THE END

This blog is now reached it’s end, thanks for reading

Kenny

It’s Official

The Martial Tai Chi Association has now become the Martial Training Association

www.Martial-Training.com

New Website

Hi folks – I don’t know if anyone still hangs around here, but I thought I’d take a chance and take the opportunity to publicise my new website. This has come about because I want to make the focus of my classes nice and clear to the public. The website is due to be updated soon (as soon as Apple sort out some glitches with their weird new .Mac to “Mobile Me” switchover – I’ll spare you the details). 

Anyway, I’ve been focussing my teaching recently on something I call my “United Combat System”. Essentially this composite systemisation draws from the so-called “3 Crowns of Kung Fu” – namely Xingyi, Bagua & Taiji in terms of power generation and also draws from my Escrima & Silat training regarding the training approach and tactical analysis.

As ever there is heavy emphasis on steady, hands-on training, utilising body armour as necessary. We just get on with serious self-defence training without wasting time on all the baggage that can so often get stuck in with martial arts training. No “energy”, no hypnosis, no NLP, just solid training.

The United Combat System (UCS) is a complete unarmed and armed combative system in its own right. Alternatively, it can provide a solid, entirely practical foundation for analysing Xingyi, Bagua & Taiji techniques, concepts and forms, if the student wishes to go down that road, but the components of the UCS can be combined to produce any technique from those styles anyway, so the pure UCS student will lack nothing that the traditional styles have.

Check out www.joannazorya.com 

Alternative web address www.unitedcombat.co.uk

United Combat System™ logo

Child Gladiators 2

I started writing an epic post about the Channel 4 documentary Strictly Baby Fight Club yesterday, when I discovered that Julie had been banned from MAP (Martial Arts Planet) without the right to reply (see post previous to this one) As I don’t want this post to overshadow the previous one I have decided to put a short review from the Times Online here instead. The article sums up the whole program pretty much in three paragraphs:

Strictly Baby Fight Club
Tim Teeman

Controversy hummed around this week’s Cutting Edge (Channel 4), Strictly Baby Fight Club, prior to transmission. But Kirsty Cunningham’s intelligent film soberly highlighted a disturbing trend – the growth of Thai boxing among young children – and the frighteningly bug-eyed support of their parents. One father said he was living through his son. Another dad’s red-faced screaming of “Kick ’er princess” as his daughter tried, and failed, to batter her opponent was ugly.

But any judgment was left to the viewer: the parents, while feverishly aggressive when their children were in the ring, explained their children’s involvement in the sport and how seriously they took safety. It still wasn’t palatable. The children’s bodies seemed too little and fragile to take it. What are those parents doing, you thought. How can they put their child in a ring and scream at them to hurt another child? Why, as an adult, would you pay to watch it?

Only one boy, Connor, seemed to be doing it for himself. He won his title belt and a cage fight (seriously horrible) and, wearing an outsized tweed cap, said cockily that with his desired future earnings of £10 million he would buy “two Bentleys and a massive house”.

Like Tim Teeman, I was struck by the way that parents behaved, both during before and after fights. Connors mother told of how she used to get Connor fired up to fight by telling him that his opponent had called her a name.

Thai’s mother a British title winner in her own right, grinned and laughed as she gleefully told the camera that she really enjoys battering the faces of her opponents before she knocks them out. Thai’s father described how when Thai fights in Thailand it’s all about the betting and as his son does badly in the first round the odds on him to win rise dramatically, he then tells his son to turn it on,this is full contact thai rules with only usual protection.

There are some interesting comments about the program that can be found here: http://blog.onthebox.com/2008/04/24/strictly-baby-fight-club/

My overall view is that the organised fighting of children is wrong and may well even amount to child abuse in certain cases. I got the impression of people trying to re-live their own failed martial arts careers through their children and an underlying feeling that maybe some of these children were being looked upon as future meal tickets. Personally I do not have a problem with children being taught martial arts and would in most cases encourage it. To teach children martial arts with the sole intention of getting them in a ring to fight another child is, in my opinion, a crime against children and should be banned.

Silenced for speaking the truth

I thought readers here might be interested to discover that Julie was banned permanently from MAP (Martial Arts Planet) for posting some films about what happens inside abattoirs on a thread about meat eating, without warning and without any opportunity to reply. Normally people have to be banned 3 times before they’re permanently disposed of – talk about a complete cover up. She must have got ‘em rattled.

Two of her posts along with a post by another MAP member (TheCount) were deleted without trace. The 3 deleted posts were the last 3 on this reconstructed page The page MAP wouldn’t let you see.

Whatever your feelings about meat eating, I think you’ll agree that it is a bit rich for a person to be permanently banned simply for posting the truth about animal slaughter on a thread discussing meat eating, especially given the fact that some people there have called me a Nazi repeatedly without suffering even so much as a warning and have made inappropriate sexual harassment comments to both Julie and myself.

*A note from Kenny*
Hi guys I just wanted to say that I thought that these links from the deleted posts of MAP, that were also posted by Julie should be made easily accesible to all, so here they are.

Julie said:
These are quite interesting pages (the first links to the second but I’ve posted both urls anyway).

http://digg.com/general_sciences/Evolving_Humans_Were_At_The_BOTTOM_Of_The_Food_Chain

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4729050.stm

Warning – these films shows scenes of animal slaughter. They are very upsetting:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=XAFoWXROyAc

Here are two UK-specific films:
http://www.animalaid.org.uk/h/f/CAMPAIGNS/blog//4//?be_id=50

 

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=OumJ7fp0bQY

Child Gladiators

Hello peeps is it really that long since I was here?!

A few months ago I watched the film 300, I picked it up in the video shop (should that be DVD shop now?) I knew nothing about the film at all, didn’t have a clue what it was about, I had been told it was a good film, so armed with the info off the back cover and a recomeddation from a friend I settled down to watch it.

For those of you that don’t know about the film, it is basically the story of how a Spartan King took only 300 men with him into battle against the army of Persia, facing insurmountable odds. It’s a story of what it meant to be a Spartan, of bravery and a sacrifice that inspired the whole of Greece to rise up against the Persians. The opening scenes of the film however, show the king as a young boy and describe what it means to be a Spartan. He was taught from an early age to fight, firstly by his father, who is shown slapping the boy with all his might accross a small arena as the boy tries to grab a sword to defend himself. At the age of just nine years old (if memory serves) he is taken from his mother (as is customary)To continue his training. His training was brutal violence and beatings. Taught that the only honorable way to meet your death was in battle and that that was in fact the ultimate honor.

Whilst the portrayal of the kings transition from boy to man was a brutal one, it was at the end of the day an act. It was nothing more than entertainment and a vital part of the story to help understand the way that the Spartan mind worked. But what if it was not just a story, what if children were being trained to fight today. Not in preperation for war, but just because they can be taught? Because they can compete.

A week or so ago I read an article over on DojoRat’s blog that says that this is actually happening in the USA. Apparently it was on TV that children as young as six years old were being taught Mixed Martial Arts so that they could compete. You can read the whole article here

Then just a couple of days ago I saw a Channel 4 programe advertised “Strictly Baby Fight Club” it’s on Channel 4 at 9pm this thursady night if any of you want to watch it. If you want more info you can take a look at the following two links from the Channel 4 website.

http://www.channel4.com/culture/microsites/C/cutting_edge/strictly_baby_fightclub/index.html

http://www.channel4.com/culture/microsites/C/cutting_edge/strictly_baby_fightclub/strictly1.html

I’m not going to say too much more about this until after I have watched the program. For now I want to leave you with a couple of quotes that I have taken from the Channel 4 website (from the second link) In the meantime please feel free to leave any comments.

“Every time she goes in that ring, there is always a worry she will start crying”, admits Darren.

“My dream and his mum’s dream is for him to win a stadium title”, but admits Mark, “I don’t know what his dream is… probably to play with his soldiers.”

“Sohan is living the life I should have had”, says Majhid. “I have always wanted to be the best. I’ve always wanted to be a champ, wanted people to look at me and say there’s the champ. But it’s as good as they saying it to my son as saying it to me.”

Kung Fu Cornerstones

Hi people,

Just a little conceptual model I’ve been working on: http://www.martialtaichi.co.uk/articles/cornerstones.php

At the end there’s a link to a follow-up article which is less positive and lists some of the same old moans and groans people have come to expect from me. Don’t bother reading it unless you enjoy a good moan yourself. Take care Joanna

Film for Kenny

Here you go, Kenny - http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=kDfHV-umSAM

Rules are made to be…

New article – it’s a nice grumpy sounding one. http://www.martialtaichi.co.uk/articles/rules.php

New article for beginners

Hi people, here’s a little article aimed at prospective and beginner students. It has a little cartoon to go with, which is rather roughly drawn by fingertip on my touch-pad, but I think you’ll get the idea. http://www.martialtaichi.co.uk/articles/3_things.php