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"Harvest Breed" - my latest novel is out!

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My first novel since 2016 has finally been published today! And it features karate action! Harvest Breed is a psychological thriller that also explores the human condition through the lens of 2 characters who are both survivors of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe. It is part murder mystery, part espionage tale, part character study that has been 15 years in the making. The novel's blurb reads as follows: "A probationer monk apparently commits suicide. His sister seeks the truth but the only person who can help her is a troubled man hiding from his own past. The ghosts of the Cold War creep into the shadows of the present in this political and psychological thriller. Spanning five decades and three continents, the story reaches its finale on an isolated estuary island in Western Australia's deep southwest. There, two strangers with linked destinies must learn to trust each other if they are to untangle a complex web of lies - including the biggest lies of all: the ones y...
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The importance of basics

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Over the years, I have often written about basics but I don't think I've ever talked about them more broadly - in particular about their importance. Recently I have been watching excerpts of David Carradine in the television series "Kung Fu" (my YouTube feed has assumed I'm a huge fan and this is inevitably reinforced every time I watch another video). One thing I notice is just how bad Carradine's technique is. It's downright awful. In a way, it reminds me of young Ralph Macchio in The Karate Kid: as the movie series progressed I kept expecting him to get better. I thought: "Surely he's been training in the meantime?" Only he didn't get better. Ditto Carradine. With the latter in mind, rather than show you a bit of the series, I thought it would be more illustrative to show you David Carradine demonstrating martial arts  after  he finished the series and had (apparently) undergone much, much more training. It's hard to explain exact...
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Robert Alwyn Davies: 1945-2018

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Martial pioneer  Bob Davies  has passed away. Technically brilliant, encyclopaedically knowledgeable, uncompromisingly exact, frighteningly powerful, brutally efficient and unerringly resolute, he taught me that nothing is impossible. His biggest lesson:  endure . A flawed man who provided endless inspiration, his lessons will live on in me, my brother and our students. He will remain one of the biggest influences on my life. He was my  sensei .
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"Looking away from your opponent" in traditional forms

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The double punch of naihanchi by Choki Motobu In traditional forms-based martial arts, whether they be Okinawan, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Indonesian etc., there is an unspoken rule - a cardinal assumption - that your head should face your "imaginary opponent" at all times. And when you think about it, this seems to make sense. Almost every analysis (in karate called "bunkai") of traditional forms takes this into consideration. So, for example, the sideways punches of the karate kata naihanchi/naifunchin are interpreted in a variety of ways - but all of them are consistent with your opponent being generally to your side. Then along comes the odd form/kata where that rule is broken - for no immediately apparent purpose. The most obvious case I can think of in karate is in the goju ryu kata saifa (see the technique below). Higaonna sensei performing saifa kata This technique is commonly interpreted in a way that largely, if not completely, ignores th...
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3 reasons why learning to "horribly injure someone" isn't "self defence"

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Introduction Photoshopped image. Original is by Wikimedia Commons user Stillwaterising A particular approach in reality-based self defence (RBSD) is becoming increasingly popular: that of learning how to inflict maximum damage to dangerous attackers. On paper this approach looks like it could have merit - and correspondingly any criticism (of the kind I'm about to make) might seem to be totally inappropriate. After all, consider this example: "He came in the door of my office and shot two people already. I saw him drop down for a reload. When he dropped down for the reload, I was able to tackle him and get him on the ground. Then the first thing I saw was his eye, and I gouged his eye out, which stopped him from going on."  I got this from an article titled " How to Horribly Injure Someone ". And yes, it is worded in such a way as to be rather unobjectionable in philosophical terms: first an horrific scenario is created - one where the worst violenc...
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"Combat tai chi"? Seriously?

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Back in about 2009 I was talking to a friend of mine who does krav maga, telling him I was off to Taiwan to train in combat taijiquan (tai chi). He laughed. "Combat tai chi? Isn't that an oxymoron?" I can see why he thought that. Because when you look at the soft, slow art of taijiquan, adding the descriptor "combat" does seem to be a contradiction in terms. In fact, the idea of it being used for fighting can appear  ludicrously funny . And to be frank, in the case of most taiji practitioners - including many who profess "fighting skill" on the interwebs   - it almost certainly is. [In the case of the preceding link, note the string attacks against zombie opponents - more on that later!] By now, I doubt there is anyone in the martial arts who hasn't heard of the debacle that constituted the recent fight between MMA fighter Xu Xiadong and self-described Yang style taijiquan "master" Wei Lei. Xu beat Wei senseless in under 10 ...
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'Receiving' intent: the art of flipping the script

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Here is an excerpt of part of my interview (from around the 59:33 min mark) with Ken Gullette on his podcast. This excerpt deals specifically with the use of "uke" - ie. "receiving", not only in the sense of receiving techniques, but also in the sense of a wider meaning of "receiving intent" in order to diffuse conflict. Enjoy! *   *   * On receiving generally - "I win if I don't get hit" KG: I encourage everyone to read your blog. Just Google The Way of Least Resistance and you have excellent articles on there. And one of your blog posts recently about the Ronda Rousey fight actually triggered some practices of my own with my students where we were practicing basic slipping of a punch. Bobbing and weaving leaning and things like that for just basic boxing technique. One of my goals as a fighter, if I have been in a fight (and I haven't since I was eighteen), is I don't want to get hurt. I want to avoid getting head. D...
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