Martial Arts and Modern Life

Congratulations to everyone on your hard work for the year, and for those who graded, well-deserved promotions: Combined Monash Caulfield...

John Coles of the Kojutsukan blog has posted a set of 3 videos of his instructor -- the late Greg Palmer -- delivering his impressive secon...

In Arthur Conan Doyle's story The Empty House , Sherlock Holmes -- previously missing, presumed dead in The Final Problem  -- explains t...

This year I plan to do a themed class roughly every four weeks.  That may be too frequent: we'll see how it goes. Where a regular class...

On Wednesday we had our first class back for the year with eight regulars on the mat -- what passes for a small class nowadays -- plus one p...

An anonymous poster asked "What's the secret of a great turn-out?" in response to a picture of a packed mat . I'd say th...

Congratulations to everyone who trained hard in the latter half of the year. Presentation day was on Sunday 19 December, and everyone who g...

The mat's looking pretty full nowadays. With a large class it's starting to get cramped during warm-ups: Warming up with some br...

John Coles is investigating the difference between throws and takedowns in the martial arts for his forthcoming book, and has written a coup...

Congratulations to everyone from Monash Caulfield who presented for the mid-2010 gradings (all successful!): Anthony ,  Lisa , Lejoe , Damia...

Over the weekend our organization had its winter gradings.   I sat on two grading panels observing and assessing students testing for jiu-j...

Fabulous clip of 7 stone (44.5 kg) Miss May Whitley giving a lightning introduction to the role of unbalancing   in jiu-jitsu  before throwi...

Our self-defence requirements include scenario training against differently trained attackers, and armed assailants.  That said, I think tha...

Spot-on post from Jiu-jitsu Sensei: Everything I need to know I learned from doing hip throws . The more years I do hip throws, the more I ...

When I started learning jiu-jitsu and judo, I immediately appreciated the broad, intricate and varied syllabus.  If I was unable to make a p...

How do you prefer to learn? Incrementally : a little bit at a time, able to show fairly complete proficiency at one ability or skill before...

We had 18 people on the mat the other night, up from 15 the week before.  With 15 on the mat, it was already crowded, so this week we borrow...

"Jiu-jitsu is originally from Brazil, right?" I've been asked this a couple of times lately.  With the rise of mixed martial...

The club where I started my training in jiu-jitsu is called  Tora-do ryu;  translation: "Way of the tiger school".  Here's a c...

Last Wednesday I had three white belts (new this year), four purple belts (our lowest tested grade), one yellow , and two orange belts.  H...