The human Stun gun

It's been a fairly hectic MA time this past week.
At the weekend I attended kobudo and was pretty pleased to really nail the new nunchaku kata that seems to fox me everytime. Also managed to get the hang of the katana 8 cuts kata, although am far from making this look polished. The frustrating thiing with kobudo for me is that we spend nearly all session going over all the old katas, leaving very little time for the new stuff. That means you walk home having never learnt anything for the next exam level. I still have not seen naginata kata, hardly touched the Sai #3 and barely scratched the surface of the bo pairs stuff. I might raise this with head sensei.

The head of our JJ style did introduce to us a new addition to the white belt kata. Now, at each belt level, there is a further 3-4 technques tacked on. By the time the students reaches brown, the original white belt kata will have mutated into a really nice looking sparring kata. It's pretty impressive and should achieve the aim of equipping students with suitable kata skills by the time they tackle shodan.

I've always been very cynical about Dim Mak - or Death touch as it is sometimes referred to. DON'T CONFUSE THIS WITH JUJITSU PRESSURE POINTS (atemi waza) - in jujitsu, although many of the pressure and nerve points used in our trad JJ style coincide. Dim Mak practitioners belive they can seriously maim or even kill with their techniques (whereas we teach that they are sometimes useful to distract). So I laughed my flipping Meerkat head off when I saw this video - a snatch from a US news segment exposing how ineffective dim mak was against a bunch of BJJ students. The instructor looked, frankly, foolish. You've been found out mate. Yet, there will always be those who believe anything, because they want to believe.

Lots of events are happening - the 10K challenge in Hackney looks to be the most exciting. Just seen the competitor list and BJJ coach Eddie Kone is on the reserve list of fighters. If someone pulls out, Eddie may get his moment on stage.