Martial arts and fitness — All recent blog posts

The ADCC (Abu Dhabi Combat Club) grappling championship is holding preliminary competitions in Israel on the 20th of December.
Winner of the open category will proceed to the official ADCC preliminaries in Sweden, in January 2008.

You can call the organizers at: 972-54-6957795

More details in the Hebrew homepage

Budo Ninjutsu practice includes ancient martial arts weapon katas. The problem we had was that for more then twenty years we couldn't check the weapon Kata practice with proper randori. There was no accurate way to practice weapons sparring, the way we do with all the empty handed Kata. Every try we made was blocked by either safety reasons (bokkens are too heavy and dangerous, while shinai and boffers are too flimsy and are not realistically balanced and weighted).

Last year we had the good fortune of learning weapons from Alex Zhelezniak, the founder of ACT school for martial weapon training and a world class expert in weapons.
From Alex we learned the basics of western hand and a half European sword and how to handle Japanese Katana in combat sparring. Alex places the utmost importance in building an accurately weighted and safe weapon replicas, comparing techniques of ancient western and Japanese masters and trying these out in combat sparring.

Since in Akban we are based in Japanese koryu, especially the Katory Shinto ryu sword system, we put in a lot of effort to build a padded katana replica. Amir Haimi, a veteran Akban martial arts instructor, spent several months building, checking in his dojos and rebuilding several prototypes of Japanese swords until we reached a working model. We now have, thanks to Amir's efforts, less than one hundred swords and are painstakingly manufacturing more.
Practicing Japanese sword randori has now entered the end trial phases in some of the groups of Akban veterans and integrating the Tenshin Shoden Katori Shinto ryu katas will probably take less then a year.

We already set our eyes on building accurately balanced safe replicas of all the weapons in our syllabus, short sticks, middle length sticks (Jo), long sticks and halberds, Kusari gama and Kusari fundo. Working since 1986 according to our martial arts methodical model, has proved that the best way to ensure realistic abilities in ancient martial arts is to make the practice sparring sessions as real as safety permits.

We just uploaded a beta of your Martial arts videos portal, and are pretty happy with it.

Till now, in order to find a movie of a martial art technique the viewer had to know the name of the technique, search the technique in the Akban-wiki and only then view the technique inside the relevant martial arts encyclopedia article.

A few months ago we paused almost all the documentation of new techniques in video and text. We wanted to make using our website an easier experience. The new video page is the result of this work. All the videos in it and most of the videos on our site were filmed by us with a small group of Akban veterans and an even smaller group of martial arts instructors from various martial arts. We store the videos on YouTube to save on broadband fees.

Economizing is one of our themes as this web site is not money oriented and the ads on it just make part of our fees sustainable. This underlying structure has made the instructors that agreed that their techniques be videoed, posted, debated and sometimes substituted by a better technique a rare breed of people.

We salute this small group of veterans and martial arts instructors. Next month we'll start adding short biographies in English, we already have a biographies in Hebrew.

So, please go ahead, try the new martial arts video page and if you have any comments or suggestions we'll be happy if you add these here or on our martial arts forum.

YouTube opened a new Israeli video site today and featured another BJJ clip we videoed for the Akban-wiki, our martial arts encyclopedia.

The guy doing the techniques is Gidon, an Akban veteran and also a brown belt with De La Riva in Brazil.
Well done Gidon!

Word is out that Danis Hanover's martial system: "Hisardut" is scheduling a sparring session - randori - in Mr. Hanover's honour.
Mr. Hanover is one of the pillars of martial arts in Israel and has been the teacher of some Akban veterans.
We're expecting this to be a great event, hopefully less exhausting then our "24".
We'll be there.

That's the finest way to end Akban's summer vacation: Ninja pursuit, on skates, on a highway!

I'll be dreaming of highway chases with my fellow pirate ninjas when doing the first push-ups next week.

BTW, if my Japanese is still on par with my Ninja skate skills, I believe the Ninjas in the end of the clip are saying: "Dude, that was easier then a 24, for sure".

Thanks, Zaeega

Most of the groups trained by Akban veterans go on vacation from martial arts training in the last two weeks of August. Training will resume in September.

Meanwhile we'll continue to update our fitness routine, video some more tutorials and add martial arts and fitness videos to your encyclopedia.

See you back in September. Have a great vacation and - stay fit.

If you want to contact our veterans or instructors, please use our Hebrew martial arts contact page. An English one will be ready soon.

Too lazy to go to the dojo? Would you rather stay at home with the air-conditioning on and workout from your couch? Looks like you might be able to in a few years. New research has led to the discovery of 2 drugs that can increase the physical ability of mice without much exercise:


Such drugs are obviously beneficial. For instance, in cases where patients are incapable of regular movement and must maintain muscle mass. However, I worry about a widespread misuse of such medication simply due to laziness.

These drugs could also add to the long list of physical enhancement drugs such as anabolic steroids that are commonly used to increase muscle mass in a short period of time. I don't even want to think about what a combination with steroids would yield.

In any case, much easier to find, and only at the cost of some sweat, is the Akban fitness program. Besides, exercise can be fun as long as your training partner washed their gi sometime in the last six months.

Link to the IHT article

One would think that injury treatment in most sports was a vital part of maintaining the athlete's ability to participate. Lately, a new trend taking hold of aspiring MMA youngsters seems to be defying this rule.

Like the dreaded knuckles that come from years of Karate training on Makiwara, Cauliflower ears - a name given to a deformity of the outer ear - is the latest widespread ailment in the world of contact martial arts.

The condition most commonly appears in practitioners who receive repetitive blows or chaffs to the ear and fail to receive professional medical treatment. Rather than trying to avoid the condition, many youngsters think of having permanently damaged ears as a sign of being tough, and try to attain the deformity by avoiding all medical treatment:


Those who choose to treat the injury often attempt to do so themselves, without professional consultation:


Whatever the reasons behind this urge, it is obvious that a do-it-yourself approach when it comes to treating injuries is extremely dangerous. Here's a youtube clip that shows how to "drain your cauliflower ear".



I do not recommend it; anyone with a cauliflower ear should seek medical drainage as soon as possible. The hardened tissue in the ear is highly susceptible to infection, and instead of a "badge of honor", an acute infection of the outer part of the ear could lead to getting a "no ear at all".

We here in Akban started MMA-ing in the begining of the 1990's and soon discovered that the best way to deal with it is using an ear protector.
This is why so many of our veterans look like they are communicating with aliens. Well, who could tell what goes on in the mind of someone finishing 24 hours of sparring - maybe these contraptions are alien gear after all.

link to the IHT article

See also:
Head injuries in martial arts
Better to rest after a head injury

Amir Haimi, a well seasoned Akban veteran (Judo black belt, studied with Renzo Gracie, De La Riva...) with more then 20 years in the Akban school, will begin another round of seminars in Ne Waza, or Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

Akban veterans have been augmenting their martial art knowledge with many disciplines in order to hone Randori skills. During the last several years Amir, I., N. and Gidon Zaghar noticed recurring mistakes in ground techniques. These series of seminars come to remedy these mistakes and are highly recommended to all the Akban veterans not in Rio De Janeiro at the moment.

Links:
Brazilian Jiu Jitsu portal in the Akban-wiki - all the videos of the basic and most useful techniques.
Judo portal in the Akban-wiki - All the throws.
Grade requirements in Akban Budo Ninjutsu

We are getting nearer to a complete coverage of all the Koto ryu kata in your martial arts encyclopedia.

Thanks for all the guys pitching in, it shows what dedication, martial expertise and our veterans can achieve.
link to Koto Ryu kata and techniques

While the Chinese are busy regulating knife sales, Kansas car dealers are giving away guns with every purchase:


Just how effective traditional weapons would be against an armed truck driver is quite obvious. Instead, I think this is a job for the Ninjutsu ("martial art of distance") technique "distancing one's self from Kansas".

link

Kaloyan Mahlyanov, known with his Sumo name Kotooshu, made history, For the First Time a European Wins the Emperor's Cup.

Kotooshu, a Bulgarian, became the first European sumo fighter who won the Emperor's Cup after winning the 2008 May Grand Sumo Tournament in Tokyo.


If Kotooshu, an ozeki ranked fighter, wins the Nagoya tournament he could rise to the esteemed rank of yokozuna.

Link to IHT

Recent research discovered that it may be better to refrain from sports and "high-intensity activities" in the period after a concussion.

Tara Parker-Pope writes:

Head injuries are common-place in contact martial arts, no matter how many safeguards are put in place.

Link to the NYTimes blog article
The original report

Yet another burn-a-hole-in-the-nations-pocket military project has emerged recently, the "Raytheon Sarcos Exoskeleton". For those of you who are not familiar with sci-fi, this is the type of super strength suit the terminator's arch enemy would have been wearing.

Sounds cool, but what does it really do? As you can see in the video below, it can allow an average human being to lift large weights with the help of assisting hydraulic arms. While connected to a massive hydraulic controller of course.

Even if you overcome the challenge of powering the suit, will this sort of device not be obsolete by the time it is practical, replaced by purely robotic vehicles? Surely in it's current state it isn't much use outside the lab, and lets not go into what it looks like.

As Calvin would have said:
Here's the video: link