Conception over perfection.

To envisage is to contemplate or devise something. We aim for perfection but invariably fall short. Thats okay though. The real talent lies in coming up with the plan, everybody knows that stuff never goes right in the execution of that plan. That should not be a reason to avoid something. We can train in a way that promotes fluidity of the mind, if a chosen course of action or technique fails we can reorganise or restructure to begin again. During times of stress we don't always get the luxury of throwing the optimal strike from the optimal stance. Anyone who has taken part in any combat scenario can appreciate that, but we deal with it. Sometimes even in times of great calm, during meditation for example, a spanner gets thrown in the works. A strange sensation, or a glimpse of something or a full on moment of complete understanding. One of the strangest things that has happened to me whilst I was meditating was that I disappeared! Hard to describe really but I became so aware of the things around me that I lost any perspective of myself. How did I deal with it? I think I decided it was the coolest thing that had ever happened to me and without panic reorganised and restructured and began again. If you wish to really practice Martial Arts you cannot slack in the cultivation of the internal systems of the body. Strengthen all parts of your physical body but if you neglect the energy systems at work within yourself you have only half trained and you will only ever half train. The energy systems relate much more closely to your health and well being. In my experience of Martial Artists I have noticed a strange dichotomy of many. On the one hand an acceptant, tolerant and of flexible mind bunch, on the other hand an unbending judgemental even borderline spiteful bunch. The latter is often brought to the fore when the internal arts are brought up. This is very evident in my "mother tounge martial art", there is a clear divide of camps. Really it is coming from people who should know better and conduct themselves more appropriately but their collective fear and lack of respect seems to be debilitating them. The previous Master of the style was a practitioner of the internal arts and discussion with the current Master would indicate that he was a practioner of some advance skill. This seems to be lost on some, their scoffing and pseudo-sapient attitude is offensive to the style that has brought me much pleasure in the many years I have been practicing. There are very few true Masters out there but there is one to which we should always defer, our own selves. Spend even a few minutes with that guy everday and you will see an improvement in many things. That is the very basic beginnings of internal training, is it really that hard to conceive?

Choose your weapon

Weaponry is a huge part of any traditional style. It is a huge selling point for many but is often reserved for the more advanced students. The reasoning behind that train of thought: you should have a fairly advanced understanding of the styles empty hand rudiments before you get anywhere near a wepon so you can fully operate it. Also there are health and safety issues of having untrained individuals swinging poles and blades around. Ironic when you think that the entire point of a weapon is to cause harm to someone! Traditionally of course the weapon was used to gain an advantage on an opponent especially if you happen to not be so adroit. So we seem to have lost our connection to the classic weaponry. Most weapons sprang from the use they had in the fields as farming tools. They evolved from apparatus that served man to apparatus that could sever a man. They function as a gruesome reminder to ages past and to the martial heritage of our chosen art. Times have changed and we have more efficient weapons but training the classic weapons should remain, we truly benefit from the inclusion of such things in the styles. The appreciation grows, we see how devastating the techniques can be and most normal folk accept that they do not want to see that weapon in action. In this way we see the way of peace in the paraphernalia of war. The combative merit should be taught above all, through that ferociousness and the control that the practitioner displays we find the hidden beauty whilst recognising the ugliness of it. This is why I am againt the musical kata and musical weaponry forms that many people enjoy! Not only is there next to no combative merit to the techniques they distance themselves from the function of a weapon to the point of irresponsible. The showboating and the way in which the weaponry is treated so lightly troubles me. Perhaps I over analyse, but when it comes to leverage over someone perhaps you should think more carefully before employing it?

Sometimes it gets tough

Well it's been a busy month for Breakthrough so apologies for neglecting the blog. Like many Martial Artists out there I also work a full time job and the month of June is the biggest challenge for me in my "Other Life". Breakthough most recently has put San Shou into focus, the tough contact sport which is the basis of many Wu Shu tournaments. It is so much fun, but is at the end of the day a contact sport. Thats right, I choose to engage in fight sports it makes me happy despite my senescent body! I teach a lot of good students and a lot of good people. One of whom recently and sadly passed away in very tragic circumstances. Big D or Tenacious D will be missed but never forgotten. He had the ability to inject fun into proceedings and his presence in a room, and the efforts that he made,served as a shining example to all who took their ensuing steps into the Martial World. Big D's driven nature happily continues on within some of the other students. Yes they are all progressing and getting tougher and tougher to handle on the mats. A good instructor should spar with his students, surely a great instructor should get beaten by them? Then it means he has nothing more to give? I managed to get a good couple of black eyes from the last big fight sesh that we did. My father with excellent comic timing (and a pinch of salt) asked when next I saw him "So have you finally met your match?". One of my newest and youngest students asked how it had happened at the next class, when I told him he still failed to comprehend and incredulously blurted "how?"

We engage in life and in sport for various reasons. Nowhere near the top of the list is the "to get hurt" option but it does happen due to the nature of the respective beasts. I am surprised at peoples surprise in seeing bruises or scars. Pursue it and try it out, sometimes things don't go according to plan. I can continue pointing the way from my understanding none the less. As for Big D he will too. His role has changed but he is right there, in our hearts and in our laughter as he always was. Wherever he is now he still has something to teach us, his understanding however will be far more vast than mine. Take it easy till next time Derek. I'm sure you still owe me a scrap!!

Yin Yang type of thing.

I really enjoyed teaching last nights' Breakthrough class. I run a Kickboxing class before hand and it turned out to be a pretty sweaty, full on affair. Full of agressive contact drills and a big chunk of sparring. The problem was that I had always intended to teach bits and pieces from Tai Chi in the second class. Well that wasn't the problem in fact, the issue was that all of the guys who do the Kickboxing stay on to get the Breakthrough training. Maximum respect to them all, I've always felt that training intensely for longer than an hour is too much to ask of anyone. In this scenario we were going from straight forward "Grunt and Punt" which is the best way to train Kickboxing, (also I feel that term should get as much recognition as "Ground and Pound" or "Sprawl and Brawl") to the seemingly more gentle and extremely more complex art of Tai Chi. So I had to bridge the gap. What better way to do it than with combat application from the very first few steps of a Tai Chi form? It is often the misconception that Tai Chi is gentle, within it lies some of the greatest and most painful techniques you could find. I was so happy to see the guys embrace the "take something hard and pointy and put it somewhere fragile" (minds out of the gutter folks combat is a serious business). That is as thorough as all combat needs to get really, which shows that Kickboxing and Tai Chi are as equally complex as they are simple! I don't know how many times I said "There is always something you can hit" and was really pleased to see the students apply that and come up with some awesome stuff! We moved on to some basic pushing hands, which in my opinion is actually the most advanced type of combat. So we moved in a beautiful cycle that took us from the Yang that is "Grunt and Punt" to the Yin of "Yield and Shield" (oh thats good!!)
I think that we should approach all our training from this holistic point of view. We cannot neglect any part of our training. At first it may seem that you find no use for something, or that it's not your thing. That's fine but I think that if we look deeper we see that the same principles often apply. It is easy to think about it in martial terms, a fight is still a fight no matter how you approach it. We will find victory in that fight by applying much of the same strategic measures. We will benefit from having hardened our bodies and from sharpening our minds. We will fight to our opponents weakness and not to our strengths. We will exploit a moment and through constant good practice we will find those moments more frequently. It's a great game to be in! I think that todays' meditation should be based around the principles of pushing hands "it is wise to yield but never be weak"

Martial Secrets revealed!!

It's time for a Breakthrough, but how do we go about getting one? Training has to follow a plan. That plan has to develop over time and has to have progression. We start small but move on. This is how we improve physically too, by overloading our bodies. Our bodies love that, we train but if we maintain the intensity and duration we do not improve. We have to use it up, we have to max it out, we have to get uncomfortable and sure enough our body will adapt and develop. These are of course the basic principles of all physical exercise ie weight lifting, cardio training and athletic training, so how do we go about improving on technique? Practice of course, but practice does not always develop technique alone we have to have good practice. Some of my technique has in fact reversed despite my length of training. My butterfly stance (a weird crouching  twisty type of stance seen in the butterfly knife set) has become awful! I used to be alright at it but I carry a hip injury which means I can no longer have a good practice of it. So what can I do? I'm going to have to develop a way in which I can do it without proper technique. I'm going to have to learn how to wing it! It is an essential skill in Martial Arts. Practice a hand block or a kick block, then have your opponent go for you, I mean really go for you and you will see that your practiced movements have had to adapt. Controversial right? Absolutely, we are told that technique always beats brute force. It's not true guys, not in real life. The technique has to adapt but it has to be understood in the first place so that you can adapt it. In the real world, where you are more likely to need your martial arts we are subject to many more factors. Weather, surface, clothing you are wearing, how much you have had to drink etc etc... You will never be technically correct trying to throw a spin kick whilst wearing jeans, on the street, in the rain after 3 pints! But what if you had to, well I can assure you, you adapt. Taking the technique that has been drilled into your muscle memory you will pull something off. It might be cool, it might not, but I can safely say it won't look like the kick you threw at your last grading.
So what is the secret if it isn't in the technique? There is no secret, it all comes down to the training method. What if you had been training how to throw a spin kick whilst wearing jeans, on the street, in the rain after 3 pints? It would look a whole lot nicer than if you hadn't. So what next? how do we get this breakthough? By pressure testing it of course, by having someone try and "do one on you". The merits of pressure testing stuff have been advocated for a long time, but no one ever talks about how much fun it is! You get roughed up, sometimes you fail but always you are forced to wing it! Thats life too, you have to learn for yourself, you have to make mistakes you have to make it up! However you can do it from a place of understanding. That understanding has to come from you though from your own breakthroughs, not because someone else told you it would work but because YOU made it work! Keep training, get as much info as you can and give it a good practice! Todays meditation- a mistake only becomes an error if it is allowed to continue

Be of one mind, your own.

I finished the filming of the latest set of "2 Minute Breakthroughs" at Mission Training Systems on Tuesday. The videos will be appearing very soon on Breakthrough Combats' Youtube channel. The Filming part is the easy part and a huge thank you goes to the Strength and Conditioning coach Johnny Elliot for giving his time. He was very informative and natural on the camera. Johnny and I had a discussion about what I was trying to achieve and it was very simple for him to translate that into some practical exercises to try at home.

The whole point behind the videos is to give some inspiration and ideas for people to give it a go! The hardest part starts after you have done them! The scrutiny of others begins. The videos are not intended to be a "This is how it should be done" type of thing. They are a "This is one way in which you could try" type of thing, like advice, good or bad it does not need to be heeded. Whenever you do a technique based video it amazes me how much hatred it inspires in people. Of course I have seen some awful stuff out on Youtube, non functional or plain silly but never has it created so much anger within that I couldn't let it go. Like bad advice (and sadly some good advice) I just ignore it. I was surprised when Johnny said that he has also received some abuse for his Strength and conditioning coaching techniques. It's crazy that someone out there in the big bad internet would like to offer an uninformed baseless opinion about anything, about everything even!

Anyway this is not the case with the new series of 2 Minute Breakthroughs, Johnny did an excellent job and made it very specific to the Combat Arts. It all comes down to justification. My whole martial career has had a constant justification required. I am surrounded by peers, good friends and good Martial Artist, many of them higher grades than me. But their Martial Arts are not my Martial Arts. How they go about teaching or expressing what they want to do is no concern of mine, that sounds harsh but I mean it in the best way. I respect them and their opinions of course but we cannot become robots. We all have to add our own personality to it, that is how things evolve. Provided that the teachings do not jeopardise the students safety, be it through unsafe training methods or false information then it's all good. Each to their own. I am getting more experienced everyday and have grown tired of justifying myself to others. This is one of the main driving forces behind starting Breakthrough. It is scary to not have the security of others but the freedom it provides in teaching more than makes up for it. If I can justify it to myself and my students then that is all I need.

So go out and try something. If you enjoy it keep it up. If you don't then stop. You don't need to belittle or badmouth it. There are many options and most of us are out there trying to give a helping hand. So what should todays meditation be? I think it would be fitting if I said that is entirely up to you.....

Getting your priorities straight

Obviously I am a great believer in the things that can be achieved with Martial Arts. Not just through physical  training, but through the qualities that are inherent within its teachings: discipline, respect and humanity. One of the greatest exports that Britain has is its pugilistic merits. " The British have always been handy with their fists" to quote a book from the turn of the century that's title escapes me!
Boxing has been removed from the school curriculum in the UK since 1962, but there has been a serious campaign in recent years to get it back up there.

"Chairman of the Amateur Boxing Association Keith Walters said boxing in schools could benefit children by boosting their overall fitness, reaching out to disengaged young people and improving their self-esteem, discipline and self confidence."

I couldn't agree more but boxing is stuck with the label of violence, but only to those who do not practice it. If you are a martial artist of any discipline/style I think that you too would see that this label is unfair! It is often equated that cultivating a healthy sense of competition is damaging to our youth. Well I say that is the biggest pile of bullshit I've heard. To send your children off into the world with no real sense of the hardship or unfairness of life is irresponsible. Yet here, whilst in school, we can cement values in our primary kids that will take them through life, standing them in good stead for adulthood. Teach them that the world owes them nothing but does not hold it against them if they try their hardest. Sometimes no matter how hard you try it may not be enough, but respect is earned from oneself and from ones peers by trying. Compete in safety against someone who holds the same principles as you and you will find a true friend not an enemy. I digress, my true point here is that the combat arts have never received the true backing of the people that can make a difference:the ones who hold the purse strings. It's all about the bandwagon for UK Sport and Sport Scotland. I've been there looking for funding in previous years-no chance, despite some of our brightest talent emerging from the field of contact sport. I hold up any amateur practitioner of fight sports over that of a professional Football player as a role model any day. We train hard and juggle more things for less reward to be labelled as thugs. I know fighters I've been around them, in various countries, to know they are the nicest group of people you could meet. Why? because they have discipline, respect and humanity. In Britain amateur boxing engenders those qualities. No one cared until the Olympics of 2012 where we cleaned up. Support was suddenly very forthcoming from the government. Sports Minister Hugh Robertson has recently warned of government intervention as the sport is in serious danger of losing £10 million of IOC(International Olympic Committee) funding over a battle between governing bodies.What is more important Hugh? the lack of development in the sport or the financial investment? So what is today's message? Stay true to what you love and stay in love with what is true to you.