Archive for the 'karate' Category

I was in Junior High-School when the Navy guy at my friends out imparted some fighting tactics to me. You see he was a black belt in Tang So Do Karate and was trying to impress us kids for some reason (and after ingesting a couple of beers). I was playing the what if game with him.

I asked him what would he do If I tried to punch him. He said, “I would chop your arm – breaking it and then chop your neck!” Wow I thought… Then I asked what about if I tried to kick you? He said, “I would chop your leg – breaking it and then I would punch your ribs – also breaking them.”

I asked him how he could break my arms, legs, or ribs and he simply said he would punch through the target. I had heard of punching through the target from my Okinawan karate instructor as he was teaching the moves. The idea was instead of aiming at the proximal (or close – on top target) one would aim 6 inches deep into whatever you were aiming at.

In this post I am going to discuss what punching through a target really is and why it is not used much today. Lets take a quick look at a video that shows some of the mechanics of how to surface punch a target.

Looking at this video the part they got right was to rotate as one is throwing a reverse or counter punch. Actually they got more wrong than right. First off if you are not worried about getting hit back we can suspend disbelief and not cover as one is throwing the punch. The video guy kind of torqued half way but stopped short and just twisted the upper body some.

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The more I have entered into this quasi social networking blogasphere I have come to realize that there are plenty of the more esoteric karateka that seemed to have divorced themselves from the notion that the end goal of any martial art is to ultimately defend oneself! I mean on the one hand it is good that one has the option to fight or not in today’s society but are we in danger of losing sight of the prize?

In this post I will list some arguments for learning how to fight (whatever you call it) and conversely learning a black belt as one might earn a doctorate. No disrespect to doctorates but there are two kinds – the scholarly professors that don’t have to practice real world skills (just teach them) and the practicing professional doctors, JD, MD, DVM, DBA and such that provide a real service!

The previous example might be a bit of a stretch but I am hearing about and have known black belts that cannot and some that even do not think it is important to fight themselves out of a paper bag.

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Hello Boys and Girls – Have you been good this year? Well I have it on good authority that Santa has been honing up his karate skills this year so instead of a lump of coal for those bad boys and girls – You might just get a swift kick in the pants!

For those of you wondering, I hear Santa is considering a spot on dancing with the stars! Karate schools have been getting into the Christmas, Hanukkah, Holiday spirit by getting the dojo ready as well as putting on full blown productions!

Tkd-Phoenix | Myspace Video

I really enjoyed watching the Santa girls fighting with those staffs! I guess they have to protect Santa’s elves while they make the toys. Those of you how didn’t know, Van Damme gets into the Christmas spirit this time of year too.

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Today while was reading the news I saw this article, entitled, “In Rough Slum, Brazil’s Police Try Soft Touch.” Apparently in the favela’s (slums) some cops have been working with the youth to reach out with karate! After a little more research I found out about an organization called, “Fight for Peace” were this NGO (non-governmental organization) also reaches out in a favela to offer boxing & martial arts, personal development, youth support services, job training, and youth leadership!

In this post I will highlight the problems, some traditional solutions, and what I think of this organization’s approach, “Fight for Peace.” First here is the movie trailer – City of God.

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One Tuesday night back in the late 1970′s I was working out at the school when a couple of Korean Stylists came in and spoke to my instructor (Dick Willett) about doing some sparring. Dick asked me to spar with these guys and I agreed as they seemed to be respectful. I believe that I had my fighting black belt at the time.

In our system, one could do an abbreviated test to wear a black belt early before the official test. The only problem with this strategy was one had to fight 10 black belts in a row and do ok against them to get the fighting black belt. I did it as I wanted to start fighting tournaments as a black belt early. I did later achieve my traditional black belt and beyond.

I fought the guy about my size and did well against him but the other big guy (I’m about 6 foot and this guy was about 6′ 4″) kept saying “Poor Form” as I was kicking his friend. You see I had been fighting lots of tournaments and had the timing down. The first guy I was fighting had some beautiful kicks but they were not connecting like mine were. You see I did not care about form at all… only if my kick or punch connected.

More about these fights later but in this post I will talk about kicking form versus substance and does it really matter? I mean what are the pros and cons of adhering to some long dead master’s view of how to throw a proper kick (no disrespect intended). I’ll finish my recollection of my fights that day in the late 70′s and the surprising (to them) outcome! Here is one video of some of the best karate kicks.

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I remember how often planes were hijacked to Cuba when I was young and thought that would be inconvenient to be diverted to Cuba like that. As I recall most of the time everyone was returned to the United States without harm (or at least that is my memory).

As you know today we are facing not only common criminals but a new breed of thugs called terrorists! Terrorists are not really new as one might argue the Trojan Horse in Homer’s Odyssey was a terrorist act but today men, women, children and pets (is nothing sacred?) strap on bombs to kill the maximum number of innocent people.

In this post I will attempt to show how some flight attendants are trying to counter some of this senseless violence by taking karate and self defense courses to protect passengers! I will also show some videos discussing this trend and the TSA crew member self defense course. I’ll round this out by highlighting how important it is for every day citizens to take part in their own safety so maybe some future attacks can be stopped and show a 9/11 video. Here is the recent story I saw in San Diego.

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I remember back to the days of Batman and Robin, watching the fight scenes and imagining myself fighting! I mean I learned a lot about good guys and bad guys and how to throw a punch (I thought).

After I was running a karate school I had a student that used to do stunt work over at the Big Oak Ranch park. I did not ever get into stunt work but I know it is very technical. The most I’ve done is karate demonstrations with a little choreographed fight scenes.

In this post I’ll explore a bit about how stunts are created and show a couple of stunts. I will also highlight some of the stunt work by Zoe Bell in the Kill Bell series. Here is one fight scene I found on youtube that has some out-takes at the end.

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