A Warrior's Thougts on the Martial Arts

On Monday I've torn my inner ankle side band. Basically, the Judo instructor performed an Ouchi-gari, I stumbled and ruined my foot. Great. Doctor told me it's going to be 6 weeks out, at a minimum. Now, I'm at home and can't even walk to the kitchen or the bathroom without my girlfriend's help. The foot is all swollen and blue. Needless to say it's hurting badly. I guess that's it for the British Open in november. In 6 weeks, all the endurance I've built up during the last two months will be gone. Also, from what I heard it'll take even longer than that to regain full ankle stability and mobility. As soon as I can place enough weight on the foor again to walk a bit, I'll see if I can make up some neat upper-body HFT program. Since I'll be spending a lot of time at home in the near future due to my immobility, I'll have the time to put in a short seesion each hour or so. Obviously I can't change the situation - being injured - so I ha...

Ok, just returned from Greece. There's been positive and negative sides to that journey. The good On a positive note, following the warrior diet is easy in Greece, as people there apparentely seem to live by it anyways. We were told by our hotel manager that " we never eat breakfast ", and when we had our main meal at something like 10pm, the taverna was filled with locals. We quickly found ourselves a decent place to eat, called Nikos Souvlaki, which I can strongly recommend to anyone in the area of Plakias. Due to the heat and the nearby sea, I've decided to substitute swimming for my usual running. This proved to be a great idea. Swimming will definately play a part in phase 2 of my current program, which will begin in September. Not only is swimming easier on the joints than running, it's also a full-body activity as opposed to roadwork. In Greece, I'd do HIIT swimming with my Polar on, stopping time intervals. For one minute I'd crawl all-out, after t...

(image taken from en.wikipedia.org) Today I'm leaving for Crete, Greece, to spend a week of my holiday there. Basically, I'll try to keep the same training program up I follow here, only I'll exchange the power work for bodyweight exercise. It'll be fun trying out new exercises on the beach. For me, a trip to Greece is something of an educational journey, after all, most of our western civilization, values and knowledge originates there. Most important of all, however, is the fact that all the martial arts as practiced today probably have their roots in greek Pankratio. I tried looking up Pankratio schools in Iraklion and Plakias, to no avail. Maybe I'll find out about a club once I'm there. Now, I have to hurry to get to the gym the last time before my departure, as always I'll keep you up to date. So long, take care

Warsaw is a warrior city. Life here constantly revolves around the idea of heroism and dying for freedom. After poisoning myself (I suspect I had ice cubes made from tap water. If you stop in Poland, beware of the tap water.), I've decided to accompany my father and go to an air show in the Mazuria, approximately 5 hours away from Warsaw. Tough luck the car didn't start up. Apparentaly, the alternator is broken, so we had to stay in the city. Which, as it turned out, wasn't no bad, since August 1st is W-day (with "W" standing for Warsaw", obviously). The whole city was on its feet, celebrating the 65th anniversary of the warsawian uprising ("Powstanie Warszawskie"). If you're into history, you probably know that Warsaw was completely destroyed in WWII. Their so-called old town is about 50 years old, everything was rebuilt after the war. After being reduced to rubble, Warsaw was invaded by the Germans. Now what you might not know (especially if ...

Ok, so yesterday I had BJJ training at 12:00 at Miroslaw Okninskis school ( www.valetudo.pl) . Again, because of the clubs training camp, which is taking place right now, there was no instructor. However, just as wednesday, there were good MMA guys at the gym so one of them led the training. After warmup we practiced the various mounts and how to escape from them. This became something of a game where we started "fighting for the position", so taking a given position rather than actually submitting the partner was the goal. Of course, at the end of the training, we had lots of sparring. Great training. At night, I met a friend of mine, Jakub, who directs a TKD club here in Warsaw (www.ronin.waw.pl) . We talked a lot and covered just about anything, but here I'll present a short outline of the martial-arts relevant topics that came up: Instructor qualification One of the hottest topics at hand was the question what a martial artist needs to qualify as an instructor. We bot...

Had a hell of a day. At 12:00 I went to the MMA training at Miroslaw Okninskis Vale Tudo school ( www.valetudo.pl ). Unfortunately, due to the fact that Okninski himself is currently at his clubs summer training camp, there was no actual trainer to supervise the lesson. However, there was a BJJ guy (Christopher), a former wrestling now MMA guy (Maciek, if I remember correctly), a professional MMA fighter with 21 fights under his hat (Martin) and - me. The pro arrived late, like 40 - 50 minutes after the lesson started. Up to that point, we warmed up and started with some combinations of strikes and takedowns as shown by Maciek. After that, the BJJ guy took us through some exercises to pass the half-guard and get into a full mount position. Lastly, we did that free-form, so one partner would establish a half-guard and try to keep it or submit the guy on top, who, in turn tries to establish a full mount position. About that time, Martin came in and joined us. The whole training took abou...

Ok, I'm in Warsaw now, visiting friends and family. Of course, I'll use that time to check out some new styles and meet fellow martial artists. On my list are definately Sambo ( самбо) and MMA. On the самбо side, I'll meet the founder and president of "Sambo System Polska", Bartłomiej Mendak ( www.sambo.pl ) . As for MMA, I'll check out Paweł Nastula s Judo club ( www.nastula.pl ). With any luck, I'll meet him personally and have the chance to talk with or even do some training with him. Also, I'm looking forward to meeting a friend of mine, Jakub Demuth, a Taekwondo instructor in Warsaw ( http://ronin.waw.pl ). Anyway, gotta be on the run right now, I'll keep you informed. So long, take care