Breaking it Down

Archeologists locate ruins of former gladitator school in Austria, speak of ‘sensational’ find - The Washington Post

2011-09-07T08:52:00.000-07:00

Archeologists locate ruins of former gladitator school in Austria, speak of ‘sensational’ find - The Washington Post:

'via Blog this'

This is some pretty amazing material for all of you Roman gladiator buff's...like me!

Was it inevitable World War 1 would be a long conflict?

2011-08-24T09:44:00.000-07:00

Was it inevitable World War 1 would be a long conflict?

As a historian, I'm generally predisposed towards Ancient and Medieval History. World War I is an exception - I find the conflict to be fascinating. The tactics, strategies, years leading up to the war, the war itself, and it's aftermath to be a wealth of interesting information to me. About.com's European History blog has a ton of great information about the First World War, including this entry regarding wether or not the belief that WWI would be a "short" war was valid or not. Enjoy!

How to Throw a Punch Correctly

2011-08-10T15:19:00.000-07:00

How to Throw a Punch Correctly

A little bit of advice from Lifehacker about how to throw a proper punch. They mention a couple of caveats in the article that I think are pretty darn important. So to reiterate: First, throwing punches is Serious Business, and should only be considered when all other options are exhausted. If a mugger just wants your belongings and not your life, give them to him. Your life isn't worth getting shot, stabbed, or otherwise hurt. Second, knowing how to make and deliver a proper punch is good, but there's no substitute for practical experience and practice. So if you have the opportunity and want to learn how to hit things with your very own Fists of Fury, get a heavy bag and get some blows in on a heavy bag. Bear in mind that hitting any object with full power repeatedly is likely to cause you some injury, so be careful. I've got about 20 years of experience in martial arts; I've broken many pine boards and bricks and have never gotten away without a little bit of pain. I've also hit things much harder than my fist and broken my hand, and that is Not Fun.

So, pay attention to this lesson - it's a good one, but not without its own perils.

Basic Self-Defense Moves Anyone Can Do (and Everyone Should Know)

2011-07-28T10:10:00.000-07:00

Basic Self-Defense Moves Anyone Can Do (and Everyone Should Know)

This is a comprehensive and generally good article from Lifehacker. However, there's a couple of things that I have to emphasize. First, you've got to practice. You've got to keep doing these moves until your self-defense is reflex. First, you don't want to have to take the time to think about what you're doing. Second, if you don't have body reflex or muscle memory, you're going to freeze or do the wrong thing which may get you into more difficulty.

There's a lot of material here. The key, most important thing, aside from practicing to make these moves into muscle memory and reflex, is to not panic. When people are faced with life-threatening situations our fight-or-flight mechanism kicks in. This is a natural reaction to a stressful occurrence, so go with it. What you need to do is to turn that burst of adrenaline into a fight, not flight reaction, and that's not always going to be easy. Once panic sets in, it takes time to shake off - time you could be using to fight your way free and escape. If you're walking down the street and someone jumps out from behind a dumpster with a weapon, you need to be calm enough to decide whether or not your life is worth what they want, and then to determine how, if at all, you're going to fight back and escape. The gentleman in the first video says it pretty clearly, this isn't a sporting event. There's no "winning" here, there's just survival and escape.

Check out the article, watch the videos (some of them are just 5 minutes, some are 10 or more), and let me know what you think. With 20 years of martial arts experience, I have a pretty good idea of what will work and what won't, and I can tell you that the psychology of self-defense is more important that the physical actions you take. Don't freak out, and you've got a better chance of surviving intact and relatively uninjured.

The Pax Dei, or Peace of God

2011-07-25T19:08:00.000-07:00

My sister-in-law, a homeschooling mother, asked me to give her some information on peacemakers and times of peace during the Middle Ages. As someone with a masters in military history, this was a bit of a stretch, but I went for it anyway.

First, the Middle Ages, that is the years following the fall of Rome and the Renaissance, were not generally considered peaceful times. There's a reason why they were called the “Dark Ages” by many historians. From a European perspective, once Rome fell (and long before, of course), there wasn't much in the way of a central authority that could, or would, protect the common folk from any local warlord who wanted to loot, pillage, and plunder. To be sure, many of them did. Some fought in the interest of carving out their own domains from the big fat steak that was Europe after Rome, like the Franks who, under Charlemagne, brought the closest thing to a Pax Europa but only for as long as Charlemagne himself lived. And woe to those who were his pagan neighbors, because one thing Charlemagne wanted was to convert pagans and he didn't really care how he did it. Others were just passing through, like the Moors who invaded from northern Africa, took over the Iberian Peninsula (today's Spain and Portugal), and started raiding into what is now southern France; or the Vikings, who made life very difficult for anyone living near a body of water - particularly churches and monasteries who had lots of shiny loot and no one to protect it. One early Irish prayer went, "Oh Lord, from the fury of the North Men please preserve us." Alongside the conquerors and invaders there were local Germanic warlords who wanted nothing more than a place to blood their warriors and gain some coin and notoriety.

But in southern Europe, closer to what was once mighty Rome, a group of churchmen and local leaders got together and started what we now call the “Peace of God” movement. Their goal was pretty basic, but broad in scope – to restrict fighting and set standards of conduct in war. One early major gatherings was called the Council of Charroux, which took place in 989 in southern France. A group of bishops, clerics, monks, and lay people (both men and women, which was unusual for the time) had had enough of local bandits and warlords burning and looting the rural areas and declared that they would excommunicate anyone who harmed priests and serfs alike. Another similar assemblage in Limoges in 949 proclaimed the same lofty goals. (Jordan, p 25-26) Excommunication was considered a fate worse than death, for who would want to be totally divorced from Heaven and shunned by anyone who followed the dictates of the Church?

Another associated movement was called the “Truce of God.” This was another effort to restrict fighting, in this case to keep it from happening during certain periods during the week. “No one dwelling in the aforesaid county and diocese [of Roussillon] should assail any enemy of his from the ninth hour on Saturday to the first hour on Monday, so that everyone may render the honour owed to the Lord's day.” These clerics were so serious that they even threatened to “humiliate” saint's relics; that is, they would take them down from altars and put them on the ground until the violators of the Truce repented. (Jordan, p 26, 27) This was very serious because the holy relics were rendered impotent during that time and they wouldn't be able to perform any miracles.

The Pax Dei and the Truce of God kept Europeans relatively safe from the late 10th to early 13th Centuries for the most part, but sending knights, nobles, kings, and princes off to the Crusades was another great way to get the violence out of Europe and into the Holy Land. But that's for another post...

There are several other excellent references out there regarding the Pax Dei, the one I found to be most useful is William Chester Jordan's “Europe in the High Middle Ages,” part of the Penguin History of Europe series (New York, 2001) (you can get it at Amazon here: http://amzn.com/0140166645). Here are a few others I found while looking on the Internet:
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/pc-of-god.html
http://www.crusades-encyclopedia.com/bibpeaceandtruce.html
http://past.oxfordjournals.org/content/46/1/42.citation

My Martial Arts History Part Two

2011-06-16T08:26:00.001-07:00

In my last post I talked about my early martial arts training. One important thing to consider during the first 30 years of my life is that I NEVER stopped reading martial arts magazines (Inside Kung Fu and Inside Karate were my favorites, but there are a lot of other publications out there and I at least tried to check out every one I could find). I read about every combative style from every country I could possibly find. Bando from Burma, Krav Maga from Israel, Escrima, Kali, and Arnis de Mano from the Philippines, Kalari from India...the list goes on and on. Pankration, Wrestling, Sambo, even some style a Native American guy re-invented that emphasized tomahawks, coup sticks, and Bowie knives. I read Bruce Lee, Robert Smith, Sun Tzu, Miyamoto Musashi...if it was related to the martial arts, I tried to find it and read it. I played role-playing games focused on martial arts every weekend. If a video game had kicks in it, I was there. When Mortal Kombat and the Capcom games came out, I was instantly hooked. I even watched hours of professional wrestling just to see if there were any "real" combat applications. Also during this time I continued to experiment in the SCA with various weapons styles. I turned kendo shinai into cutlasses and sabers by steaming and bending them. I made javelins out of pvc pipe, closed cell foam, and duct tape and threw them at friends and opponents alike. We dodged arrows, set up small-unit tactics on battlefields, and developed elaborate fighting scenarios for our entertainment. All of this went into the jumbled-up file cabinet I call my brain and influenced my life in ways I probably couldn't accurately describe.

So when we last left Our Hero, I'd just moved to another martial arts instructor. Master Halstead was a different kind of Tang Soo Do stylist. He was, I think, a legitimate bad-ass who'd worked his way up to fifth dan (that's a fifth-degree black belt) under a different lineage than my first teacher, and had a different approach to martial arts. He had a much greater depth of knowledge in forms and applications, and, I discovered, a much stronger set of ethics. Whereas my first teacher had a strong physical basis for his art, Master Halstead had a much more complete understanding, including a softer, more relaxed (but still very powerful) style. His wife, a second dan, LOVED to spar, and we spent a lot of time (with a few other students) practicing our fighting applications with one another. Master Halstead was part of my second dan test panel, and said something I'd never even thought of before - "You need to figure out what you want to get out of your martial art. Now that you've got the basics, what do you want to do? Then figure out how to go about doing that." Thinking for myself as a Tang Soo Do student wasn't ever really in the program. I mean, we all had things we liked to do more or less than others, but we were required to learn it all - the school had a curriculum, and we had to follow that whether we liked it or not. The art was what was important, not the particular person - if I had a hard time with a jump spinning kick, I needed to practice it more, not figure out a different way to accomplish the same thing.

Working with the Halsteads, though short-lived, was an excellent experience for me. I learned that there was more to Tang Soo Do than beating people with muscular strength, that there was a more subtle, almost internal facet to the art that I found very interesting. I had always enjoyed forms, but I learned WHY I enjoy them - I can quiet my mind and just MOVE. I also learned more about grappling, Tai Chi, Aikido, and Escrima at my new school. All of which was incorporated into what I now thought of as "My Style." After about a year, life started to interfere too much with my martial arts, and I stopped training up in Ramona. I continued to train a little at home, but nothing like what I'd done before. I had the opportunity to take an Aikido class for a couple of semesters at Palomar College and really enjoyed the experience. Like anything new for me, it became an obsession for a while. But after the semesters were over, I moved on and continued to practice less and less. My interest in the arts didn't really wane (I still bought magazines and kept them around the house, much to the "delight" of my wife, for example), but my interest in continuing my education, getting a degree, and getting a "real" job outweighed my desire to keep up my skills. I never stopped reading, however, and my intellectual knowledge of martial arts became encyclopedic. I could tell you something about almost any art you could name - where it was from, who the Grandmasters were, what it specialized in, what kinds of weapons they trained, all of it. But physically, I kind of became a wreck.

Fast forward to 2004. Lots of things had changed in my life, including a big weight gain, a move to a new home in El Cajon, and the need to find something to get me back into shape and back into the arts. We started working out at the Aztec Recreation Center at SDSU, which is a great gym with all kinds of cool equipment, a dance room, and a heavy bag that begged for my attention. My wife and I did a LOT of research, looking for the best teacher of the best art we could find in San Diego. We finally, after literally years of study and searching, found Sifu Rogelio Lopez, who was teaching a style called Pa Kua Chang at the Taoist Sanctuary on Park Boulevard in San Diego. This was a completely different experience for me. Chinese kung fu was mostly based in a completely different tradition than my Korean Karate. This was also an "internal" style, which meant that it emphasized much more relaxation and something called "whipping power" that was completely foreign to me. It was AWESOME. My instructor, all about 5'4" and 130 pounds of him, could knock me on my ass with what appeared to be almost no effort. He had, at that time, about 30 years of experience in Tai Chi and Pa Kua, and was (and still is) a fantastic, insightful, motivated instructor. Sifu Lopez works out EVERY DAY and has for years. And not just working out, but really focusing and paying attention. His attention to detail is incredible, and he's taught me things in the last six and a half years that I wouldn't have learned in decades of training under other teachers. Despite being very different to what I'd done before, Pa Kua was a perfect fit - once we learn the basics, everything else is based on what we like and what works best for our bodies and physical abilities.

So, that's about 20 years of experience wrapped up into a few paragraphs. I know a LOT about martial arts, and am learning more every day. I'm getting more and more out of each minute I practice Pa Kua. I'm really looking forward to sharing my insights with you, gentle readers, and learning more about your points of view.

My Martial Arts History Part One

2011-05-31T16:25:00.000-07:00

I thought it would help give a little context to what I'm writing by giving a little of my own martial arts history and practice. Now, I'm not saying that I've been everywhere and I've seen everything, (thank you Jack Burton... I've been practicing martial arts informally (that is, without a "real" teacher) since around 1985, and with an instructor since 1991. I have always been interested in the martial arts - I used to get up early on Sundays to watch Kung Fu Theater on channel 5 and would read anything I could get my hands on about karate, kung fu, or whatever. My brother (the lucky guy) trained in Tae Kwon Do for a year or so when he was in first or second grade, and I was totally jealous. Once I got the time and money (at 20 years old), I started taking classes in Tang Soo Do and have been pretty much obsessed since then.

I first started my martial arts "practice" in the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) as a light weapons fighter. Light weapons was kind of a hybridization (and some might say bastardization) of western fencing and Japanese kendo. We used shinai (the four slat bamboo practice swords used in kendo) as our primary "swords," and worked out ways using bamboo poles and slats (cannibalized from broken shinai), with plenty of duct tape, to make halberd-like pole weapons (we called them "naginatas," but they could just as easily have been any kind of sword on a stick) and even experimented with archery for a while. We were required to wear some kind of head protection, like a fencing mask with padding on the back, elbow pads, knee pads, and gloves. Lights were supposed to be a "touch" sport, but bruises, welts, and messed-up knuckles were pretty common. My first "teacher" said, "You want to learn how to fight? Put this on and come out onto the field." So I put on my gear, grabbed a shinai, and proceeded to get my head clocked for about 2 hours. His theory was that if he hit me enough that I'd eventually learn how to defend myself. It worked, more or less. And I was totally in love with my new sport.

I had always been a somewhat awkward and uncoordinated kid - the kind who got picked last in kickball - but I was tall and I had what was termed "good instincts." I managed to beg, borrow, or...borrow without permission enough gear to get out onto the fighting field on a regular basis and rarely missed a practice or a light weapons event in San Diego. Over the next several years, I got to be good enough to be considered one of the "top" fighters in the Southern California area. I won a few tournaments, had an absolute blast at larger events, and started to get in charge of things. Which is, of course where the whole SCA thing went downhill. What I did learn, however, was that there was a lot more to being a good fighter than just being tall, getting in the first head shot, or being able to fight well on one leg. There were fighting manuals, both western and eastern, that had detailed pictures of people in the Middle Ages doing pretty much the same thing I was doing. There was a whole world of other weapons, styles, techniques, and time periods to study. Light weapons fighting really gave me the confidence and conditioning to begin to understand what "martial arts" were all about. So even though it really was just a bunch of weird people wearing silly costumes and hitting each other with play bamboo swords, it gave me a stepping stone to bigger, and much better things. I learned foundational principles of attack and defense, what it's like to get hit, and how much fun it can be to party like a 12th Century Irish Viking.

My next experience with martial arts came when I joined a new Tang Soo Do school in Rancho Bernardo, California. I had no idea when I started that this would soon completely take over my life and that in just a couple of years I'd be running my own school, putting on demonstrations, and teaching self-defense classes to women and children all over North County. What I learned first were a few basic punches, four blocks, five kicks, and three stances. These few techniques opened my eyes to new possibilities. I had dreams of walking down dark alleys with $20 bills hanging out of my pockets, beating would-be muggers and cutthroats to a pulp, defending helpless innocents from ne'erdowells and generally being a bad ass karate master. What I didn't know is that it takes years of dedicated practice to get to the point where I wasn't going to be more of a danger to myself than I would be to anyone else. I, like many others, had seen the training sequences in those Hong Kong kung fu flicks, and it didn't seem like they'd trained for more than a few hours before their kung fu skills had reached levels unheard of except in, well, martial arts movies.

So, what's Tang Soo Do all about? you may ask. Tang Soo Do, according to my instructor and the book he bought for me for being his first black belt, is a Korean style of martial art that incorporates some southern Chinese kung fu with Okinawan karate into a traditional Korean kicking art called Tae Kyon. Tang Soo Do (which roughly translates to "China Fist Art") is mostly all about kicking the snot out of people. I learned a lot of different ways I could kick people - jumping, flying, and spinning, in every direction and from almost any stance. A good Tang Soo Do stylist should be strong, fast, and tough. We often would "systematically harden" our hands, feet, shins, and forearms by hitting things repeatedly. I spent so much time barefoot that I was able to perform spinning kicks in a gravel parking lot or walk on hot sidewalks in the summer without getting massive blisters. I also learned how to break boards and bricks, and was one of the top students in the school for breaking 2" x 6" x 16" paving blocks. I learned a lot of hyung (forms - set patterns of moves that were designed to teach technique, focus, precision, attacks, and defenses) and did well in tournament in both forms and point fighting.

Things changed quite a bit after I started first assisting my instructor, then teaching my own classes. I was training hard on a daily basis and picked up a lot of "extra" information. One of my teachers was a lieutenant for the Federal prison system and gave us the mantra, "Practice like you play." In other words, take your practice seriously, because what you do in the dojang (practice hall) is what you're going to do when you need your art in actual combat. He also taught us a lot about pressure point strikes, joint locks, and knife defense techniques. Master Church was a really good guy and an excellent instructor. I was honored to have met and trained with him.

It was also at about this time that I started taking Tai Chi from an instructor my teacher invited to the school. I only ever knew him as Dee Jay, and I have no idea who his teacher was, or really anything about him. At the time I didn't think much of it. We learned what I later discovered was the Yang family short form. I had little time to practice outside of class (I was busy running two or three schools, a demo team, assisting at the main dojang, and working a full time job besides), so I didn't advance quickly enough to do push hands before I stopped working with Dee Jay. In Tai Chi I learned how to flow and how to relax, but I never got any kind of real combat application so it ended up being more of an exercise than anything else.

As time passed, things changed. I never lost my love for the martial arts, but things got...complicated at my school, so I changed to another instructor. I'll talk more about that in my next post...

....Part 2 coming soon....

Getting Started....A Short Primer on Internal Martial Arts

2011-05-30T16:53:00.001-07:00

A family member of mine whom I haven't seen in a long time was asking me some questions about the martial art I practice, and I thought it would be easier to give her a short primer on a few terms that could give her some perspective. So here they are:

Internal Art - a martial art that uses "chi" or "internal" power to do damage to an opponent. Most internal arts have a very strong health aspect - if you're not healthy, what's the point of trying to defend yourself, right? Internal arts (Tai Chi, Xing-Yi, and Pa Kua) are usually also considered to be "soft," meaning that movements are relaxed and are often performed in a slow, deliberate way. They're more difficult to learn than most "external" styles if there's a good teacher involved. The movements require more attention to detail and take a lot of relaxation and focused concentration to get real skill.

Chi - Think of this as being like "the Force" from the Star Wars films. Basically, it's the vital energy of the universe. Every person is born with it, we use it like electricity in a battery, and we can replenish it with food, sleep, meditation, or some kinds of exercise like chi kung. In Pa Kua, we're trying to develop chi skill for two reasons - our own health, and in order to be able to "inject" it into our opponents to do serious damage. Our instructor likes to say that if he wants to hurt someone, he'll use his fists. If he wants to REALLY hurt someone seriously, he will use his palm strikes, because internal power from them can damage organs and cause internal hemorrhaging. This is not to say that internal arts are all about turning folks' livers to jello, but it is a "martial" art...

Tai Chi - one of the three internal arts of China, based on traditional Shaolin kung fu styles from the 700's BCE and before. Tai Chi was the first one of the three that was developed, back in the 17th century (if I recall correctly). It is based on the idea of yin/yang principle and is considered to be the most "soft." The goal of Tai Chi is to redirect an opponent's energy by yielding to their attack, or to neutralize it by being so relaxed and evasive that the energy of it is dissipated. Tai Chi practitioners can also move their chi through their bodies in way that allow them to do some pretty wild stuff - take punches to the stomach that would knock most people down, make themselves immovable (rooted), and even move objects from a distance. The most common style of Tai Chi is the Yang family style, but there's also Sun, Wu, Chen, and a few others out there. All are similar, but have a little different twist. Kind of like different kinds of pasta. All made up of the same ingredients, but used in different ways. Tai Chi movements (in practice) are usually slow, deliberate, and surprisingly difficult. To get good at Tai Chi, one needs to be patient, disciplined, and focused. This is true in any martial art, but learning internal arts is especially hard in that it usually takes a long time before one sees obvious benefits. On the other hand, I've read studies that show that people who practice Tai Chi on a regular basis are a lot healthier than those who don't. And a "regular basis" can be as little as 30 minutes three times a week.

Push hands - The "sparring" in Tai Chi. Two stylists will stand facing each other with their hands touching. Each will then try to uproot their opponent or push them off balance by using their hands, arms, shoulders, and body. Good push hands is essential to being able to make the movements of Tai Chi into a practical self-defense art. If a Tai Chi instructor doesn't do push hands, be skeptical.

"Old Man" Tai Chi - what most people are doing in the US (and probably, at this point, even in China) today. The slow, sagging, impractical "form" style of Tai Chi that you've probably seen in videos. A lot of teachers only teach a particular form in their practice, most often the Yang family style 108 ("long") or 54 ("short") movement forms. Old Man Tai Chi is relaxed, but almost limp. "Real" Tai Chi is dynamic and strong, but still slow and relaxed. It can be difficult to see the difference, especially if you're not sure what you're looking at, but an Old Man Tai Chi artist is probably going to be a limp noodle, not steel wrapped in cotton.

Chi Kung - "internal power skill," the goal in Pa Kua Chi Kung is to develop greater skill and sensitivity with internal power by increasing one's sensitivity and ability to move chi through joints to any point in the body. Our style of Pa Kua puts a lot of focus on the palms, because that's where the chi is going to exit us and enter our opponents when we strike. There are about as many different sets of Chi Kung as there are joints in the body. Chi Kung starts with a pretty simple formula - Chi Skill = Posture (and movement) + Breathing + Focus. There's more to it than that (as a good teacher will be able to explain), but that's how it starts. When we say that any movement we do in Pa Kua can be done "Chi Kung way," that means that we're moving much more slowly and focusing on moving each joint and being fully aware of every thing that is going on with our body, as well as focusing on feeling and moving chi. The goal is to completely control and be aware of every cell of our bodies as we move them. The better one's focus the greater the ability to be able to control the movement, both physical and energetic. A lot of Chi Kung is geared towards a specific location or organ in the body, and there are probably hundreds of different styles out there for all kinds of different purposes.

So that's a little bit of the basics of Tai Chi and Chi Kung, with a little bit of Pa Kua added. I'll be sure to write more specifically about Pa Kua and my other martial arts experience soon. Thanks for reading, let me know if you have any comments or questions.