When the sociologist Stanley Cohen began his research into folk devils and moral panics he primarily looked at how the public created and fueled – with the assistance of the media - these things; he looked at how a small number of fights between “mods” and “rockers”, two opposing youth cultures in the 1960’s, was blown up by the media to create a national panic and the vilification of anyone who rode a scooter or a motorbike, and/or listened to a particular type of music etc. However, moral pani...(Click Here To Read The Article)
The belt system in martial arts is a relatively modern creation. Before belts, Japanese martial arts used what was known as a menkyo system with licenses or scrolls that signified levels of ability and mastery etc. These weren’t visible in training; they were documents awarded privately by the teacher to their students. This “invisibility” of rank meant that a student was judged by others on their ability, rather than on their instructor’s recognition of their skills and abilities etc. It was Ji...(Click Here To Read The Article)
When I used to compete in Judo, I knew what to expect e.g., I knew how to win the fight, what the rules were, how long the “fight” would last for, and if I was competing locally/regionally I often knew the people I’d be competing against. All of these things allowed me to make “trained” responses i.e., I could set up throws, work towards submissions on the ground etc. However, real life violence is very different; there is no referee to stop, start and adjudicate the fight, there are no rules th...(Click Here To Read The Article)
In last week’s article I looked at the need to commit to violence when dealing with physical confrontations, i.e., you need to be 100% committed to the task at hand and that means committing to violence. It would be nice to think that you could “safely” throw people away from you, without causing them any harm, such as in an aikido demonstration, whilst failing to acknowledge if the person hadn’t “rolled” away they’d be suffering a broken wrist/limb i.e., as “soft” as a particular martial art ma...(Click Here To Read The Article)
Conan O’Brien recalls the time (he was still a student at Harvard) when he met John Candy and told him that he wanted to “try” comedy. Candy’s response – which was not disparaging – was that you don’t try comedy, you either do it, or you don’t. It convinced O’Brien that if he wanted to become a comedian he had to effectively “burn the boats” i.e., not have a contingency plan but to commit this path/route. We don’t know if John Candy gave this piece of advice to other aspiring comics, who didn’t ...(Click Here To Read The Article)
When fighting you don’t need to look at something to know where a target is. In an interview, Mike Tyson was once asked where he “looked”, and he indicated to the chest area. The interviewer asked why he didn’t look at the head, and Tyson replied that, the head can’t hit you. He knew where the target was: it was located directly over the chest/torso, and he didn’t need to see it to be able to target it. There are many rookie/novice mistakes that people make when first starting to spar, and looki...(Click Here To Read The Article)