“Summer Movie Season” is the theme for hip-hop artist Spec Boogie’s ambitious new mixtape project. Every few weeks, he will release a new track, and video, based upon a classic hit movie.
This week’s feature is: Enter The Dragon.
Jose Aldo’s Crushing Crane Kick
After Karate expert Lyoto Machida’s recent win in UFC 98, fans immediately started talking about a comeback for traditional martial arts. Prior to Machida’s victory, the couch potato consensus had written off traditional training methods as superstitious and ineffective. How quickly perceptions change.
Two short weeks later, Brazilian featherweight Jose Aldo won a truly stunning victory against Cub Swanson in WEC 41. Total match time: 5 seconds. Winning technique: crane kick.
No More Black Belts For Kids!
Following is a selection from Dave Lowry’s essay collection, The Karate Way.
We have to admit that the popular image of the black belt is inextricably woven into the general perception of these arts we follow. While we may have a more comprehensive view of the belt, we need to see that in the population outside the dojo, in the world at large, it usually means something else. When a black belt is conferred upon a karateka, that has implications in the popular imagination. And we should consider some ramifications that perception and those implications have upon what people think about karate-do.
The Single Most Important Lesson in Martial Arts
Please answer the following question, in forty words or less (preferably in one sentence):
What is the single most important lesson you have learned in martial arts?
On June 30, I will randomly select one respondent to receive a prize, courtesy of contest sponsor Shambhala Publications.
If your complete answer exceeds forty words, you are welcome to publish it on your own blog or forum; just give us the summary, and drop a link to your full post below.
Your Answers
Chen Bing’s Taiji: From Silk Uniforms to the MMA Cage
Chen Bing is one of dozens of martial arts instructors visiting Seattle this year.
Chen Style Taiji: 38-posture form
Mike Martello, Director of Wutang Belgium, 1966-2009
Hu Xi Lin, Mike Martello and myself
I first met Mike Martello in 2007, when he gave a local seminar hosted by Jake Burroughs. Although we only spent a few hours together, he impressed me as few other Kungfu instructors have.
The Best of Tui Shou, The Worst of Tui Shou
In theory, the Seattle Martial Arts Club has no teacher. Members meet to practice martial arts drills and exercises of their choosing, under their own direction, for the benefit of all involved.
In practice, no two practice partners are ever equal, and the partner in control usually sets the pace and the tone of a practice session—if not intentionally, then haphazardly.
As I am often the senior Taiji practitioner in attendance—or in other words, the unpaid and under-appreciated Taiji instructor in attendance—it seems appropriate to briefly discuss my personal guidelines and preferences for tui shou (pushing hands) practice.
One Punch, One Kill, Two Lives Destroyed
Ikken Hissatsu, the popular Japanese Karate maxim, is usually translated as “one punch, one kill”. And although you won’t see it in the sporting ring, it does happen in real life. As reported in the Seattle Times,
The July 9 confrontation began while James Paroline was watering plants in the traffic circle, where he set cones on the street to protect his watering hose. Instead of driving around the cones, a group of girls got out of a car and two of them yelled at Paroline.
One of the girls summoned Brian Keith Brown, who was driven to the scene. He hit Paroline once and walked away…
Hans Aschenbach, a friend of Paroline’s for 20 years, said the [cellphone video evidence] proved Brown deserved a long sentence. “The video is shocking and was really an execution with a fist.”
Now, I’m not going to ask whether, with all your Karate training, you could have stopped someone like Brian Brown. That is too easy.
These Tough Guys Did Martial Arts…For Health
Do you know how martial artists spell irony? R-B-S-D.
RBSD, or reality-based self-defense, is a blanket term for martial arts training that purports to focus on practical applications. In truth, however, these applications—gross motor skills such as the straight punch and Thai-style knee strike—can only be deemed “practical” within a fiat-based reality.
Reality as measured by the CDC is strikingly different. Among the leading causes of death in 2005, assault ranks in 15th place—behind heart disease, diabetes, and a host of other illnesses. In the USA, death by suicide is 50% more common than homicide. Statistically speaking, influenza is far deadlier than any fatigue-clad RBSD play-warrior, or the threats they would prepare you to face.
Despite the indisputable fact that sickness is the greatest danger to the average person, martial arts for health have somehow earned a bad reputation.
Inside Deadliest Warrior’s Combat Simulator
Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we do.
~ Donald Knuth
You’ll never appreciate the true complexity of a mundane, everyday task, until you’ve tried explaining it to a computer.
Contrary to popular perception, computers are not smart. Actually, they are stone dumb. Given a lengthy set of precise instructions, your computer can follow them well enough, most of the time, but when asked to exhibit the tiniest bit of reasoning or creativity, your cutting-edge laptop PC is helpless and hopeless. Ditto for the Mac. Sorry, Linux won’t help either.
Consider the simple act of making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. You can teach the average six year-old child this skill in a few minutes; writing the equivalent instructions for a general-purpose computer could literally take weeks or months of effort.
Knowing all this, I was amazed by the concept and promise of Spike TV’s new show, Deadliest Warrior:
In Los Angeles, CA, we’ve created a high-tech fight club, with scientists, martial arts experts, and lots and lots of weapons. It’s all here to create a virtual battle between two legendary warriors. We’ll test their weapons and fighting techniques on high-tech dummies—stand-ins for human victims. Based on this data, a battle simulation program will stage a true-to-life fight to the death. The winner will be The Deadliest Warrior.
Could it possibly be true? Would the endless debates over the ultimate fighting style finally be put to rest, by indisputable scientific evidence?