A Warrior's Thougts on the Martial Arts

On September 29th 2011, Ronny Kokert gave a speech where he explained the theory behind Shinergy. Not much to say here - just listen and enjoy!

I wish you all a happy new year. Photo by camera slayer, found on flickr.org For me, the year won't start particularily good, I guess. On january 7th, the doc will put my foot into plaster again. This time, it's 4 weeks. After that, we shall see further. Now on the one hand, this is significantly screwed up. Gone are my plans of doing a max strength program to begin the year. Also, as a professional trainer, not being mobile at the beginning of the year means a serious handicap to my marketing actions. Novembet through February are, after all, the best months for any sports school, finance-wise. Also, I need to make up for all the losses my second studio has produced over the last year anyways. Instead of recovering financially, I'll now have to pay an instructor to teach my classes. Great. Not to mention all my plans of offering more classes at my Dojo. They're most definately put on a halt at the moment. As you can see, from a business point of view, my situation is s...

It's Sunday, December 27th. Why am I wishing you a merry Xmas today? Well, although I did plan on writing an article on christmas, family, togetherness and the like, I was far to busy celebrating the holdiays with my loved ones. So, here it goes, albeit 3 days late: Merry Xmas and a happy new year. May 2010 be injury-free and successfull for all of you.

Sometimes it's so simple. Still, we fail to think of it. Afterwards, it's quite awkward to think such an obvious thing didn't cross the mind in the first place. But then it just didn't. I had a situation like that today, while teaching my conditioning class. Now "class" is a bit of an overstatement here, it was more of a personal coaching with one of my advanced students, Doris. Usually, the conditioning class quite full. Today, however, with christmas being just two days away and the streets being covered in ice and snow, most of my clients chose to stay at home. Not that I was really surprised. This gave me the opportunity to tailor the session specifically to Doris' needs and address some points I sometimes have to leave unattended. When it came to strength training, we basically did a modified version of Charles Staley's EDT (escalating density training). In a nutshell, the idea of edt is to do two exercises alternatively over a certain time period...

On Friday, December 11th 2009, Mariusz Pudzianowski, polish strongman with an impressive record of 6 european titles and 5 won world chmapionships, made his MMA debut at the "Konfrontacja Sztuk Walki", or short KSW. Pudzian, as Mariusz is called in Poland, was facing Marcin Najman, a professional boxer. There'sa good intro on both fighters on youtube, for your convenience I've posted the video here: As you can see, Mariusz is obviously the bigger, stronger fighter. There's a weight difference of approximately 25kg. Although Mariusz is a strength athlete, he's been doing Kyokushinkai Karate and Boxing for years (according to his homepage boxing for 7 years, karate for 20+ years, see http://pudzian.pl/mariusz.php ). Also, the guy was practicing BJJ with Miroslaw Okninski, propably the number one expert in poland when it comes to the brazilian art. You can look it up on their homepage, www.valetudo.pl , all that training is no urban myth. Of course, there's a...

Yesterday was the 4rd day on my HFT program. I decided to pay a visit to my Stadlau-based dojo (for those non-Vienna residents amongst you: Stadlau is a part of Vienna's 22nd district) before going on to teach at my Aspern-based gym (again, Aspern is another art of Vienna's 22nd district). While my partner, Chris, was holding the children and youth classes, I set a basic "outdoor-gym" that perfectly suits my needs at the moment. All the equipment I used was a stool, a piece of rope (which I could have done without), a towel and a 12 KG kettlebell. The kettlebell and the stool I used for the pistols. To add some variety, I've decided to do them with extra weight today - that's where said kettlebell comes into play. Due to my ankle injury, I did box-pistols for my left leg. Hence the stool. Also for the sake of variety, I used my rope (which is usually used in kids and youth classes for strength-building games) for the pullups. The first 5 sets I did only with t...

Warsaw is a warrior city. Life here constantly revolves around the idea of heroism and dying for freedom. After poisoning myself (I suspect I had ice cubes made from tap water. If you stop in Poland, beware of the tap water.), I've decided to accompany my father and go to an air show in the Mazuria, approximately 5 hours away from Warsaw. Tough luck the car didn't start up. Apparentaly, the alternator is broken, so we had to stay in the city. Which, as it turned out, wasn't no bad, since August 1st is W-day (with "W" standing for Warsaw", obviously). The whole city was on its feet, celebrating the 65th anniversary of the warsawian uprising ("Powstanie Warszawskie"). If you're into history, you probably know that Warsaw was completely destroyed in WWII. Their so-called old town is about 50 years old, everything was rebuilt after the war. After being reduced to rubble, Warsaw was invaded by the Germans. Now what you might not know (especially if ...

Ok, so yesterday I had BJJ training at 12:00 at Miroslaw Okninskis school ( www.valetudo.pl) . Again, because of the clubs training camp, which is taking place right now, there was no instructor. However, just as wednesday, there were good MMA guys at the gym so one of them led the training. After warmup we practiced the various mounts and how to escape from them. This became something of a game where we started "fighting for the position", so taking a given position rather than actually submitting the partner was the goal. Of course, at the end of the training, we had lots of sparring. Great training. At night, I met a friend of mine, Jakub, who directs a TKD club here in Warsaw (www.ronin.waw.pl) . We talked a lot and covered just about anything, but here I'll present a short outline of the martial-arts relevant topics that came up: Instructor qualification One of the hottest topics at hand was the question what a martial artist needs to qualify as an instructor. We bot...

About 7 months ago, I got my hands on a copy of Ori Hofmeklers "Warrior Diet". Fascinated by the idea, I took it up. Before I go any further, I'll outline the main points in case you're not familiar with the concept: Eat one meal at night During the day, eat only raw, unprocessed food if you must eat In your main meal, start with raw veggies, continue with cooked veggies, protein and fat and finish the meal with carbos. Go low in the food chain. Now, basically that means you're fasting all day in a controlled manner - you're allowed to eat raw fruit, veggies, tiny portions of protein, just don't overdo it - and then, before going to bed, you feast. I'm certainly not going to elaborate on the scientific aspect behind the warrior diet, there's enough fuss about that already. No need for me to contribute. Quite frankly, the "warrior diet" goes against most of the stuff I've learned about nutrition in the past. To this time I've tried...

On July 4th, the Shinergy[battle] summer '09 took place. The winner in the men's heavyweight division was my good friend Dominik. Now altough that's great, it's not the sportive aspect of winning a tournament I want to adress here. It's something completely different. You see, Dominik works in the IT sector. He's a last-level support guy, meaning he fixes other peoples software - problems when noone else can do so. Now this isn't exactly a job that does a lot for your health and fitness. It's an office job, lots of sitting involved. Now I've known Dominik for about eight years now. We've been to tech college together. We served together as paramedics. We train together. You see, Dominik and I know each other pretty well. In all the time we've known each other, Dominik had weight issues. At the top, he was over 120Kg. Since Dominik's tall - he's over 185 cm (~6 feet) - this didn't catch the eye as much as it would have otherwise, e...

Welcome! For more than two years now I've had the privilege and pleasure to direct a Shinergy studio here in Vienna, Austria. I'm lucky to have really interessting people in my school that help me broaden my horizon each day. Aditionally, my instructor colleagues, especially my good friend and mentor Ronny , help me on my way. In seminars, workshops and also in everydays training, a lot of thoughts concerning the martial arts arise. I'd like to keep a record of those thoughts here on this blog. Although I'm only a beginner in the way of the martial arts, I've had the opportunity to train with quite a few people in quite a few styles. My carreer as a competitive fighter in various standup-styles did it's part to give me a broader overview over the diverse martial arts and fighting styles. As different as those styles may appear from the outside, as equal they are when it comes to the essence, the fundamental idea. Many styles undere underwent a process of develo...