Afghan female boxer at Olympics 2012

Whatever happens at the Olympics, I think Afghan female boxer Sadaf Rahimi's already a winner…

The BBC site says, "Under Taliban rule, women in Afghanistan were forbidden from participating in any sports." Here's a BBC video about Rahimi's fight to the top

And another by Al Jazeera:

Be the best you can be in your world

Towards the end of a short video I saw on the BBC site entitled The art of boxing, I was struck by this quote by the boxer and artist Thaddine Swift Eagle Johnson. An inspiring short video, it looks at her life as a champion boxer and the challenges she faces but also touches on her philosophy and how to look at things when life seems bleak.

She says, "Be the best you can be in your world, or…someone else's world. Be that champion in someone else's world. Smile to someone on the street. You don't know what their day was like. That would make their day."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16880075 

Boxing legend Angelo Dundee

Video of Angelo Dundee here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/world_news_america/9406099.stm

Dundee cornered for the champions such as Muhammad Ali...!

"That's the key. If you have fun at what you do you're gonna excel at it."

Counter riposte

The counter riposte in fencing refers to a continuation of an attack after the first riposte has been parried. The first attack has been defended and the attacker presses on his or her attack.

This made me think of something we worked on in boxing a week ago and that is to continue the attack even when your opponent is attacking. In other words parry and attack (in this case punch) a the same time. This tactic can of course yield great results but often in our kata work and one step techniques we can overlook this by assuming: block, punch, block, punch in sequence. If we don't understand the forms we can step through them in quite a linear fashion. The boxing counter punch is almost simultaneous.

This isn't to say that traditional Asian striking arts don't advocate this quick counter riposte, it's just something we need to bear in mind.

Some karateka often churn out the old chestnut, "Ah yes but any block can also be an attack". This is certainly true but I think there's more to it than simply banging in a block hard and claiming that the force would have hurt your opponent's arm/leg. This is too simplistic. Of course bunkai or the attitude of seeing and practising applications within kata is now more and more popular and we can use this within our visualisations during training. It's in these applications that we can unlock many of the more sophisticated block ripostes. for example see the following video outlining one of the very first moves many karateka make from Pyung Ahn Cho Dan (peinan or heian shodan). Here the actors show first the moves as they exist within the hyung then the interpretation. Here you will see a fierce multiple counter riposte sequence.

My fencing teacher made a point which might clarify the issue here. We were happily trying out the riposte and counter riposte over and over again with application and quiet dedication and thought we were doing a good job of it. When he came over he said that it was ok but we needed to spend less time on the blade when blocking. Parry and counter were quickly executed almost like one flowing technique.

It's easy to think of the blocks and counters within hyung to be linear and sequential. No matter how quickly you execute them they still seem like a block and punch combination whereas we should be mindful of the idea of a counter riposte without spending so much time "on the blade".

Tiredness and training

I'm tired out today. It doesn't help that one of my children had a nightmare and I tended to her at about 2am. But I can't blame her, poor thing! The reason I'm physically tired is that I've had training sessions, non-stop for the past couple of days. Shorinji Kempo on Monday night, boxing for an hour and a half on Tuesday morning then Tang Soo Do on Tuesday evening.

I feel a bit run down but I like the tightness of the muscles and the feeling of having worked at something.

Shorinji Kempo gave me insight into the way I learn a martial art. The philosophy discussion was based on this and as a Zen art has some fairly regimented attitudes towards learning. What I found on Monday was humility works quite well at learning. Being there, present for training and willing to soak up knowledge goes a long way. It's sometimes very easy to become over-confident about one's own abilities if one is never challenged! You can potentially get an over inflated estimation of your own abilities. Of course confidence is a good thing and I believe martial arts training delivers this in bagfuls: not the confidence to beat someone up or defend yourself (which is achieved) but the confidence of knowing yourself, your limitations and your ability to train within a process or system.

Boxing was fun. I was completely tired out after it and all the younger scamps looked like they could have trained for another hour! Interestingly the teacher told us that the best way to box is to not get hit. Sounds like a no-brainer but there were a couple of big guys there trading slugs at each other and I think this was meant for their benefit. We looked at turning the body sideways to minimise the target area, laying back, parrying and countering rapidly. I was amazed at how these similar elements crop up in more traditional martial arts. I shouldn't be I suppose because fundamentally there can be only a limited number of strategies to striking another person in 'sparring'. Very good practice of laying or leaning back, out of range and then returning with counters. Very tiring!

Tang Soo Do started off quite up tempo as well with light sparring straight off to warm us up! I realised quickly that my body was tired and I wasn't recovering as quickly as I would like! When this happens I try to focus on core technique, slowing it down if I have to but maintaining good posture. It's easy to shoot out tired limbs to make the technique *look* ok but it's another do the technique well under stress. This was what I was trying to do but very often I ended up gasping...and sweating! Later I had the pleasure of working with a young woman for her hyung. This was made a pleasure as she was reacting very well to my coaching to the extent I saw a great difference between starting and finishing the session! We mostly looked at engaging the whole body from foot through hip rotation and ending up at the arms. It's a difficult thing for beginners to grasp but she did a great job! Younger practitioners tend to fling their arms and legs out without engaging their whole body and this, in some ways, is normal: they haven't seen or been shown the intricacy of the body mechanics involved. I find, however, that once the whole body is being used to generate power it becomes an entirely better experience! And you get more feedback from your body when you do this. Otherwise you just end up flapping your arms about...!

These guys seem to be trying REALLY hard to engage their entire bodies...

(oldie but goody!)

Pro Am Fight Centre flyer

Ok, so it's flyer season and I'm helping Pro-Am Fight Centre out with some marketing communications so here's the second flyer in the series.... :)

They do pretty much what it says on the tin..er I mean flyer. MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) training in Brazilian Jiu-jitsu, boxing, muay thai as well as full on weights gym and training cage, all in the centre of Cambridge!

Go...fight!

A case of stating the bleedin' obvious

"The taste of your own blood in your mouth while someone is punching you in the face is not a nice thing"

(Commentator on the Phil Goodwin / Bob Ajisafe boxing match)

Boxing class at MMA gym Cambridge

I stopped off at the Pro-am fight centre this week: they have an extensive gym as well as a full size cage and mat area with plenty of hanging full size and half size bags. These guys train in MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) in Cambridge and even have professionals who drop in to train for fights. I was roped into a boxing class, which was entirely new to me. I have done some savate in the past but really nothing to talk about so I was intrigued by a boxing lesson.

The teacher was ABA affiliated and extremely good: polite but worked us hard. There was some very different levels here (including me, relative beginner) and he catered for us all and by the end of the hour (or was it 90 minutes?) I was sweating buckets... But I was happy and felt I'd learnt a lot (hands up, strike and move, maintain a distance, stay relaxed).

Great class, I'll be looking at doing more! Maybe I'll try the Muay Thai class....!

Focus on your goal. But not too hard.

The WBC World Middleweight championship was by no means a given result but Taylor, the American, was talking it up big: he wanted to put Froch "to sleep". And so it was that Froch in the last round was staring at a 106-102 deficit and although he'd been knocked down (for the first time in his career) but not put to sleep it was all over bar the shouting.

But it wasn't. Froch said later in an interview (radio 2, Chris Evans, 29-4-09) that as long as there was one round left he was in the fight. He knew he had to do something special: knock Taylor out or stop him dead a couple of times, and his trainer, rather than putting pressure on him and telling him to knock the guy out, said he needed a special round...

Froch rocked the challenger but maintained that he didn't want to rush straight back in instead he literally boxed clever and finally clobbered Taylor with a "booming right" leaving him on jelly legs. The fight was stopped with seconds to go. Good job too looking at Taylor's eyes rolling in his head. Technical Knock Out to Froch.

Amazing example of keeping one's cool and not grasping at victory. Often that final grasping can be the undoing. I've been in fights when I've been winning (just) and lost it all by flailing at it, not seeing the clarity of the situation. Equally if you're behind, like Froch was, it's good to see the opportunity of a last round, a last few minutes to box clever and still be able to do the job. As Froch proved it's not over till the fat lady sings, bows and heads off for the changing room to tuck into the pies.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/boxing/8020426.stm

King of the Gypsies

More about Bartley Gorman

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartley_Gorman

More about the film maker, Shane Meadows

http://www.shanemeadows.co.uk/