Here is an introduction by my friend, fellow black belt and hall of famer - David Hays:
I wanted to give this post a introduction. Many of you know that this post is done by John Zimmer. John is a good friend of mine and was inducted into the KenpoHall of Fame this past weekend along with Victor Hervias and John West. All of these men are from the San Diego school of Dick Willett. All of us that come from that school are proud to be part of this great fighting system.
John Zimmer, Victor Hervias and John West are some of the best all around fighters I have ever trained with. The speed of Victor, the hard hitting, unorthodox left handed style of John Zimmer and raw brutalness of John West always kept me on my toes. All three of these men are greats in the arts.
Last year at the 40th anniversary of Dick Willett’s San Diego American Kenpo School (now owned and ran by Todd McElhinny) a statement was read by Al Tracy. Master Tracy said that Dick Willett had produced some of the best fighter in Kenpo Karate.
The legendary fighter, Joe Lewis, who was at the event, stood up and said “That statement was not completely true.” Joe went on to say “Dick Willett had produced some of the best fighters anywhere period”. We were all humbled by that statement coming from the Joe Lewis. Congratulations men!
I am pleased to announce that I was among three black belts (John West, Victor Hervias and John Zimmer) that were nominated and inducted into the Kenpo Hall of Fame this last weekend in Chicago! Dick Willett’s American Kenpo Karate board selected us to go the the Tracy’s Karate - Gathering of Eagles 2009.
John West, Victor Hervias and I (John W. Zimmer) were all students of Dick Willett at Tracy’s Karate. Later we amicably split off from Tracy’s Karate and Dick formed American Kenpo Karate. In this post I will give a brief bio of each of us and speak more on the Gathering of Eagles 2009. Here is a picture of my instructor, Richard “Dick” Willett and myself.
You are the proverbial 98 pound weakling at Jones beach one summer day but rather than responding to that Joe Weider ad at the back of the comic book last fall, you sent away for the KETSUGO book! Yes you launched your pseudo martial arts training but now find yourself in a sandy situation! What do you do?
Before we explore that question - consider the ramifications? To what level of adversity must a confrontation rise before you respond? If you respond, how will you respond? Verbally? In kind? Or very aggressively? Are you concerned with your ego? Morally, Legally, Ethically, or do you just want to get even-steven?
In this post we will examine some of these issues as when to fight is every bit as important as how to fight. While you are framing your response, look at this video basically showing the logic of the comic book ad.
Stories like this warm my heart although my kids are grown - I don’t like to hear about men messing with kids! Kids are supposed to be safe walking to school. The story here is about a girl in the marching band walking to school.
I don’t know about you but when I was in the band - I had to lug my trombone to school. In this case the girl in the marching band had her baton with her! One guy grabbed her coat from behind in an attempted robbery.
In this post I’ll talk about the girls self-defense as well as ways to use some ordinary objects as weapons. Here is a video I found of a girl with a baton. I’m not sure if it was this kind of baton or one of those large ones you see in the old time marching bands. Notice the amazing control this girl has of her baton.
Well one of the main fights of the Summer is fast approaching on August 15! Crush vs. Cyborg! Some of you might correct me and say Gina’s handle is now Conviction and you would be right but I like the sound of Crush.
Both women have good records in MMA with 7 wins and Cyborg has one loss. Both women are billed as ready to fight and both seem ready for 5 rounds. Showtime is now hosting the Strikeforce fights and doing a good job. I’ll highlight both fighters in this post and talk a bit about what it means to women’s MMA.
There have been many great fighters and fighting arts that use similar moves but throw them differently. Kung Fu kicks look different than Tae Kwon Do and Muay Thai kicks look different than Karate kicks. Which way of throwing a kick is best?
What am I talking about? Well one example I am going to talk about is a wheel kick, also known as a round house kick. There are significant differences from style to style on how to throw this kick. I’ll talk about some of the rationals and what you have to consider when throwing a wheel kick. Here is one way to throw the round house kick from Bas Rutten.
Now when I was growing up (in the dark ages as my kids would say) our family did not have a color TV, microwave, VCR, DVD, cable TV service or computers! Eventually all of those things came but not when I was little.
I remember my brother and I being so happy one Christmas when there was a Rockem Sockem Robots game under the tree! Back in the dark ages when one wanted to play a game - they did not merely turn on the computer or the game system but rather pulled the game out of the box!
In this post I will tell you about how these games evolved (as I saw it) and hot the modern versions of these video games can contribute to one’s overall martial arts fitness level! Here is an old TV commercial for Rockem Sockem Robots.
For those of you who watch the WEC on Versus TV, the fight of the year is happening Sunday, June 6th! Mike Brown is defending his title against Urijah Faber. Faber lost the title last year in a surprise upset.
The WEC is still airing free on Versus TV and thankfully there are some good competitors in this league. Miguel Torres is another exciting champion in the WEC. My guess is eventually the WEC will go to PPV like the UFC but I really hope not too soon. In this short post I’ll briefly talk about my expectations in this fight. Here is a recent promo video I found.
I have been watching too many youtube women’s self-defense videos and reading the chatter on the web lately and seem to keep finding a familiar theme. An alternate universe where karate instructors seem to be pumping up the egos of women, trying to pretend they can go toe to toe with men!
Now before you (if you are a 21st century woman) start screaming at your computer screen, let me assure you that I know women CAN defend themselves against men. But do I think just because a woman has attended a self-defense course and generally buys into equality, that she understands what she is in for?
I may have worded this a little too strongly but please understand that I think realism should be injected into any woman’s fighting strategy… rather than the dribble that I see so often put forth as empowerment for women (in the form of self-defense)! I spoke to my step-daughter to try and get an understanding of why equality is bandied about so freely when speaking of self-defense and she told me that for some women - it is more important to “feel” that women are equal to men in every way.
Ok here is what I am going to do in this post:
Point out how to overcome a stronger attacker
Point out that women have to use strategy (i.e. surprise, explosiveness, run, awareness, or weapons to win)
Women in the martial arts can overcome a size/strength advantage by superior skill.
That many men attacking women will strike hard to disillusion a woman - make her more complainant.
Woman should expect to have to fight for their lives - become an animal if they expect to survive!
I hope I have not lost you but let me open with this video and then I will go into more detail. The good news is if you are a woman - YES you CAN defend yourself against a stronger, larger man but you will have to be smart about it!
As I was searching for interesting martial arts stories I came apon the Journal of Manly Arts. Hmm I thought so I clicked in and found some historical stories about Western Martial Arts as well as some Eastern Martial Arts! I came across in volume 2002, 01/02, and exert from Theodore Roosevelt’s, “The Vigor of Life.”
Now I knew about our 26th President’s military experience in the Spanish - American War and his famous charge up San Jaun Hill, but I did not know about his wrestling and boxing background. Mr. Roosevelt relates about his Harvard experience:
This was, as far as I remember, the only one of my exceedingly rare athletic triumphs which would be worth relating. I did a good deal of boxing and wrestling in Harvard, but never attained to the first rank in either, even at my own weight. Once, in the big contests in the Gym, I got either into the finals or semi-finals…
In this post I will talk a little about wrestling, boxing and transitioning to an eastern martial art. Theodore Roosevelt was a man’s man and apparently was an accomplished hunter. He had to shoot a grizzly bear in this film adaptation video I found.
I was scouring the Internet for news worthy stories about karate and came across this New York Times article entitled, “TV Sports; Coming on the Digital Sports Dial: A Selection of Singular Sensations.” This peaked my interest and I found a Black Belt TV channel that is or will be coming to a cable provider near you, here. This is not the actual website but has the information. This will give an overview (I believe) of what the cable channel will be about.
This TV channel apparently will be about all things martial arts! In this post I will provide some insight to the content and delivery methods including over the Internet. Here is the first video I found about the new channel.
One of the reasons I got into karate as a kid was to learn how to do amazing things with my body as all things physical interested me. I liked climbing, fighting, riding a unicycle as well as hang gliding and scuba diving. Karate was just one more outlet to push my body to new heights.
I have found some activities that are not necessarily thought of as having anything to do with the martial arts but can be used to improve ones own strength, coordination and timing thereby improving your own martial art. I wrote a post on my other website (http://leananmean.com) about the fitness benefits of pole dancing here.
As you might know I try to find interesting material for this website that I can weave into karate, self-defense, conditioning, or general martial arts stories. In this post I will speak of fun conditioning exercises that one can do to help some facets of your overall martial art! I found this interesting (although a beginning foray) karate application of pole dancing.
Imagine that you grew up in the 60’s (some of you did) and your dad used to watch boxing! Boxing was an ideal martial art (even though it was not widely thought of as martial arts) because anyone could learn the basics and then defend themselves against a larger attacker! What you might be thinking? Don’t you mean karate? Well karate was in its infancy in the 60’s but boxing had a large audience.
If one knew how to jab, right cross and hook - he could take almost anyone bigger that was just trying to tear your head off and make them look silly! Karate kicked like girls did so it was not too popular with some men at first. Later when pioneers like Bill Wallace, Joe Lewis, Ron Marchini, and Chuck Norris started to make the sport of karate more popular there was still a dominant question at the time, what was better, karate or boxing?
In this post I will attempt to answer that question somewhat but before I do I will go into some history and note the differences between the two martial arts. Here is a video I found of the debate between boxing and MMA for some of the issues. MMA as many of you know is the most popular form of striking and submission sport that is watched today.
Carano vs. Cyborg is one of the fights I am waiting to see but for now I found a video game with Gina as Natasha. The game is called Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 and has a web page here. According to Wikipeda’s page here, the game is set in an alternate universe where Albert Einstein has been removed (so no nukes).
Carano seems to be good for the part as she was already bigger than life as Crush in the American Gladiator TV series. This is a short post about Gina Carano’s recent history and role in this video game. I found this video promotion for the game.
Imagine you are a 15 year-old girl, after just getting your allowance on a mid-summers day, walking over to your friends house. On the way you suddenly notice a guy opening a car door and running up to you! What do you do? This is one of the defining moments in any one’s life - how they will respond to danger. I wrote a post about this here, that describes what feelings a person might have and how do deal with the fight or flight response.
In this post I am going to tell you about four recent stories of girls having to fight or run away to safety! I have noticed Internet chatter about karate instructors recommending to just kick the guy in the nuts and the girl will be safe! What? I would like to say that no matter how good I or any other blogger out there is, we cannot teach fighting skills over the Internet.
The only thing I hope for is to somewhat explore an issue or two in any one post! This means that if I say a girl should gouge the eyes out and try to run away - I am not saying that is all that it will take to get away! Who really knows? It depends on how badly the attacker (the bad guy) gets hurt or surprised. If you really want to know how to escape an attacker - go take a self-defense class at a minimum! With that caviot, here is a picture I found a funny photo on flickr of a scary guy attacking a girl (he is not really a bad guy)!
Back when I was a kid and had discovered karate on TV, I thought a black belt in karate could beat up any bad guy! I remember seeing shows like the Wild Wild West where Robert Conrad was able to fight his way out of many sticky situations because of his karate training (although karate had not made it to the United States yet - this TV series was set in the 1800’s).
As a boy I had to either learn how to fight or be one of the ones that gave away his lunch money. This started in the sixth grade but I was able to eventually get to the point where I stuck up for myself. Now I understand that girls are every bit as tough as boys. I will admit that I do not really understand the dynamics of girl on girl bulling but boys are simple - the bully will pick on anyone that is afraid of him!
In this post I will talk about some reasons why you should learn martial arts of some kind. I do not think the type of martial art is so important as actully starting the lessons! I wrote a post on how to pick a martial arts school here. Learning is generally an evolving process. I as a young man thought differently than I as a middle aged man. I will talk about this process, some expected goals, achieved goals and the importaint lessons I’ve learned from taking martial arts. Here is a video about one lesson Kwai Chang Caine (played by David Carradine) learned in the Kung Fu TV series.
