Some of you may remember the Q&A section Steve Morris had on the self-protection forum some time ago. This was a vibrant information rich section of the forum. In the end though Steve closed it because it was very time consuming, his responses were in depth and incredibly helpful. It’s fair to say he caused some debate. On Morris’s main site he has created a new section called Fighting Arts Alliance which will launch...
On your marks; get set; GO! The starters orders as a race is about to begin. These remind me of how to and how not to hold yourself in sparring or when addressing pads or involved in any type of training. The picture illustrates the phases of the start of a sprint quite nicely; preparing, ready, off! If we compare the ‘state’ of a sprinter in each of these three phases to those of...
Part one used a highlight clip of Roy Jones Jnr’s exceptional timing as a kind of definition of what timing in fighting is. At Primal, Morris develops methods for learning the timing skill RJJ exhibits in the clip, which has several components. This post will describe one drill which helps develop timing, that is the ability to see the opponents’ strikes/kicks/shoots etc coming and get your response in before it arrives. In essence it’s...
We recently had a BJJ session with a very young coach who put together a great session for us. He really is a young man and is tiny, weighing only 50 kilos. His assistant told me how strong the coach was despite looking like he wasn’t. I mentioned that no-one would like to be hit with 50 kilos. It’s an important point but is often forgotten when considering how to increase punching power. When...
In professional sport the use of vizualisation or imagery is pretty widespread. It’s usually used to imagine successful performance of a particular technique, race or whatever. Sport Psychology categorizes imagery into internal and external types, from the of perspective of the person imaging, i.e. you are either observing yourself performing the technique or actually doing it. The recommendation is to get the images as vivid as possible and to be multi-sensory, to include sight,...
Lyoto Machida has taken the MMA world by storm. He has brought something a bit different to the table, his fighting style incorporates his Shotokan and specifically sport karate background, which along with his other martial arts training has helped him fight his way to the UFC Light Heavyweight Title. He has had the karate forums buzzing due to the success of one of their own. For non-karate background MMA fighters he has proved...
I recently watched some live Flamenco while away in Sevilla. That region is considered the home of Flamenco and as such there are a lot of live shows. The show we attended was in the Flamenco Museum, which we’d visited the day before. It’s a really interesting place, charting the development of Flamenco from impromtu dances at gitano (gypsy) gatherings. There are three forms of Flamenco; guitar, singing and dancing. I hadn’t really thought...
Muay Thai is often referred to as the ‘Science of eight limbs’ which actually refers to eight weapons or points of contact. Namely, elbows, knees, fists and feet which translate into close range elbow and knee strikes and long and short range kicks and punches. If weapon volume were a measure of effectiveness Karate with many more empty hand martial weapons than Mauy Thai, would come out winner. Restricted by the rules of the...
At the beginning of the Speed 1 post, I alluded to the illusion of speed, brought to mind by a post on Marks Training. One attribute that great fighters have, or used to have, is excellent timing, which makes a fighter extremely fast, or at least appear so. Certainly, if your opponent has superior timing he/she is on you in a flash and you end up on the receiving end. Roy Jones Jnr was/is...
After the rather unexciting fight card of UFC 110 this weekend’s event features a Welterweight title fight between Canadian George St.Pierre and Dan Hardy from Nottingham. On the surface it seems as though Hardy will simply be just another victim for GSP, as he is relatively untested in the UFC. But Hardy is dangerous, he’s an athletic busy fighter, very strong standing up with plenty KO power. He has spent time training with Freddie...
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