A Warrior's Thougts on the Martial Arts

I'll be hosting a couple of events in the near future. For a good beginning,  professional MMA fighter and BJJ purple belt Michelle Rirsch will be teaching a three hour workshop on MMA strategies such as the transition between standup fighting / striking and ground fighting / grappling sweeps and escapes on the ground selected submissions The event takes place on Sunday, Mai 15th at my Dojo. Participation costs €25,- , which in my opinion is a bargain. There's still some free spots, but they sell by the minute, so now might be your best time to ring me up or write me a mail if you wish to participate. Of course, there'll be photos on the blog after the event so you know what you missed. So long,  Don't get hurt

Today we had a boxing masterclass with [Tom Knöbl] . Since I'm currently handicapped, I wasn't able to do most of the stuff he taught, but that's ok. At least, I know what what we'll be working on over the course of the next couple weeks. In essence, what Tom covered was weight distribution during stepping and striking. Especially, he explained something of a pendulum jab, where you bob into your strike to increase effective mass and thus, punching power. Tom also covered the importance of conditioning, as fatigue leads to a decrease in concentration and situational awareness, which in turn puts you at a greater risk of being knocked out. That's exactly what I preach all the time. Strength and conditioning first and foremost fulfill the role to keep the athlete injury-free and enable him to actually exhibit his technical and tactical skills over a longer time. 'nuff said. Below, you'll find a couple of pictures of the class. Note tha...

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...

Just came home from todays masterclass. It's well past midnight already, so I'll just post a couple of pictures now and follow up with a more detailed post in the next days. There's more pictures on facebook , you can find them on the Shinergy[stadlau] page! By the way, I just got the clips of our last conditioning session today, so I'll post them soon and write a few words on what we're currently doing in terms of s&c training. So long, take care

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...