The Way of Least Resistance

Some of you might recall from my essay " My unlikely relationship with the jian " the story of how my father bought me a hunting knife when I was 7 years old - and how I lost it.  In fact, it wasn't "lost" so much as stolen.  Now, after almost exactly 41 years, I have it back.  Almost.  Anyway, here's the story: You might remember that my father and I entered a rather smoky little specialist blade shop somewhere in downtown Belgrade in December 1972 where he bought me a lovely bone-handled hunting knife.  It seemed like a large Bowie in my child-sized hands.  And it was love at first sight. I took that knife home with me to Papua New Guinea.  Back then we were living in the tiny hamlet of Kavieng on the northern and western tip of New Ireland, just 100 km south of the equator.  It was a hot, sticky, remote and totally undeveloped corner of the world where remnants of World War II were still "fresh" - at least in a decomposing, oxidising yet...

I've prepared this short sampler video for promoting my new text "Essential Jo". Please share. Copyright © 2015 Dejan Djurdjevic

If you've been wondering where I've been for last month or so, I have been working at a somewhat furious pace in the background on one of my long-sought after goals.  And now I've finally achieved it: After 6 years of toil and struggle, my first martial textbook, " Essential Jo " has finally been published! The book is intended as a complete instructional manual on practical, as well as sophisticated and elegant, techniques using the jo.  For those who don't know, the jo is the Japanese 4-foot staff, originally taught with the ken (sword) in the samurai arts. As far as I can tell, Essential Jo is the most comprehensive text on the subject to date, offering a course of study from white through to black belt in the "Way of the Jo" (jodo). The book features over 900 professional black and white photographs accompanied by clear, detailed textual explanations. While it is intended primarily for students with experience in weapons arts, pa...

Some of you will recall my article back in 2010: " Uraken: karate's greatest folly? " in which I discussed the relative usefulness of the uraken - the backfist of karate. Over the years I'd heard many opinions on the worth of this technique - mostly disparaging ones. I'm heartened to see that my opinion of the uraken wasn't misplaced.  Paul Felder's knockout of Danny Castillo use of this very technique at UFC 182 on January 3 was, as it turns out, a classic execution - albeit in the context of a spin.  It even used a snap-back at the elbow (rather than a swinging follow-through)! And it had a devastating effect. At first it was suggested by many that the technique was a hammer fist.  Or was intended as a hammer fist.  But, thanks to the work of my friend Noah Legel , the gif below demonstrates that it was indeed a pretty standard uraken as taught in karate - right down to the wrist extension at the end (see the picture above and my uraken example...

I am happy to announce that as of yesterday, this blog had officially passed the 1 million pageviews mark! My sincere thanks to all my readers for helping me achieve this milestone.  When I first started blogging I never dreamt that I would garner more than the occasional read of my lengthy, technical and detailed essays - especially on an internet where soundbites rule.  I've always worked on the basis that I would write what I wanted to write.  I'm heartened to find that being true to oneself doesn't always mean being not having your voice heard. So here's to the next million - and happy new year! Copyright © 2015 Dejan Djurdjevic

A lazy year? My regular readers will note that it hasn't exactly been a standard year for this blog. I started off with two fairly meaty (I think anyway) articles in January relating to the karate maxim " karate ni sente nashi " ("there is no first strike in karate") and a fairly big post on  traditional techniques in MMA  in February. But from that time until August I wrote almost nothing here - just a few "micro blogs". Even my January and February posts hardly reflected my usual average of 4 or so large (at least 3,000 or so words) articles per month (something I've maintained since I started blogging in 2008). So what happened?  A very busy year, is the answer: Writing a novel in 3 months Somewhat surprisingly (for me and others) I used the period of 24 December 2013 to 26 March 2014 to write a novel -  The Mirror Image of Sound .  This was published in instalments in "real time" (on a  blog  dedicated to this pr...

Before I leave the subject of Ed Parker behind completely, I'm going to delve into something I touched on very briefly in my last article - his hand postures.  I'm doing so because the issue was raised recently on the Kenpotalk forum . A friend of mine, MarkC, posted that he felt the postures were "fake".  Another replied to him as follows: "So tell me again why posing with the extended fingers is some kind of fake.  In fact tell that to Ed Parker and his followers.  This is the form of the Crane and there is a specific application for it." So I replied with the more or less what follows below: There are two types of "postures" seen in photos of quan fa practitioners: poses of strikes; and  poses of "guard positions". The poses of "strikes" are usually what quan fa people adopt for photos. Here's me posing with others at a temple during training in Taiwan: The strike is used in action in the tiger crane ...