Learn how to take your martial arts training to whole new levels using the following advice I've listed belowIf you only train in a school that doesn't allow sparring, or practice hitting a heavy bag, or maybe you practice self defense drills at the YMCA, a common problem I have seen is people being trained by "know it all" blackbelts who have never even been in a street fight, which is frightening!If you're in this situation read my crucial...more
Most martial arts don't fit together easily. You take the circular hands of Chinese kenpo Karate and try to put them atop the linear stances of Japanese shotokan, and you are going to get an uncoordinated mish mash. Or, the quick and slick jabs of boxing might fit with wing chun, but the round house power punches don't fit at all.And, of course, there are arts that do fit together. You can put aikido together with pa kua chang, but it is going to...more
One of the most important things you can have, if you want to be a good fighter, inside the ring or out, is the gunfighter mentality. The best fighters, like Chuck Lidells and Anderson Silva, have this intuitively in their personality. The losers don't.Interestingly enough, the Gunfighter Mentality used to be central to learning the classical martial arts. I remember training back in the sixties, and everything we did was pointed towards building this ability. While there were many factors involved in the death of the Gunfighter Mentality in training, people like Bruce Lee probably drove home the spike.Bruce Lee added circling and bouncing to the martial arts. The Gunfighter Mentality depends on stillness, being coiled like a snake, and here was this fellow acting like Mohammad Ali, circling and jabbing and destroying the mindset of the Gunfighter. Now Bruce Lee would have won most any fight anyway, but a generation copied him, and they gave up the deadly zen stillness of the Gunfighter.Now stillness is the heart of the matter, when it comes to Gunfighting in the martial arts, and there are several good reasons or this. There was much interchange between zen concepts and karate in...more
Throwing stars have been made popular today because of the mystical legend of the Ninjas. The throwing stars also known as the Shuriken shu, ri and ken, which is literally translated as "hand hidden blade" and are commonly known in the West as (throwing stars) that were generally for throwing, and sometimes stabbing or slashing. A shuriken...more
I want offer you another handful of useful street fighting moves and tips that can take your martial arts training to a whole new level. You need to be able to tell the difference between training for tournaments and the dojo, and applicable street fighting techniques.Learn Martial Arts Moves #1 - Always be the first person to attack. When you use...more
Wham bam! Iron Mike Tyson, back in the day, was knocking them down faster than they could stand up. Twelve of his first nineteen fights ended in the first round, and always with the opposing fighter laying face down like a drunk that had been massaged by a tractor!No other fighter was doing what Iron Mike, who the media labeled as Kid Dynamite, was doing, and there were a lot of strong fighters out there. So there had to be something that Mike was doing that other fighters did not know about. There simply had to be a secret behind his fantastic, explosive filled, slobber knocking punches!The secret can be detailed in two parts. The first part is that he was not as tall as the other fighters, therefore he was automatically ducking under the incoming fist, and rising up with his own. This meant that he had to use the push of his legs as part of his punch.Because he was rising up, he learned how to push with his legs and turn his hips so they supported the angle of his punch. He just happened to be the exact height that enabled him to twist his hips at the right time, to arc his punch in at exactly the right angle, to pop that chin at exactly the right spot. Every fighter attacked him...more
Author: Dr. Gary S. GoodmanI've been a student of martial arts for decades, but my formal training didn't come until later. At that point, I invested eight years in achieving the rank of Shodan, first-degree black belt in Chinese Kenpo Karate. My...more