A Warrior's Thougts on the Martial Arts

The other day I was analysing a [Shinergy bout] that took place at the Shinergy[battle] autumn 2011. In that bout, one of my students got knocked down by a wild, uncontrolled haymaker. Now usually I'd say that kind of strike is absolutely no threat to a fighter. We know how to deal with that. Blocking and countering a swing on the outside line is probably the first thing a fighter learns to do. This is not because those attacks are particularly common when facing an experienced fighter - learning how to deal with haymakers is the first step because it's so easy. Then again, I've been knocked down in my career. I've been knocked out. I was hit by mediocre strikes that should never have so much as touched my skin. Sometimes it's the unorthodox fighters and their "inferior" technique that pose the biggest threat to the black-belt martial arts practitioner. "Reality based" self defense styles take that into consideration and expand their technical a...

So with this fight, I'll finish analyzing the fights that were fought at the Shinergy[battle] autumn '11. We're looking at the bout between Felpe (Shinergy[stadlau]) and Gerhard (Shinergy[zone vienna]). For both boys this was the second fight on that evening. In Felipe's first fight, the columbian proved he could deal with brawlers quite well. Gerhard, on the other hand, already proved he's a decent boxer and strong - if slow - kicker. They say that styles make fights and this one promised to get interresting. In terms of action, this certainly was no dissapointment. Both guys got at it from the start. Kept a proper distance, too - the fight never got slowed down by either clinching (too close distance) or standing off (too far distance). Over the course of first minute, it looked like this was a more or less balanced match-up. It was easily to be seen that there was a technical advantage on Gerhard's side, but nothing drastical. However, Felipe got too confiden...

Both Chris and I plan to qualify for and compete in the WKF kickboxing world championships in Croatia this year. Hence, we don't cross-train a lot but rather stick to basic kickboxing training. Besides shadow sparring, padwork and actual sparring, drills are a great way to develop reflexes and grind in some sport-specific reactions. After analyzing some old kickboxing bouts and some more recent boxing matches, we came up with a simple defensive drill. One partner assumes a low kickboxing guard, while the other keeps throwing 1-2-3 combinations (jab, cross, lead hook). The first partner goes through the 6 step drill, working on each step for one 2 minute round. On each individual step, two factors are exchanged to give a variety of possibilities: type of defensive action (block / dodge) timing of the counter (none / indirect / direct) I think the first factor is pretty obvious. You either block or dodge. Getting hit is not a valid option for rather obvious reasons. As for the second...

Yesterday was fight club day. You see, once a month I invite fighters from another school to spar with my boys and girls to gain some combat experience. The Shinergy[battle] are quite a rare event, so for most of my athletes - those which are not keen on competing in Kickboxing bouts -, getting to fight someone from another gym ain't that common. Hence, I decided to host those fight clubs. For quite a while I've tried to get competitors from the Shinergy[zone vienna] come visit us for sparring sessions - to no avail. When I asked Thomas, head instructor of Shinergy[liesing] , he immediately liked the idea and so we decided to have those sparring sessions on a regular base, once per month. Unfortunately, I didn't have a chance to attend the first event, but yesterday, the second fight club took place and I was there to hold the class. Although there were still few competitors, I believe that the session was a success. Everyone had a chance to learn and hone his/her skills. B...

So yesterday we had the "Gymnastics 101" masterclass, which was held by a good friend of mine, Martin Friedrich. The guy's an incredible gymnast and freerunner, so basically the plan is to do a "gymnastics 101" masterclass first (check), follow up with an "acrobatics 101" class and finish the series with a "freerunning 101" class. Martin already held a masterclass the the Dojo some time ago, so most of yesterday's topics weren't exactly new, but it sure didn't hurt to practice the basics again. Everything was clearly structured, for every exercise there was a series of preparatory exercises and different level of difficulty. Therefore, everyone faced a challenge, no one was bored, yet no one was hopelessly overwhelmed either. That being said, I need to add that everyone seems to be pretty thrashed today, so the whole thing was very intense. Go figure why gymnasts look and perform the way they do... Basically, what we did was Warm...

This time I actually have an excuse for not posting for such a long time: on 1st of March, I had my last exam for my BSC studies. Obviously, that involved quite some learning. Training suffered, too. However, now I'm done with that, in a couple of weeks I'll have my papers and officially be an BSC. Anyhow, back to the topic at hand, it's time to look at another fight. This time, I'll analyze Gabriel's second fight at the Shinergy[autumn battle] 2011. He was up against Florian, a boy from Tom's Dojo in Liesing, Vienna's 23rd district. I guess you could dub that fight "Speed VS Power". The whole fight had something of a play of catch after the first couple of seconds: Florian chased Gabriel across the mat, Gabriel tried to land indirect counters. Having said that, let's take a (very brief) look at the details. Gabriel Let's start out with the positive things. Gabriel consistantly made those direct roundhouse counters work. This can already be...