Reality Based Self Defence

Fight Science takes science to the martial arts and shows us (in very cool CGI) in this episode how some basic self defence techniques can cause serious damage. Well worth watching (Fight Science on National Geographics)

The “Krav Maga” bursting defence is good to use when you have several attackers coming at you at once. In Wing Chun the same defense would be call Fak-Da with stepping in.

With the emergence of Mixed Martial Arts “cage fighting” in the early 90′s and the subsequent domination of Brazillian Jiu Jitsu in this area we began to hear the claim that “all fights go to ground”. Have you stopped to question this statement?

The question is often asked; what martial art or fighting system is the best for self self defence? The answer is always going to be biased to some degree as we tend to practice systems which we believe in. As someone who has been trained in several martial arts and fighting systems I have come [...]

Captain Ben Mängels is the founder (Soke) of the South African Institute of Unarmed Combat. He started his career in 1954 as a young police officer in Durban, South Africa. He soon learned that the rough and tough sailors were a force to be reckoned with, so began his training in Kodokwan Jujitsu.

Shihan Thaya falls into that category of great masters who kept under the radar prefering to focus on learning and growing and then unselfishly passing on their knowledge to their students…

The Marine Corps Martial Arts Program was developed by the US Marine Corps to combine existing and new hand-to-hand and Close Quarters Combat (CQC) techniques with morale and team-building functions and instruction.

There are many, many close quarters combat videos on the Internet and most are not worth watching. The closest I have seen to what I was taught was one documentary on the French Legion. Following that one video, the system that consistently comes closest to what we do is Krav Maga, the Israeli military hand-to-hand combat system.

I have been accused of being somewhat pedantic and I guess I am, and in that light I want to get things right. For instance, I want to use the most correct Romanisation of kanji characters. When it comes to deciding whether to use Jujitsu or Jujutsu in writing on the topic there is always [...]

The roots of Jujutsu can be traced back to the earliest historical records of Japan, the Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters) and the Nihon Shoki (Chronicles of Japan – 8th century).