Category: Martial Arts

Once again, we’re giving our readers the opportunity to elect their favorite martial artists to the prestigious Black Belt Hall of Fame!

Using this online voting form, you may nominate any individual who deserves recognition for his or her contributions to the martial arts.

You may nominate artists in as many categories as you wish, but remember that (a.) it takes only one vote to nominate a candidate for a particular award and (b.) awards may not be presented in all categories.

We kindly suggest selecting only martial artists who have achieved recognition beyond their immediate schools.

Nominations for the 2014 Hall of Fame categories will be tabulated, and the winners will be those who have received a significant number of nominations in a given category.

In some cases, a martial artist may be nominated even if he or she has been largely overlooked in the readers’ balloting but, in the opinion of Black Belt editorial staff, deserves to be in the running for Hall of Fame membership.

Once votes for the nominees are tallied, a panel composed of Black Belt staff members will make the final selections.

The winners will be announced in Black Belt magazine and on BlackBeltMag.com.

CLICK HERE TO SUBMIT YOUR NOMINATIONS!

Source: Black Belt Magazine

If you want to be a swordsman, you have your work cut out for you. For true samurai education, you must learn how to properly handle and maintain a real blade. You must master the basic body-sword mechanics and train safely and effectively in two-person and solo forms. You must study combat strategy, etiquette and the philosophy of the warrior — all elements of the samurai code of bushido. It’s a tall order, to be sure.

For guidance in this quest for samurai education, which is one of the most popular in the martial arts, Black Belt turned to Toshishiro Obata, a renowned master in samurai training who now heads the International Shinkendo Federation in Los Angeles. Before delving into the essence of samurai education and samurai training according to Obata, some background information will help put things in perspective.

Your path to meaningful samurai sword practice starts with this FREE download!
Samurai Weapons Philosophy: How the Samurai Sword Can
Enhance Life Rather Than Simply Take It

The Beginning of Toshishiro Obata’s Samurai Education

In 1966 Obata left a small town in Gunma prefecture, Japan, and headed for Tokyo to begin a career in the martial arts. He found himself at Yoshinkan Honbu Dojo, the birthplace of aikido, where he became an uchi-deshi, or live-in student, under headmaster Gozo Shioda. Obata stayed there for seven years as a student and instructor, eventually teaching the Tokyo Metropolitan Riot Police course. During that time, his samurai education in Japanese swordsmanship began — specifically, when he observed several demonstrations by Taizaburo Nakamura, headmaster of nakamura-ryu.

Obata left the Yoshinkan in 1973 to pursue swordsmanship full time. He studied and achieved high rank in many other renowned Japanese schools, including ioriken battojutsu, toyama-ryu, yagyu shinkage-ryu, kashima shin-ryu and Ryukyu kobudo. He also joined the Tokyo Wakakoma, Japan’s elite group of stuntmen and fight choreographers, and was responsible for the introduction and increasing popularity of aikido on Japanese television and in movies. During this time, he also won seven consecutive All-Japan Target-Cutting Championships.

A Samurai Education System of His Own

Throughout his studies, it became clear to Obata that although each sword school had its own strengths, none of them taught a complete, comprehensive system. In Japan, traditional schools aren’t permitted to change or even expand on their original curriculum. Each art is considered a living, breathing historical treasure that must be preserved as faithfully and precisely as possible.

The inheritor of a traditional school is therefore duty-bound to teach techniques, training methods and ideals exactly as he learned them. To change anything would be seen as disrespectful to the art’s founder. It was for this reason that Obata, having mastered many of the old schools, came to America in 1980 to start a comprehensive samurai education system known as shinkendo Japanese swordsmanship.

For this samurai education system, Obata chose the name “shinkendo” for a variety of reasons. The word can be translated in several ways, but perhaps the most important one is “way of the real sword.” That doesn’t just refer to practicing with a real sword; it also means studying real, complete swordsmanship — a vital element in one’s overall samurai training.

In shinkendo, the major aspects of swordsmanship are broken down into five areas of study: suburi, goho battoho, tanren kata, tachiuchi and tameshigiri. These separate fields of samurai training are like five interlocking rings, each one relating to and providing context for the components of a student’s samurai education. This provides a comprehensive foundation and allows students to view all the techniques from a bigger perspective.

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Samurai Training Methods: The First Ring of Shinkendo

Suburi, the first ring of study in this samurai education system, teaches basic sword and body exercises. These include proper posture, effective movement and balance, and basic sword swinging. These essential elements are the foundation on which the other rings of samurai training are based.

Without an effective stance, you can’t generate power and you’re easily knocked off-balance. Without knowing the essentials of gripping and swinging the sword, all movements become as meaningless as dance steps.

Suburi drills include assuming basic kamae (ready stances), making simple cuts and practicing hard stops, follow-through swings and transitions from one cut to another.

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Samurai Training Methods: The Second Ring of Shinkendo

Goho battoho, the next ring of study in Obata’s system of samurai education, is based on the five methods of combative drawing and cutting. Here, you learn how to handle the sword and wear it properly. You also learn how to swiftly draw it from its scabbard and cut down an opponent in one move. After that comes the act of returning the blade to its sheath.

The five basic draws of shinkendo are the following:

• nukiuchi (horizontal)
• migi kesagiri (right-to-left diagonal)
• kiriage (rising cut)
• hidari kesagiri (left-to-right diagonal)
• hineri tsuki (thrust)

Advanced forms of goho battoho include drawing in multiple directions, making multiple follow-up cuts and block/attack combinations.

Samurai Training Methods: The Third Ring of Shinkendo

Next in Obata’s samurai training system is tanren kata, which is composed of solo forms designed to refine and reinforce your technique. The word “tanren” refers to the phase of sword making in which impurities are removed from the steel and, through repeated hammering and folding, an even, flawless blade is created. In the shinkendo system of samurai training, these kata teach you how to effect smooth transitions and advanced, dynamic body-sword movements. Balance and agility are also emphasized, as are insight into combat strategy and the effective application of techniques.

Exhaustive repetition of the basic forms helps you build muscle memory and instinctive reflexes. The more complex forms focus on developing total concentration of mind, body and spirit — the evidence of a comprehensive samurai education in action.

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Samurai Training Methods: The Fourth Ring of Shinkendo

Tachiuchi, the fourth ring of study in the shinkendo system of samurai training, roughly translates as “strike and response” and refers to partner-practice drills. You train with other students to learn about distance, agility and timing — and to experience the power needed to strike and block effectively against a living, moving opponent.

No armor is worn during tachiuchi, and students use bokken, or hardwood sparring swords. They’ve been proved more effective than light bamboo shinai because the latter don’t mimic the feel of a real weapon. Although using hardwood swords might sound dangerous, it’s not because the effort you’ve put into mastering the other rings enables you to engage in the drills with a controlled body and mind.

When you’ve thoroughly worked the basic levels of samurai training and can strike your target with pinpoint accuracy — when you can stop your strike instantly and redirect your weapon and your body with equal ease — you can practice tachiuchi with great speed and power while remaining safe. Even better, you’ll be keeping your partner free from harm during samurai training.

Samurai Training Methods: The Fifth Ring of Shinkendo

The final ring is tameshigiri, or using a real sword against a real target. At this stage of samurai education, when done properly, it serves as an unforgiving mirror with which you can measure how well you’ve learned the essentials of swordsmanship in your samurai training: blade angle, grip, power, control and so on.

It must be stressed, however, that tameshigiri has no practical value when done outside the context of disciplined samurai education. Whether you’re using a bokken or shinken (real sword), you should treat the weapon with respect, never handling it casually or showing off. Unless all facets of shinkendo are taken seriously and used to improve each other, target cutting is nothing more than a circus act — a display considered far outside the tenets of the samurai code of bushido.

The Mind

To really comprehend the samurai sword, you must understand the mindset and attitude of the samurai warrior cultivated through samurai training. Obata teaches these ideals through the 12 precepts of shinkendo and what he calls the eightfold path. Together, they define the philosophy of Japanese swordsmanship and provide insight into the samurai code of bushido that can lead to better martial arts abilities and ultimately a better life. Explaining those 20 principles of samurai training is beyond the scope of this article. For more information to further your samurai education, see Obata’s book Shinkendo Japanese Swordsmanship.

About the Author:
Matthew Lynch has studied shinkendo under Toshishiro Obata for many years and runs his own branch school, Mashuu Dojo, in Van Nuys, California. For more information about Toshishiro Obata, visit his website at shinkendo.com. For more information about Matthew Lynch, visit his website at mashuudojo.com.

Source: Black Belt Magazine

Richard “Mack” Machowicz, an ex-Navy SEAL and former host of the cable-TV series Future Weapons, as well as a student of taekwondo, muay Thai, kali, boxing, Brazilian jiu-jitsu and Paul Vunak’s jeet kune do, discusses the three dynamic elements of combat (movements, weapons and targets) in this exclusive footage shot on location by Black Belt magazine.

“Rarely if ever will you experience combat,” Machowicz says, “and most likely you will never see combat in a literal sense, but the principles that make for effectiveness in battle are relevant to the daily challenges you face.”

It’s his way of telling people that the benfits of what he’s about to explain extend far beyond fighting. After interrogating Richard “Mack” Machowicz for 10 minutes, however, I learn that it would be a huge mistake to dismiss him as a guy who uses self-defense to preach self- help. It would be just as erroneous to brush him off as just another retired military man who doesn’t know that the skills civilians need are radically different from the skills soldiers need.

Twenty minutes into our interview, it’s clear that Mack is a martial artist who can throw down and a guy who sees the big picture with respect to violence. Which is probably why he’s so successful at what he does.

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After he’d become a hand-to-hand-combat instructor for his SEAL Team and studied muay Thai, kali, boxing, Brazilian jiu-jitsu and Paul Vunak’s take on jeet kune do, Mack found himself in an interesting quandary. “There were so many ideas I wanted to convey that [I had to convert them] into simple principles,” he says. “Why? Because people tend to get stuck on technique. They don’t understand that techniques apply to specific situations at specific times in specific ways. That means techniques are limited. Principles are more universal. The basic principle of ‘target dictates weapon and weapons dictate movement’ can apply to everything in life because everything is a target, a weapon or a movement.”

Mack explains that fighting is composed of three dynamic elements, then forces me to exercise my brain a bit to see the light: “From nukes to hand-to-hand combat, everything in life is a movement, a weapon or a target.”

During the photo shoot to accompany the interview, he put the theory into practice with our creative director, as shown in this video:

RICHARD “MACK” MACHOWICZ VIDEO
Ex-Navy SEAL on Movements, Weapons and Targets in Combat

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Source: Black Belt Magazine

By the 19th century, the walking stick had become the hallmark of distinction, authority and strength. For the gentlemen of the era, it was not only an indispensable fashion accessory but also a source of confidence, security and nonverbal deterrence on the streets of Europe. In its various designs and configurations, the walking stick was also valued at home, where it served as an objet d’art and an effective weapon against invaders.

The French developed the walking stick into a formidable self-defense tool that became known as la canne. Adopted into the traditional savate training halls of the 1800s, it’s remained by the side of the kicking art for more than 200 years.

The Birth of La Canne

Pierre Vigny was one of the most innovative masters of la canne. Born in France in 1869, he began training in savate, English boxing and fencing at a young age. During his teenage years, he often ventured from one academy to another, learning new martial arts techniques and testing his skills against anyone who’d pick up a sword, stick or pair of boxing gloves.

In 1886 he joined the army, where he served as the fencing master for the second regiment of the French artillery at Grenoble. After leaving the military in 1889, he moved to Geneva and opened a combat academy. During this period, he devoted several years to the perfection of his own method of la canne.

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Pierre Vigny devised a system that could be described as a mixture of several indigenous European self-defense methods. Many of the passes, thrusts and wards resembled fighting techniques from German swordsmanship, and a collection of the foot skills were borrowed from savate and French boxing.

Upon receiving an offer from Edward W. Barton-Wright to assume the position of chief instructor at the Bartitsu School of Self-Defence, Vigny relocated to England in the late 1890s and introduced la canne and savate to the British. During his time there, he met and trained with two celebrated jujutsu instructors: Yukio Tani and S.K. Uyenishi. From them, he acquired new martial arts techniques for his already efficient repertoire of self-defense skills, after which he formulated his method of personal combat, which included moves from wrestling, savate, jujutsu and sword dueling. The addition of the new techniques was deemed necessary because of the rise of hooliganism throughout England.

Perfecting La Canne

Pierre Vigny’s skill as a fighter and teacher attracted the attention of both the working class and the aristocracy. He served as a coach at the London Boxing Club and instructed at Aldershot Military School. Seeking better business opportunities, he moved to London, where he opened a school in 1903 under the patronage of Grand Duke Michael of Russia and became director and manager of the New School of Self-Defence and Fencing Academy. Interestingly, his wife also taught there, offering ladies instruction in the use of the parasol and the steel-spiked umbrella.

The syllabus at the school catered to students who were interested in a variety of fighting arts. Even though he conducted classes in the fencing foil, sword, savate and self-defense from morning to night, la canne remained Vigny’s pet project. He taught courses that lasted 12 weeks, a length of time he believed was sufficient to give the average person the ability to handle almost any emergency.

Shunning the lighter assault canes that were popular in the academic training halls—Pierre Vigny referred to them as “chopsticks”—he believed that a true walking stick should be rigid and sturdy. Because of his dislike for the less-functional models, he had one produced to his own specifications. Termed the “Vigny self-defense stick,” it was made from a medium-weight Malacca cane with a metal knob mounted on the end. The heavy ball served as the point of percussion, thus adding instant knockout effectiveness to the weapon.

La Canne Goes Global

By 1912 London held little interest for Pierre Vigny, so he returned to Geneva, where he managed the Academy of Sports and Defence for a number of years. He put the finishing touches on what is arguably the most complete and effective stick-fighting system ever devised. Several police, military and martial arts academies adopted his syllabus.

During the 1920s, Superintendent Henry G. Lang, an English officer of the Indian police, was required to search for a less-than-lethal equalizer to oppose the commonly carried lathi. While on leave, he traveled to Europe to learn the Vigny system, and upon his return to India, Lang produced a syllabus that he documented in the now-classic book The “Walking Stick” Method of Self-Defence.

In 1941 Henry G. Lang’s manual was translated into Hebrew, and for a time it was adopted into the kapap curriculum, later to be included as part of the training undertaken by an Israeli spec-ops unit known as Palmach. It’s estimated that up to 50,000 Israelis received training in the walking-stick method.

Pierre Vigny’s influence also reached the United States through jujutsu and fencing instructor Charles Yerkow. By the early 1940s, Yerkow had written a series of books titled Modern Judo: The Complete Ju-Jitsu Library, which served as a supplemental manual for American hand-to-hand combat teams. The section on stick play is based on Henry G. Lang’s “Walking Stick” Method.

Today, practitioners of Vigny la canne are privileged to be able to tap into a system that’s time tested, versatile and still very workable on the street. Anyone looking for a backup to his or her unarmed skills would do well to consider it, for it’s as relevant now as it was 100 years ago.

About the Author:
Craig Gemeiner is the founder of the Gemeiner Academy of European Combat Arts in Queensland, Australia. He serves as president of and technical director for the Australian Savate Federation Inc.

Source: Black Belt Magazine

In Korean martial arts video footage recently shot at the Black Belt studios, hwa rang do grandmaster Taejoon Lee — co-author of the Korean martial arts book Hwa Rang Do: Defend, Take Down, Submit — demonstrates what’s known as yongtoogi.

According to Fernando Ceballos, the author of the cover story for Black Belt’s August/September 2014 issue, yongtoogi is stand-up and submission fighting. It’s one of 10 categories of competition — including grappling, sword fighting, stick fighting, empty-hand forms, weapon forms and so on — that take place at the Hwa Rang Do World Championships.

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“This is the world’s only decathlon of martial arts,” says Taejoon Lee, eighth-degree black belt and president of the World Hwa Rang Do Association. “Most martial artists spend months training for one fight or at most one tournament. Yet over 40 percent of our competitors will compete in 10 tournaments over the course of the two days, testing not only their skill in each category but also their endurance. Our advanced students compete in one additional tournament — yongtoogi, our submission-fighting category, which is designed to condition fighters to master hwa rang do’s self-defense formula of defend, take down, quick submit.

“My goal is not really to create champion fighters, although that certainly is fun to watch and is an excellent test of skill,” Lee says. “My goal is to help my students develop self-defense skills, which could one day save their lives, without the ego-driven culture of full-contact fighting gyms and, most important, while preserving our martial way.”

For more information on hwa rang do grandmaster Taejoon Lee’s latest project, be sure to pick up the August/September 2014 issue of Black Belt, available digitally and at newsstands July 29, 2014.

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Source: Black Belt Magazine

In all likelihood, the front kick was the first leg technique you learned when you took up the martial arts. Now you know it like the back of your hand. So does everybody else.

Reality-based translation: Because the front kick requires very little training to pull off — it doesn’t have to be precise to do damage — it just might be the most common kick in the world. Therefore, if you don’t know how to counter it efficiently and effectively, you’re leaving yourself vulnerable to defeat in a tournament or to injury on the street.

Enter sixth-degree black-belt Han Woong Kim, who teaches Jang Mu Won hapkido, the fighting system founded by his father, Black Belt Hall of Fame inductee Chong S. Kim. Like all Jang Mu Won black belts, the junior Kim is a master of kick defense. In these hapkido technique videos, he teaches his art’s responses to a front kick delivered from four different distances.

HAPKIDO TECHNIQUES VIDEO
Han Woong Kim Uses Hapkido Techniques to Counter
Long-Range Front Kicks

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HAPKIDO TECHNIQUES VIDEO
Han Woong Kim Uses Hapkido Techniques to Counter
Medium-Range Front Kicks

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HAPKIDO TECHNIQUES VIDEO
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HAPKIDO TECHNIQUES VIDEO
Han Woong Kim Uses Hapkido Techniques to Counter
Very-Close-Range Roundhouse Kicks

Source: Black Belt Magazine

1. Bill “Superfoot” Wallace was not always nicknamed “Superfoot.” Early point-fighting opponents often referred to him as “Bad Billy.”

2. Bill Wallace remained a brown belt in judo until 1971, when Sam Allred tested and then promoted him to shodan.

3. Bill Wallace is still an active Screen Actors Guild cardholder. Although he never looks for work, it does find him from time to time. He reports that he occasionally receives royalty checks from his old movie work — often for 15 cents or 20 cents.

4. Bill Wallace taught martial arts to John Belushi. In fact, he was the one who found the actor’s body after he died from an overdose in 1982. To this day, media reps from the USA and abroad still try to coax Wallace to the site of Belushi’s death, the Chateau Marmont Hotel in Los Angeles, to extract gory details.

5. Back in the day, Bill Wallace would spar with all the martial artists who attended his seminars — and that forced him to fend off some wild and crazy guys. I saw him knock out three such people in 1983 — two men from an Air Force base and one arrogant student of the host instructor. Several years later, Superfoot’s lawyer advised him to discontinue the practice. It was a great loss to those who never got a chance to trade kicks and punches with the champion.

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6. Bill Wallace competed in kata on several occasions. He never did very well, though, because his leg injury hindered his performance of certain stances and kicks.

7. Even though Bill Wallace gained fame as a sparring and full-contact karate champion, he’s just as old school as anyone. For testing purposes, he had to learn the five pinan kata and the three naihanchi kata, as well as saisan and ananku. He also learned all the kobudo weapons. He was always a bit irked by weapons training, though. His point of view: If the word “karate” means “empty hand,” why would anyone focus on weapons?

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Source: Black Belt Magazine

Eyal Yanilov is, by far, one of the most respected krav maga practitioners in the world today. He is currently listed as “master level 3/expert level 8″ in krav maga – the highest rank krav maga founder Imi Lichtenfeld ever awarded to any student. Yanilov’s official title today is chief instructor of Krav Maga Global, the organization he founded in 2010 to spread real krav maga to the world.

In the cover story for the March 2011 issue of Black Belt, Yanilov demonstrated a series of krav maga defenses against variations of the front kick. In this exclusive video, Yanilov demonstrates his “disable and defend” moves.

KRAV MAGA TECHNIQUE VIDEO
Eyal Yanilov Shows You How to Disable an Opponent and Defend Yourself From the Ground Using Krav Maga

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In the above video’s technique sequence, Yanilov is sitting on the ground when the aggressor approaches and begins his kick. “In the sitting position,” Yanilov explains, “[I will deflect] the kick when moving the body out from the area of the attack.”

The krav maga expert shifts to his left to evade the foot and simultaneously deflects the leg with his left arm. “We call it 200-percent defense,” Yanilov says. “One-hundred-percent efficiency with the hand, 100-percent efficiency with the body.”

Yanilov explains the final section of the krav maga technique: “As soon as I [can], I counterattack. The moment I [shift] my weight and there’s no weight on the legs, I [can] already function to kick with them.” Yanilov then falls onto his left side and unleashes side kicks to the man’s leg and body, which prompts him to explain, “From this position, I attack … and from this position, either I continue to attack or move away from the danger zone,” as he finishes his opponent and escapes.

Eyal Yanilov began his training in the Israeli art at age 14 under Eli Avikzar but then shifted to the legendary Imi Lichtenfeld, founder of the system. Yanilov so impressed the krav maga master that he became Lichtenfeld’s assistant. His primary assignment was to commit the art’s principles and techniques to paper. The result was Krav Maga: How to Defend Yourself Against Armed Assault, co-written by Lichtenfeld (as Imi Sde-Or) and Yanilov, which was published in 2001 — three years after the founder passed away.

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Source: Black Belt Magazine

“I fear not the man who practices 10,000 techniques once, but the man who practices one technique 10,000 times holds my respect.”

The gist of that old Chinese saying is obvious: The key to reaching the highest levels of any martial art is practice. Only by executing thousands of repetitions of your style’s blocks, kicks and strikes will you be able to use your strategies and techniques in a natural and spontaneous way. Without that kind of preparation, in a fight you’ll be forced to think about what you should do next when you ought to be doing it.

Traditional wing chun kung fu instructors address the need for practice by emphasizing to their students the importance of developing their reflexes. They stipulate, however, that you cannot rely on just any set of repeated movements to hone your ability to defend yourself. To ensure that you respond with optimal timing, balance and accuracy, you need to learn the lessons of the wooden dummy and integrate it into your wing chun training.

Enter the Wooden Dummy

For more than two millennia, the fighting monks of China’s Shaolin Temple have used clever training devices to supplement their martial arts education. Legends tell that the old southern Shaolin Temple in Fujian province featured a unique collection of man-made warriors.

“There was a corridor that consisted of 108 wooden dummies representing 108 different attacking techniques,” says wing chun training expert and Black Belt Hall of Fame member William Cheung. “The monks would move down the hall and practice their defenses and counterattacks on them.”

After the Manchus razed the temple three centuries ago, one of the few surviving masters, a nun named Ng Mui, constructed a training device based on the principles of those dummies. “The positioning of the three arms and one leg of the wooden dummy was designed for 108 specific techniques parallel to the 108 techniques performed on the original dummies,” William Cheung says.

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In the old days, dummies were built using a large central trunk — sometimes as long as 9 feet — with a tapered bottom, he continues. “A hole would be dug in the ground, and the dummy would be buried about three feet or four feet deep with gravel packed around it,” William Cheung explains. “The gravel would give way slightly when the wooden dummy was struck in order to soften the practitioner’s contact point.”

In traditional Shaolin kung fu, hard contact with a training dummy was used to condition the practitioner’s arms in preparation for combat. Although some martial artists still aim for that goal, wing chun training does not focus on making direct contact with the device’s wooden appendages. Instead, it uses the dummy to instill the ability to deflect or release an opponent’s force. This principle is particularly important for people who must fend off a larger or stronger assailant or who simply wish to employ a more efficient and fluid method of defense.

William Cheung Demonstrates Wooden Dummy Exercises
for Use in Wing Chun Training

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Reap the Benefits in Your Wing Chun Training

Wooden-dummy workouts help you develop all the attributes needed to actualize wing chun’s avoid-using-force-against-force principle: correct angle (of deflection), balance, accuracy, timing, mobility, positioning, speed, flow and power. But the training also endows you with numerous other skills and abilities.

Perhaps the most obvious is toughness. “Because wing chun uses the palms and forearms to block kicks — for example, the rolling block and the cross-arm block — it’s necessary to toughen these weapons, and that’s what wooden-dummy training does,” William Cheung says.

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Even though the dummy is an inanimate object, it can still help you polish your visual and contact reflexes during wing chun training. It does so by teaching you how to execute blocks and strikes in concert with each other, thus making them almost simultaneous parry-and-counter combinations. Just before you execute your counterstrike, there’s a moment of contact when your parry deflects the incoming blow — or the arm of the wooden dummy that represents the limb of the assailant. This contact is your cue to unleash your strike. To an observer, however, your full-speed block and strike appear to arrive simultaneously.

Over time, making contact with the dummy becomes your trigger to launch a counterattack. The result is the development of your contact reflexes, which constitute an essential element of real-world combat proficiency.

Using the wooden dummy in your wing chun training also builds your visual reflexes. It requires a little more imagination and focus than does the sharpening of your contact reflexes, however, for you must pretend not to know what comes next in the form you’re doing. By allowing yourself to be surprised by the next strike, you force your eyes to visually lock onto your wooden opponent before following up.

William Cheung and Eric Oram Demonstrate the Application of
Wooden-Dummy Exercises in Wing Chun Training

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Stay Safe During Wooden-Dummy Training

Because wooden dummies are usually made of teak, it’s essential to practice all your offensive and defensive moves slowly and softly at first to minimize the impacts your body is forced to absorb. Then, as your accuracy and technique improve, you can put more energy and intention into it.

“In wooden-dummy training, the blocking areas of the arms are the palms and the inside and outside of the forearms,” wing chun training master William Cheung says. “With the lower extremities, it’s the outside and inside of the legs just below the knees.”

Whichever body part you use to make contact, care must be taken to minimize the impact between your body and the wooden dummy — especially your bones and pressure points.

“When striking with the hands, your primary weapons are the heel of the palm, the side of the palm, the knuckles and the phoenix knuckles,” William Cheung explains. “With the feet, the ball of the foot, the side of the foot and the heel are used. If the wooden dummy is adequately padded, the elbows and knees can be trained, as well. However, without proper padding, serious injury to the arms and legs may result.”

Always remember that the deflection of the incoming force is your goal. You are not out to meet an opposing force head-on. According to William Cheung, if you take pains to implement that principle before you try to gradually build your speed and power, you’ll heighten your ability to deflect while reducing the risk of injury.

“Beginners can benefit from the wooden dummy without unnecessary risk of injury as long as they are patient and cautious during the early stages of their training,” William Cheung says. “The key is to make light contact until the body is sufficiently conditioned.”

The ultimate goal of wooden-dummy training is the establishment of a good basic skill set you can tap into when you train with a live partner. That will enable you to respond with the right movements and principles without undue thought. Then, no matter where your martial arts journey may lead, you’ll be as prepared as you can be to handle any contingency that emerges — with an old wooden friend as your guide.

About the Author:
Eric Oram is a freelance writer and senior disciple of William Cheung. He has taught wing chun for two decades. When he is not engaged in wing chun training, teaching or writing, he works as an actor and fight choreographer. To contact
Eric Oram, visit lawingchun.com. His book, Modern Wing Chun Kung Fu: A Guide to Practical Combat and Self-Defense is available in our online store.

Source: Black Belt Magazine

Ever get hit with a sucker punch?

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Long before the Brazilian jiu-jitsu revolution swept the United States, George Kirby began studying the gentle art to help deal with the stress of grad school. Little did he know that his tutelage under sensei Jack “Sanzo” Seki was the beginning of a martial arts journey that would shape America’s understanding of jujitsu for decades to come.

By 1968, Seki could sense Kirby’s potential as an instructor and told him and fellow-student Bill Fromm about an opening at a local YMCA in Burbank, California. When Kirby pointed out that as brown belts they were too inexperienced to teach, Seki responded, “Now you’re both black belts. Act like it.” And so began the teaching career of one of traditional jujitsu’s most respected and beloved masters.

A year later, Kirby followed another one of Seki’s suggestions and collaborated with Fromm to form the American Ju-Jitsu Association, which has grown into a governing body renowned for bringing together jujitsu practitioners from around the world. He’s also the founder and chairman of the Budoshin Ju-Jitsu Dojo Inc., a nonprofit educational foundation, and the Budoshin Ju-Jitsu Yudanshakai, a research and educational foundation.

In 1996, George Kirby launched a new jujitsu program for the city of Santa Clarita, California, where he continues to share what he’s learned. Along the way, he perfected his craft in the public-school system, where he taught jujitsu and social studies for nearly four decades.

A prolific writer, George Kirby has penned a half-dozen jujitsu books, and his self-defense essays have appeared in numerous publications, including Black Belt.

In 2000 Kirby reached the pinnacle of his profession when he was promoted to judan (10th-degree black belt).

In recognition of his 40 years of teaching, Black Belt proudly inducted him into its Hall of Fame as their 2007 Instructor of the Year.

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Source: Black Belt Magazine