A Warrior's Thougts on the Martial Arts

Time for an update, I guess. A week ago, while attending a [Luta Livre] workshop with Daniel D'Dane (watch the video above for some info on that guy. Note that obviously, it's not the workshop I've been to.), I ruptured the extendor tendon in my left pinky finger. No big deal, but then again, the doc says 16 weeks no grappling or boxing. Now that's a big friggin' deal. Especially since we're about to go fight in [Poland] again. Great. Another tournament where I'm sidelined and just attend as a coach. Well, nevermind, though, since four of my youngsters are going to compete, so there'll be quite some work for me anyway. Ok, now what do I do with no boxing or grappling? Pout and sob - a lot. But when I'm done with that, I'll be going to work. Do what you can, with what you have, where you are     --Theodore Roosevelt I can still kick, so that's what I'll be working on. No rocket science here. I can shadow box and I can wo...

In December, before going on [my trip across Florida] , I took the [T36] instructor course with [Andreas “Andyconda” Schmidt] . The course was a great experience and, although I’m certainly not fit to teach a full-fledged grappling class at the moment, vastly expanded my knowledge about the ground game. Besides being a great learning experience, the whole thing also made me re-think some didactic matters, which I may or may not cover in a future post. In a nutshell, the T36 system is a [luta-livre] based grappling system of combat. Combat, as in street fighting for law enforcement and military. It’s all strictly no-gi, with the ultimate goal of every action being a swift and clean choke finish. Obviously, most of that stuff is pretty close to what you’d find in a BJJ or Sambo curriculum, only it’s all a bit different. After all, we know that rules make styles and in a no-gi setting that allows for heel hooks, neck-cranks, spinning knee bars and the like (even in competitions like...

Disclaimer : Pictures and links are to follow soon. Also, most of that text was written when I was still in Clearwater, so half the trip is not yet covered.  On December 24th I hopped onto the plane and took off for the US. Just as with [China last year] , we're not staying in one location but rather go from place to place. So far, the journey took us from Miami to Key West, Key Largo, the Everglades, Okeechobee, Orlando, Saint Augustine, Crystal River and now, Clearwater. Just before the trip, I strained my right calf, so during the first week of the trip, Training was pretty much out of question. By I was more or less pain free at the beginning of the second week, however, I went back to business. First, I had the opportunity to train with [Phil] at the Renzo Gracie Jiu Jitsu Academy in Crystal River. The class was No-Gi, which obviously is a topic of special interest to me. Phil had is go over a couple of his bread and butter moves, such as the cross coke to...

The third day of the fight-for-fun camp has just ended. Today, I took a kickboxing class with Mr. Zaar and two MMA classes with Andre Reinders . Just like yesterday, the total training time today was 6 hours. My plan was to take Mr. Mack's class for the morning session, but I ended up on the wrong mat and so took another class with Mr. Zaar instead. Looking back, I really don't regret that twist of fate. Now I have no idea what Mr. Mack did with his students - I'm sure the class was great - but Mr. Zaar's topic today suited me just fine: we practiced kicking on the inside and outside lane as well as the corresponding counters. Coming from a TKD background, most of that stuff appeared rather basic to me, at least in technical complexity. Anyhow, obviously the kickboxers do things in a different way than we do, so I learned quite a bit from a tactical point of view. Most important, Mr. Zaar told us to secure every single kick with a technique from the lead hand, someth...

It's my second day at the fight-for-fun camp in Ötztal, Tyrol. Yesterday, everything was too stressy to post, so I'll quickly wrap up yesterday's events before going into detail about today. First off, what is the fight-for-fun camp? Well, basically it's a training camp sponsored by Budoland GmbH, a martial arts supplier. Now while most camps pretty much focus on one fighting art, here they offer lessons for virtually any striker. Check out the schedule HERE. The trainers here are top-notch, the best of the best. Living legends in terms of kickboxing. Also, there's quite some former and even reigning world champions from all kickboxing disciplines amongst the ranks of students. Definately a place to learn and grow. I'm here with Elias, a friend of mine who's also a Shinergy[instructor]. He's taking the semi-contact classes while I'm rather into MMA and Muay-Thai. This is great, because back in Vienna we can exchange ideas and share what we'...

Today's master class was awesome. The trainer, Alex, really did a great job in adapting competition-proved Judo techniques to work in a no-Gi setting. As most of us are absolute beginners in terms of grappling, we started the class with some falling exerices. Alex then transitioned into a double-leg takedown. I have to say that there's a lot to this seemingly easy technique. Also, although the very same technique exists in every grappling system, I noticed that everyone seems to be doing it slightly different. For me, the Judo-approach with a vertical spine and strong shoulder pressure makes sense. Not connecting the hands was new to me, but with some practice, I'll get that down too. Having took down the partner, we practiced passing the guard, going from guard to side-mount. Again, there were some hints and tricks that were new to me, at least in this form. Personally, I consider the battle for a dominant position the alpha and omega of grappling, no matter which style. F...