The Way of Least Resistance

Oh boy - if you thought Ed Parker was just a little "unorthodox" in his technique, you haven't seen anything. Along with Ed Parker's "Secrets of Chinese Karate" my brother's and my martial bookshelf was also home to a couple of other books that were "cornerstones" of martial information in their day.  One of these books was Bruce Tegner's "Complete Book of Karate". Straight off, we could pretty much tell it was very, very basic: lots of stepping in zenkutsu dachi (forward stance) with single, rather awkward looking, rising blocks or simple lunge punches. The "kata" were really endless reconfigurations of the same basic patterns - sometimes a step to the left, sometimes a step to the right, sometimes a kick, sometimes a punch, sometimes a rising block, sometimes a rather awful chest level block.  Sometimes a chop. Looking back, I can see that someone must have shown Tegner some shorin ryu (I am reminded th...

Introduction Readers of my blog will be familiar with my frequent reference to my "pet hate" - something I call "faux boxing". What is this? It is a method of sparring often employed by traditional martial artists but which is virtually devoid of traditional martial techniques . In their stead, practitioners will substitute moves that resemble boxing, even though the particular practitioners have no training or other experience in that sport. For example, instead of seeing a karateka use karate punches , kicks , evasions , blocks/deflections and stances (in a dynamic sense - not in static postures), one sees purported boxing punches, kickboxing style kicks, no blocks/deflections and, as I shall discuss, a facsimile of "flashy" boxing footwork. Ditto with taekwondo, kung-fu etc. I recall going to an "all-styles" tournament in the late '80s with my primary karate instructor Bob Davies. After watching for a while he lamented that ...

Some of you might have heard about a martial arts school that teaches “secret techniques” or has “secret training methods”. Something about this might intrigue you. Perhaps they guard their secrets so obsessively that you might wonder whether they do indeed have some methodology that makes them “superior” to all other arts/styles/schools... In my school of martial art we have certain techniques that I’ve found to be very effective from my personal physical experience. However these techniques and methods are largely misunderstood today - particularly in the sports arena where issues such as glove dynamics and rules affect their use. Although they are classical techniques they are even forgotten among traditional martial artists who are increasingly adopting boxing and other modern sports alternatives (see for example my article " Faux boxing "). These include our use of "blocks" in sparring (especially with our use of "tenshin" or evasion), our "...