Archive for the 'karate' Category

So you have learned how to throw all of the kicks and punches and have achieved a black belt in your chosen style of karate; how can you improve your fighting ability? You have fought at a couple of open tournaments (open to all styles) and have yet to win a trophy? You had to defend your girlfriends honor and end up looking as bad as the other guy?

Do any of these statements resemble you? If so – read on. In this post I will introduce advanced fighting tactics that American Kenpo Karate teaches to brown and black belt students. Many of you that have learned your karate at Tracy’s or Joe Lewis Fighting Systems will recognize these techniques too as I believe Joe Lewis and Bruce Lee to be the source.

Do you remember that childhood game of hand slapping? Seemingly the fastest guy could slap the other guy’s hand before he could move it! If one knows how to do initial movement, he or she can slap the hand before the the other guy can move it! Watch this video I found and then I will explain initial movement and a high level overview of Angular Attacks.

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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.

Dick Willett & John Zimmer

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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.

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I saw this on the news not to long ago and decided to find out more about it. I have kind of a closet interest in ballet because at one time I wanted to be a dancer. I thought that karate and ballet might be the perfect combination but as probably happens so many times – I had to chose one over the other (I could only afford to take karate lessons, not both).

Practitioners of ballet have to be in superb condition to make all of the moves look easy. That is kind of like fighting because one should not telegraph a move by grunting during a the initial execution of a kick. Now as much as I like good form during kicks and punches, I am more concerned with the application, meaning does the kick actually connect. Watch this video for the overview of Balete (TM) the new fitness craze in LA.

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Imagine you are a point karate champion with lots of trophys - you are at the top of your game. You take some well deserved time off an attend a party with your girlfriend. You happen to mention you are a champion and you start getting questions about MMA or Mui Thai belts? When you tell them that it is in one of the iterations of point karate, a practitioner of jui-jitsu or MMA ask if you have ever done any real fighting?

This may seem surreal to many but various types of sport karate and many martial arts do not seem to have the same level of respect as some of the other fighting arts. In this post I am going to limit the discussion to various point karate and full contact karate sport matches. The focus of each will be examined along with my opinion. One correlation for context might be the difference between fencing and sword fighting. Here is a quick video of fencing followed up buy a sword fight for your perusal.

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I told Tommy (a commenter) that I would do a post on how to fight multiple opponents at once! Briefly if you look at my post entitled, “Knife Attack! What do you do?” you will realize that my fighting style does not change much but I will go into specifics of what to consider when fighting more than one attacker.

I just saw this post from Karate das Menias entitled, “Lutando contra um ou mais oponentes” (you can translate (Portuguese to English)) from google, that in English is, “Fighting against one or more opponents” by Matthew Apsokard. I did really like the boxing youtube video that was reviewed in that post. Remember this is about one defender trying to fight against mutipal attackers. Review this video and I’ll add my 2 cents.

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This is just a quick notice to let former students and instructors of the El Cajon Tracy’s Karate/American Kenpo Karate School that I may have missed know that there will be a reunion party at my home on March 7th, 2009. If you are a former student or instructor, please email me for details at john.zimmer@myselfdefenseblog.com.