AKBAN is an international organization for practicing and researching Martial arts. Two paths are open to you, one in our AKBAN-Online dojo and the other in our various dojos in in Greece, Germany, Canada, and Israel. Join us online or talk to us on WhatsApp
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Use the proven and researched AKBAN Extreme Fitness program for regular people to gradually get into top shape and stay strong till old age. AKBAN Fitness routine
Learn to control stress and fear
Use our ground breaking Detant course and learn to be clear headed, focused and determined in extreme situations. Use our unique physical emotional modulation. Proved in battle and in the daily grind of the Israeli situation.
AKBAN is a Martial arts research institute that was founded in Israel and has dojos in Israel, Germany, Canada, Greece and soon, in Japan. Yossi Sheriff is the AKBAN Academy headmaster. Our veterans have decades of experience.
Extreme training regime is augmented by the conflict managment tools and unique power control techniques of DETANT.
We train the way we like by absorbing ourselves in Japanese Ninjutsu techniques while fearlessly researching. We don’t care about politics, political values, belt systems or Mc-dojos – what matters to us is dojo time, heart and earth, that’s it: One principle – There are No shortcuts, but there is Kwisatz Haderach.
This site is a part of our Slow web philosophy. In it you will find more than 7000 pages of techniques and videos and also our gradual fitness routines – take your time, return to reread or mail us (akban [at ] akban.org) for research oriented issues. Scroll down, and on this page you can read the last week’s sessions, because that’s what we focus on – plain old practice.We are The AKBAN academy, we preserve ancient knowledge of fighting, awareness and desert navigation by practicing it. on our list of publications is research in conflict methodology and analysis of traditional and modern fighting techniques. Our think tank resulted in unique research and was the cornerstone of the DETANT organisation for public sector conflict resolution.Sparring is in each and every lesson and so are yearly seminars with some of the world’s best teachers in Boxing, BJJ, Muai Thai, European martial arts and more. On our dojos are only 300 practitioners each year, and they take at least 12 years before a black belt. So, since 1986, we graduated only 100 black belts.
This site is our dedication to what we love: the warrior culture, and all this is free, our respect to you.
The Academy’s headquarters is situated in Tel Aviv, and another office is in Jerusalem. We have graduate instructors all over Israel, working in small, sparring oriented, dojos. Our recent dojo addition is in Toronto, Canada.
It is not easy to say what makes the Akban community so robust; is it the Israeli situation, the top notch fitness? Who knows? We believe part of it is the special kind of students who choose training with us, students that get involved in incredible achievements and continue training for a lifetime. As we said, we are not sure, but we love the atmosphere, you can catch the scent of it in many of the images in our galleries or come train with us. Tel Aviv is a fun city.
There are never guarantees that we’ll make a warrior from every new student, the only guarantee is that whatever we do, we do it with our extensive knowledge, our heart, taking no shortcuts, the way we see it.
Violence in New York is up….In the last 28 days (through July 12), compared to last year, shootings have more than tripled (318 vs. 97). (link)
How to Tell GPT-3 from a human? “The lesson here is that if you’re a judge in a Turing test, make sure you ask some nonsense questions, and see if the interviewee responds the way a human would.” (link) [not so fast, gwern shows how to circumvent this nonsense (link), also “Tempering Expectations…(link)”
TV and radio could command our attention the way the speaker in a classroom would, through people paying attention to what others were attending to. But we use 21st-century media in isolation. (link)
The human sperm flagellum rotates the cell to beat equally on all sides in 3D, not an eel-like, side to side motion. (link)
Warlords of the air, Sergey Brin’s Revolutionary $19 Airship. (link)
Creating a comprehensive (physical-internal) fitness training for the environment of a prison / small room / refugee camp.
Music (together with Ran Lev Ari, Yaniv Meisel, Yoni Ben Dor):
Sympathetic music for fighting and practicing katas
Parasympathetic music for Detant Niradin (After several years of focusing on the rhythm we are working on in parallel on melody, harmonies and human voice)
Economic growth: The persistence of poverty Mellisa Dell, recent winner of the John Bates Clark Award, shares her fascinating research about how decisions made over 400 years ago can affect economic outcomes today.
Price ceilings and floors: English Bread RegulationsFresh bread is clearly better than stale bread, but you might not think to ban FRESH bread during a wheat shortage. However, it’s been tried: The English prohibited the sale of fresh bread in order to suppress demand during a bad wheat harvest around 1800, and the UK tried the same trick during WWI.
Huge Political Disconnect Over the State of the Economy. In 2008 everyone knew the economy was in bad shape. Today, views vary tremendously by party affiliation. (link)
Amazing mix of 1970-1980 technology in a seven minutes video explaining the buttons in the F-15C fighter jet cockpit. Part Star Wars stuff, part reality. Makes me think of the timescale of preparation of the fighters. Thousands of hours.
Sofie Matterson is tracking alone across Australia with her five camels (Jude, Delilah, Charlie, Clayton and Mac). Black belts, you understand why I’m posting this. I’m filing this under inspirations. Sofie’s website (link)
I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention, but the world took a sharp turn for the dystopian. Governments declare states of emergency across the globe, people are dying left and right, and the media – true to their prime directive – stoke fear with warlike talk against an enemy we cannot see, but whose power we most definitely feel.
Covid-19 is just a name – a symptom if you will – of a problem much deeper and much more endemic to the lives we’ve chosen. This enemy, measured in micrometers, was foreseen, warned against, and thoroughly ignored until it was too late. There are many “enemies” following it closely (some preceding it too), and they are way nastier. Authoritarian states. Economic recession. Environmental collapse.
And the big question looms: Why the hell do we train amidst all this chaos? Does it even make sense? Isn’t it just …futile?
Yeah, it is. And training is still not an option.
Life has always been about fighting. Not the military kind, the one that’s good, bloody, self-destructive business. The other kind; the one that makes me get out of bed to face a universe that couldn’t give two shits about my troubles, without any meaning aside for the one I create for myself. You might disagree, but it’s all good. All opinions end in silence, but this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t enjoy a good fight. Bleak, perhaps, but martial arts are not among the fine arts. We study violence and conflict, but trust me – it’s deeply spiritual. Visceral, yes, but spiritual. Life-asserting actually, one punch at a time.
I don’t know why any student of mine trains. Don’t get me wrong; I’m curious, but ultimately, it’s not my burden to know the reason. It took me over a decade to find out why I train (it’s because I define my self-worth by my ability to withstand hardship – and fear). Some train to feel powerful, some to protect themselves, some to pick up girls (or boys) at the beach because, hey, ninjas are cool. “Why” is not important. Training is. You come in, do the work, shed the sweat, get punched, kicked, thrown, choked, share a few laughs, and come back for more – until you don’t. A perfect theater of the human condition, if you ask me.
There lies the “deeper meaning” of martial arts. Not meditating on a mountain until your teeth fall off, not chanting mantras, making mudras, drawing mandalas, but grappling with Death, in a macabre simulation, three times a week, every week. What did you think it means when you tap? You’re dead. Or you would be if you weren’t just playing with your training buddies. Sometimes you have their life in your hands, sometimes they have yours. Full circle. There is a simple beauty to this, different from that of a painting, but no less true. We are all in this together, and our lives depend on one another.
Tell me of one other human enterprise where you get to learn that so clearly. The lessons of the body cannot be denied.
That’s what martial arts are all about. To play with mortality, grapple with fragility, mock death, and have a good time. To possess that fabled, sparkling jewel of being human – the fighting spirit. Same as our ancestors when they scratched their way across frozen tundras, stalked by beasts, and lashed by the elements. If you think we’re past that as a species, I’d say you’re about to get a crash course on the symbolic structure of reality. Our tundras are concrete, the beasts wear suits, and the elements (*cough* climate change *cough*) are about to get a whole lot angrier with the tricks we’ve been pulling post-industrialization.
Martial arts are futile, and so is everything else. That’s the nature of our being; fragile, ephemeral, mortal. We cannot win, and it doesn’t matter. But we can fight. It’s great fun. To be human is to fight. You make great friends and great enemies too. In the end, we’re all invited for dinner. What else are you going to do? Go train.
Inside a personal room and the internet it’s easy to create an imaginary world that has never been tested against both colleagues and opponents. But, what determines the next era is the ability to communicate online. This is not ideal, this is already the case and it will only get worse.
The Takeaway: Do learn to communicate online but do not be a amateur.
Some martial arts will lose students
Martial arts that emphasis close body contact will lose students. In the post-Corona world, despite the desire for human touch and physical embrace, the risk of close breathing and bodily fluids will be reserved for those who ignore risks.
The Takeaway: If you are centred in a Grappling, diversify.
Other martial arts will gain students
Martial arts that can build or have a syllabus of contactless training will be more popular – see section 2. In times of uncertainty many want and need to learn martial arts, the question is which ones. Defensive abilities give us a better quality of life because the fear of the other becomes an emotion in control. I expect a rise in historical weapons, karate, kung fu, and some forms of ninjutsu.
The Takeaway: Change syllabus to adapt to post pandemic world. Use the Methodical Pyramid.
The intimate session is back
AKBAN’s teachers, and myself, usually teach a few dozen students. It’s intimate and allows a reasonable number of students to Zoom learn. Seminars abroad with the physical presence of tens and hundreds of attendees will have to wait a long time to resume.
The Takeaway: Intimacy and closeness can be discovered in a large group and an online class. It takes sensitivity and work.
Streaming is not just for the experts
Any teacher who wants to teach now must learn how to overcome the technological hurdles and learn well how to stream. This is the situation.
The Takeaway: Control the technology or be its pawn.
Streaming will build a deep student audience
The human ability to communicate will bypass the limit of presence in the same room. Students who study in streaming can go deeper in some places than students who attend.
The Takeaway: The urban, easy access dojo is relatively new, many more models of learning used to exist. Embrace change with an easy heart, this is a challenge.
Streaming needs to evolve
Streaming needs to go beyond the basic video – we’ll find ways to teach better with streaming, methods we don’t know at the moment, from cellular reminders to specific merchandise for training – I’m waiting for our human creativity here.
The Takeaway: Do not wait on the sidelines for the technology to evolve. Play with it, learn and maybe, contribute.
Not everyone will survive professionally
Not all teachers, not all organizations will survive the crisis – a strong community is just as important as a fighting spirit. There will still be times when one of us will feel down. A strong and close community is key. A spiritually and physically strong community is the most important help now. Writing this Again: Community (Friendship, Humanity, Participation, Patience, Tolerance, Openness).
The Takeaway: Give more than you receive.
Those who survive the crisis will flourish
Martial arts, no matter which ones, show ability. Those who will show ability in crisis (clarity, speed, generosity, fighting spirit, emotional balance) will reap the reward afterwards.
The Takeaway: Frown strong. Breath deep.
New priorities
More students, more things, more money – that belongs to previous era. This is changing to better students and less things (but good and useful).
The Takeaway: An axe never runs out of batteries. Five good students are better than fifty mediocre ones.
Modifications
The local will replace the international. Online will replace the physical. Good or not good, it’s no longer to us to decide. It is what it is.
Some will naturally freeze and hesitate, others will deny and go to escapism and nostalgia.That is not the best reaction. We need to put our natural emotions in check.
The Takeaway: Stop, asses the situation and then start doing.
The Individual and telling a story
An academy, like AKBAN, is more than the sum of its parts, it exists in each individual. Each of the teachers and practitioners should be strong to hold both the practice and the knowledge. In this multiple task scenario on multiple platforms it is easy to loose yourself.
The Takeaway: Learn how not to dilute the personal story when telling it to others.
Corona is a social crisis, and I am not talking about COVID-19 as a disease, but about it’s social consequences. The crisis is not the Corona virus, the crisis is the automatic visceral reaction of communicated amplified individuals.
SARS-CoV-2 is an anomaly. It’s been many years since humanity had to process such a communal surprise and right now, middle of March 2020, processing is going on, consciously and automatically, at full speed. This processing is amplified by our interconnectedness and the visibility of things happening far and near. News that would be local and could be digested in months and years in the early civilisations are now processed in a matter of days. The speed at which humanity and society are meeting this anomaly, is a huge factor in what is going to happen now.
Anything more complicated than a fruit fly deals with anomalies in the same way, it freezes.
In a sudden and big enough anomaly the reaction is almost always freezing to digest the information and to avoid possible harm. This happens not only in fruit flies, it happened to our society. Freezing should not always be taken literally, sometimes it is the vacant stupor of complex automatic daily activities.
Not every sudden phenomena is an anomaly. When someone attacks a soldier it is sudden, but it is a category of surprises he grew accustomed to. For these kind of surprises, we have a set of reactions that have been wired into the system.
This COVID-19 is a surprise on another level. Few countries have been preparing for this pandemic, and even if those that did, are not prepared for the scale of this one.
‘Fight, flight, freeze’ reactions are not limited to individual organisms on the micro level, these reactions appear on the macro level of societies too.
On the Corona crisis, the first thing many societies and individuals did is freezing, some for weeks, some for months. So many advanced countries chose not to prepare that it is astonishing. The Fight, Flight, Freeze reaction only played its first part – freeze.
As we all know, it take two to tango, but one is enough to start a fight. This street wisdom works on the personal, regional and global scale.
When the surprise is bad, but it has been dealt with before, we can sometimes use pre-learned reactions to deal with it. When a ‘once in a century’ anomaly like Covid-19 hits, and is combined with hyper connectivity, the reaction it will elicit is lunacy.
I expect social deterioration in many fields. No doubt that the fear potentiated startle reflex we are having as a society will reverberate for years. The Fight part of the unholy trinity ‘fight, flight, freeze’ will take precedence to higher, rational, thinking.
If a good and cheap cure, and later on a flexible vaccine, will not be found then the visceral reactions of individuals and societies will cause greater suffering than the virus will.
