I have recently coached my students of Cambridge University Kickboxing Society in a Varsity match against Oxford and then the University Kickboxing Championship in Canterbury (Kent – UK) and I had the inspiration to write this post because of what I have seen: most people have little or no guard and, for my standard, are simply asking to be beaten up.  Both during Varsity fight and the Uni Champ, with over two hundred fighters, it was very rare to spot people that were holding a decent guard, lasting even for just a single round.  Let’s analyse the facts.

Copyright and courtesy of Duncan Grisby

When in a contact fighting situation you are often at a short distance with an opponent who has a single goal: hitting you in every area allowed, in order to score as many points as possible.  This simple rule applies in the same way to boxers, any kind of kick boxers and any practitioner of other striking martial arts like karate or tae known do.   Having a poor guard can undermine the quality of your attacks because you become way more vulnerable to your opponent’s attacks or counter attacks and have painful consequences.

A guard position imposes the fighter to control where her hands and arms are while she is performing other techniques with her legs or ensuring that at least one hand is in the right position, close to the head to protect it from opponent’s strikes, while the other is striking.  Instinct and balance doesn’t suggest keeping the guard in place: it’s easier to stand if you spread your arms when kicking.  At the same time a martial artist is supposed to be a controlled and trained person that can suppress and control her instincts and use her training for the best performance.  What best performance?  Once you run out of evasive footwork, proper use of distance and active blocks I hope we all agree that a decent guard is the only defence you have against an attack: the only shield to protect your head, face or part of the body.  If you can strengthen some part of your torso and chest with serious conditioning and abdominal exercises the same cannot be said for the face and the head.

Copyright and courtesy of Duncan Grisby

To some extent it is difficult for me to understand how and why people that teach kickboxing (in these cases) are spending long time at practicing conditioning, decent combinations of punches and kicks, ring strategy and so on without spending enough time to concentrate of keeping a decent guards all times.  However well your guard is trained it will perform worse when under great pressure.   When ever I am coaching a fighter more than 50% of all my suggestions are about keeping and closing the guard: that minimised her chance of being hit and she reduces the number of points scored on her and the risk of KO while she can save energy and be ready to strike back.

It’s more important to win 1-nil than 10-9: in the latter case you scored 10 points but 9 were scored on you.  Keeping a good guard will ensure to minimise the number of times your opponent scores on you.

Posted under educational, theory

I have recently been commenting a post titled: Are You Smart Enough to Fight a Monkey? I found very interesting the different points of view of various people that contributed with their comments (23 at the time of writing).

I would be interested in other people’s opinion about this topic.

Posted under blogging, self defence, theory

Posted under self defence, theory

I have just read this great post on Ikigaiway and started writing a comment: when it became too long I though it was a good idea to write my own post.

Most striking martial arts, being them bare handed like Karate, Wing Chun or Tae Kwon Do or weapon based like Iai Jitsu, Iai Do and Kobudo, use forms (Kata in Japanese) as a way or classifying various groups of techniques.  Forms are usually increasingly difficult and they can be part of grading.

Forms, in any martial art, is meant to be a way of collecting a number of techniques, arranged in logical sequences, with to 4 main purposes in mind:

1. solo practice, to allow the practitioner to keep training without an opponent;
2. having a kind of comparable scale among different practitioner at similar level;
3. practicing and rehearsing logical sequences of techniques that eventually should be applied to real right
4. collecting techniques that otherwise might be lost in teaching over various generations of students: let’s not forget that until a few decades ago video recording or filming was not as practical and affordable as it is today and a book has lots of limitation is showing dynamic 3D actions.

In the first video shown in Ikigaiway post the young lady moves a lot, she is very acrobatic but most of what she does is not useful, if not dangerous,  in a fight.  The second video is more realistic: question here is: “if you push somebody away with a powerful yoko geri (side kick) what it the probability that his face will be there to be hit with an elbow?”

I am convinced that a form is (supposed to be) a fight against imaginary opponents that the practitioner attacks or defends against.  Somebody practicing a form should always ask herself:

• “what is this (particular technique) for?”
• “would it really work?”
• “what about if a real opponent appeared now in that position?”

If the answer to any of these question doesn’t make too much sense than what you are practicing is not a practical form and, while it can help working out fitness, balance and flexibility, it will not ultimately help your fighting skills.

Posted under styles, theory

In life like in martial arts timing is everything: correctly timed footwork allows you to be in the right place at the right time to either strike, block or avoid an attack putting the basis for your next move.

A punch, like a kick or a throwing technique requires by definition correct footwork to maximize its potential.  At the same time correct footwork allows the following crucial actions:

• align yourself toward the opponent in order to offer a correct posture, stance and weight distribution, suitable for the situation you are in and the strategy you would like to implement
• shift your weight in the correct way and direction according to the technique you are performing
• deliver maximum power with every technique by directing appropriately your momentum

I’ll use an example that can be applied to virtually any technique, even when the movements follow a circular line rather than a straight one:

1. Imagine, as matter of example, to be throwing a straight punch just by simply extending your arm toward your target.  Depending on how strong you are the punch will have a certain level of power.
2. Now imagine of having your arm already fully extended as in a punching position and you being on a train, travelling at 200 mph: even if you arm doesn’t move your whole body is moving very fast and the impact will be disastrous.
3. Now, going back to our punch, if you are using a correct step of even a couple of inches in the same direction of your punch and you add this to the correct, well timed, extension of your arm your punch will deliver the sum of the momentum built by the same movement in point 1, together with the extra momentum created by the step.

Different martial arts are some times based on footwork that is so different from each other to look illogical.  Nonetheless when used with their context they work and deliver the desired effect: enhancing the basic movement and delivering unexpected power by making a correct use of our bodies.

Posted under educational, theory