A Warrior's Thougts on the Martial Arts

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...

Disclaimer : Pictures and links are to follow soon. Also, most of that text was written when I was still in Clearwater, so half the trip is not yet covered.  On December 24th I hopped onto the plane and took off for the US. Just as with [China last year] , we're not staying in one location but rather go from place to place. So far, the journey took us from Miami to Key West, Key Largo, the Everglades, Okeechobee, Orlando, Saint Augustine, Crystal River and now, Clearwater. Just before the trip, I strained my right calf, so during the first week of the trip, Training was pretty much out of question. By I was more or less pain free at the beginning of the second week, however, I went back to business. First, I had the opportunity to train with [Phil] at the Renzo Gracie Jiu Jitsu Academy in Crystal River. The class was No-Gi, which obviously is a topic of special interest to me. Phil had is go over a couple of his bread and butter moves, such as the cross coke to...