Well once again I return from a short absence, lots of stuff going off here. Well my urge to write today was prompted by an interesting clip posted on Facebook. It is a guy explaining how he can knock somebody out using pressure point techniques. I am not writing to attack, forgive the pun, the use of pressure points to defeat or disable an attacker, everything works sometimes right. My problem is with snake oil salesmen misleading the gullible, they remind me of those guys on the edge of the market demonstrating the latest wonder gizmo. Watch the clip.
So after filling us up with dubious science otherwise known as mumbo jumbo, this guy effectively knocks out his uki. I think a smack to the jaw from about a foot away would probably knock me out too if I was daft enough to stand there and let somebody do that to me. It takes a lot less force than you think to knock somebody out that way so forget sending 250,000, 600,000 or WOWEE 750,000 impulses to the brain at once to knock somebody out, just hit him on his nicely offered, unprotected jaw, but do not forget to give him a round of applause for playing his part well.
So was the mumbo jumbo pointless, well the answer is simply no, it is part of the process, some people call it pre programming compliance, others see it as a subtle form of hypnosis and other see Neural Linguistic Programming at work. Whatever it is it needs willing believers to work, either that or rather than touching the pressure point you give it a hard enough if not full power smack. It is not that people peddle such twaddle but that other people queue up to learn these incredible superpowers. I have seen lots of examples over the years, here is one of the best.
Well he had an explanation for everything, most impressive was his ability to create huge chiballs that can knock people out, really? Well the test made it look a bit tacky if you ask me and as for interfering with customers in Starbuck’s is that ethically acceptable. Maybe I can pop over the road to the Co-op and get my chiball out and see what happens!
One thing these snake oil salesmen have in common is huge amounts of front and an ego the size of an aircraft carrier. Their followers buy into the mysterious powers of their master even when the Emperor has been exposed, literally, as a man with no clothes. The original clip posting started some interesting Facebook discussion including comments from people I have trained with and respect and I think the majority would concur with these sentiments. Once again skilled practitioners can cause real pain by attacking pressure points, I have felt this pain. However, take a look at this group of jokers.
So where was her chi when she needed it? Well the answer lies at the end of the last paragraph, they were jokers, it was a spoof, the next clip was not a spoof.
A video clip from a beach in Perth, Australia. Yellow Bamboo are chiblasters, and even if you do manage to get close enough to touch them, you’ll allegedly die if you touch someone who’s got a charged up chi blast in him. Sounds worse than Master Ken’s deadly kill face.
ou can hear people on the beach, believers, saying “he touched him, he touched him. how could he touch him?” Well he touched them and pinned them because he recognises the complete lack of anything awesome of chi, whether it is packaged as a chi ball or contained in a human chiblaster. Still think there is something in this chi thing? Well I have saved the best for last.
The thing is people will believe anything, Joseph Goebbels the nazi propogandist famously said “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
I am not in anyway implying that anybody represented here is a bad person but that they are fantasists, the build a version of reality based on their fantasies and the set about collecting their believers, those people who are searching for mysteries and something to believe in. Once they have the believers in their camp then Goebbels strategy is applied anything else and their very world can be shattered, in the last clip the chi cupboard was clearly empty and a thrashing resulted. I suspect the ego was damaged more than the flesh.
OK so you have guessed I have no belief that chi exists, it is just one of a number of myths and fantasies that pertain in the martial arts world. They surface occasionally and usually get knocked back down by people who know what the are talking about, people who recognise cognitive dissonance when they see it and at the end of the day, and at the end of this blog, it is not the end of the world, boom boom. However, my problem with these guys is the image they create of all martial arts in the eyes of the public. They are like that stubborn stain on your favourite shirt, whatever you treat it with it just will not go away or worse, you get rid of the stain then a few days later another one appears.
These people will service the gullible and remove their money from them little by little, mysticism sells and often it sells big. For me I think I will settle for reality, I am an empirically orientated person anyway, I love theories and I really enjoy academic enquiry and examination and I think I can spot a gizmo when I see one, can you? If you are not sure yet here is a clip to help you. Enjoy.
Yesterday I finished a series of five classes in a school in Sheffield and in it I mentioned that I live in a very safe area, relatively speaking, very low crime, virtually no anti social behaviour, excepting the illegal and dangerous parking around the shops, by people who should know better. It is an affluent area and well looked after. At the end of the class I was cornered, quite literally by young people telling me how dangerous their area was. The training is funded by the Home Office as part of Ending Gang and Youth Violence programme. This is not the first time and not a surprise as the area has had a serious problem with organised gangs for many years and a spate of gun crime in the back-end of last year.
My wife is a criminal lawyer and has been involved in many serious cases, quite a few murders where knives were used, the young people yesterday, ordinary kids from a disadvantaged area were really eager to tell me what scared them, not once in a while, but everyday fears. Apparently the worst spot is outside the local library that many of these kids pass to get to and from school, there is often police presence in that vicinity, I work in a number of schools in the area so drive through a lot. Guns are rare, but present in this community, there has been a huge clampdown by the police but very few guns found. Knives are not as rare, and they are cheap, the most common weapon used in murders is your cheap plastic handled kitchen knife. They are not the crafted Bowie knives posted on Facebook by knife collectors and lovers, I have a Fairbairn Sykes Fighting Knife, it is a classic hand made, Made in Sheffield model, a thing of beauty bought for me as a Christmas present. Knives, as with every other aspect of life, are seen differently by different people. They can be beautiful and ugly at the same time depending upon your perceptions and experience.
Fear of crime affects more people than being a victim of crime, but it is debilitating. Large sections of the areas these kids live in are described by them as dangerous, people carry knives to protect themselves and we know how that often ends up. Mirroring the discussions in the United States on gun ownership, we have a debate on knives, however, knives are incredibly freely available, every home has at least a few in the kitchen and every burglar knows it.
There has been quite a bit of discussion during our club training about how martial arts training deals with attacks with knives. As a result my ‘head of research’, Bill, has been doing a review of materials available on Youtube and has turned up some pretty useful stuff, he has sorted through a huge heap of trash to find these little nuggets of gold, we are studying them and looking at what this means for how we train. Last week on Facebook Julien Masson, who hosts a really good Facebook page, VCFS – Violent CCTV Footage Study, posted a video he put together, here it is.
This chimes with our little groups discussion on how do we put the real into our training, well we had a mini epiphany the other week, snow stopped play this last Saturday, and decided we needed to attack like a knifer. The only problem is what does this mean? Well does it mean a trained knifer, say someone skilled in the arts as outlined by W.E. Fairbairn in ‘Get Tough’, someone using the surgical strike approach or the prison shanking type attack as described by Don Pentecost in ‘Put ‘Em down, Take ‘Em Out! Knife Fighting Techniques from Folsom Prison’.
Thinking about the video from Julien and having just read ‘Put ‘Em Down’ again, some of the answers are beginning to come together in my head. So our starting point is already agreed for our Saturday morning special session, binning the syllabus techniques we have learned, they are occasionally fun to do and test your technical ability but almost entirely impractical. In fact we did this a while ago preferring to slap down the offending knife attacking arm and simultaneously or as fast as possible striking full force to the attackers head (well a focus pad). Recently we put on the body armor too so we could strike full force to the body too. We have even played at grappling with the opponent pulling a knife and have even gone knife on knife using a dummy attacking arm that we can slash with a real knife.
Having watched the video of actual attacks I think I will plan some ‘unexpected’ attacks after some short but vigorous exercise, I do not mind being the guinea pig on this, some interesting things happen when you experiment. First I am going to dig out the Fairbairn Sykes, draw the curtains, very important that, and practice my attacks. I am going to construct a dummy from old clothes, like the Guy Fawkes effigies we made as kids for bonfire night and hang him in a doorway, then I will learn to kill him and cut him. I intend to develop controlled aggressive use of the knife as recommended by Don Pentecost then I will attack my friends in the same way but with a training knife, when they are not expecting it, a bit like Cato Fong in the Pink Panther.
What a great clip, I used to share a house with a mate and the light switch was on the wall opposite the front door, I occasionally used to stand in the middle of the room in the dark and let him walk into me, once I hid behind the cellar door and leapt out in the dark, it was very cruel but great fun for me, sometimes my sides ached from laughing as George had a minor heart attack on the settee. So whilst not going to the extremes of Cato and leaping out of the fridge, I will consult with my pals first, but I think unannounced knife attacks at random in training is also a way forward and I am also going to have a knife fighting party at my house. If my wife lets me.
Well I am going to do some more training and sort out my new best friend, the hanging dummy. Literally. I will build him up to cut him up. So please let me know how you train against the knife and until then lets hope we are spared the cutter.
When I met and trained with Hoch Hochheim around 18 months ago he used a phrase that has stuck in my mind ever since, “Nothing works all the time, everything works sometimes”, it stuck in my mind straight away and I have used it countless times myself since. We all know it is true, especially in a self defence situation. We all have some favourite techniques and methods that we drill and drill and drill to try to make them second nature and we are all pretty convinced that this is good practice I think, well as we are training ourselves if it works all well and good, but if it does not it is we who suffer the consequences.
Many of us in the SD community encourage the use of, and teach effective pre-emptive striking, obviously in context with the level of threat present and the law pertaining to self defence in the location the event takes place. As I am based in England I refer to Section 3 Paragraph one of the Criminal Law Act 1978;
“A person may use such force as is reasonable in the circumstances in the prevention of crime, or in effecting or assisting in the lawful arrest of offenders or suspected offenders or of persons unlawfully at large.”
So in my SD classes I teach, having exhausted avoidance, escape, de-escalation strategies, and looking at a list of attack indicators used by the police, a range of simple pre-emptive strikes designed to cause disruption in the attacker, or potential attackers, modus operandi, or to incapacitate and remove the threat both being to create a window of opportunity to escape. Simple. No. Because I can demonstrate the technique very ably if that is not immodest, I can explain applications of these techniques in various scenarios but they are all just that, demonstrations, using pads, shields and other protective equipment in well-lit, safe, risk assessed environments.
Use Jaw Jaw first where possible.
De-escalate, walk away, do not, I REPEAT, do not engage the monkey brain.
Reality based operators will know that however good the drill, however much we stress test, it is never the real thing. I know people who have taken jobs on doors, gone to work in dangerous environments to test themselves because the dojo and the training room did not offer enough. But that is not my point, remember the words of Hoch, “Nothing works all the time, everything works sometimes” as we look at a guy not getting his pre-emptive strike in properly and the consequences.
now let us not read too much into the clip, we will never know the full story. The guy in red gets a fair strike in but his aim is not great and it lands more forehead than face and certainly nowhere near the chin where it should be game over. He then reaps fails to follow-up, maybe stunned his imagined one hit knock out has not worked and allowed his opponent time to observe, orientate, decide and act. Remember those last words from somewhere? I thought so. So that was how to do it wrong, here is how to do it right.
Again I do not know the context and there are hints of something sinister in this, what matters is that when it happens it happens fast, with no warning due to successful misdirection technique and the technique, aim and delivery are brought together in harmony.There really is little else to say.
So what is the point of this blog. Well the point is about honesty, being honest with your students. I have come to the conclusion that it is fundamentally dishonest to lead students to believe they have skills they have not. Doing a percussion slap 50 or a hundred times on a pad or dummy may mean that on the one occasion they need to do this in real life, against an aggressive threat, when they want to pee their pants and are feeling a full on adrenal dump is unrealistic and anyone telling them different should hang their head in shame.
Those in the business who know a thing or two will know how to manage a students expectations and know it is their duty to do so, not passively but actively. Almost anyone can teach a knockout blow, but can they start at the appropriate point and travel through the wide range of variables and their consequences. Because if they get it wrong there are consequences as there are if they get it right. Personally I spend time explaining the dangers posed when people consider the use of violence even when they are empowered to do so by the law. In this world that is rapidly moving towards the need for instant gratification, I feel many proponents of SD are starting at the point of conflict too high up the use of force pyramid, they go there because it is part of their mindset and often what the customer expects and demands. This is dangerous as it negates the importance of the lower levels of conflict resolution. There is no money to be made teaching people to run away, take the insult, apologise yourself and walk. Customers want to know how to fight back against a snarling violent opponent and yes I agree, if that is what they are facing often then they need help, help to look at their lifestyle.
The softer skills, the thinking sentient beings that we are need to be encouraged to work through the various stages and learn how to assess threats and deal with them, I am seriously thinking of hooking up with a theatre group to play some of this stuff out for people. It is not as much fun as hitting and kicking things but I have been experimenting with it in six school recently, 4 primary and 2 secondary and it has gone down incredibly well, several of the schools are now looking to spread the provision and others not in the batch are wanting it too, good news spreads fast I hope. I am not claiming my approach is new, I know it is not, I am not claiming it is a one size fits all situation and yes I remember what Hoch says, it will not work all the time, but I feel it works better than going straight to the fight.
So that you realise I have not gone all hippy I teach that when it does go straight to the fight, when against your choice it goes War War it needs to be instant aggression and immediate Shock and Awe. Destroy your attacker, make yourself safe then rationalise it. So I like to have my cake and eat it, what do you think? Whilst you gather your thoughts, and I really would love to hear them whether you agree or not or would just like to add to the debate, I am always happy to learn, watch out for those carefully crafted pre-emptive strikes in this little compilation.
Yesterday we had a really good training session at Abbeydale Ju Jitsu Club, just the four of us, Bill, Pete, Jayne and myself, where are you all. Saturday morning is set aside for fun, hard work, sweat and occasionally some pain, that is our fun. I think we all took some knocks yesterday, quite a few to the groin where despite the groin guard if a contact is accurate, even though it is controlled, there is still an effect. The words of Master Ken, “Destroy the Groin”, rang in our ears once or twice. We use body armour and groin guards for protection and shin and instep protectors where necessary, but once the rough stuff starts to happen then the odd stray shot will connect, it is all part and parcel of making the drill more realistic and pressure testing one another, all part of the fun.
There is no set routine on a Saturday, just a light warm up then into the drills and scenarios. Sometimes we train barefoot on the mat, sometimes off mat wearing trainers, sometimes we train one on one, sometimes against multiple opponents, occasionally we use a tight corridor to fight in a restricted space, sometimes with added obstacles. We mix and match, Yesterday we came up with some variants to previous drills, short of knocking lumps off one another we try to make it as realistic as training allows and as a certain Rory Miller will point out there is always a flaw built into the drill, otherwise we would be regular visitors to the casualty department. As long as you are aware of the flaw then the drill can still help you to condition your response to the stimuli, it is when you do not see the flaw that unreality becomes a problem.
We use body armour, pads and shields so that we can strike full force to our tormentors and I really like this. As opposed to our usual training where the emphasis is on learning techniques and their application, the Saturday session allows us to free the beast within. I love Saturdays, I get to express myself. I like letting the beast out, it is damn fun, I keep using that word because those three little letters combined are the most appropriate. Yesterday we did some great three attacker drills starting with one minute of being jostled from all sides and using any strike to the targets presented. This is great training, the opposite of what you get in sports orientated martial arts, you are outnumbered and being mobbed, closed down all the time, you are in a target rich environment and one minute seems a very long time. At one point I was convinced Bill had not pressed the start button on the timer.
We were trying to not use our fists at all but concentrate on striking open-handed, not easy after years of conditioning to punch, but we have kicks, knees, elbows depending on the target and the range and all get used, it is fast, furious and seriously knackering. Padding is not much of a rest either as you get knocked around quite a bit and we use all the space, fights are rarely stationary, neither are our drills. We then revised the drill by starting laid on our backs, kicking, kneeing and punching to get to our feet then fill out the minute as before. In its third incarnation we lost the pads, now with shin and instep protectors on the three standing attackers gave whoever was on the floor a ‘light’ kicking, as Pete’s ribs. Again the objective was to fight your way up, interesting how strikes to the groin became very popular here, once up finish the person in the body armour, I love to grab head and pull someone onto the knee, nice and hard, stealing their power and giving some of mine.
On the fourth run two people knelt either side of you, and punched you ‘lightly’ to body and face whilst the other kicked you in the head in a nice way, once this starts it is go, go, go, it is strike, strike, strike to create a chance to get up. Yes I know it is not everybody’s idea of a good Saturday morning but it is mine, I have not had so much fun for ages, there is that word again, well for at least a week.
Last weekend we were training with Rory Miller and much of it was close in stuff, we practiced in the toilets, showers and changing rooms using his one step method, the funny bit was when guys were pressed up against the wall in the showers and triggered the button for a nice cold shower, see here:
OK I did not get the cold shower shots but trust me they were funny, I even copped it myself as I stepped back to get a still shot, nice. Anyway, this is just another example of safe forms of training for reality, going slow allows you to see the gaps, the holes and not to fixate on one target, this is evidence when we were drilling yesterday and you realise that you are now covering up and striking at the same time, especially on the floor drills. If you train like this often enough you will condition a response to a stimuli be that an attack or an inner command, the first depends on an attacker moving first the latter on you giving yourself permission to use force first, within the law of course.
Rory is an infighter, it is his ‘happy place’ I prefer this too. Most attacks, in my experience start close up, I practice for this a lot and teach effective striking from close quarters, most criminals, bullies and thugs are not sportsmen, they do not offer you a square go. One of my preferred strikes is with the elbow, like this.
However, as a certain Hoch Hochheim says ” Nothing works all the time, everything works sometime”. So back to our training, I am lucky to be part of a club that encourages us to train this way. Sometimes it hurts a little bit, like now on both sides of my ribs, the right thanks to Pete’s knee and the left thanks to Jayne’s fist, neither were intentional, I think but they got round the body armour somehow. Am I bothered? Hell no, it is the price we pay for adding a dash of chaos into our training instead of following a well rehearsed recipe. Everybody who trains for reality rather than points will feel some discomfort, as my pal Tony Preston’s sweatshirt declared last weekend that there is no growth in comfort, there was no comfort in rolling around on a hardwood floor but you get so absorbed in the grappling you only feel the lumps and bumps afterwards.
I remember seeing the multiple bruises on people’s arms, some very large indeed, including my own daughter, after our seminar with Itay Gil last October, they were worn like badges of honour. I do not train to get injured and hurt but accept that this is inevitable if we train hard, as the saying goes work hard, play hard, training is my playtime, as I said earlier it is where I best express myself, a place where it is OK to free the beast, the thing inside us that we often need to keep on a tight leash. In training the beast is exercised under control, it is conditioned and made ready for when it may be needed, because when the brown stuff hits the rotating thingy on the ceiling all hell is often let loose, and that is when operant conditioning kicks in and training under stress, ignoring discomfort and embracing a little pain pays off. So do you free your beast occasionally? Do you problem solve against different attacks indifferent conditions and environments? Because the clip that follows, includes swearing turn sound of if that offends, is how that meat head will attack you out in the world.
Last week I watched the much acclaimed film ‘The Raid’ after receiving many positive comments from my friends, it was ok. See I am no Barry Norman, I am a book person really, but I do enjoy film but not really martial arts films and after a promising start it became so so predictable. It was so much more than the usual slug fest but it was unbelievable, totally unbelievable, how in a matter of just a few hours so much physical punishment can be dished out, so much pain absorbed beggars belief. It is not a bad film, but in my eyes not a good one either, when it ended I was glad. This is one of the more realistic scenes.
It makes for the right level of gore if that is what you want but the fact that everybody in the film who fought, if they were not killed immediately, was a martial arts expert of incredible skill. How likely is that in a tower block in Indonesia inhabited virtually entirely by criminals? It may be very likely, I do not know. Maybe it is, maybe it is not, does it matter, not really as it is fiction. Or is fiction sometimes mistaken for real life? well better people than me have argued over the effect of film or the following game, Lt Col Dave Grossman for one. On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society is an analysis of the physiological processes involved with killing another human being. He looks at the role of film and fiction, and in particular, computer games, and how they may be contributing to creating a more violent civilian population, the old argument is that the more graphic the violence can be multiplied by the amount of our exposure to it, to contribute to our increased level of violence when we resort to it. This is particularly so in the first person shooter game.
I have seen young children playing these games, blowing away, quite graphically, thousands of enemies, in a single episode. Lt Col Grossmann stated clearly, post Sandy Hook, that he thought such games contribute to altering the realities of some enabling them to become desensitized, killing for them, is a game they like to play.
The Raid has a warning on the cover stating that the film “Contains frequent strong bloody violence and gore”, yes, it certainly does, there is blood in bucket-loads and the angel of death is kept very busy indeed. Violent films are not new, but they, as film-makers and their technologies allow, have become extremely convincing.
I may have mentioned recently reading ‘The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid’ by Bill Bryson. Set in America in the 50′s it describes his childhood and some of the stories are incredibly funny. It reminded me of so many of my childhood memories and experiences, nostalgia can be intoxicating, I loved the book. I loved the stories of the Saturday morning trips to the cinema where an army of kids, a kind of 20th century combination of the Mongols, Goths and Vandals, would descend on said cinema for several hours entertainment. Our such cinema in Sheffield was the ABC and it is almost exactly as Bryson described it in his book. It really was a much more innocent time in many ways but there was violence, shock horror, on the screen too, have a peek at the stuff we were still watching well into the late 60′s.
Slapstick, it is still funny, maybe not to younger generations but these slapstick fights had us rolling with laughter back then, the beauty of YouTube is I can watch them now, whenever I want, for free, and I do. Fights and fighting have been in films since films began, almost. With the increasingly cheep video cameras, palm held camcorders and now phones people record thousands of aspects of daily life, including fights, the internet is crammed with them and people I communicate with on Facebook are posting stuff all the time. Used appropriately they make sensational teaching aids to highlight interactions in violent situations, to be honest I could use lots of clips from the Laurel and Hardy clip just as well and I find people learn very well when humour is used as opposed to horror.
But what about the real fights, individuals, gangs fighting gangs, gangs attacking and savagely beating individuals, stabbings, shootings, they are available at the click of a mouse, so how do we use those, well it is an ethical and moral dilemma and I am not preaching here, each individual will come to their own decision if they use them at all. This following clip sent to me by Bill Barrott induced side-splitting laughter when I watched it. It is a serious bout, there is some real punishment being dished out, and taken, not least by the referee. Watch it please, I hope it makes you laugh too. One last point I do lean-to the idea that constant exposure to violence makes some people susceptible to imitating what they see, be it on film, in a game, on TV, YouTube, wherever, just as some people become addicted to substances. Where does this leave us martial artists? Where do you stand on the issue? I really would appreciate your views.
Well it is moving towards the back end of January now and our recent holiday seems so long ago. Yesterday I did a bit of writing for my book and one thought that popped into my head was though last year was tough financially, things happened that I would never have thought possible a year or two ago. The thought was prompted as I reflected on sitting in a park shelter in Leicester on a typically damp late summer day talking with Ed Phillips and Rob Poyton, that was what I was writing about yesterday, not sitting on a bench but their physical training techniques that underpin their Systema training. The next thought that sprung to mind was that my calendar already has some really great things appearing in it, the year ahead is looking exciting, economically challenging again, but definitely exciting.
There was a point similar last year when I told my Sensei, Paul Jenkinson of Abbeydale Ju Jitsu Club, how I did not realise how walking into the dojo one Tuesday night in December fifteen years ago would transform my life, literally completely transform it.
What I did then as a job, hard fought for, as a lecturer in Further and Higher Education and manager of hundreds of courses a year would go, with all sorts of happenings in between I popped out where I am now as the owner of a small company, the Academy of Self Defence Ltd, that is now 4 years old and clinging on in there despite the ravages of what looks like a triple dip recession
The journey metaphor is often used to describe what happened along the way from there to here but that is for another day, assuming anyone would be interested. However, the point of this blog is not that the journey has ended but that it is getting ever more interesting as I go along, in fact it is more like an expedition into previously barely understood territories, ‘beware, here lie dragons’, type territories Instead of encountering mythical beasts along the way I am meeting people who used to exist on my bookshelf and on the DVD and internet. When I spoke with Paul I told him that one morning when I looked in my email inbox it was like looking at my bookshelf and I was not kidding, Rory Miller. Marc MacYoung, Kris Wilder and Wim Demeere had all sent emails; we were busy setting up seminars in my home town of Sheffield, UK. The fact that I put UK now is because of all the people who read this blog around the world; it is always a source of amazement when I see the flags of so many countries on my stats page, thank you.
So the Academy still teaches self defence and we are now doing so in one secondary school as part of their physical education classes as well as part of the cities Ending Youth and Gang Violence. We are looking forward to being part of a literacy project in Rotherham later this year too as well as pursuing some other exciting opportunities. My book is making good progress, I think, the blog is proving very popular, there is a fantastic line up shaping up this for seminars and I am hoping to go on the road too.
The very best part of my expedition are the people I am making friends with and some of the places I am going, In April Anthony Pillage has very kindly invited me to be his guest at his dojo ‘The Way of the Spiritual Warrior’ in Coventry, I believe it is one of the biggest in the midlands to train with no other than Master Ken.
Sunday 7th April, apparently Rachel is curious about British groins, better take the box then. In August John Miller of Institute of Krav Maga Scotland has invited me to attend Krav Island 2013, another ace experience, I went to observe last year, and it was superb.
In between Rory Miller, Marc and Dianna MacYoung, Wim Demeere, Kris Wilder, Marc and Dianna again then Alaine Buresse will be staying at mine and am I honoured, on top of this Itay Gil came late last year and we are going to be working together again and hopefully I will get Kasey Keckeisen here if he stops getting promoted at work. This is all work but what sort of work, it is really worth getting out of bed for each day I can tell you. Nothing in life is free everything has to be worked for and that is a process I really love, I am so full of the protestant work ethic I could just burst. On top of everything else I get to work with Mick Franklin, Andi Kidd, Chris Webb, Rob Poyton, Ed Phillips and many more great martial artists and each has added a layer of richness to my life. As I said earlier I walked into a not very warm church hall, received a very warm welcome and began an incredible journey.
We have just had Martin Luther King Day and I heard several times his dream speech and it still makes the spine tingle and I am white. The thing is it is our ability to dream that separates the wheat from the chaff. Everyone has dreams but only a few pursue their dreams. One of the conversations I had with Itay, as we walked on a crisp autumn day in the Mayfield Valley where I live, was how we were wealthy. We were not counting our money or our assets, but our wealth in being surrounded by fantastic families and friends and how fantastic it is when that definition blurs. Looking around the dining table last Saturday night at our Ju Jitsu Club Christmas Dinner, you look at the faces of people you have trained with for so many years and feel the incredibly warm glow that real friendship provides. The day after at my stepson’s sons christening, we posed for a family photo, the surnames involved are like a mini telephone directory, we are an orange juice family, not that we were all drinking it but our family has so many reconstituted parts, but it is a great family that has grown together over the years.
This blog is principally about my work and not family but they are my rock. The foundation on which my life rests, and I love them all dearly. Life is always full of challenges we face them and overcome them or we can go round them. Tactics are best when they are pragmatic and designed to meet the challenge faced and not pre decided and applied to any problem. If life is to be a pleasure and not a chore then we need to keep dreaming and to follow our dream whatever barriers may hinder our journey. A friend of mine, Henk Littlewood, handed in his notice today for a job I know he loved and he has taken a calculated risk to follow his dream and I wish him all the very best, take a look at what he is doing now he is an entrepreneur. http://www.henkswoodwork.co.uk/
It is a big step, it is not easy but it can go anywhere, there is no map Henk and to use a fitting metaphor for a former Ranger, you may have to hack away at the bush in order to find a path at all, but it is there and the determined will find it. I am off now to see what twists and turns affect me today, tomorrow and in the near distant future, one thing is certain, the horizon is perpetually changing and we will always desire to see what is just beyond its curve, do you recognise this? Then start or restart your journey, adjust your own inner compass and start creating your map, and ignore the dragons, dream your impossible dream.
The following blog was written on Thursday 10th Jan 2013 on my flight home, since then I have managed to train hard three times, I could not wait. On Saturday whilst I played on the old pc and read my novel, my wife was watching Embarrasing Bodies, a repulsive programme at best, gratuitous voyeurism I think, I kept having a peek as you do. There were some alarmingly obese people on these many of whom were seeking medical assistance, operations to get rid of their fat, the quick fix, no effort on their part. Most, not all had led sedentary lifestyles and some were clearly gluttens, fast food freaks who either through negligence or ignorance are attacking their own bodies. Sorry but it is true, tough love. It kind of chimed with my observations on holiday and prior to that that the warnings of obesity reaching epidemic proportions are not as alarmist as most people think. We are on the road to troubled times Oby City is just around the corner. Well here is last Thursdays blog.
Well hello there, long time no blog. There have been umpteen little things, and a few big ones, getting in the way of me writing in the last few months culminating in a very busy Christmas, growing family, and the small matter of two fantastically sunny weeks in Lanzarotte with my wife. It has been idyllic this winter break with long sunny days a good 2 hours longer than in the UK and the the most glorious sunsets. Last night we sat on the harbour wall in Playa Blanca watching the scant clouds glowing red from the sun already set behind the horizon as the small waves lapped on the rocks below us. I will tell you a little more about our holiday in a while, We are currently sat in our aircraft making its way back to blighty and in the last couple of days the increasing heat of the Canarian sun has set this young fellas, in my head, rising as I think of training starting again with a vengeance.
Like most people our club ceases training mid December and starts again a week after the new year, I have noted the comments of friends on Facebook that people are getting started again and many of the hardcore were cursing the lack of a training fix. I feel the same, I think next year I will organise something to run up to Christmas, maybe with appropriately festive costumes, who knows. Whilst on holiday I have not been lazy, last year in Mexico I hit the gym and the free weights everyday, this year the gym at our hotel, the free one had disappeared and to access the new one was 5 euros an hour and yes I am a Yorkshireman and it was machine orientated, a few free weights but virtually no room to use them, so it was plan B.
Plan B fell back on what we had come to Playa Blanca for, to walk its beautiful seafront, you can walk for several miles only crossing one small road that serves the ferry to the lovely Rubicon Marina, or alternatively take the shorter walk to the lighthouse, for a dash of excitement you could climb the redundant volcano that sits like a great red sentinel overlooking our hotel, the Rubicon Palace. Well plan B day one, the Marina and back after breakfast, just three hours there and back including a stop for the wife to have a coffee, myself having taught my body to endure hardship needed no refreshment outside of our all-inclusive retreat.
It was a gorgeous walk, clear blue skies and increasingly hot sunshine saw us plod our way there and plod our way back, not racing but not dawdling either. We can walk for hours like this hardly saying a word to each other but enjoying our time together and enjoying this lovely, tasteful resort, this is our 6th visit and my wifes 7th. It was a grand walk, we really enjoyed it until almost back at the Rubicon when my wife mentioned her feet feeling a bit sore, then mentioned them again, then checking noticed a couple of blisters so she popped into the shop for some plasters. This was the start on what was to become a run on plasters for the next 2 weeks. Had I known then what I know now I should have bought shares in the plaster manufacturer. Oh dear.
Well on the flight home the blisters are healing but not gone, the walks did not end but were more relaxed, my dear wife bravely carried on with our daily walks but they were not the mile eating yomps we are used to. However, my exercise fix still needed addressing and I turned in the direction of the pool. Now, the Rubicon possesses a number of pools of which the main one is a beauty, it is one of the biggest I have seen, it is a bigun missis, a monster, one of the biggest I have seen. This was our 5th time at the Rubicon and we know this pool well, it is salt water with a consistently even temperature throughout the year that registers just short of freezing. It is one of the few complaints that the first timers have BUT there are other pools, not as big but still very nice and a bit warmer. However, we like the big cold pool as we get it virtually to ourselves. So everyday around 12.30 we would saunter from our balcony. A huge south-facing balcony with reclining chairs were we sat read and snoozed our days away when not eating, and once through the seal colony the was the sun bed area surrounding the pool, we would chuck our towels on an empty bed and get straight into the swim of it, literally.
The pool is great if you get straight in, no messing in under and start swimming heading down the length of the pool whilst a few people raise their heads from their sun beds and quietly question your, our, sanity. After about 20 strokes the shock of the cold on our sun warmed bodies went away and we set into our rhythm, we are no Olympians, we swim for the pleasure of it and for the exercise, the pool is about 80 metres long and we, well I, did 10 lengths for about 35 minutes or so, steady strokes trying not to count, almost impossible, steady breathing with breaststroke there, backstroke back. I have not enjoyed swimming this much for years and it was nice to feel the whole body working as I pushed through the water. It felt even better to step out of the water at the end and feel how good my chest and arms felt as I padded myself dry letting the sun do its job on what the towel missed, then it was a short plod through the seal colony to the poolside bar for a cool glass of tonic. Honest.
OK, I have mentioned seal colony twice now and that is where this blog is heading on a kind of safari to view our own species at leisure in our hotel and our resort. I think it was the fact that numerous people commented on our swimming as if it was a holidaymakers alternative to wearing a hair shirt or flagellating oneself with a cat-o-nine. We shared lots of jokes and laughs with a some people especially those who at least gave the pool a try, I think we became a bit of a novelty act for some, a kind of relief from their Daily Mail or Express. I genuine think most people could nt equate what we were doing with pleasure, hard work yes, pleasure no. But that is what those lengths were to us and to me in particular, the opportunity to work my body and make it feel good and let me tell you by the end of the two weeks it felt very good indeed and excellent preparation for getting back in the dojo on Saturday next for a really tough session, preceded by a good hour on the free weights on Friday.
As I swam up and down that pool I focussed, when not counting strokes, on thinking about my training and thought up some new, really tough drills we will be trying, harder stuff than we have done before and I can see a really great three four months training ahead of me as we work our way into the new year. I made no resolutions on New Years Eve or after other than to continue to be the best I can, to remain fit and strong mentally and physically as long as possible. I read 5 novels and started a sixth last night. One is the Arthur trilogy by Bernard Cornwell and is full of fearsome warriors set when men were men and the shieldwall was the proving ground. To survive the shield wall made a warrior of a man, made a man of a boy as well. Whilst I stop short of the warrior fantasy I still feel the need to train and be ready should violence come to call, being physically fit and strong and mentally prepared is part of my core, it is not some app we bolt on so even during the rest of our holiday, exercise is central for me. Now for the safari.
As we proceed from our swim full of joy de vivre we walk amongst slumbering bodies of every shape and size reclining, sitting, reading, chatting and drinking, doing what they like best on a holiday and I have no criticism of that. However, amongst this host of sun worshippers, and I am one of those too, it is a pagan thing after all buried deep in our psyche, lay huge bests of incredible weight and size stressing their sun beds frame by simply being on it. Great obese men and women in increasing numbers who can barely waddle over to collect more lager or replenish their plate of chips and burger, so vast are some of these creatures I cannot see how their backsides fit in an aircraft seat. OK here is a confession, I too am obese.
Technically, I cannot think what my number is but it is close to morbidly obese too. My youngest daughter likes to tease me with this mischievously. I am 5’10” and 15.5 stones, my waste is 34” and my chest 46”, muscle weighs more than fat. I am not obese but it is what a simplistic reading od height and weight tell. However, looking at some of my fellow holiday makers was like seeing a visual representations of the warning we keep receiving about our nations health, or increasing unhealthy as the case may be. The book ‘Men are from Mars and Women from Venus’ has apparently helped many people understand the difference between men and women so I am told. Maybe somebody will write one on the difference between those of us who value exercise, fitness and our health and those who do not. I do not want to be rude to our overweight fellow humans but I cannot understand them, I know the dangerous flip side of obesity is bulimia and other eating disorders, but surely there comes a time when it gets harder and harder to buy clothes, when walking to the bar makes you sweat or when getting on and off your sunbed id a Herculean task that you should start to question what you are doing to yourselves.
Ok I am not that ignorant that I do not understand the role of external forces on the individual, advertising, fast food, activities that require no physical effort but these forces target us all in the same way as we can all go to the gym, the swimming baths or the dojo. However, as the smell of chips wafts through the aircraft, we all make our own choices, it is like the tree little pigs, the lazy pig makes his house of straw, his industrious brother builds a time and labour expensive house of bricks and we know the moral of that story. BUT back to the safari as we enter the dining room, well it is what you would expect, you can almost always predict what is going on each persons plate, who is loading up on salad and freshly cooked fish (me) and who is hammering the chips and burgers??? As for the pudding section only the brave venture there. Throughout this holiday and on previous ones and at home I see the growth of this disease and it really worries me on one level, I have helped several times on a project aimed at helping obese kids, it is a sorry sight and having seen some kids waddling round on this holiday I tend to see it as a form of abuse under the heading of neglect, neglecting to provide your child with a healthy lifestyle.
There were whole families with a range of weight issues, they need intervention if they cannot take the initiative themselves. I read something the other day about cutting or withdrawing benefits for obese people for whom their obesity prevents them working, well I am all for this. It is time to take of the velvet glove for the sake of the greater good, \(hot \fuzz anyone) and stop pandering, no more big bones or it is my glands excuses, get down the gym or else you are choosing the consequences.
We as martial artists have a role to play here too as enablers, as local authorities take responsibility for NHS preventative care and its attendant budget we should be setting out a case for the long-term physical and mental benefits for participating in a martial art. How about setting up a class specifically for this and gaining GP referrals? Have you ever thought of that. Obese and overweight people will rarely, in the early stages of a corrective programme, want to train alongside the already fit and competent, the contrast is too stark between them and us. However, remove the barriers presented by the them and us situation and they may, just may poke a toe into the dojo, your dojo, ever thought about that?
I may look into this, I will keep you briefed. until then here is a clip of three well post 50 blokes going to daft lengths to prevent becoming armchair athletes, in the woods, in the dark with the first flakes of snow starting to fall, what did you do on Sunday evening just gone?
