Month: April 2018

Violence Never Solves Anything . . . . Really?

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How many times have you heard well-meaning people say something like, “violence never solves anything”.

The idea that violence never solves anything has been has been around for a while in world of ever growing political correctness. As a society, it’s a laudable goal to try and eradicate violence so that nobody has to be unnecessarily hurt and it is something that we should all work towards. We’ll never achieve it of course as violence is part of the human condition and we are all capable of it given the right circumstances! It’s only social training and conditioning that makes it unpalatable to us today. With different conditioning, you can end up with the excesses of the Roman Games, where they’d take their children to watch a day’s sport! The social conditioning (political correctness) goes so far in some cases, Continue reading “Violence Never Solves Anything . . . . Really?” »

How Important Is Discipline In Martial Arts?

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This post was actually stimulated by a conversation with one of my former instructors, Sensei Graham Mead, a man from whom I learnt a great deal and who I hold in very high regard. Unfortunately Sensei Mead no longer teaches due to health issues, but an older tiger is still a tiger!

Since I started teaching regularly in 2012, Sensei Mead has honoured me with a few visits to my Dojo to see how my school is getting on. During the recent conversation, discussing the deeper meanings of martial arts philosophy over a few beers (as one does) it became apparent that he was happy with the standards of my school and with what I was teaching; the only thing he had some doubt about was that he felt that the discipline was not strict enough.

This got me thinking, as any such comment from Sensei Mead should be taken seriously.

So here are my thoughts which I’ll share with you: Continue reading “How Important Is Discipline In Martial Arts?” »

Positioning For Multiple Assailants

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I came across the video below from the London Wing Chun Academy which I thought was worth sharing as goes beyond style boundaries and should be of interest to anybody who is into real world self protection. It talks about being aware of your surroundings and how to positional yourself when facing multiple opponents.

Anyway, I’m not going to tell you all about here, I’ll let you watch and see what I mean. Please leave your feedback and comments below. Continue reading “Positioning For Multiple Assailants” »

The Bunkai Challenge: Iain Abernethy Vs Jesse Enkamp

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This is a light hearted fun challenge from Jesse Enkamp to Iain Abernethy. The rules are that each of them chooses a movement from any Kata and the other one has to give a practical street application to that movement.

The judges . . . . . well anybody watching the video can put there vote in the comments section (in Youtube) below the video.

I’ve trained with Iain Abernethy at several seminars and know him to be extremely good at what he does, knowledgeable about Karate concepts and history and author of a numerous books and dvd’s. He’s also an intelligent and articulate man with a great sense of humour who is really approachable with no ego or pretentiousness about him at all despite being regarded as the best in the UK and a world leader for practical Karate Kata bunkai.

I’ve never met or trained with Jesse Enkamp, but I would like to at some point. He runs his own blog KarateByJesse.com and is well informed, articulate, extremely enthusiastic and despite being Swedish I’d say he has a bit of British style self-depreciating sense of humour (which if you read this Jesse, is a compliment)! 🙂 He always refers to himself as the “Karate Nerd”; I guess for his nerdy attention to detail!

So please check out the video and leave your comment. And as Jesse says at the end of the video, “after all, doesn’t matter who wins, the important part is that you learn something”.

Join the fun!