The Way of Least Resistance

Recently the subject of what is often called "bouncy tag" has reared its head at the Traditional Fighting Arts Forum . In particular comment was made about the Youtube footage of George Alexander undertaking a 50 person kumite in celebration of his achievement of his judan (10th dan) grade. I have embedded the video below: George Alexander undertaking a 50 person kumite At the outset I'll say that I think Mr Alexander's demonstration was reasonably impressive for a man of his age. I am not going to comment on the issues pertaining to his grade (for me the rank "judan" would surely be an honourary grade more than anything - a kind of "lifetime achievement award"). Rather I will simply observe that he shows skill at what he does in that video. So what is he doing? Is it karate? Or is it something else? Many on the Traditional Fighting Arts Forum argue that it is not traditional karate , and I would respectfully agree with this posit...

A few months ago I read a post on a forum stressing the importance of not “missing” or “pulling” your blows in training. 1 The gist of the gentleman’s post is that one should not train to “miss”. Instead one should train to contact, both to groove the correct approach to striking and also to become accustomed to taking blows. I agree wholeheartedly with this as a general statement in as much as it pertains to those who are training to apply their techniques, be it in civilian defence , the sporting arena or a military conflict. But how can one make contact in training safe? Being from a boxing background the poster notes that the punches should be “heavy, but not hard... you're driving through to your target but only with weight and not power”. What does he mean by this? It is my view that the poster’s description of “heavy, but not hard” is entirely accurate from a physics perspective. In my article “Hitting harder: physics made easy” I discuss how in order to transfer mome...