The MartialBody Blog

As a competitive Athlete in my mid 40s, who trains with elite level competitors in their 20's, it would be fair to say that I have my fair share of niggles and injuries. These injuries can and have been minor problems with knees, all they way up to major injuries to muscle or joints. It is also very common for an older athlete to have less obvious 'aches and pains' on a daily basis that can be resolved through focused MartialBody training. In this article I share how I go about heali...

I have had the opportunity to meet a lot of martial artists from different disciplines. In this article we are going to look at a certain subset of individuals, specifically those interested in the 'internal arts' or Aiki arts. There is much mystery, misconception and indeed ridicule surrounding these ‘internal’ systems and they are often linked to MartialBody training due to my personal training in them. So if you are not from these arts this article may not make much sense but it cou...

The MartialBody Process can sometimes be confused for other methods or systems. I often get emails asking 'is MartialBody this or that'. So let clearly define what MartialBody is and what it aims to achieve.

When training a body skill it is common to have the impression that we are building something that is somewhat unique, or special, something that we feel is powerful enough to make a difference.  This attitude can be seen in the multitudes of people studying martial arts skill that are wholly convinced of their unique supremacy. However,the reality is that all of these powers, body skills and methods that we hold so dear can become undone in an instant by those with an intelligent approach.

It is common for many martial artists, especially those with experience, to come to a given practice with an expectation. Martial artist from all walks of life, and from all systems will have a predetermined notion of what is specific technique or training method should be and ultimately what it should achieve.

The subject of today’s article is focus, specifically how our focus impacts our ability to develop a process for achieving our desired body method development. The discussion of focus is the discussion of the feeling that underpins our mental and physical ability to stay on track, to not deviate from a path we have set and to stick things out. But all though I talk often about the development of the body, without an ability to focus, everything else is irrelevant.

​​​​​​​In a previous article we looked at the subject of passive and active power. These two types of power can be used to define the ways in which martial artists interact and are helpful when examining the context in which our body method is used. Here we will examine the subject of active power in more depth in order to understand how Active and Passive are essentially two parts of the same coin.

When I worked as a Doorman, I would spend many hours on my feet getting people into and out of the venue. I would be observing and monitoring problems, making sure everyone was safe and sometimes getting physical to remove trouble makers. If you were to observe my posture throughout the night, it would be in constant change. From the upright confident posture needed for the front of house, to the fluidity needed to get through the crowd, to the fighting postures needed to deal with attackers, to...

When we take a higher level view of the hundreds of practices that encompass the Martial Arts or Combat sports we see that, regardless of origin, cultural background or goal, they boil down to our ability to produce or deal with forces. Even largely solo training methods like Iaido are reliant on a refined understanding of forces in our body to produce smoothness and clarity in the methods. This higher level view of the Martial Arts, peeling away the layers of context from them, gives us an oppo...