A Mixed Martial Art before MMA

Below is a video about Nippon Kempo. A truly mixed martial art before MMA was cool. Enjoy.

 

 

Gracie's All The Way Down

At the Budo Journeyman blog, is a series of articles about martial arts dynasties. There was a recent post about the celebrated Gracie family of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu fame. An excerpt is below. The full post may be read here.

Still looking at the three-generation rule I want to carousel through other family dynasties.

In this third piece, I will look at:

Gracie Jiu-Jitsu.

I always liked the simple historical fact that the Gracie’s originally came from Scotland. It made me think of ‘The Clans of the Highlands’, you couldn’t get more tribal than that.1

In reading around the subject (another one which I have zero practical experience of) I found myself going down a whole Brazilian rabbit hole, and really had to discipline myself to stick with the ‘three-generation rule’.

This is going to be a lightning tour and I do hope the GJJ and the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu community will forgive me.

First impressions: the Gracie family really do go for huge families (yet the ‘Mrs Gracie’s’ never seem to get a mention. They must have been heroes in themselves. Incidentally, Carlos Gracie is said to have fathered 21 children, most of them became black belts in Jiu-Jitsu; I wonder if that’s some kind of record?).

So, this leads me to the second observation; patriarchal family structures. I would posit that this particular dynamic promotes a strong brand of masculine-based family loyalty and pride, a distinct kind of energy. Possibly here we see some of the ingredients for success.

Gracie’s triumphant.

I found myself looking for some references on a kind of Gracie family business model. What did the clan get right? Before I fully get into the whole brand identity thing, let me dip into the origins story.

Early decades of the 20^th century. The Gracie family have already worked to develop an entrepreneurial spirit; but this needs a little background.

The beginnings.

It all really starts with a Brazilian chance encounter for one of the early family patriarchs, Gastão Gracie, who in 1916 went into the circus business and came across a Japanese ex-pat called Maeda Mitsuyo who used to be a rising judo star in Kano’s Kodokan from 1895 to 1904. In that same year, 1916, Maeda travel to the Americas and barnstormed his way through open fighting circuits all the way through to his arrival in Brazil. Read up on Maeda’s life; it’s a hell of a story.

 

First generation.

As I understand it, Gastão Gracie did not train under Maeda, but two of his sons did; the elder, Carlos Gracie and younger brother Helio. Both of these are generally considered as first generation of what was to become Gracie Jiu-Jitsu.

This was the founding of the generations.

The impression I get is that this form of fighting, so far removed from Japan, does not deserve the name its detractors give it, i.e. ‘Pseudo-judo’. It has Japanese origins but developed its own distinct identity that suited the environment it was later to flourish in.

Some people say that the Gracie/Maeda style came out of a Kodokan project intended to break the ground impasse; hence the emphasis on the ground game. I am not qualified to comment, but it sort of makes sense.

 

 

Bruce Lee's Training Regime

Over at The Art of Manliness blog, there was an extensive article on the techniques and philosophy of Bruce Lee's training regime. I thought it was an impressive article. 

An excerpt is below. The full post may be read here.

Bruce Lee is a legend.

He revolutionized movies and martial arts.

He also boasted incredible strength and all-around physicality.

Lee could place his fist one inch from the chest of a man twice his size and unleash a quick, cobra-like strike that’d send his opponent flying. 

Lee could perform push-ups using just two fingers of one hand. 

Lee wasn’t huge, but his lean, chiseled, defined physique was widely admired, and bodybuilders like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lou Ferrigno, Flex Wheeler, Shawn Ray, and Dorian Yates all acknowledged the impact it had on their careers.

Co-star and fellow martial artist Chuck Norris described Lee’s ripped physique as “muscle upon muscle.”

A woman who asked if she could touch Bruce Lee’s flexed bicep (a common request he appreciated receiving) described it as “warm marble.”

How did Lee develop his strength and physique? Was he simply a genetic freak?

Nope. If you look at early pictures of the Little Dragon, he was a pretty scrawny guy.

Instead of genetics, Lee systematically and relentlessly built his body with physical training.

Thanks to the meticulous research of martial artist and writer John Little, we know exactly what Lee did to achieve his results. Little shares the details of Lee’s fitness training in his 1998 book Bruce Lee: The Art of Expressing the Human Body. The book is an absolute gold mine of fitness history and information, and I highly recommend picking up a copy.

In today’s article, we take a look at the principles that informed Bruce Lee’s training and the components of his regimen that turned a man into a legend.

Throughout his childhood, Lee was incredibly active. He got in trouble at school, and his spiritedness drove him to mischief and street fights. If Lee had grown up in the 21st century, he probably would have been diagnosed with ADHD. His hyperactivity inspired his family to call him “never sits still.”

To channel Lee’s energy into less destructive activities, his father signed him up for kung fu instruction under the tutelage of master Ip Man. Thus, at age thirteen, Bruce began the lifelong practice that would make him a worldwide legend.

By the time Lee was in his twenties, he had developed enough physical conditioning to excel as a martial artist, but remained a skinny guy.

Then came a moment that would take his physical training to the next level.

In the early 1960s, Lee lived in Oakland, CA, and had begun teaching kung fu. Lee didn’t discriminate in who he took on as a student, and according to some accounts, some traditional Chinese kung fu masters in the area weren’t happy with him teaching the martial art to non-Chinese. So in 1964, they presented an ultimatum to Lee: take part in a kung fu battle against their best fighter; if Lee lost, he had to shut down his kung fu class.

While different versions of exactly how the fight went down exist, according to Bruce, the fight lasted three minutes and primarily involved him chasing his opponent around a building until he forced him to submit.

Despite winning, Lee was disappointed with how he performed. He was unhappy about the shape he was in and had begun to feel that the parameters of traditional martial arts were impractical for street fights. He concluded that to realize his full physical potential and become the best martial artist in the world, he’d need to move beyond kung fu and expand his repertoire of physical modalities.

This moment of discontent not only inspired Bruce Lee to get serious about his physical fitness, but birthed a martial art and overall life philosophy he called Jeet Kune Do or the Way of the Intercepting Fist.

In moving forward from the fight, Lee sought to develop a physical training system that emphasized “practicality, flexibility, speed, and efficiency” and drew from a wide range of training methods.

While Jeet Kune Do sounds like a formal martial art style like Tae Kwon Do, Lee intended it to be “the style of no style” — a martial art that transcended formal rules and incorporated the best ideas from various disciplines.

To find these ideas, Lee became a devoted student of the art and science of physical training.

Even though Bruce had struggled in school, he had a strong commitment to continuous learning and was a voracious reader throughout his adulthood. Over his life, he amassed a huge personal library of over 2,500 titles.

He trained his mind by reading Eastern and Western philosophy (Summa Theologica by St. Thomas Aquinas; The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi), as well as American self-help (As a Man Thinketh by James Allen; How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie).

He also religiously studied everything he could get his hands on about training the body.  

Lee thought there was something to be learned from all combatives and read books about boxing by Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis, and Rocky Marciano, texts on karate and aikido, and over sixty volumes on fencing.

In the 1960s, bodybuilding magazines were the primary sources of information on strength training, and Bruce Lee subscribed to them all. If he found an article that contained useful information, he’d clip it and put it in his filing system.

Lee also browsed used bookstores and bought copies of health and fitness books from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including Strength and How to Obtain It by bodybuilder and strongman Eugen Sandow and The Application of Measurement to Health and Physical Education written in 1945 by H. Harrison Clarke.

Lee continued to add fitness books to his extensive library throughout his life and never let a set lens contort his reading choices; if a book or magazine had some useful info in it, he bought it and read it.

Besides magazines and books, Lee would ask his friends and students for training advice. Two men who had a huge influence on Lee’s physical education were James Yimm Lee and Allen Joe. James Lee (no relation to Bruce Lee) was an Oakland-based martial artist and weightlifter, and Allen Joe was the first Chinese-American bodybuilding champion. Both men introduced Lee to the way of the iron and helped develop his first weightlifting program.

 

Lee’s study of all aspects of physical training led him to experiment with different fitness modalities, including barbell training, isometrics, plyometrics, circuit training, running, and stretching.

His practice of these diverse modalities all had a single goal: becoming a better martial artist.

While Lee only chose exercises that would help him improve as a fighter, because martial arts require the full spectrum of physical capabilities (strength, power, speed, endurance, and flexibility), Lee systematically trained all these capabilities; he didn’t specialize.

 

Catch Wrestling

 

Brazilian JiuJutsu has a solid foundation with classical Judo, but the experience of the early BJJ guys was colored by the frequent matches they had against other martial artists. Capoeira and western wrestlers, including "Catch Wrestlers."

From Wikipedia: 

Catch wrestling (originally catch-as-catch-can) is a classical hybrid grappling style and combat sport. It was popularised by wrestlers of travelling funfairs who developed their own submission holds, or "hooks", into their wrestling to increase their effectiveness against their opponents. Catch wrestling derives from various different international styles of wrestling: several English styles (primarily Lancashire,^[2] as well as Cumberland and Westmorland wrestling,^[3] Devonshire,^[3] and Irish collar-and-elbow wrestling). The training of some modern submission wrestlers, professional wrestlers and mixed martial artists is founded in catch wrestling. 

Below is a documentary on Catch Wrestling.

Push Through

Below is an excerpt from a post that appeared at Martial Views regarding perseverance in training. The full post may be read here.

I have a confession to make. I've been out of work for seven months (courtesy of some health issues I've previously discussed, but I go back at the end of September), and I'm not happy with the way I look. This morning on a doctor's scale I weighed a whopping 205 lbs., way up from my sparring heyday of 178. (I used to be 5 ft 10; I'm currently 5 ft 9. I have a medium frame.) A lot of this is just due to my inactivity, but also, to my defense, it's age related. I turn 63 in October, and my body just doesn't do what it used to do. Not just willful physical activity, whether it's performing job duties or exercising in my basement gym/dojo, but also trying to keep my weight down, recover from minor injuries, and incentive to do otherwise menial tasks. I find myself actually having to push myself to go on my daily one-mile walk. My strength and stamina in the gym over the years has diminished significantly, and when I confided this to a friend, he replied, "why bother pumping iron if you just keep getting weaker?"

"Alright," I replied. "What do you suppose would happen if I just completely stopped working out?"

Stopping my workouts is not an option for me. Perish the thought! But naturally I have to modify a routine to accommodate my pre-existing injuries. And as of late I need serious motivation—fortunately fate came to the rescue. The other day a co-worker texted me a bodybuilding routine Bruce Lee created in 1965, before he became a star cinematically (although by this time Lee was an in-demand martial arts instructor). This flow chart, I'm assuming, is a catalog of exercises to be performed in a single session. It's a list of mostly upper body/arm exercises, but I really like how the first item is squats. Never skip leg day. I'm glad Lee knew his priorities.

As Lee's status as a star rose he continued his self created bodybuilding routine that emphasized both strength and muscular endurance. At  5 ft 7 1⁄2 and 140 lbs, Lee was not not an overtly formidable presence. But his devotion to fitness paid off. Chuck Norris once said that Lee was, pound for pound, the strongest human being he has ever trained with.

While Lee was making gains in the gym, he began to adjust his diet and cardio exercises that accelerated his body's ability to burn fat. In the 1965 photo above, I would guess his body fat percentage to be about 12. The pic below taken from Enter The Dragon (1973) depicts a much leaner version of Lee, evident with a marked increase in muscular definition and striations. I'd put his body fat here at about 7 percent. Understand that this level of body fat is quite low, even for an athlete, and is very difficult to achieve without resorting to sports enhancing drugs. (There is no respectable evidence that Lee used steroids or the like to achieve his physique. I'm also fairly confident this photo has not been enhanced.)

Bruce Lee's Childhood

Below is a video of Shannon Lee, Bruce Lee's daughter, discussing his childhood and relationship with Ip Man.

 

 

 

Capoeira in MMA

Capoeira is a unique martial art. MMA is probably the last place I would expect to see Capoeira.

Enjoy.

One of the First Modern MMA Matches

In 1963, the late, legendary judoka, Gene LeBell, had a match with boxer Milo Savage. Below is a short vintage video.

 

Shadow Boxing for Fitness

Over at the Art of Manliness was an article on how to shadow box for fitness. Below is an excerpt. The whole post may be read here.

Shadow boxing is a fundamental boxing skill. It provides an opportunity for boxers to fine-tune their technique and mentally prepare for a workout or fight.

For non-boxers, shadow boxing can be an excellent warm-up for a workout or even a workout in and of itself — you’ll be amazed at how quickly it revs up your heart rate. This low-impact cardio can be done pretty much anywhere —the gym, your garage, a hotel room. You can even shadow box in the dark after you’ve rambled in the park. (Only real ones know that reference).

To get the lowdown on how to shadow box like a champ, I talked to boxing coach Aaron Sloan, owner of The Engine Room — a boxing gym here in Tulsa, OK.

How to Shadow Box

To get set for a shadow boxing session, get in a proper boxing stance, with your hands up. You don’t need to wear gloves, but you may want your hands wrapped if you’re going to be moving right from a shadow-boxing warm-up to doing something like hitting the speed bag.

Stay focused.

The biggest mistake Aaron sees boxers make with their shadow-boxing work is that they just go through the motions. “Shadow boxing is an important part of your development as a fighter,” Aaron told me. “It’s the only time you get to really practice your technique perfectly. The boxers who just go through the motions are missing out on becoming a better fighter.”

So the first tip for effective shadow boxing is to stay mentally focused during your entire session.

Only use a mirror if you’re a beginner working on technique.

Despite its name, when you’re shadow boxing, you’re not really going to be sparring with a shadow on a wall. Aaron doesn’t like to use mirrors for shadow-boxing work either. He wants his boxers to feel a correct punch being thrown, not just see it. With that said, he’ll sometimes have his beginning boxers stand in front of a mirror while shadow boxing to help them fine-tune their technique.

Vividly visualize a boxer in front of you.

Even when you’re not using a mirror, you should be sparring with an opponent in your mind. Visualize him: How far is he from you? Where is his body relative to you? At what height is his head? “I have my fighters imagine a boxer in front of them in the middle of the ring, but it has to be vivid. It requires mental focus,” Aaron says. “To make sure my fighters have a vivid imaginary boxer in front of them, I’ll ask them, ‘What color are his shorts?’ If they can’t answer right away, it means they’re not focused on the practice, and they need to get their head back in the game.”

Don’t throw full punches.

You don’t want to throw full punches while you’re shadow boxing. “You’ll just give yourself tennis elbow,” Aaron says. Go hard, but don’t extend your arm all the way when throwing straight punches.

 

 

Combat Sports for Self Defense

The video below is an interesting discussion of whether combat sports, such as boxing or BJJ are suitable for self defense.

 

Traditional Martial Arts vs Reallity

Below is an opinion piece from the South China Morning Post which posits the question: Are most traditional martial arts fake?

The full post may be read here.

It is followed by an excerpt from Kung Fu Tea, which references the first post and makes a counter argument. That full post may be read here. 

I still remember my first ice hockey fight. All the movies I’d watched as a kid, where highly choreographed fight scenes looked like expertly planned dance routines, had horribly lied to me. By the time I realised I was in a fight, at the tender age of 16, it was already half over and I’d taken three or four solid shots to the face and my jersey had been pulled well over my head, rendering me blind.

The experience was jarring: unfiltered chaos, blurred vision in one eye from an errant thumb poke, a ringing eardrum from getting punched in the side of the head, the taste of my own blood and swallowing a tooth. There was just disorganised, violent confusion with a skyrocketing heart rate and buckets of adrenaline.

I held my breath as my body went into shock and when it was over I threw up in the penalty box from exhaustion, even though the whole thing lasted less than 45 seconds.

After about a dozen or so, I started to get the hang of it and learned a few things: an actual fight is about survival. Fights do not happen in closed environments and any time to think is about the same amount of time it will take for your opponent to break your nose.

In one fight, I remember getting my hand caught on my combatant’s shoulder pad. I took three off the chin before I realised his pads were tied to his body and I could use them to take him to the ground. In another tilt, the first punch I threw shattered one of my knuckles on my opponent’s visor and I had to learn how to be a southpaw in about two milliseconds. In one fight I ended up on the concrete ground at the rink as the trainer had forgotten to close the bench door because he was too busy watching the madness in front of him.

What I’m getting at here is that I’m pretty sure no dojo or tai chi master teaches this. There are martial arts you practice in a vacuum, and there is being in a fight. These are two very different things. By no means am I an expert pugilist, but I've been in enough altercations to know things like meditation and flow states will get your head kicked in during a real bout.

A fight is a visceral, primal experience and when you are fighting your physical doppelganger, you can get seriously hurt if you mess around even for a split second.

I’ve watched enough of the same videos I’m sure you all have where a wing chun or kung fu master gets quickly dismantled by a mixed martial artist. The morbid curiosity has got the best of me many times even though I know the storyline: MMA, which teaches people to fight, is a far cry from other traditional disciplines which are heavy on the artistry. 

Still, I can’t help myself in watching these beat downs because I think it exposes an important fallacy floating around the martial arts world: that going to a couple of karate classes or learning moves from a wing chun master will help you in an actual fight, be it in a ring, octagon or out on the street.
 

While the recent documentary The Game Changers talks about former UFC fighter James Wilks’ experience in investigating plant-based diets, one part of the film stuck with me. Wilks remembers being young and getting into his first street fight after taking years of karate and getting rightly pummelled. It was a watershed moment for the fighter and it should ring true for many within the fighting world. You don’t know how ill-equipped you actually are against a much better fighter until you are brutally exposed in embarrassing fashion.

The important thing is not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Karate is great for things like self-confidence, discipline, meditation and various other life skills. Wing chun can teach you how to control your mind, regulate your breathing and helps with stretching and toning muscles. These disciplines work around relaxing and centering the psyche, which is incredibly beneficial for kids who have attention issues and adults who have anxiety and stress.

But the buck needs to stop there. Mixed martial artists, pioneered by Bruce Lee himself, have come on the scene as taking the best of various disciplines, from taekwondo to boxing, from jiu-jitsu to Muay Thai, and combining them with the purpose of teaching people how to fight, and more importantly, defend themselves properly from other fighters.

 I still remember my first ice hockey fight. All the movies I’d watched as a kid, where highly choreographed fight scenes looked like expertly planned dance routines, had horribly lied to me. By the time I realised I was in a fight, at the tender age of 16, it was already half over and I’d taken three or four solid shots to the face and my jersey had been pulled well over my head, rendering me blind.

The experience was jarring: unfiltered chaos, blurred vision in one eye from an errant thumb poke, a ringing eardrum from getting punched in the side of the head, the taste of my own blood and swallowing a tooth. There was just disorganised, violent confusion with a skyrocketing heart rate and buckets of adrenaline.

I held my breath as my body went into shock and when it was over I threw up in the penalty box from exhaustion, even though the whole thing lasted less than 45 seconds.

After about a dozen or so, I started to get the hang of it and learned a few things: an actual fight is about survival. Fights do not happen in closed environments and any time to think is about the same amount of time it will take for your opponent to break your nose.In one fight, I remember getting my hand caught on my combatant’s shoulder pad. I took three off the chin before I realised his pads were tied to his body and I could use them to take him to the ground. In another tilt, the first punch I threw shattered one of my knuckles on my opponent’s visor and I had to learn how to be a southpaw in about two milliseconds. In one fight I ended up on the concrete ground at the rink as the trainer had forgotten to close the bench door because he was too busy watching the madness in front of him.What 

I’m getting at here is that I’m pretty sure no dojo or tai chi master teaches this. 

There are martial arts you practice in a vacuum, and there is being in a fight. 

These are two very different things. By no means am I an expert pugilist, but I've been in enough altercations to know things like meditation and flow states will get your head kicked in during a real bout.

Traditional Martial Arts and Combat Sports

Traditional martial arts and combat sports doesn't have to be an either/or proposition. The study of each can supplement and enhance the other. 

It's not uncommon for Kendo students to also practice Kenjutsu, for example.

Below is an article that appeared at the Hung Sing Martial Arts Association on how traditional Choy Lay Fut practice and Mixed Martial Arts can go together. The full post may be read here.

Choy Lay Fut Complete Combat Efficiency: The Value of Combat Sports For the Traditional Chinese Martial Artist

Given the popularity of modern combat sports events like the UFC and the history of combat sports like the lei tei , it seems strange to have to make the argument for the value of combat sport training in today’s martial arts community.   However it is still very common to see posts in online communities dedicated to traditional martial arts attempting to make the argument that combat sport fighting is not real fighting. The primary purpose for training the martial arts is as a method of self protection using physical force to counter an immediate threat of violence. Such force can be either armed or unarmed. In either case, the chances of success depend on a large number of parameters as situations where one is forced to use their skills are largely unpredictable. Choy Lay Fut was a system originally employed as a method of fighting for militias and fighting troops during a turbulent period of Chinese’s history. The original purpose of the system has led some opponents of sport combat training to believe that the system is not intended for sport and such practice is deluding the practical nature of the system. While many practitioners can often be resistant to new ideas, modern sports combat training can offer a wealth of benefits to the traditional martial artist.

A combat sport is a competitive contact sport that usually involves one-on-one combat. Typically in a combat sport a combatant wins by scoring more points than the opponent or by disabling the opponent within an established set of rules.  Combatants usually fight one-on-one. Different combat sport formats involve different skill sets and rules. In Ancient China, combat sport appeared in the form of Leitai, a no-holds-barred combat sport that utilized the full spectrum of Chinese martial arts, striking, wrestling and weapons. Lei tai in its present form appeared during the Song dynasty when it was used for striking and Shuai Jiao exhibition matches and private duels. An ancestor of the lei tai was used during the Qin dynasty to hold wrestling competitions between imperial soldiers. The winner would be chosen to act as a bodyguard to the emperor or a martial arts instructor for the Imperial Military.

             A tradition in the Chinese martial arts was for a practitioner whom wanted to establish themselves as a martial arts instructor in a new location, to initiate an open challenge on top of the leitei to established martial art practitioners in the area. A fighter lost the match and his credibility if he fell, was forced off or was knocked to the floor of the stage. The winner of the match remained on the leitei unless he was forced off himself. If there were no more challengers, he became the champion and or established the dominance of his system of combat in that area.  In order to become a champion, a fighter had to defeat countless opponents. For instance, Lama Pai Grandmaster Wong Yan-Lam set up his own lei tai platform in front of Hai Tung Monastery in Guangdong after having worked as a famous bodyguard in Northern China. For 18 days, he fought over 150 other martial artists and was never defeated Shortly afterwards, he was elected as the leader of the Ten Tigers of Canton, who were the top ten martial arts practitioners in Guangdong.

 

              The irony of the Traditional martial arts versus combat sports debate is that combat sport fighting has always been a vital component of martial arts. Many who practice the traditional martial arts view the practice of combat sports as antagonistic towards their practice. To understand the issue it’s helpful to re-evaluate our terminology.  What is a “traditional martial art”? The term in itself, while conjuring images of Shaolin monks in robes wielding ancient weaponry, doesn’t really mean anything in the context of this debate. Combat sports have existed in China since antiquity, and current combat sports are undeniably linked to traditional martial art and exist as a continuation of those methods. Training for combat sports can help the traditional martial arts practitioner reorganize their training and make it more efficient by focusing in a specific direction.

A Traditional Chinese Martial Art Refocused

            The Choy Lay Fut system was created in 1836, by founder Chan Heung in Guangzhou, a southern province of China. Seeking out the most information he could find on the Chinese martial arts led Chan Heung to seek the tutelage of 3 different teachers during his life time. Like many contemporary mixed martial artists, he sought to consolidate the 3 different methods of his teachers into one method utilizing the strengths of each. Because of this, Choy Lay Fut is a well rounded method combining powerful striking methods with grabs/holds, kicking and solid yet nimble footwork.

 Choy Lay Fut is often thought to be a vast and complex system of martial arts by both the casual observer and even many students of the system. This line of thinking can be attributed to a large quantity of empty hand and weapons forms practiced by the various schools teaching the system. The number of forms practiced by an individual Choy Lay Fut practitioner can range from only a few to well over forty. If you take into account all the variations and unique forms created by and taught by the different lineages of the system the number of empty hand and weapons forms can easily number in the hundreds. If you include the different apparatus training sets and partner drills, the sheer volume of the system can become such that even a diligent practitioner can seem overwhelmed and unsure of how to properly identify those things that should be priorities in training for combat efficiency. The key to making effective use of this vast library of material is through an understanding and proper focus on the systems core concepts.

The Choy Lay Fut method is centered on its key combative concepts such as the 10 elements, asterisk footwork, gate theory etc. These concepts give a practitioner the tools to deal with various vectors of force leading to a better understanding of fighting in general and as such making it easier for the practitioner to fight against an aggressor regardless of that aggressor’s background and training in other systems. Approaching the system as a conceptual method will allow the Choy Lay Fut practitioner to cut through the vast quantity of material and understand how to effectively apply the system in combat. The conceptual method of training a martial art can be compared to learning a new language. Learning only forms and techniques with no understanding of the concepts behind them is similar to attempting to communicate in a foreign language using a phrase book. You may be able to ask specific questions like “where is the bathroom” but you will not be able to express your own ideas and converse fluently. The conceptual method of learning a martial art is similar to learning a foreign language in its entirety. You begin with the core concepts which can be compared to an alphabet then you move on to combining concepts together which is like forming words. 

Finally you can put together combinations and apply these concepts where they are needed and, in essence, converse freely with your opponent. 

The History of Nippon Kempo

At the Ukraine site for Nippon Kempo, is a nice article explaining the history of this martial art. An excerpt is posted below. The full post may be read here.

Different martial arts are popular in our time. In particular, universal fighting system (UFS) which promotes a mix of fighting styles and bouts. But very few people know about Nippon Kempo (jp:日本拳法) system. It was the first system of the full-contact mix fighting in 1930s in the motherland of Samurai Japan. The founder of the Japanese hand-to-hand fighting which became Nippon kempo was Masaru Sawayama.

He was born on December 12, 1906 in the family of a noble Nakaoke Clan. He was a weak child. It was difficult for him to walk to school. This was till he was 13 (thirteen). At that time different kinds of Western sport began to appear in Japan: baseball, boxing, bodybuilding etc. Japanese young people became fond of these new trends. Magazines and books which made western sport popular came from Europe. Sports shops began to sell barbells, dumbbells, expanders and other sports equipment of exotic Western civilization.

Masaru felt the influence of such expansion and he decided to change – a man must be strong! He started bodybuilding and martial arts. And in some years he turned into a strong young man with a perfect body.

One of the founders of western ways of preparation of sportsmen in Japan legendary Dzigoro Kano (founder of Judo) had great influence on life and development of Sawayama Masaru. In 1904 Dzigoro Kano implemented and made popular the bodybuilding system of Yevgeniy Sandov. Dzigoro Kano was an educated man; he could go around the world and Europe and find different methods of training. He paid attention to bodybuilding system and he was the first to use barbells, dumbbells, and expanders in Judo.

In 1926 when Sawayama Masaru went to Law School of Kansai University in Osaka he was a perfectly developed young man.

At university he went in for judo and got the Fifth Dan (Shihan). He turned into the defender of all the weak; he many times stopped fighting students and local gangsters.

Sawayama Masaru was a skillful fighter, a good organizer and leader and the head of the university judo team.

At university Sawayama was interested in striking and kicking fighting techniques. He thought it was not used enough in judo and ju-jitsu.

Basis of judo training was randori – free bouts which had certain rules.

They let fighters develop useful skills such as reaction and feeling of distance, decide tactics, use techniques on fighting opponents. But randori rules did not let use strikes.

These rules made fighting safe and protected sportsmen from serious injuries. Fighters used strikes in vital striking areas only in kata. But Sawayama thought that using only kata technique did not let sportsmen master fighting on high level. Understanding of it made him start exploring old schools of budjutzu (jp: 武術:じゅつ) (martial arts) famous for sophisticated techniques of striking in atemi (vital areas). He spent a lot of time looking for ancient manuscripts describing these techniques and communication with masters living in Osaka in that time.

In 1920s several fighting systems such as European boxing, Okinawa karate-do and Thai boxing appeared in Japan. Osaka became the center of activity of masters of different martial arts systems. 

Thanks to this Masaru could attend trainings and master classes of different martial arts styles and schools. He could compare advantages and disadvantages of kicking and striking techniques. He came up to the conclusion that real martial arts like ancient bujitsu must include striking and kicking techniques, throws, reverse joint locks and skills to resist an armed person. Then he decided to create a synthetic applied fighting system of practical use.

After learning from master of Okinava karate and founder of Shitoryu karate-do style Kenwa Mabuni, Sawayama founded the Centre for Tode Study at Kansay University. Tode is the general term for martial arts of Chinese origin in Okinawa.

This organization became the main centre  for study karate-do in Kansay region. Masters of different fighting styles gave seminars and classes here. He invited the founder of  Gojiryu style Miyagi Chijuni and Chinese master of Bahei Tzhuan style Hu Siangui 白鹤拳, whose method influenced a lot Gojiryu and Shitoryu schools, to give classes at Kansai university at the beginning of 1930s. Their performances and teaching methods promoted growing interest of people in Osaka nearby districts to Okinawa martial art.

Mabuni used traditional Okinawa karate methods when he trained Masaru. Classes were individual, and kata was paid much attention. However, this approach did not satisfy the young active man.  

Together with members of Centre for Tode Study he began to develop the methods of study of striking and kicking techniques and free  full-contact fighting system. Sawayama put three goals:

1. Avoid using atemi technique which its great ruining power with evil aims;
2. Make atemi technique safe to protect fighters from injuries;
3. Find the most efficient atemi technique.

Sawayama tried to achieve these goals in different ways which were not always successful.

On the first stage of his work Masaru developed and used three kinds of sparring: yakusoku-kumite, juiji-kumite, and senken-kumite. Later, they became one kind – jui-kumite. While yakusoku-kumite sparring (when the opponent says what he is going to do) students struck and kicked according to the instruction of the teacher. This made the activity relatively safe.

Jui-kumite is a free sparring. Sawayama described it as a kind of sparring when fighters use attacking and defensive techniques freely. However, attacker strikes and kicks and waits the opponent to use a protective technique. The main idea is to practice different protective techniques freely and counter-attack. It is go-no-sen method (skill to counter-attack after resisting opponent’s attack) with outlined roles.

At last, but not the least is sinken kumitte. It is a sparring with fighting swards which is a free bout with hikite. And it reminds sparring in modern WKF karate system with sun-do-me rules. This system of trainings developed in autumn of 1930 and became standard for Centre for Tode Study at Kansay University.

Active use of judo and jujitsu techniques in sparring made members of the Centre think if they did karate or if they created a new independent kind of budo which had the right to exist.

In autumn 1932 Sawayama Masaru, after seven years of studying at Law School, organized a meeting of the leaders of Centre for Tode Study: Yano Fumio, Yagi Suiti, Yamada Reniti, Nakano Mizuru, Kuroyama Takamaro, Takeiti Kazuaki and Tyadani Kintoshi. They declared the birth of a new kind of budo. They called it Dai Nippon Kempo (Kempo of Great Japan) and their Centre was called Dai Nippon Kempo Kai (Kempo of Great Japan Centre). Sawayama was elected President. It should be mentioned that all leaders of the Centre were masters of different fighting styles. Kuroyama Takamaru was a judo teacher of chief police department of Osaka. He was the best friend of Masaru and they together created the motto “Develop body and mind practicing judo and kempo to serve your country and people.”

This opposition made relations between Sawayama and Kenwa Mabuni complicated. However, the creator of a new fighting style and his teacher continued business relations. Mabuni followed his student’s thorough methodological search. He looked for new forms of sparring which made training process even more efficient.

Sawayama refused from basic kata practice and focused on free bouts. But experience showed that, firstly, sparring with restricted contact did not have real effect. Secondly, it did not make fighting safe because during the bout fighters could strike in contact by accident. That is why very soon after Dai Nippon Kempo Kai foundation its leaders began experiments with different kinds of protective clothes. Finally, they decided to use special equipment – bogu: helmet with bars for face protection (men), chest armour (dou), groin armour (matate), and boxing gloves (gurubu). This gear let strike and hit with all might, do throws, reverse joint locks in sparring and ground bouts. The main was that fighters could have full-contact strikes and kicks without serious injuries to the opponent. This became carte-de-visite of Nippon kempo.

Absence of weight categories, kicks in groin, training of special stamina and spirit are chief advantages of Sawayama’s systems. Systematic kumite practice is the way of fighting spirit development and control. It makes this type of exercise an important and efficient means of bringing up braveness.

Implementation of sparring practice in bogu let fighters use the widest range of techniques in the bout and have full-scale competitions. Sawayama’s students exchanged powerful strikes, did throws and reverse joint locks while standing and falling on the floor, continued to fight underground, skillfully using karate, boxing, judo and jiu-jitsu techniques. This kind of sparring was introduced to Dai Nippon Kempo Kai in 1934. This year the first official bogu fight tournament was held in main dojo (jp:  道場)of Kokai Association, members of which practiced Nippon kempo.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nippon_Kempo

Judo Book Review

Below is an excerpt from a book review by Dr AnnaMaria De Mars, 7th Dan, PhD.

Dr De Mars won a world's championship as a judo competitor in the 80's. She's also the mother of Ronda Roussey.

The full review may be read here.

I can think of four types of people who would like this book a lot.

First, coaches who have a more analytical approach to judo. I don't coach competitors any more, but when I did, this was totally me. When I saw everyone losing to a specific technique, say, sankaku jime, I would go home and work until I came up with a counter to it and my players wouldn't lose the same way again. I never could understand why other coaches didn't do this and their players lost the same way over and over.  This isn't to say the book is all discussion. I loved the section in Chapter 8 on using the head as a third arm and the section on combinations in Chapter 6.

Second, the competitor who has an intellectual approach to judo. That doesn't mean necessarily the player with the most education or highest IQ and it doesn't mean  that those competitors don't work out hard physically. Again, this was me when I was competing. I was always watching my own matches (once videotape became available), planning matches, analyzing why people won and lost. This doesn't mean I wasn't training my ass off, because I was, but the thinking about judo part and looking at it from every angle was yet one more tool to help me win. At the same time, I knew some highly educated people that just went into the dojo and did 1,000 uchikomis and ten rounds of randori and never got any smarter about why they were not able to throw their opponents.

Third, the older adult judo players - and by this I don't mean only senior citizens, but really, anyone who qualifies for masters divisions. These are people who have to show up at work on Monday and aren't doing the competitive circuit but they are interested in judo as an intellectual challenge as well as a physical one.There are a ton of people who love to talk about their ideas about judo. This book is for you, not only to give you more fodder for those discussions, but to enjoy when your friends aren't available and you still have judo on the brain.

If you are one of those people who talk about judo with your friends all the time - why person A is going to beat person B, what happened in the tournament last week and why the same team is going to win again - this is your book. 

So, am I saying  that this is "just a book for brainiacs"?  Well, no, I am saying, those people will LOVE The Judo Advantage.

The Monotony of Training

Below are excerpts from another excellent post at Must Triumph. The full post may be read here.

Philosophers should fight and fighters should read philosophy. Otherwise, a fragile society awaits.

By Sam Yang - Get similar updates here
BJ "The Prodigy" Penn will go down as one of the best in mixed martial arts history. Some of us, however, would like to believe that "The Prodigy" could have gone down as the best ever—possibly in all of combat sports. Yet, the fans have come to know two BJ Penns: the motivated Penn, who is a two-division champion, and the unmotivated Penn, who loses or has draws with lesser-skilled fighters. There have also been the long time-offs taken during Penn's prime, to find his motivation. From the UFC film crew, his former teammates, to the president of the UFC, Dana White himself, have all witnessed Penn's lackluster training. He is a prodigy, and sometimes that means only wanting to do things that come easy, and not the hard things that feel like work.

The Human Condition of Inactivity

Though Penn is a natural fighter, he's human like the rest of us. And like the rest of us, he's susceptible to the same mental trappings. He's a product of the same messaging many of us grew up with in the 80s and 90s; that motivation is the answer to everything, and everything must be fun. (The media needs you to believe this so you feel a need and urgency to keep buying crap. If you were content, you would be a terrible consumer.)
We're told that whatever it is we want to accomplish, we should feel like doing it. And if we don't, we should somehow motivate ourselves to feel like otherwise. Journalist and author of The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking Oliver Burkeman said this in a talk:

“You do not have to feel like doing something to do it. Such a liberating insight. All those motivational messages ... it seems like they will help you get things done but they actually erect this additional barrier. They say now, not only do you have to do the challenging-important thing, but you got to feel like doing it as well. And I think that’s a lot bigger and unnecessary demand.”

If we take the typical advice for getting things done, it often makes things worse. Doing it and also feeling like doing it; it's a double-whammy of stress. Yes, it may work for some people but the effects are usually temporary. Motivation isn't the same thing as endurance, it's not meant to last. Which is the point of self-help, you must keep returning to consume more motivation because you can't generate the will yourself.

The Monotony of Being a Champion

For most of his professional career, BJ Penn was his own head coach. He had long avoided training with the best camps. After another losing streak followed by another brief retirement, Penn took time to reassess. Like many of his fans, Penn knew he never lived up to the fighter he could have become. Penn sought out Greg Jackson, whom many consider to be the best coach in mixed martial arts, and undeniably one of its best minds.
It was with Jackson when Penn recognized the stumbling block that had been plaguing his career—his misguided perception of boredom. With every loss, Penn made excuses: he accused fighters of cheating, he came up with conspiracy theories, he blamed the athletic commission. Yet, there was no secret conspiracy out there holding him back. (The fans and the UFC itself wanted him to win.) His saboteur was himself, and his weakness wasn't physical, it was mental. He could face extraordinary obstacles without fear; what he couldn't face, what he couldn't defeat were simple and ordinary daily challenges. Penn said this in an interview:

“The talks Greg and I have together, he tells me, ‘BJ, if you’re going to go out there and do something that no one else has done before and win these three belts you’re going to have to put in [the work]. You’re going to be sitting in the apartment bored, looking at the ceiling and you’re going to have to go through all these things, go through all these emotions.

It’s starting to happen already. I’m getting further into camp, and I’m starting to see the monotony and repetitiveness take place. That’s why I stepped out of the sport before. All that stuff, it all plays, and all those mental mind games. It’s all how you handle it. Being tough mentally. At the end of the day, it’s a mental game, and you’re only as good as you think you are.”

As much natural ability BJ Penn had, he had a mental weakness: endurance. This had not only shown itself physically during his matches, by him gassing out, but also in his inability to maintain his training. He was on-and-off with fighting, staying in shape, and his martial arts progress. Penn could not endure. That's the irony many of his fans could not understand; he could fight men twice his size, people that would make us cower, yet he could not overcome minor things like boredom and emotions. Things most of us overcome regularly. Sometimes, true mental strength is pedestrian. Many fighters fight not because it is a challenge to them, it's often the opposite, they get a "high" off of it. (It is the constant chase for that "high" that is dangerous and self-destructive.) Now, being able to do those things that aren't exciting and fun, that takes courage and grit. But in our society, we are not likely to admire the trash collector or the public high school teacher (but we should).

Bertrand Russell on Fruitful Monotony

This is a life lesson mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970) discusses at some length in The Conquest of Happiness. In it, Russell writes:

“The capacity to endure a more or less monotonous life is one which should be acquired in childhood. Modern parents are greatly to blame in this respect; they provide their children with far too many passive amusements, such as shows and good things to eat, and they do not realise the importance to a child of having one day like another, except, of course, for somewhat rare occasions.

The pleasures of childhood should in the main be such as the child extracts from his environment by means of some effort and inventiveness. Pleasures which are exciting and at the same time involve no physical exertion, such, for example, as the theatre, should occur very rarely. The excitement is in the nature of a drug, of which more and more will come to be required, and the physical passivity during the excitement is contrary to instinct. A child develops best when, like a young plant, he is left undisturbed in the same soil. Too much travel, too much variety of impressions, are not good for the young, and cause them as they grow up to become incapable of enduring fruitful monotony.”

A life lesson that many of us never learn, but for those that do, a world of accomplishments and happiness awaits. I know it sounds counterintuitive but embracing boredom is how you rob boredom of its powers. Fleeing from boredom only allows it to dominate you. Think for a second what you could achieve if boredom was never an issue? Russell calls the productive embracing of boredom "fruitful monotony." In the realm of martial arts, it's called discipline. It's how people launch companies, build Apple and Facebook, go through a training camp, get their PhDs, and how hard-working fighters defeat prodigies. It's the mistake young lovers make; they think love only means excitement, but love is also the fruitful and tender monotony of spending the rest of your life with another person who wants to do the same with you.
Russell writes:

“I do not mean that monotony has any merits of its own; I mean only that certain good things are not possible except where there is a certain degree of monotony. ... A boy or young man who has some serious constructive purpose will endure voluntarily a great deal of boredom if he finds that it is necessary by the way. But constructive purposes do not easily form themselves in a boy’s mind if he is living a life of distractions and dissipations, for in that case his thoughts will always be directed towards the next pleasure rather than towards the distant achievement.”

Physical toughness is not the same as mental toughness, though one should be fit in both arenas. Philosophy for the body and martial arts for the mind; philosophers should fight and fighters should read philosophy. Otherwise, a fragile society awaits.