30th anniversary festival: Academy of Traditional Fighting Arts


I was honoured and privileged to attend and participate in the 30th anniversary festival for our school yesterday.  What a blast!  Over two hours of martial arts demonstrations by all the students of the Academy covering almost our entire syllabus - ranging from karate kata and bunkai (applications), embu (our two person forms), tuide (grappling), throwing, jo and bokken, sai (tie chi in Chinese), jian (Chinese straight sword), xingyiquan (single and two person forms) and taijiquan.

Having not seen many of the students for a while, I was flabbergasted by the improvement in their skill, timing, knowledge, creativity and toughness. They know so much more than I did at their levels - and can execute it under pressure, with power and efficiency and without flinching. I suppose that goes to show that the old saying is true: "Poor is the student who does not surpass his or her teacher"!

Those who want to see more pictures of the event can do so here.

Speaking of improvement, we also screened the video below as  a retrospective of the last 30 years.  You can see me as a white belt in my first grading, all the way through my early black belt years, my more physical youth up to the present.




I want to congratulate all of the students of the Academy of Traditional Fighting Arts in Perth on their achievement at this festival.  In particular I want to thank my brother Nenad, our school's headmaster, and our friend and senior student Sensei Jeff Cosgrove who organised the event so professionally and efficiently.

Hopefully I'll have a video of the demonstrations sometime in the near future.  Stay tuned!


Copyright © 2015 Dejan Djurdjevic

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Civilian defence systems

Image
Introduction It was in the late '80s in South Africa where I first heard my teacher Lao Tze Bob Davies describe what he taught as a "civilian defence system". At the time I paid little attention. It seemed nothing more than another variant on the term "self-defence", perhaps with some extra resonance because of its contrast with the military training undertaken by conscripts in the apartheid regime's armed forces. However over the intervening years I have had occasion to consider this term in greater detail and I am finally starting to understand its import. I now see that the significance of "civilian defence system" is two-fold. It serves to distinguish what we do from military methodology; that much is clear. But it also serves to distinguish our methodology from sports. The dynamics of sport or military fighting disciplines are significantly different to those of civilian defence. These differences have nothing short of a profound effe...
Read more

"Combat tai chi"? Seriously?

Image
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 ...
Read more

Karate punches vs. boxing punches

Image
Introduction In my article “ Kime: the soul of the karate punch ” I described the essential feature of the karate punch as being “focus” – ie. a combination of minimal deceleration before impact and optimum distancing – usually performed in karate with a straight thrust . Many have, and will continue to, argue that this straight thrust is less powerful than a boxer’s follow-through punches. This is true. But to understand why this does not necessarily mean that the former is less effective we’ll have to examine punching methods – what someone I know calls “delivery systems” – in greater detail. To the extent that karate punching is “less powerful”, I will then go on to examine why this is a tactical choice rather than a necessary failing. Categorising punches In a very general sense karate punches can be divided into 2 kinds: straight line and curved. In boxing, punches can be divided into 2 different categories that overlap with the karate ones, namely: 1. jabs (ie. punches which...
Read more