I never thought I’d see the day when a well known MMA fighter takes classes from Steven Seagal… But here it is:

I took Aikido for a couple of years in college, and for the most part found it to be useless for self defense the way it was taught to me. But I’ve always liked the theory behind it and figured at least some of the techniques could work if trained properly.

I recently had the chance to read the e-book Small Dojo Big Profits, by Michael Massie.  Before I go any further I’d like to mention that I’m not profiting in any way from mentioning this book.  I’m very much turned off by single page, sales letter type websites like the one I’m about to link to, and if I had come across his site without having corresponded with Michael first I never would have bought or read the book.  BUT, I must say it’s a great book.  I wish I would have read it before I started teaching martial arts, and before I opened my own school.  So here’s the link: Small Dojo Big Profits.

Michael really covers everything you should know and consider before opening a martial arts business.  And if you’ve already got a one, the book is still a great read. I had my own place for many years, and there’s plenty of material in his book that I had never thought about.  At $147 it’s not cheap…as e-books go.  But if you’re serious about running an MA school, the book is well worth it.

I don’t use Facebook personally.  I’d rather not be user generated content for a company that has every incentive to make my private information public.  But nearly everyone I know does have a Facebook account, and I can understand part of the appeal.  As I’ve mentioned in other posts on digital defense, I consider personal data protection to be part of self defense.  The details of your private life can be more valuable than what’s in your wallet or purse at any given time.

Even though I don’t use Facebook myself, I decided to put a FB like button (which you can see at the bottom of this post for example) on this site.  Since there are hundreds of millions of Facebook users, I figured it would be a good way for them to share this site with their friends.  In order to do that I signed up for a Facebook account to get a FB “application id”.  I have numerous email addresses, and I used the one associated with this website when I created the account.  To my horror, I was shown a list of people I may know.  How did Facebook know that I knew some of these people since I didn’t even have a Facebook account???

After doing a bit of research, it seems that Facebook asks users to upload their email contacts in order for Facebook to see if they have any “friends” on the network.  So even if you don’t use Facebook yourself, if you’ve emailed with someone who does, there’s a good chance that Facebook has connected you to that person through their email contact list.  Keeping your private life private just got a little bit harder…

Karate at the CCF

My wife and I sponsor a child in Cambodia via the Cambodian Children’s Fund, a terrific organization that I’d highly recommend donating to.  We’ve visited their schools, met the child we sponsor, and learned a lot about their programs, which are outstanding.  Today I was watching a new PBS video on the CCF and saw the kid we sponsor doing a karate reverse punch at the 2:15 mark!

Myself at the CCF

You can make a donation here, or sign up to sponsor a child here.  Again, I’d highly recommend it!

Iban Parang

Humans have been using weapons since the beginning of their existence, and for good reason. Weapons provide a massive advantage in both attack and defense.  Every martial arts practitioner interested in self defense should learn how to use weapons both to better defend against their use, and to gain an advantage in a serious self defense situation. You can see how I categorize weapons and their use on my self defense weapons page.

Although people in most 1st world countries no longer carry swords, practicing with them (or a stick of a similar length) can provide very valuable lessons in self defense. The methods of attack and defense that work with a sword also work with a stick, cane, hammer, wrench, knife, machete…even a household iron. You can learn to use a “stick” or any other long blunt or sharp object through the curriculum and videos on my single stick page, which I plan to add to in the very near future.

Parang Handle

Aside from the usefulness of sword and stick training for self defense, swords from different cultures can be fascinating. I recently posted a review of the Filipino ginunting, one of my favorite swords for functionality, and thought I’d add a few pictures of another favorite, an Iban parang from the island of Borneo. I purchased this parang in the state of Sarawak on the Malaysian side of Borneo. It’s about 100 years old, and decorated with human hair. The handle and scabbard are the most beautiful of all the swords I own.

As beautiful as the parang is, it’s hard for a modern westerner to imagine they were used on head hunting raids.  Up until the late 1800′s or so, several tribes of Borneo required heads for all sorts of ceremonies, from those related to the rice harvest to weddings. Imagine having to cut a person’s head off before you could be married…or walking through the jungle where people were looking for heads! In any case, the parang is an amazing sword, very similar to others used in Indonesia and the Philippines.  It’s designed for one handed use, fast, well balanced, and the design of the handle prevents the parang from slipping out of your hand.

Parang Scabbard

I’ve asked a few older Iban about their sword training, but never really gotten any detailed answers. They do have dances that involve the use of the sword and shield, but it seems that their “martial art” was lost when the practice of head hunting was abandoned.  If anyone reading this has information on the martial arts of the tribes of Borneo, I’d love to hear from you! I can’t imagine people like the Iban wouldn’t have had their own martial art. If you were living in a jungle at a time when nearby tribes wanted your head, wouldn’t you?

Mekong

Martial arts have always been about much more than fighting to me.  I started seriously training after reading the Tao of Jeet Kune Do.  The ideas expressed there were immensely appealing to me, as a person who never quite fit in the boxes society builds for us.  And, coming from a relatively dangerous city, my interest in what really worked in a no rules environment, where there are no limitations, also helped me avoid getting stuck in the cult like groups that so many styles produce.  Finding the best material for self defense was more important to me than loyalty to any particular instructor or style.

Many martial arts claim to draw from “eastern philosophy”.  They talk about the concepts of Zen, having an empty mind (mushin in Japanese martial arts), etc., etc.  But most of this is just talk.  It’s leaving one box to enter another.  Rather than becoming awake, they end up more like this:

Buddha?

It’s really a shame, because martial arts have so much more to offer than fighting skills…or worse, becoming another box for practitioners.  Matt Thorton says it best in two excellent posts that go into far greater detail than I will here: The Sacred and the Superstitious and Carving Nature at the Joints.  Honest, unlimited martial arts practice breaks down walls.  It puts truth right in your face.  What you’re doing either works or it doesn’t, and it’s plain to see.  Dishonest training and thinking, along stylized lines, doesn’t do this.

And the same is true in life.  You can live within the walls of social expectations, or you can choose not to.  They’re not real.  And even if you do break down the walls, you can still live within their former borders.  But you don’t have to.  Open and honest thinking, never just believing, leads to freedom.

A Path

There’s no single path.  Martial arts will teach you this better than most pursuits, through experience.  And that’s a great lesson to learn.  To be good at martial arts you need to become an explorer.  You need to see through the walls that were never really there in the first place.  When you apply the same free thinking to life, you’ll inevitably find happiness.  As Bruce Lee once said, “ultimately, martial art is self knowledge“.  You can only do what you need to do if you know what you need to do.  You need to know yourself.

Vasco and I

Really, the same can be said for playing the piano, painting, dancing, or even running a business.  Honest thinking and exploring will make you a far better martial artist, a better person, and a lot happier.

Self defense shouldn’t only be about protecting your physical body from an external attacker.  I’ve written a bit on digital defense in the past, and after reading this  excellent post on Jarlo Ilano’s True Aim Fitness blog I thought I’d also share the video below on the dangers of sugar.  I consider myself to be pretty healthy, but this video was a shocker.  It’s going to change the way I eat and drink, and it should change the way you eat and drink too!  It’s a long video, but highly worth watching, especially if you have children:

Stop Kick

After yesterday’s post on the default/flinch response, I’d like to make a couple points of clarification.  The crash (our primary default response against a surprise punching attack) and the spear (Tony Blauer’s default response against a surprise attack) are both excellent responses that really work.  They’re far better than the vast majority of defenses that require a person to match a specific defense to a specific punch.  When you’re attacked by surprise you need a single, gross-motor-skill-based-response that works no matter what punch the attacker threw.  In such a situation your mind and body will not be fast enough to determine exactly what’s coming and pick a particular matching response before you get hit.

However, ideally you should not be in a position in which you are attacked by surprise.  Ideally you should be aware of your surroundings and maintain a safe distance from any potential threat, so you have the time to see the attack coming without being surprised…without having a “jack in the box moment”.  If you are aware of your surroundings and maintain a safe distance (distance = time), you can intercept an attack using a variety of methods from the stop kick shown in the image above, to a preemptive attack if justified, or even better, escaping before the attack occurs.  You can also use a technique such as the crash or spear if you prefer.  But it is better to be aware and have a greater variety of options.  So while techniques like the spear are brilliant and very effective, you should aim not to be in such a position where you have so little choice.  This is why we emphasize awareness first, and then the Fundamental Five in Hertao…five default responses/strategies for a greater variety of situations…one of which is the crash.  Of course you never know what situation you may end up in, so having such a flinch response in your arsenal is a must for self defense!

Here’s an outstanding video by Tony Blauer that every self defense practitioner should see:

Although we use our own default response, the crash, rather than “the spear”, the concept is the same. Both techniques are a bridge that utilize natural physiological reactions instead of an attempt to unnaturally react to an attack with a complex response.

His points on the “jack in the box” effect, not knowing which particular attack is coming, etc., are all excellent. They explain why so many self defense and martial arts techniques will fail in a real assault. The majority of attacks on the street are going to be surprising, violent forward pressure assaults. You need a simple default response to deal with such an attack, and the spear is another great option.

See the follow up post: Default Response Clarification.

I have very little video footage prior to 2000, as I got rid of most of my old video tapes since I had no way to play them. But a week or so ago I happened to come across some old training footage on an external hard drive, of Wing Chun trapping and a bit of early blast training. The training in the clips is not so good, and I thought I’d edit it together and post it as an example of what not to do:

The same video is posted on the Wing Chun page, where more realistic applications of Wing Chun trapping and techniques are demonstrated in both pictures and videos. (I’ve recently updated the Wing Chun page with images of the pak sao, bong sao, and lop sao, and will be adding more images in the near future.)

So what specifically is wrong with the above video? The trapping practice in the first two clips might appear to be somewhat fierce, as I hit my training partner in the solar plexus and face in the second clip. Around the time these videos were recorded (1998), we regularly “sparred” from a Wing Chun reference point using a good bit of trapping. We did train hard back then, but the training was very unrealistic. The primary problem with the type of training shown in the first video clips is that there is no footwork or movement at all. No one is going to fight like that. If you attack someone they are going to move, and if someone attacks you, you are going to move. Standing in place does allow you to use more complex trapping, but you’re going to be at a loss if you ever have to fight or defend yourself for real…which leads me to the third clip of “blast practice”.

In 1999 I was invited to spar with a number of other New Orleans instructors I had never trained with before. I did pretty well attacking with Wing Chun trapping and blasting, interceptions, etc. I was able to back my opponent’s up over and over again. But, I was barely hitting them! Every time I’d enter with a blast, they’d back up and cover. My trapping no longer worked, and I didn’t have the techniques or training to deal with what were often unconventional and unskilled cover ups and retreats. I used this experience to begin working on a comprehensive version of what I called the blast…a continuous, forward pressure assault.

Wing Chun has the straight blast, which is generally taught as a punching only blast. Not only is this insufficient against an opponent who simply uses either a very tight or extended cover, but it can also be easily countered by a beginning boxer, as I explain in this video on Wing Chun trapping. After I had the above mentioned sparring experience, I tried to search out techniques and training that would solve this problem. I attended a seminar with Paul Vunak and took some private classes on RAT (Rapid Assault Tactics) in 2000. Although I loved the RAT concept, I found the specific entry (largely consisting of attempts to elbow incoming punches), pressure/blast (the Wing Chun straight blast), and termination (headbutts, knees, and elbows from the Thai clinch) to be lacking or unrealistic.

The third clip in the above video is basically Paul Vunak’s RAT with a groin kick entry/interception. Like I said, I don’t find it to be ideal against a high pressure, real attack. Additionally, there are better “termination” phase positions than the Thai clinch for the majority of people. So there you have it…the reasons that the training in the above clips is not so good. Fortunately I’ve since come up with much better solutions. We’ve now got great, effective and realistic ways to apply trapping and a comprehensive blast that works. I’ve been using and teaching them for 10 years now, and am 100% positive they work. You can see examples of effective trapping on our Wing Chun page, a couple of examples of the blast here, and detailed explanations of all the techniques and training methods in my self defense eBook.