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...

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...

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...

Traditionally, jiu-jitsu is performed right-handed: "there are no left-handed swordsmen in Japan".  The jiu-jitsu syllabus is larg...

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

A former student -- he may well return! -- sent me a link to a real-life judo in the news story: Judo-trained dairy owner sees off armed y...

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

The acronym of the day is FOOSH.  It stands for Falling On OutStretched Hand.  John Coles has written an informative post on FOOSH injuries ...

Here's some 90-year-old footage: judo randori from 1922 featuring a young Kyuzo Mifune (then only a fifth dan!) in action. Lovely t...

Kyuzo Mifune was possibly the greatest judo technician ever.  Beginning Judo training at age 13 or 14, by 30 he was already a 6th dan under...

The judo I practice is a descendant of the method of the approach to judo devised by Mikonosuke Kawaishi  adapted for teaching Europeans and...

In a battle of sword vs stick, I'll take the sword: Nice exhibition of throws, too.

Kani basami  is judo's flying scissors throw, and was banned from competition because of the risk of breaking one or both of uke 's ...

Kano's early Judo included distinctive striking techniques (atemi waza), and training in many weapons, as well as throws, groundwork, an...

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 ...