Lots of the stuff I learnt in my Karate days often now seems relevant when watching people train. Though the Karate had lots of downsides it was a great learning experience. Let’s look at stance. Karate has more of a fixed way of looking at stance. It’s not bad but it leads to rigidity. Boxing [...]
One of the main aims of martial arts training is to enable a smaller opponent to beat a larger opponent through the use of technique and skill. This is obviously composed of a number of factors: Placement, timing, experience, speed, and efficient technique. One of the most important though is leverage. Give me a lever [...]
We’ve been working lots of sparring lately concentrating on simple direct attacks like the front kick and generally working kicks more. What’s profound here is how many different things you can do with just front kick and a jab and cross. I taught the concept of boxes. First and nearest you have the punching box, [...]
For the last three weeks we’ve been working on changing leads and on understanding the southpaw or unmatched lead where you are in the right stance and your opponent in the left. Bruce Lee’s JKD was in many respects just a southpaw style. As I remember too well, most of the fighters back then were [...]
This week in classes I’ve been focusing on showing the guys how just making small changes forwards and backwards can totally upset your opponents rhythm. What most people do is stand fairly statically and let their opponent or partner do their thing. This is most evident when doing pad work. This is essential at first [...]
The best form of defence is evasion. You can evade passively or you can hit at the same time as evading. This is the beauty of boxing in that most times your hitting your opponent whilst evading his attack. There are basically two types of evading. First with footwork and then with body movement. Becoming [...]
Next time you are in a sparring session consider how often you throw the jab in contrast to how often you throw crosses, hooks, uppercuts etc. This will give you some idea how important a weapon the jab is in your armoury; try to think of it as a spear, thrust like a bayonet at [...]
