A Warrior's Thougts on the Martial Arts

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...

So on Saturday, my instructor, Ronny Kokert was holding a master class at my dojo in Vienna's 22nd district. Additionally to being OpenTKD World Champion an god-knows how many times state champion in olympic TKD, this is the guy who brought the idea of Shinergy to live and created the system I've devoted myself to over the last decade. That being said, Ronny was always more to me than just an instructor - I consider him a teacher, mentor, role-model and great friend all at once. Therefore, it's always a pleasure having him at my dojo. Generally, I think that mixing things up from time to time and getting new/different input from someone else than their regular instructor can greatly benefit trainees from all walks of live. It's not really like there was a lot of new information, but the way it was presented was just superb. Basically, the class was all about making basic techniques work out better, biomechanics-wise. In short, the essence was: Stay relaxed. You need st...