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Showing posts from June, 2010

DIY Training Equipment #3 - Makiwara

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I have made a makeshift makiwara, loosely based on designs garnered from the internet, but also from Mike Clarke's book "Hojo Undo".  Compared to some of the makiwara out there, it's quite springy, and compared to others, it's a bit woosy.  I like to think of it as "my-first-makiwara", and the intention is, once I've broken myself in to using it, I'll replace it with a stronger one. It is made from a spare mountain ash plank I had lying around.  I sawed it into two lengths, one shorter than the other, and dug a hole to put it in.  At the base of the hole, I put a large rock just in front of the planks and as I filled it in, I placed another rock about 2/3 of the way up behind the planks.  I packed all the dirt down, angling the board a little forward of vertical (about 10 degrees). The idea behind the two planks was to give me a poor-man's way of angling the wood.  In a traditional makiwara, it is made of a single piece of tapered wood - ab

Silat Seminar

Last month, I attended my first Silat seminar, run by Maul Mornie of silat suffian bela diri.  It was possibly the most enjoyable seminar (martial arts or otherwise) I have ever attended. So, what is it?  Silat Suffian Bela Diri is a Bruneian martial art (about the only one I've heard of, at that).  It is the family art of Maul Mornie, who took the seminar.  From my impression, it is an integrated weapon/weaponless martial art.  By integrated, I mean that the core principles of the art are the same regardless of whether there is a weapon or not, and that the same body structures are used in empty and armed conflict.  Maul seems to spend a lot of the year travelling from country to country running seminars in the art. Things I enjoyed: 6 hours of doing nothing but physical partner-based training the core principles and techniques are congruent with the core principles and techniques of my karate, so I was able to pick them up well, and not have "culture