Thursday, December 12, 2013

Street-Tweaked Boxing

Street-Tweaked Boxing is now in DVD format, huzzah! At the moment it is only available as an MPEG4, so it is fine on a computer, but not a standard DVD player. See instructional DVD section for ordering.

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Curriculum and the Individual

Curriculum is often a double-edged thing. It is a way to have a logical organization of material, but too often it's just a regurgitation of tradition, and a way of justifying having blinders on. I may have a general progression that I use, but it's always adjusted to the individual. It's clear that each person has different learning capabilities and predilections that need to be addressed. To fine-tune training to a particular student's abilities, physical and cognitive, is a challenge (usually enjoyable). The important goal for me is to feel that the student owns the material rather than having memorized a curriculum, and indeed, none of my students have been "curriculum junkies," or concerned with rank (which I don't generally bother with). I'm glad the concern has been, as the saying in JKD goes, "It's not what you know, but what you can do."

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Available Weapons


We have talked about "available," i.e. improvised weapons before. Since I go to deserted and not particularly welcoming places as part of my ongoing documentation of graffiti, I keep my eyes open for              such objects even if I carry a knife. Here's one I came across while walking down the rail tracks in Watts. It would be great even without the spike.

Friday, February 8, 2013

Time Hitting

"Time Hitting" is the western fencing term for simultaneous defense and attack, what in (at least one transliteration) Wing Chun is referred to as "lin sil die dar." My "Sectoring" DVD is about that subject, particularly against jabs and crosses.

The reason that developing the ability to time hit is so valuable, is that attackers rarely think of defending during their attack. Human combative instinct is not that efficient. Rather, the commonality is all defense, all attack, all defense until one sees an opening after an attack has failed, or two knuckleheads just trying to out-punch each other. The example I like to point out is that even world class boxers drop their non-punching hand when punching, and they more than anyone else are supposed to be trained to keep their hands up. I would recommend getting a video of a world class match and watching the exchanges in slow motion to see how many time-hit opportunities are presented.

Yes, I certainly acknowledge that when it's coming fast and hard that it's not a done deal, but the opportunities are there and worth training to look for and catch.