Hey everyone I am sorry I haven't been blogging lately, I have been super busy sorting things out for my future plans, I have some exciting news that I would like to share. Number one I will be in Auckland the first weekend of October  doing seminars the whole weekend, still got to sort out where abouts we will be but hopefully I'll sort that before its too late. I'll be looking at self defense principals which is a subject dare to my heart. Covering insecure holds, secure holds and ground escapes. I'll try to come up and few times before the end of the year and will let you know when and where the next set are also.

Secondly I am looking at doing a hitch hiking tour of the country next year for a whole year, going from town to town meeting groups to train with for at least 2 months, interviewing how martial arts effects peoples lives and seeing the similarities in all styles, cos the theory is we all do the same thing, only the intention or purpose changes, the principals are all the same. I'll be funding this tour by teaching self defense to the general public but mostly being a martial bum.

I wanted to try my hand at writing like those old masters 

Find strength in accuracy,  (true strength isnt how hard you can hit but the accuracy of your technique and placement of your strike) 

The way of the roll, this holds special signifcates to me mainly due to the fact that my main system that I train in is an aikido based system and the first year of my leasons I wasnt allowed to do a single throw. I was used as an uke, or punching bag in english for the more senior students training and the teachers prime demostratee (if thats a word).

But because of this type of training I learnt the techniques by name, the differnce between a good throw and a bad one and later on where to counter safely, sooner then those of the same grade. Now I try to focus most of my classes on how to attack well, keep yourself safe through out movement so that if an attack fails and you are thrown you can still be better off......well kind of.

I have been doing a lot of reading these last few weeks on martial arts principals from a few sources. It's been really good but now I'm a bit lost on what to blog.

So after much humming and harring this blog is on the main principals of self defence. Note that these are principals, not techniques, if you want techniques that demonstrate the principals look at the stuff your class does first and if you don't see them ask your teacher, I am more then happy to answer any questions or confusions as well.

Three words… Time on Distance 

The formula for speed but also a very very important principal for the lessons I've been doing about positioning. Last weeks class we looked at blocking techniques and the one thing that my teacher hated about the word blocking is that its misleading.