“You’re starting to come to the realization that there’s less difference than one might expect between the experience of practices that are hyper-real versus those that are historically grounded. You’re taking your first steps down an interesting path. Keep taking the additional steps, and move beyond questions of definition. What do you see . . . ?”
“With something like a song, or a martial arts form, you go in and there’s more. It’s not that you go in and you dominate it and it closes off and then you have it – you’ve mastered it. Something else always appears . . .”
“Attaining a black belt is the ultimate martial arts achievement.”
“It’s better to learn Tai Chi from a Chinese teacher.”
“All fights go to the ground.”
When we hear myths like this being bandied around, how are we supposed to fight them, and make people see that they are false? Well for Neil Hall, co-founder of LCTKD (formerly London Chinatown TaeKwonDo), this is actually the wrong question . . .
Interest in the Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA) is growing. And one of its big questions is whether it’s possible to rediscover a lost or disrupted art, by studying and copying the techniques depicted in the old fightbooks (training manuals) . . . ?
As a training tool, sparring has loads of physical / technical benefits.
But according to Professor Janet (Jay) O’Shea – who is both an academic and a martial arts practitioner – sparring has all kinds of sociopsychological benefits too.
Here are five key points from a lecture she gave on this last week . . .
One of my female martial arts blogger friends, Megan, has been training in Lightsaber Combat for the last few months. It looks like they have a lot of fun – but until now I didn’t really get it.
But having attended a lecture on this topic yesterday by Dr Ben Judkins (of Kung Fu Tea fame), a few things have fallen into place. Here are the key points he made, which suddenly put this seemingly bizarre art into a very interesting light . . .