Archive for September, 2009

I remember in the fifth grade, some kids were picking on me. I started coming home from school with some bruises and my mom started questioning me. I told her what was going on and she had my dad talk to me.

I faced what so many children in the world face every day – bullies! I was a nice enough kid and had no idea why someone wanted to pick on me. I’ll tell you later how I came out of my shell but in this post I found one heart warming story about some children from India.

It seems that kids get bullied there a lot but some people are giving girls the tools to fight back! Girls have a good chance to fight back against boys on an even playing field (they are just as strong) until their teen years! In this post I will highlight how a self-defense class can even up girl’s chances against bullies. Here is one video I found.

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As I was growing up in the 60′s and 70′s I remember seeing some musicians that could do karate! Elvis comes to mind but as much as I loved karate in movies, I loved to see karate done well with music.

In this post I will review the Karate Hottie’s appearance in Megadeth’s music video. I found this cool band, The Living End, doing a music video call Rising Sun. I found an original video clip of Carl Douglass performing Kung Fu Fighting and of course what music video review would be complete without the Karate Kid (Sweep the Leg music video). Here is Megadeth with the Karate Hottie!

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Have you noticed the amount of martial arts related videos that do not seem to be related to fighting? I won’t show the extreme examples here but if you have been on youtube, you can find a lot of videos of bikini clad women demonstrating karate moves.

Now I do not believe that is necessarily a problem because what if it is nice day out and the girls live in a warm climate? Who am I to say how one should practice their martial art? That being said, I do think the demonstrators in the videos ought to actually know some martial arts!

In this post we will look at how sex appeal might help or hurt overall martial arts. First I’d like to show one funny video I found of how the presence of women in the dojo might seemingly affect some males. 

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I was happy to hear that Neil Martin of Urban Samurai had created a e-Book entitled, “Street Smart” that dealt with common self-defense issues! I have had to chance to review this book and I will give it a review in this post.

First off the title is aptly named, “Street Smart” because Mr. Martin is trying to make the connection that not all self-defense situations have to happen. Often times the decisions one makes in his or her own life can contribute to one’s safety! For instance how important is it to take the short-cut through a bad part of town? Neil  injects lots of good common sense into this book.

I will go over some of the many points  of this book for your consideration in this post. At the end I will offer my opinion of the usefulness of this work for students of the martial arts.

Cover of Street Smart, displayed under Fair Use

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Have you watched a martial arts match and wondered why their stances looked different than what you were taught? Have you noticed that boxers fight in more of a forward facing stance and karateka seem to be more sideways? Should a karateka ever turn into a forward stance?

In this post I’ll talk about some of the different stances and the reasons behind them. First off the rules you are fighting with are important. I mean if all targets are open then a boxing stance is ripe for kicks to the groin. If a karateka is fighting a boxer and is inside the distance – he had better be facing forward! Why? Because if he is sideways on the inside – any ol hook will take him out! Here is an example of a karate fighting stance.

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I suppose that I have one advantage over most law-abiding citizens of nations – I have worked on the fringe as a bouncer! What does working the on the fringe mean? Well that means in any county, city or other form of municipality – the authorities do not want to over budget their resources (read man/woman power – jails – courts) to any one business.

Well in America, if you want to play fast and loose with normal laws – you become a bounty hunter (laws of normal search and seizure do not apply). If you want to have various municipalities tolerate your fights – you become a bouncer!

In this post I will review some of the common issue facing these folk that want to make the easy money (supposedly) by watching an establishment as a bouncer!  I will also relate some true life stories of my life as a bouncer and why you should tell your children not to travel my path. I’ll open with this Danzig song entitled, “Mother” for how I really feel about bouncing and I will then relate some stories and video about the act of balancing called bouncing. Also I will speak about a city’ s role in law enforcement at bars and regarding specifically bouncers! Here is how I really feel about bouncing:

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One of the best fights I saw during the Summer was Faber vs Brown 2 for the WEC Featherweight title! For those of you not familiar with the WEC featherweights, Urijah Faber had it for a while. When I first started watching Faber a couple of years ago, he was the kind of fighter that always won by submission. It was kind of fun to watch his fights because often he would give up his back and then pull a reversal and win the match!

Urijah showed off his standing game (for the first time I saw) in the first Jens Pulver fight. Faber has a kind of karate distance - lunging punch that can bridge the distance easily but it packs a wallop! The main move I love is his elbows (which you will see a lot of in this fight).

In this post I will first show the video of the fight and then contrast it with the moves that I normally see from Faber. By the way the previous time Mike Brown took the WEC Featherweight belt decisively – Faber was taken down and he seemed to recover a bit too quickly (bounced right up) and he bridged the gap with a crazy elbow! Brown hit Faber with a right hand and easily followed up for the win! What I was most hoping to see in this fight was Faber not losing the match but each fighter duking it out to see who was the best fighter. Here is the full fight (if it slows down – pause it for a minute)

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