about karate training is that the original katas were based on the assumption that the Okinawan students would be coming from a grappling culture. This is one of the reasons why although there is grappling contained with the katas the emphasis was more placed on training to strike than the grappling […]
31.10.20 My second Saturday lesson today consisted of the sixth part of my online adapted course on “When Parents Aren’t Around” children’s self-protection hosted by Ryukyukan Shorin Ryu Karate Matsuri Dojo, Pitsea, Essex. We took the focus onto the grappling/clinch range. At this point in a conflict the defender should be doing their best to avoid being clinched for a variety of different reasons, but in order to train defending this range one needs to understand this particular range. Drilling […]
20.05.20 Tonight I was booked to teach for Forest Schools of Karate on Zoom. This 45 minute lesson focused on restrictive training and visualisation exercises to get the most out of home training. Whenever I guest-teach for clubs I am always impressed by the way particularly young students are continuing to engage as Lockdown fatigue sets in for society. Vijay Pathek’s child students were no exception. Siblings and individual students enthusiastically gave all my different training methods a fair go. […]
04.02.20 My second Tuesday night lesson continued my teacher training and we looked at material for this Saturday’s closed Muay Thai for Martial Arts Cross Training Workshop. I began with an assessment of how fighters in this particular karate school sparred. This was so that I had a good idea of what I could add and how I would best be able to integrate the techniques I would be teaching. We decided that chaining punches with kicks, the low round […]
23.11.19 This Saturday I taught a special 2-hour workshop for the Oxford School of Martial Arts on Ground-Fighting. My mandate was to help prepare prospective candidates for the last half hour of their black belt karate grading, focusing on one specific area. This grading involves 30 minutes of non-stop low rules sparring whereby it is highly likely that the candidates will end up on the ground and fighting from their backs. My approach to preparing these students was to […]
08.11.19 I was delighted to be invited back to teach to Hinnerup Karate for a second time. Since I was last in Denmark both my cross-training programme, “Vagabond Warriors”, and my children’s self-protection programme “When Parents Aren’t Around” has considerably progressed. “Vagabond Warriors” Cross-Training Martial Arts Workshop in Denmark (Part 1) Vagabond Warriors is the Clubb Chimera Martial Arts approach to cross-training. We use a Single Objective Path diagram to illustrate how an individual may cross-train in order to get […]
“The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.” ― Christopher Hitchens I am currently in the process of editing, researching, writing and re-writing a multi-volume book entitled “Bullshitsu and the Fight to Make Martial Arts Work”. It is a project that I started around 2005 as an examination of the legacy of the R.B.S.D. (Reality-Based Self-Defence) movement, but has since evolved into a critical overview of martial arts subculture in […]
We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield. —George Orwell (1946) The process of martial arts training can be a […]
