12 Months of Hard Labour

Happy New Year everyone!  Looking forward to another great 12 months with friends, students and hard martial arts training.   

At the beginning of each year we look back at the changes and improvements over the years.   As a young Rookie, I only had to carry a revolver, a spare ammo pouch and handcuffs; how is easy was that?  Twenty nine years later, I am bombarded with so much stuff to carry around; a box trailer would be nice!

Technology is the cause of all this.  Who would’ve ever thought you would be able to carry a phone in your pocket and call from anywhere around the world or own a computer a trillion times more powerful than that first black and white Wang computer of the 80’s?  Now we have cars that reverse park by themselves!  Nobody can resist technology or catch up with it.  Technology is about constant improvement based on the demands and expectations of the world.

Fight technology is no different.  It has to keep up with the demands of the times and the demands of people.  The martial arts also have to advance or evolve.  When I commenced martial arts training 35 years ago, our floor exercises were just push-ups, and sit-ups – even those were done the wrong way.  Strectches were just based on the forward and side splits (that was it).  Today, there's a lot of material out there.

Kickboxing in the early 70’s – what was that?  Boxing with kicks?  How stupid, that will never work, we thought.  Ground fighting in the early 80’s?  That was also stupid, who wants to get on the ground and get their clothes dirty!  

If you try to resist technology it will only be for a short time.  Look at the people who said they will never use the internet or carry a mobile phone.  These are the same sort of people who said the same thing about BJJ and Kickboxing.

Shihan Richard and I were talking about how wonderful it would've been to have the technology of today available when we were young!
GA