Ong Bak is possibly the finest example (after a few fight scenes in the Bourne films [ie. the park bench scene with the two Police men]) of realistic applied martial arts put to film. Most of the time Jaa is fighting as if his only goal is to disable the attacker and finish the attack in as short order as possible. This is the ultimate aim of a person in a fight when the outcome has to be in their favour.

A mantra at a gym I used to train at was, ‘don’t turn it into a fight.’ This didn’t just mean the pithy ‘walk away from fights, just back down’ etc. It means simply don’t draw the situation out. Don’t get fancy and fire off 5 moves when 1 will do, don’t let the situation escalate. Always keep the mindset of finishing the attacker with your strikes etc. If this fool is punching me, I’m not thinking about defence, instead I’m thinking of what can be done to stop him from punching again / staying standing / breathing / etc.

“Invincibility lies in the defence;
the possibility of victory in the Attack.”

Sun Tzu

“In every battle there comes a time when both sides consider themselves beaten, then he who continues the attack wins.”

Ulysses S. Grant

A t-Shirt I saw once, in very poor taste I should add, had the slogan, ‘don’t turn this rape into a murder‘ (without debating the t-shirt) The essence is broght to the fore in very graphic terms; don’t make a very bad situation worse by doing extraneous things. If you’re going to crash your car, you slam on the brakes and turn the wheel to avoid the accident. What you don’t do is turn down the stereo, adjust the air-con and wind up the windows! It should be the same in a fight.

I’ve gone off on a tangent here!! Check out the Ong Bak II goodness in the trailer below!

http://www.brightcove.tv/title.jsp?title=1612560688

Looking through the ‘tags’ section of WordPress today I came across this.

How To Manipulate Chi - A Secret To Martial Arts (martialartsecrets.wordpress.com/2008/06/10/how-to-manipulate-chi-a-secret-to-martial-arts)
Learning to manipulate Chi and have it do what you want, when you want, how you want it, is not something that happens overnight. Many people when they learn that Chi is the secret behind most martial arts and the amazing things that can be done by martial arts masters think that they can easily obtain this ability and then they too can do the amazing things done by martial arts masters.

For fuck’s sake, why do you bother. The Internet is full of enough shite already and you feel the need to add some more just to promote something only a 13 year old kid would buy, only to tell the story as a cautionary tale when they matured enough to realise that you’re a scam merchant a a few weeks later.

All the links on the page go to martialarts expert.org. advertising some McDojo propaganda, sponsored by ‘Super Affiliate Marketing Corp. of U.S.A.’ What a shower of cunts.

More from the tool

You don’t need years of the same boring training because the secret and deadly effective methods that the NO instructor wants you to know are finally revealed!

Wow! I wish I had those M4d sK1LLz!

One satisfied customer notes

My anticipation of my opponent has increased ten fold. Thank You”

Tim Stone

ahhh, the sweet anticipation of you Paypal account being a few quid/$ lighter and your body being more than a few mills of essential body fluids lighter on the way to the hospital.

So Mr. ‘Super Affiliate Marketing Corp. of U.S.A.‘ why don’t you just fuck off and leave the real training to people like us and pray that you never need the help of people with the legitimate skills that you have bastardised.

This isn’t new: (yubi - finger, waza - techniques, tricks)

http://sciencehack.com/videos/view/BBsOeLcUARw

A film dealing with the relative size of things in the universe and the effect of adding another zero.

I like this. Makes me remember just how much of nothing there is within us, that we are not a solid as we are in the habit of thinking.

As above so below, or the macrocosm microcosm concept from Taoism.

Let’s say a guy named Roger is attracted to a woman named Elaine. He
asks her out to a movie; she accepts; they have a pretty good time. A
few nights later he asks her out to dinner, and again they enjoy
themselves. They continue to see each other regularly, and after a
while neither one of them is seeing anybody else.

And then, one
evening when they’re driving home, a thought occurs to Elaine, and,
without really thinking, she says it aloud: “Do you realize that, as of
tonight, we’ve been seeing each other for exactly six months?”

Look Here

I noticed a good post today about someone just starting out in Aikido,

Firstly, there’s frustration. Aikido is very frustrating for me. I’m not particularly good at picking up even what is going on in a technique, much less how
to do it. Sure I’m just beginning. Sure this is a skill that requires
development, just like anything else. Sure I’ve gotten better at it
even in the few weeks I’ve been observing. But ego rears its ugly head:
“I should be picking this up faster!”, right?

From here: Aikido Week #3

There is no doubt that he raises a lot of points that we can all relate to.

The one about observation is one that I can especially relate to at the moment; training BJJ over here and learning from / training with Brazilians means that I don’t have the first clue what they’re saying (my Portuguese is much much worse than my Japanese, which is also pretty bad!). BJJ is completely different from what I’d done in the past, which was mostly; If you go to ground, get the fuck up as fast as you can! So I’m having to rely on my eyes, the problem here is that everything you see is interpreted and filtered by your mind according to past experiences, notions etc. This doesn’t help when you’re trying to learn.
‘Beginners mind’ is a good goal.

munting around on the Interwebs at work today, I felt the need to respond to a post I saw here

This is a portion of the original post:

I think I finally mastered the knife disarm!

Self defense seems so imprecise to me…the attacker will never be in
the same exact position that you’ve practiced, so much of defense, I
feel, is improvised on the spot. Since I dislike improvising anything
(can’t everything come with an instruction manual?) I struggle with all
the “what ifs” (especially, when it comes to things like “what if I
miss in disarming him?”)…….

This is such a common theme. Really most self defence can be summed up in a single word, bullshit, and sometimes; bullshit that will get you killed.

Really, self defence in a nutshell should consist of how to stay the fuck out of dangerous situations, and then, only if you’ve messed that up, how to punch, knee, headbutt, bite, elbow and gouge as hard and as much as required to make the threat go away. Obviously if you’ve got time, a continuum of force idea could be introduced and legal issues addressed. but I digress.

Anyway, here’s my reply:

“Self defence seems so imprecise to me”

If you think about it, what you really mean is that it’s too precise. ie; the attacker has to have their arm in exactly position A, otherwise technique B wont work.

100% foolproof [insert weapon/body part etc here] defence is not a realistic goal, exactly because of all those ‘what ifs’ you’ve mentioned. Don’t be lulled into a false sense of security.

The ‘improvisation’ you’re talking about is the goal of self defence and martial arts in general. You need to respond without thinking to the situation as it evolves, and it will evolve and change far, far too fast for you if you’re trying to remember a technique from amongst a list of hundreds that you’ve memorised.

On the other hand; if you have learned and practice a set of principals and internalised them, then from these you can rely on your self to adapt spontaneously to the fight.
eg: If someone taught you that 2 + 3 is 5 and didn’t explain the function of the ‘+’ sign then you would only ever be able to answer 2+3, you’d be stumped when some one asked you to do 5 + 7!! however, if they taught you the principal that the ‘+’ means to add the values together, you’d be able to do any addition you wanted.

But, you can’t just be told that, you need to put in the practice adding things before it comes naturally.

to bring this back to martial arts; the first 2 + 3 you do is like this ‘knife disarm’ technique you’re learning; you can only do the disarm successfully within very fixed parameters.
After a while and you move on to disarm number 2 and 3 etc. you are still confined to the new parameters of the techniques.
After a number of these techniques you will start to see a common theme, the principals of knife defence. This is where you learn what the ‘+’ does, and how you can make it yours.

These principals that you should be trying to discover are not set in stone. some people may like to trap the knife close to there body, some may like to deflect it and counter attack. each has it’s benefits, but the only measure of correctness is if it works for that person.

It’s from these principals come the answers to the ‘what ifs.’

Remember, the overriding goal is to stop the person from harming you. however you get there is good, as long as you do get there.

Shit, this turned out to be quite long. It’s an important point though. The take home message is really run as fast away as you can if someone comes at you with a knife (Principle number 1!)

Good luck in the training!

look here

Apparently the Essence of Internal Martial arts books I and II are sold out. I really shouldn’t have to repeat what I said in an earlier post about the necessity of reading these, but I really think that you need them in your life!

If you can brave the awful [sorry guys, but it's my professional opionion ] Monabooks website (don’t worry about the company behind the website, they’ve been going for years and a lot of people in the UK have them to thank for reading material over the last few years) you can get your hands on a copy or two before they disappear all together.

Go here and search for ESSENCE OF INTERNAL MARTIAL ARTS” and send them then link to this blog!

For those of you in the US, you might be able to get hold of them here

EDIT: Also try here at ryukyu books

EDIT: Table of contents for both books

Book 1

Table of Contents

Section One:
Fighting Method and Theory

• Chapter 1. Foundation Movement and Applications
• Chapter 2. Rolling Hands: Kun Shou
• Chapter 3. Two-Man Sets
• Chapter 4. Free Form Fighting: San Shou
• Chapter 5. Internal Boxing Awareness Skills: Nei Ch’uan
• Chapter 6. The Six Combinations & Eight Methods
• Chapter 7. Establishing Realistic Training Goals

Section Two:
Eight Animal Fighting Methods and Theory

• Chapter 8. Eight Animal Fighting Characteristics of the I-Ching
• Chapter 9. The Lions & The Heaven Trigram: Ch’ien
• Chapter 10. The Unicorn & The Earth Trigram: K’um
• Chapter 11. The Snake & The Water Trigram: K’an
• Chapter 12. The Falcon & The Fire Trigram: Li
• Chapter 13. The Dragon & The Thunder Trigram: Chen
• Chapter 14. The Pheonix & The Wind Trigram: Sun
• Chapter 15. The Bear & The Mountain Trigram: Ken
• Chapter 16: The Monkey & The Lake Trigram: Tui

Section Three:
Palm Training Methods and Theory

• Chapter 17. Palm Training
• Chapter 18. Classical Palm Liniments
• Chapter 19. Stage One Palm Training
• Chapter 20. Stage Two Palm Training
• Chapter 21. Stage Three palm training
• Chapter 22. Harmful Side Effects of Incorrect Practicing

Section Four:
Death Touch Methods and Theory

• Chapter 23. Death Touch: Ssu Chu Chueh
• Chapter 24. Attacking the Nerves: T’ien Ching
• Chapter 25. Attacking the Blood Vessels: T’ien Hseuh
• Chapter 26. Attacking the Body’s Energy: T’ien Hsing Ch’i

Section Five
Healting Methods and Theory

• Chapter 27. Herbal Medicine
• Chapter 28. Tui Na: Massage and Acupressure

Book 2

This morning I got pretty aggravated by some tool that made the statement

‘We can safely say that martial arts started when Bodhidharma travelled
from India to China and taught some emaciated Chinese Buddhist monks
some exercises to stay healthy’

This kind of thing really riles me. In my opinion the Shaolin story is full of shit, propagated by the Chinese government and old skool kung fu flicks. Why do I think this, because of things I have read and researched.

Now, does this really matter a toss? Really? the answer is definitely no. It’s my opinion, should it be other people’s opinion too? who gives a toss, it doesn’t matter. Does it help my training if indeed the first person to ever throw a punch and teach his mates was some Indian Yogi? not at all. So why debate it?!

The martial arts are about training to be good at fighting, you cannot put a gloss on that. As a side effect of deep study in any practical field, you will also, after time, develop a scholarly side and start researching the martial arts and related fields. If your inclined that way you might even develop the internal aspects of the arts as well. It’s really no big shit! don’t get all excited about it!

I’m not sure if this post makes much sense, but in summary:

• Don’t be a tool and just spout shit on the internet/real world - At least try to do some research first before showing your ignorance.
• Debating esoterica, vague history etc. is fully pointless and will not make you a better practitioner. The main part of that word is practice, so when you feel the urge to spout off, can it and get to the gym to do something useful (I’m clearly not following my own advice here with this rant!)

NB: For a much more eloquent expression of what I am trying to say look here and here

I said a while ago that I moved, well, part of that has involved learning a new language. Following the martial arts maxim,

Do not seek to just blindly copy and emulate your teachers, instead seek what they sought.

I set about trying to find the tools and strategy that worked best for me to accomplish the goal of learning a new language quickly and well.

I found that the king of SRS (spaced repetition systems) and Japanese language learning tools is the humble PDA

So, First go to http://www.japaneselanguagetools.com/ and get an Axim loaded to the gills with Japanese - English dictionaries. Then get bazillions of example sentences from ftp://ftp.cc.monash.edu.au/pub/nihongo/jp_examples.fpw.tar.gz and stick that on the PDA’s SD Card (get a big one, the bigger the better)

Once that’s done you have a Japanese-English-Kanji-Stroke order-readings etc Dictionary that easily outperforms any of the commercial J-E ‘Wordtank’ kind of dictionaries,you can add further pimpage too by adding the worlds finest SRS　on it by adding PocketStackz from http://www.stackz.com/Stackz/ppc/ppc.htm
after that’s installed add the vocabulary files from http://www.stackz.com/Stackz/Archive/Archive.php

That’s well on the way to being the King of language learning helpers, but adding Declan’s voice flash cards (Yes: VOICE, they speak the words at you!) and the Kanji software will quite honestly put you over the edge!! get them from here -
http://www.declan-software.com/pocket_pc/japanese/index.htm

The Declans and Stackz site has files for all the JLPT levels and quite frankly, any words you’d ever need!

Free trials are available for all the software listed above (Obviously not the Axim)

Good luck!

NB: I am in no way affiliated with these sites, but I do fully recommend the products.