Articles & Blog

When I worked as a Doorman, I would spend many hours on my feet getting people into and out of the venue. I would be observing and monitoring problems, making sure everyone was safe and sometimes getting physical to remove trouble makers. If you were to observe my posture throughout the night, it would be in constant change. From the upright confident posture needed for the front of house, to the fluidity needed to get through the crowd, to the fighting postures needed to deal with attackers, to...

When we take a higher level view of the hundreds of practices that encompass the Martial Arts or Combat sports we see that, regardless of origin, cultural background or goal, they boil down to our ability to produce or deal with forces. Even largely solo training methods like Iaido are reliant on a refined understanding of forces in our body to produce smoothness and clarity in the methods. This higher level view of the Martial Arts, peeling away the layers of context from them, gives us an oppo...

Training is a constant search for effectiveness and results, it doesn’t matter whether we are a bodybuilder, a martial artist, a violinist or the purveyor of any other skill. When we train or practice, we are searching for some type of improvement and aiming for our method to be as efficient as possible.To maximise the effectiveness of our practice we must be aware of its effects. We could measure our progress via external means with our results in competition, our ability to defeat a trai...

With a large number of Martial Arts Academies, Gyms and Dojos closing their doors to students in order to stall the movement of Covid-19 though the community it can be a depressing or confusing time for some. Especially those (like Myself) who spend huge amounts of time in the Gym or Dojo training who are now facing a enormous hole in their weekly schedule.Many people are spreading sound information on best practices for maintaining hygiene, social distancing etc. However, I think there is proba...

In this article we will be exploring a phenomena that naturally arises when interacting with someone who has highly developed body skill. This is the feeling that your own efforts are returned to you, or that when trying to apply effort in a specific direction it makes another area tighter or closer. The experience is one that can be frustrating, disconcerting and exhausting to be on the receiving end of.Here we introduce a few of the reasons for this strange sensation to lay a brief groundwork ...

Name : Riantsoa Tsu RasolonjatovoDescribe a little of your martial background or related practices.Martial artist and practicioner for 20+ years, I started my martial journey with Yoseikan Budo, a Japanese « mixed » martial arts, when I was 15 years old. As I grew older, I felt that I was training more for competition than for efficiency. Therefore, I started looking for a more « traditional » martial art. By chance, I was lucky enough to find a 8th dan Aikido shihan in m...

‘We don’t do sport, sport is limited’ … ‘traditional arts are not realistic’ … ‘How would you use that flipping stuff in a street fight!?’ …. ‘Why would you want to fight on the ground’ …. “there are no rules in a street fight” … “ we train for self defence not to fight professionals”If you are a martial artist, the chances are that you have considered these positions, responded to th...

One thing that always struck me about some of the old body training methods was how simple they looked. Someone would just move their arms a certain way, take some simple steps or even just stand there with their arms in a static position. It all looked so very simple, so very normal. That was until you came to practice them, really practice them, and like the layers of an onion more and more complexity, challenge and difficulty would be revealed. This is part of the paradox of Body method train...

In this article I am going to explore one of my favorite joint and tissue rehabilitation techniques, one which can be used in addition to modern rehabilitation and physiotherapy techniques. This is a method that I have used for several serious joint and tissue injuries over the years and one which I always turn too first whenever an injury occurs.For many injuries, usually caused by hard sparring or competition, the time frame quoted for recovery has been cut in half as a result of this approach...

Movement is the bedrock of martial arts, whether looking at footwork, how we punch or kick, how we move another person or even how we stand still (paradoxically!). There are, of course, many ways that we train to move that are specific to our martial practice, in this article we will briefly look at the merit of deviation away from the standard or common patterns of a Martial Style of movement. Every martial art, under examination and through a specific lens is simply movement, movement in assoc...