A Warrior's Thougts on the Martial Arts

So last weekend I took the [FMS] (functional movement screen) certification course. Still need to take the online exam to actually get certified, but I don't believe that'll be much of a big deal. After all, I worked through the book a couple of times and I guess I got most of what Gray and Lee are saying. In case you've been living under a rock for the last decade, the FMS is a simple screen that aims at establishing a (more or less) objective measure regarding movement quality, a minimal acceptable baseline against which individual can be evaluated and scored. To achieve this goal, a battery of seven simple tests is performed, with each test being scored from zero to three points. Three points means perfect movement with no compensation whatsoever. Two marks acceptable yet somehow compromised movement. One is dysfunctional movement. Zero is pain. Obviously, a zero would mean referral to a healthcare professional, this is where my job as a trainer ends. As soon as som...

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...