Martial Arts Blog

Hi,

Ever had your back to the wall? Even worse, has an attacker had you cornered? The best advice I can give in those situations is to keep your eyes open and get ready for some straight forward attack and defence.

Being stuck in a corner or having your back to the wall encourages the attacker to press forward and take advantage. Get ready to block his attacks, but no scrappy blocks, if you miss his punches and kicks he’ll slaughter you. Counter attacks work very well at getting out from a corner if you can pull one off quickly enough. More often than not though, you’re going to be in for some up close fighting where any fancy blocks and counters simply won’t have enough room to work.

The upper cut is a great tool for right up close fighting. You can quickly pull your arm back from a block and uppercut the guy under the chin or even use the uppercut to attack his solar plexus.

When cornered, remember to lean forward and be coiled up like a spring ready to pounce at the attacker and break out of the corner or away from the wall as soon as he gives a second’s pause.

If you block an incoming punch don’t forget to put your hand on the guy’s bicep from the outside, locking his arm in towards his body. This will give you leverage, you can push his bicep across his body blocking punches from his other arm and it will also turn his whole body that way. It’ll create enough of a hole for you to escape. And hit the guy’s exposed side on the way out.

If you’re desperate shove your hand on the guys face and push backwards. Try and cover his eyes with your fingers. No need to scratch his eyes or face, if you do that and lose he will kill you in the corner. Push his head back, this will cause him to lose his balance and his punches will become very inaccurate as he can’t focus on you to attack. He will instinctively try and kick you and attack your arm. You only need to hold the hand in his face and punch backwards for a couple of seconds and he will move backwards as he body will be bending that way. Enough time for you to push forward and take back some ground.

Thanks,
Andy

Hi,

One thing you’ll notice fairly quickly when learning martial arts is the moves in the class room don’t always work in real fights. Usually that’s a hard lesson to learn if you don’t try sparring in a class setting first and instead learn it in a street fight.

The first thing you’ve got to learn is that real fights are A LOT more jittery. There’s way more adrenaline and tensions and strength in your body and your moves. Real fights can get very fast and very scrappy, those elegant and powerful blocks you practiced in class get quickly turned into frantic slaps against your opponent’s arms in order to defect his punches. The only way to be able to pull off really good and effective blocks and counter-attacks in a real fight is to practise them in a sparring session and keep on practising until you know the moves and counter attacks without thinking.

Learning combos is a great way of stringing together moves, and making sure you follow through with a short series of attacks against your real-life opponents. BUT, they do not work very well for defensive purposes in a real fight. You can not relay on Dojo taught sequences of blocking in a real fight – you’ll simply be overwhelmed and forced to abandon them and get scrappy.

Thanks,
Andy

Hi

When in a real street fight a headlock is usually one of the most common wrestling moves used by professionals and amateurs alike. Ideally you’d want to bend your arm around the attacker’s neck bringing him to a bent over position facing the ground. Then you’d want to grab your wrist with your free arm to secure the headlock and give you some additional power and control. Remember to control your headlock, if you don’t know what you’re doing you could easily choke the person to death, which is the problem I have with most amateurs using this move.

In a fast and furious fight though I’d advise using a half-headlock. This is basically the same as the fist headlock only you don’t grab your wrist with your free hand, you keep that hand free. You can still do some damage with a partial headlock using only one arm which makes it effective with practise but the chances of escape are much higher. On the bright side you do have your other hand free to defend against other attackers or a weapon the opponent may still have. You can also supplement you’re half-headlock with knee strikes to the face, and if the opponent gets out of it you can quickly attack him with both hands and feet while he’s regaining his balance.

I’ll go over how to escape from a headlock in the next blog entry, as headlocks are very common all amateurs use them as their first wrestling go to move.

Thanks,
Andy

Hi, 

One of the smartest things you can do when faced with several opponents is run. But what if they chase after you? Luckily there is a pattern to being chased. The pursuer often runs directly behind you and tries to grab you with their arms, to pull you back towards them or pull you down. 

I’d suggest practising running while glancing over your shoulder in the dojo, have someone chase you so you get experience of judging distance between you and them and you can over come that feeling of panic when they close in. 

When your pursuers is reasonably close behind you a good move is to come to a quick stop and do a back kick, if you hit them you’ll do some major damage as the kick a pretty powerful and they’re running into it. You’ll need to practise this though to make sure you don’t screw it up in a real-life fight.

Another technique to train on is being chased, feeling the pursuer’s hands on your back and then quickly stopping, turning around to face them, move to the sde and grabbing their arms. From that position you should be able to do several takedown moves. 

Even quickly darting to the side, letting your attacker continue running forward for two steps, and then attacking their exposed side would be a good idea. 

Thanks, 

Andy    

Hi,

Change is a foot at Learn Martial Arts Online! I’ve decided to move ahead with completing an interactive online training course to learn some good self-defence moves. Bare with me through this as until it starts to make money it will look a little rough around the edges, if it becomes profitable I’ll make sure the course has all the bells and whistles.

Luckily the website’s been steadily getting around 8,000 visitors a month so I think the course will offer those visitors what they’re looking for.

Don’t worry, I fully intend to keep the blog, newsletter and forum going. I’ll give all my current newsletter subscribers a discount on the course.

Thanks,

Andy

Hi, 

When you join a martial arts club you’ll usually be given a trail period. After you’ve survived a few weeks and you’re obviously intending to stick around for a bit longer, the sensei will arrange your insurance/licensing information.  Now this is the odd part. Licensing means very different things to very different countries. Some states in the USA will need you to have a permit saying your hands are classed as dangerous weapons and will issue you with a card you carry around. In the UK basically you pay £50 and that covers you for up to £1 million public indemnity insurance for the year (no, you don’t get any money for yourself like in the USA that just pays hospital bills up to £1 million). Licensing in the UK just means you join the martial arts association (karate kung-fu etc all have their own associations). 

Some martial arts clubs, and some countries will tell you that once you learn martial arts you can only use it for self-defence of yourself, or to defend an officer of the law (UK). Some clubs will take the view that you only use martial arts in self-defence to avoid serious harm (Canada).  Oh, and I’ll share one more thing, once you’re on that martial arts licensing list if you’re country is ever invaded expect them to eventually give you a talking to. The soviet union always look for rifle/handgun owners, martial artists and anyone with sufficient “training” to start an insurgency once they took over a county (Afghanistan some eastern Europe depending on how occupied they were with fighting the Nazis). So you’ve been warned lol! 

Thanks,  Andy 

Hi,

Speed is everything in a fight, and it’s also soemthign that most martial artists sacrifice in training to work on cooler moves. Everyone would rather practice take-down moves, combos and new styles but you should always set aside 10 minutes to practice making an initial strike from a laid back, standing position. Improve your speed. Practice standing normally and then suddenly lashing out with a powerful and accurate punch to the nose, then practice attacking using a short combo (a punch tot he nose, a punch to the throat and a kick to the shin) also from a normal standing position.

 Beginners often have better punching reflexes than better trained martial artists because that’s all they’re practsing standing and quickly punching. It’s often something we leave behind in training.

Keep your speed, it would be fantastic to assume a non-threatening pose when confronted by a bully, see they punch comign and quickly spring into action still getting the first punch even though they beat you to the start. Remember the “right hook” is a slower move than the direct martial arts punches as you have to swing your arm back and “chamber it” before punching. Keeping your speed up is a simple and very effective method of training.

Thanks,

Andy

Hi,

 I’d like to wish all my members and visiters to this site a merry christmas and a happy new year.

 I wonder what 2008 will bring to martial arts, it’s not that likly a new art or style will develop and quickly rise to fame (unless a famous martial art movie star creates it and invests in dojos). In 2007 the main gain in martial arts was the use of the internet, especially in clubs filming demonstations of their katas and set pieces and posting them on sites like youtube and their own websites.

I’ll need to update the site again inorder to include this new visual elemnt in learning martial arts online.

Thanks,

Andy

Hi,

 The concept of mixed martial arts is an old one, every warrior knew several different martial arts (you had to in order to stay alive usually) but these were never really taught as a system until recently. Every MMA class will have a different style, one may be 50% Karate, 20% kung-fu and 30% boxing.

Traditional karate or traditional anything is basically that one system with a historical perspective. MMA won’t teach you how to bow or do katas or any “showy” piece of body movement art. It will be all combat related. As suck traditional martial arts are said to teach students more respect and discipline. The trouble is that not all of the moves you will learn will be used in that manner in a fight, in MMA what you see is what you use.

One choice that’s often overlooked is shoudl I be the best at a particual martial art? i.e. Traditional Karate or Traditional Kung-fu or should I be a jack of all trades and master of none i.e. a mixed martial arts class?

Thanks,

Andy