Enter the Dragon!

This year my first theme of the month is "Juicy kuzushi". Kuzushi is the art of disrupting your opponent's balance. Even if (s)he is stronger, faster, and/or swifter, once balance is broken these advantages evaporate, and resistance becomes negligible. The "juicy"-ness refers to my ambition to squeeze a lot out of the kuzushi concept. Plus: It rhymes. I have written about the broader concept of kuzushi before, and intend to explore all of the aspects of kuzushi that I listed in that post: Looking more broadly at the problem of "leveling" an aggressor, any or all of the following means can contribute to the cause: Unbalancing : Bringing the aggressor's center of gravity beyond his or her base of support Mis-alignment : Moving parts of the aggressor into an awkward configuration Distraction Pain (which can also be a distraction) All of these measures help to reduce the aggressor's ability to resist the remainder of the technique. Howe...

I would love to train every day, but at the moment my life is very full, with a young family and career taking up the majority of my waking hours. Martial arts is what I do in "my time" and other interests take a back seat. While I am working on breeding my own regular training partners they are both still too young for serious practice. So what to do? Most weekday mornings I get up at 5.30 am and practice some of my hung gar kug fu sets (kata), before breakfast and work. But I am also on the lookout for mini-training opportunities throughout my work-day. This has the following benefits: It's exercise, fun and relaxing It offsets an otherwise sedentary chunk of the day, giving me energy and de-stressing It helps me in my quest to apply what I learn in the martial arts elsewhere in my life It helps me to rack up more "training hours" How I do it Each morning I drive to the local train station. If I have to wait a while I get to do some loosening exercises...

I plan to do a little photo article about how I incorporate incidental training into my otherwise sedentary work day. The photos are ready, but I don't have time to do it right now. In the meantime, here's how Christopher Walken and Fatboy Slim do it*: Enjoy! *Thanks to my colleague Ben Loft for showing me this.