My Journey – part two

This is a continuation of the previous article detailing my journey through the martial arts, if you would like to read part one you can find it here

 

Krav Maga

After leaving Aikido I floated for a few months until I was invited to try Krav Maga by one of the Aikido black belts I had trained with. I was a bit reluctant at first, I wasn’t at all sure about going for what could be seen as a modern art after spending so much time in the traditional styles.

After a bit of persuasion I went along to see what it was like. I loved it. Running about hitting pads, sweating, and breathing heavy was like returning home. The simplicity of Krav and the training methods makes for a very effective self-defense system.

The classes had just newly opened were quite small, in fact I was in the first group of 8 people to train Krav in Beijing. Of the 8, every single one of us had a black belt in one style or another, this made the training really hard and a lot of fun. We all knew how to train and whether it was pad work or contact drills we were all pushing each other as hard as we could.

One thing that happened while I was Krav was I realized how much extra power I had from learning to relax in the Chinese styles. I was no longer forcing the punches and feeling tight in my body but letting fly with loose strikes. Due to this, the standing and walking practices I learnt from Zhu Baozhen remain part of my practice to this day.

Krav Maga grew rapidly in Beijing, class numbers rose from 8, to around 20, to over 30 on some evenings. With the increase in students more instructors were needed, I happily put myself forward for the instructor’s course. Different from other martial arts, in Krav you don’t become an instructor after time served. You go through a very demanding course. In my case it was 2, two-week long courses. During the course you train every day from about 8 am – 6 pm, constantly running through the technical aspects of the art and the teaching methodology. Each course ends in a day long exam.

The standard expected from instructors is very high and the course is both mentally and physically demanding. It was a great experience, really pushing yourself to your limits each day.

I passed the course and returned to the gym to face the new challenge of being an instructor. I took my turn running regular classes, women’s self-defense classes, and special seminars. I was very happy to be working in the industry.

Balintawak

From time to time I go online to find out what is happening within the martial arts in my local area. It was through a casual internet search that I found my final teacher Mr. Frank Olea. He had posted an ad on one of the local forums that simply said ‘weapons training’. Being a Krav trainer, which involves a number of different weapons, this sounded something that would suit me.

I contacted him and set up meeting. It turned out he was living very close to me and was a Master level teacher in the Filipino art of Balintawak.

Balintawak is a single stick system of Eskrima, traditionally taught one on one from instructor to student. The instructor teaching the student through giving them increasingly complex and rapid attacks for the student to deal with.

That was how the training was, first defending against simple attacks, then attacks where my weapon hand was held, then defending against disarm attempts and so on. All of this was done training outside, and because of our individual work schedules, in the dark.

Frank would continually push me to understand the weapon movements especially the knife which he specialized in. He was also always pushing himself and trying to develop his art, the benefit of having a younger master as a teacher. He would occasionally come up with a new attack combination or angle that I had to defend against, either with a stick or a training knife. One night he came down from his apartment and announced that for the next few weeks we would be training with live blades.

For me Balintawak brought a number of things together the methods of Balintawak complement the Chinese systems very well due to the close in nature of the style. It also blends quite well with some of the Krav techniques.

Frank granted me permission to teach his style shortly before I left Beijing.

Currently, I live in Jakarta where I teach both Krav Maga and Balintawak with some Tactical Taekwondo thrown in. I choose not to study any additional  styles right now. I use my time in this country to consolidate what I have learnt from all the teachers I have known.

As I said in the about section I try to bring everything I learn back to the original TKD patterns that I learnt. For example, my interpretation of the opening movement of Do San was inspired by the attention paid to natural movements in Krav Maga techniques, and my application of Sonkal Daebi Makgi was taken from the chicken form from Xingyiquan and some of the Bagua entering movements.

I hope you enjoyed reading about my journey through the martial arts. I don’t know where my path will lead me next, but I know I will be training and studying martial arts for as long as I am able.

My Journey – Part one

A little while ago I received a notification from WordPress that I have been blogging for 5 years, this coincidences with my 50^th post. To mark this milestone I am going to write about my own personal journey in the martial arts.

To make it a little easier to read I have divided it into two parts

As I said in the ‘about’ section, I started TKD when I was 16 as a very unfit teenager who could run the length of the hall without turning purple and collapsing. over the years i got better physically but I was never much of a competitor despite winning a few medals over the years. I was always more interested in the application of the movements found in the patterns. I think it is that interest that has led me to study different martial arts.

I am also lucky that I travel with my work quite a lot which has exposed me to a lot of different cultures and teachers.

So here it is… my journey part one

 

Chinese styles

After achieving black belt in TKD and training in Scotland, Italy and Russia I moved to China. Originally for a year but ended up staying for 15 years. While in China I had the opportunity to train in a number of arts. At first I studied the Chinese internal martial arts, initially under Professor Liu Yuzeng who taught Taiji, Xingyi, and Bagua. It was under him that I discovered how different training in the Chinese martial arts were. Training was done early in the morning and consisted of practicing the movements and forms over and over, we would start with the short explosive movements of Xingyi, then move on to the circular walking of Bagua and then finish with the softer movements of Taiji before closing with qigong. Although I enjoyed the training I think I was too young and inexperienced to really make the most out of it. I had gone from the pad work and sparring of Taekwondo to just movement practice, I often felt frustrated with not fully understanding what the aim of the training was.

Training under Professor Liu gave me a keen interest in Baguazhang, which eventually caused me to move to what could be regarded as the birth place of Bagua, Beijing. It was in Beijing that I met Zhu Baozhen, who I regard as my main teacher of the Chinese styles. Similar to professor Liu, Zhu Laoshi (teacher Zhu) taught all three of the internal arts, however he mainly concentrated on Baguazhang from the Yin Fu lineage. Similar to Professor Liu his practice also consisted of single movements repeated many times and the circle walking forms, but he also included a lot of standing qi gong. In fact for my first class under Zhu Laoshi, all he taught me was the standing practice and walking method specific to his line of Bagua.

Although both Professor Liu and Zhu Laoshi were both highly skilled in their arts and very capable teachers, I feel I was in a better place to learn from Zhu Laoshi. This was both in my understanding of the Chinese arts and also my Chinese language ability.

I spent about 4 years with Zhu Laoshi, then due to circumstance I stopped training under him regularly. Sadly Zhu Laoshi passed away in 2014

Aikido

While training in Bagua I also took up Aikido, this was mainly to get some more partner practice. I had read that Bagua and Aikido were somewhat linked so it seemed logical to try Aikido to supplement my training.

In the beginning I got a lot out of training in Aikido. Our teacher, the only female teacher I have had, was highly technical and appeared to really love the art. Through the Beijing dojo I also had the pleasure of training with Horii Shihan from Japan on a number of occasions

Everyone in the dojo started out really enjoying the training, however over the years our teacher seemed to get progressively more frustrated with her situation. I don’t know if she wasn’t getting the recognition she wanted, wasn’t developing herself as much as she wanted, or if the issue was purely financial. Whatever the reason it started to show in the classes. There was a distinct lack of patience with new students coming in to the dojo and even some of the classes were trained with an atmosphere of displeasure.

In time the dojo was to close, it reopened months later and all the students went back for a while but as the frustration continued the students, including myself, started to fall away. Aikido still leaves me with a sense of unfinished business. One day I still plan to return to the art.

Continued in part two……

Strength Training

Ok, so the topic of strength training has been covered by many people. Despite this, there still seems to be a little confusion over whether people should train with weights and the benefits of lifting heavy. In this article will be throwing my two cents in to the discussion.

The martial arts world and in fact the world in general has largely opened up to the idea that lifting weights is good for everybody. The idea of the huge, stiff bodybuilder has been replaced by a strong supple muscular human body. The question of should a martial artist should spend some time on strength training should have finally been answered. However, there are still some people that feel it somehow demeans what they do. These are the people that maybe believe that technique is enough and would rather spending their time in seated mediation than sweating in the gym or even the dojang.

Whereas meditation can be seen as an important part of marital arts training, we should not lose the site that our training is physical and having a strong body can only serve to make our practice better.

In my personal practice I use kettlebell training and some basic barbell work. I find the two complement each other and gives me a good balance of general strength and explosive power. Certainly at time when I have gone to training camps I have performed better and been more injury free than I would have been had I not spent some time on strength training.

However,

This is not the whole story, you cannot go in start a strength program and improve.  Our training should be balanced, if we add something to our training then we need to balance it in other areas of what we do.

As an example, a little while ago i was going through a  specific strength training program, through the time spent in the gym gripping the barbell etc. I found that when I was working with my Arnis teacher I started to grip the stick too hard. This made disarming me as simple as snapping a dry twig. I didn’t want to stop my strength training so I had to balance out my training. I believe that this lack of balance in training was more responsible for the ‘stiff muscleman’ image that used to be held up as a reason for not touching weights.

To quote one of the UK’s best throwing and strength athletes you need to pay attention to the 5 Ss, Strength, speed, skill, suppleness, stamina. If you ignore or focus on one of these too much you won’t reach your full potential

One last word on strength training, if you are going to lift weights then learn how to do it right. Find a good instructor and tell them your goals. Lifting weights is as technical and dangerous as practicing martial arts

What we take with us

I haven’t posted in a while, my life has been extremely busy. I got married in December and have spent the last few months preparing to leave China and move to Jakarta. Hopefully since Indonesia doesn’t have so many internet restrictions I’ll be able to post more often.

The subject of me moving country is connected to the theme of this posting. In moving country I have had to say goodbye to my students and teacher. It is never an easy thing to do, but sometimes life pushes you in a certain way. However, it did prompt me to thinking about what a person can take from training. I have moved around a lot and have always had to take as much from training as I can and make it my own.

Often I have had teachers move in and out of my life, if I don’t try to assimilate what they teach in to what I do then why bother training with them. I think that this is something people should ask themselves; what do you take from training?

I have known many good practitioners and Dan grades that have moved away from their dojang and as a result stopped practicing. Without the group or their teacher they maybe find out that their art is meaningless, and belong only in the gym. These are maybe the same people that would tell students that martial arts was part of their life.

I don’t think that someone has to leave their club or even travel to another country to find this out but just ask yourself, if you took away the dojang, your teacher, and dobok, what have you got?

In other words, does the art you practice belong to you or does it still belong to your teacher, do you still need a teacher to continue to develop. Of course we all need one in the beginning but there comes a time when you should be able to break free and start altering the art to fit your needs. It may seem strange for some especially in a system that encourages copying a form as closely as we can.

I think we all have to spend time actually studying the art that we practice so that when life does make staying at your current place of training impossible you don’t lose the art

Sparring drills

To follow on from my last article on sparring, in this article I am going to describe some sparring drills that I practice with the guys I train with.

The drills that I use have been collected from seminars, past instructors and my own personal training.. It is likely that you have come across some similar ideas before. Since we are all trying to solve the same problem of fighting same solutions will be reached by people. The drills described below are ones that I have tried and work for me and the guys I train with.

Before describing the drill some basic points about my general approach to sparring practice

Whenever I start a sparring session my first concern is safety. As I mentioned in the previous article fighting by its very nature is a dangerous pursuit. In order to effectively practice it we must pay attention to students’ safety. Students must be well versed in the techniques that are going to be used, and the correct protective equipment must be used.

One more important thing is letting people know roughly what to expect during any drill. For example if one person thinks that we are practicing stand up, and then his partner does a takedown there is a higher chance of injury. So I make sure that all students are on the same page.

Of course that the higher level of the student the more scope you can put into a drill. You may start isolating drill for beginner students, i.e. only stand up or only ground but for more advanced students who can breakfall you may want to leave the drill open to both

The final point is that as much as possible sparring drills should have a goal, whether it is escaping, or scoring points etc. students should be sparring with a purpose in mind

Elevator

For this drill you need a few people holding kick shields forming a small elevator sized area. Two people step in and on the command start fighting. There is no room for footwork or feints so often it is a very quick blast. On the command two people holding the kick shield step away (i.e. the doors open) and one person tries to escape. You can either nominate the person or leave it to whoever is in the better position to get out. The rounds tend to be very short none lasting more that 40 seconds.

Ambush

In this drill, the students are in groups. One person stands with their eyes closed and the other are free to start the fight. Usually this is with attacking the person with punches or kicks. The initial attack should be controlled as the person has their eyes closed, but should also be continuous, to not give the ‘victim’ time to think, more on this can be found here . One thing I hate seeing during this drill is students throwing one punch then stepping back ready to spar.

After the attack has commenced person who was attacked  has to then defend themselves and make their way to a ‘safe zone’ in the training hall’

To bring up the challenge I sometimes have the person with their eyes closed turn in circles while waiting to be attacked.

Pick a skill

After going over a series of attacks based on kicks, punches and grappling the students pair off to spar. Before sparring begins, a cup of small bits of paper is passed round. Each student takes a piece of paper, on it is written either K,P, or G to indicate if the student should use kicking, punching or grappling for that round. Whatever they pick that is the only range/attacking method they can use. They can of course defend the attacks but not attack with anything other than what they picked. When the round finishes the students change partner and then pick a new skill.

Get up

One student lies on the floor the other student/s have 3 seconds to get in position in order to hold the student down. The object for the student on the floor is to get up and get to the safe zone. I allow striking in this drill, and also focus on dirty fighting, so students can look for opportunities to bite, eye gouge etc

The ring

The students stand in a circle and two students start fighting in the centre. The rules of the sparring can be anything you like but as the two people spar if they get close to anyone in the circle that person can join in. They can choose to attack either or both people. This continues till everyone is fighting. When everyone is in, I let the fight continue for a set amount of time them reset with a new group in the centre.

These are just a few of the drills that I use in my training. I occasionally mix one or two ideas together for extra challenge and there is always the option of multiple opponents or weapons to be included. If you are already doing something similar or try these drills after reading this article, I would love to hear your feedback.

Happy Training

The Pyramid of Skills

With all the styles that are being openly taught now, and the great trend for MMA and cross training, Students can be like a kid in a candy store about what styles they want to take. A striking style, a grappling style, a traditional or modern style, of course part of this choice will be somewhat dictated by what is available and training goals. But if you live in a larger city with a lot of choice and you are looking for practical self-defence what should you train in?
The phrase ‘no style has all the answers’ is used a lot and is as true today as it ever has been. Beyond that we can also say no teacher has all the answers, take 2 or three teachers in one style and of course you are going to find differences in them. So we should sometimes not be looking at picking a style but also picking a teach within a style.
In my opinion there is an order that things should be trained and training should focus on some skills more than others. I refer to this as the ‘pyramid of skills’ which can be broken down as follows

At the base of the pyramid we should have striking; this is the foundation and also covers the most area. Meaning not only should it be the first thing that you study but should also be the biggest part of what you do. Read any interview by some of the leading self-protection experts in the wold and most, if not all of them, advocate developing very powerful striking ability. However, it is not just about hitting hard, although that would be the base of the level, but also about distancing, timing, grabbing and pulling limbs, and other support skills. In short everything that you need to be able to deliver hard strikes punches, knife hands, kicks, head butts, to your opponent

Now a lot of people never move off the first level of the pyramid and certainly there are many good fighters out there who have only trained in striking. But to become a more well-rounded martial artist and develop skills you need to continue to build on those skills. With that we can move on to the next level of the pyramid

Grappling, again this is a very large part of the pyramid and a very large topic; we can break it down to stand up grappling/clinch fighting and groundwork. Although for self-protection we don’t need the depth of knowledge of an MMA competitor, by that I mean we don’t need to know how to tap people out on the ground. For self-defence however we do need some skills, to throw and attack from the clinch and to get up from the ground. The strong strikes that you have trained in the first part of the pyramid can also be integrated into the skills you learn here.

At this point in the pyramid there is a divide, the striking and the grappling side of the arts are huge and in themselves make very complete and competent martial artists. However, to then go on to say that those two huge skill areas are the only things of any value in the arts, does a great disservice to a great number of teachers and other skill within the martial arts.

The final two sections of the pyramid are given over to some ‘higher skills’. I use the term ‘higher skills’ not to imply that people that know these skills are in anyway superior to the ones that don’t. But more because for these skills to employed effectively a practitioner needs a good solid grounding in the two lower sets of skills. You may also notice that because this is a pyramid, not a tower, the area taken up by these last two sections is considerably smaller than the previous two. Meaning that there should be less emphasis on these skills.

The next section on the pyramid is for joint manipulation, whereas during the grappling section and possible even the striking section there is some overlap in to limb control, this area would be looking deeper into things like wrist locks and finger locks etc. strangely when people go to self-defence courses it is mainly techniques form this section that are taught, maybe because they make the teacher look good and complex so people think they are getting value for money. It is due to this complexity that puts joint manipulation in to the higher section. Unless you have the distancing and timing skill of striking and the close in range holds etc. of grappling you will find it very difficult to apply any sort of locking or small joint breaking technique. Also without the training in the other two sections you may find yourself at a loss as to what to do after you have the lock. A lock in itself is not usually a fight stopper but can be used to place your opponent in a position for some follow up attacks.

The last part or the pyramid and therefore the top and the smallest part is point striking. Whether you believe in pressure points or not the fact is you have to be a very skilled martial artist to hit a single point or a number of points in sequence during any sort of a fight. You would need all the skill from the previous levels of the pyramid to apply point striking. The distancing, timing, body control, small joint control and grasping techniques would all come into play. Without them you would be resigned to demonstrating your point striking ability on compliant, non-active opponents i.e. your students or friends. Something that I am sure you have all seen

So there you have it where the main skills fit in as I see it. Of course you don’t have to fully complete a section before moving on to the rest as there is always some overlap. You also, as mentioned in the article, don’t have to go all the way to the top of the pyramid. But if you are working on some of the skills in the upper levels of the pyramid you should be asking yourself if you could make it work in a real situation, and have you built yourself a good enough foundation in your own personal martial art.

The Ritual Cat

When the spiritual teacher and his disciples began their evening meditation, the cat who lived in the monastery made such noise that it distracted them. So the teacher ordered that the cat be tied up during the evening practice. Years later, when the teacher died, the cat continued to be tied up during the meditation session. And when the cat eventually died, another cat was brought to the monastery and tied up. Centuries later, learned descendants of the spiritual teacher wrote scholarly treatises about the religious significance of tying up a cat for meditation practice.

I came across this Zen story on the internet years ago it has stayed with me ever since. During my journey through the martial arts I have kept coming back to this story in my mind. This was mainly because the amount of ceremony that some martial arts have for little or no practical reason. Take for example bowing in to class. This should be a fairly simple action. Depending on who you are and what style you do you may bow in different ways, for some styles a short bow while entering is enough while other styles require students to kneel before they bow and they may have guidelines for when to place the hands etc. All of these are fine and essentially serve the same purpose of indicating the beginning of class or that you have entered a training hall.
But when there is too much empty ceremony applied to it that I believe it becomes a problem. There is a tendency for some teachers, especially in the ‘softer’ styles to present their art as mystical and something that is based more on faith than on physical evidence. They are then open to develop whatever routines that they want under the guise of spiritual training. Their motive for this and the type of students that they attract is a huge topic and worthy of another article all of its own.
It is not just the softer arts that suffer from this over ritualization and dogma. Take part in a hard style class and watch how they are almost fanatical about punching or kicking in a certain way for no more reason than that’s what their style did traditionally.
In my opinion as people who study martial arts we need to be constantly evaluating what we are doing and should never be afraid of asking or in fact being asked ‘why?’ if someone is telling you that the way that you hold your fist is wrong, or that you have to bow a certain number of degrees they should also be able to explain the reason behind such practices.
That is not to say that we should become the students that is always challenging the teacher and trying to catch them out, at some point we should have enough experience to be to notice the advantages and disadvantages of different techniques and make our own judgement accordingly.
Also it doesn’t mean that we should leave perfectly good schools just because students are required to bow at the beginning of a class.
It simply means that we should approach everything with a critical mind and look for the reasons in everything that we do. Through knowing this reasoning we can apply the appropriate amount of effort and attention and get the most out of our training sessions

How to Cross Train

Cross training is becoming more and more popular. Ask many people now what style they study and they will give you their root style and then a number of styles that they dabble in. I myself have trained in a number of different arts sometimes to work on a skill that I was lacking and sometimes because my situation required me to look to a certain style in order to continue training.

Cross training is sometimes seen as a newer idea that became popular after the advent of the UFC and other similar cage fighting events. However, nothing could be further from the truth. Take a look at the old masters’ martial resumes and you will see that many if not all have a number of styles in their past all of which contributed to the particular master’s system. This is especially clear in the Chinese styles, every master or teacher that I have ever met that studies a Chinese style has trained in some other styles. It is far from being a new concept in fact it is probably mainly due to the sporting aspects of modern day martial arts that have made people specialise and become exclusive, i.e. learning judo throws won’t help you win a taekwondo match.

To become a complete and well-rounded martial artist cross training is essential as no style, even those claiming to have taken the strongest techniques from traditional martial arts, has all the answers. Cross training is not as simple as joining every club in your area and training every night of the week however. To get the most out of your time and training it must be approaching with some thought and planning.

In my opinion there is a way to approach cross training that makes it an effective practice.

Before you begin cross training I think you should have a root art that you have spent some time in and gain a reasonable level in. the reason for this is many arts will give conflicting advice about small technical differences. Without a foundation you may be without the ability to assess different ways of doing things and choose which works best for you. In that way know a number of different ways of doing a side kick could be detrimental to your training.

Ask yourself why you are cross training. Are you looking to develop some skills that are either absent or not focused on in your current style? In which case do some research as to what styles would offer what you are looking for and what is available in your area. if you are just looking for something different or you feel that your current style isn’t working for you then it might be time to fully assess what you are getting out of your current training.

When you start cross training it is important that you go with an open mind. Every style has its own way of doing things and there might be some cross over in to what you currently do. It is best not to start over pedantic style arguments over small differences. Equally you shouldn’t completely change over to your new system just because it is new and novel. Every style has developed a standard way of doing things. It is up to you as the cross trainer to assess the difference and make up your own mind as to what works better for you.

You also need to find a way to organise and practice the techniques you are learning. Some way that makes sense to you, and helps you put the techniques together. If you study TKD and judo for example you would want to spend time blending the techniques of both. If you have nothing that connects the different pieces of what you train, then you run the risk of having a selection of techniques learnt from different arts with to bring them together in a workable way. i.e. you would either be doing TKD or Judo but never both together. A selection of techniques with no connection leads to a broken up art and makes things easy to forget.

The way that I organise the information that I receive from my teachers is the TKD patterns. Within the patterns I can fit techniques from as varied arts as aikido and krav maga. I can then lead from the techniques contianed in the patterns into training drills. This means that I remember more and have a way of recording the different principles and drills that I have been exposed to. Through this you can add skills and techniques to your base art in a good systematic way and help get the most out of your cross training.