It’s been said that the hardest part of martial arts training is getting into the car. I have seen this first hand when 11 people tell me they are coming to train and 2 show up. I don’t take it personally when people tell me they were “busy” or there was “traffic” or whatever. I [...]
The other day I posted a statistic to my facebook profile – that 70% of adult males carry edged tools, such as knives, on a day to day basis in the U.S. A couple of people called me on the statistic; I have no problem with that. I do have statistics and research methods training [...]
Martial arts skills are far less generalizable than many people would think. I am reminded of an interview I once heard with Joe Rogan who said, “The UFC has proven that Brazilian Jujutsu is the most effective martial art in the world.” That’s a load of crap.
First, this is to take nothing away, or in [...]
Make contact, keep it. That’s a basic philosophy of our system or ketsugo jujutsu. When someone throws a punch or a kick, or moves in to grapple – they are giving us a gift by presenting us a set of targets for attack.
It’s a good idea not to box a boxer, or wrestle a wrestler, [...]
I just returned from Bonny Eagle High School, a local school, where I taught a group of 24 seniors an 1 1/2 hour self defense class. I have probably done a couple of hundred very short self-defense seminars such as these over the years, and I draw a few distinctions between teaching martial arts and [...]
Kuzushi (崩し) is a Japanese word for unbalancing an opponent. It comes from the verb kuzusu, meaning to pull down or demolish. You’ll find it commonly used in jujutsu and derived arts such as judo and aikido. Normally it is the act of taking an opponent’s balance rendering them incapable of counterattack. In most schools [...]
All martial arts and systems of self defense will, in some way deal with range. Range, in this sense, means the proximity of your opponent, his ability to attack you, and your ability to attack him. Many systems have a ton of different ranges, kicking, grappling, striking, weapons etc. While there is nothing wrong with [...]
Mushin is an interesting concept in the martial arts, a Japanese term meaning roughly “no mind” or “empty mind”. It references a state of thoughtlessness where a practitioner merely acts appropriately to an attack or situation without the intercession of thought. It all sounds very Zen-like and spiritual, but there is a practical side as [...]
Mission Centric Training™ is a concept that a partner and I came up with a few years ago while conducting self defense training for a numerous organizations in the Boston area. It’s a concept that many military personnel and law enforcement officers (LEOs) get, but is missed on the broader public much of the time.
The [...]
In English, the Japanese phrase “kihon waza” is sometimes translated as “basic techniques”. I don’t really like this translation, because many Western minds grasp this to mean “the basic stuff I need to learn, get out of the way, and then move on to the advanced stuff”. The translation I prefer is “fundamental methods.” These [...]
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Martial Artists Images From Flickr
