The Ultimate Guide to Boxing Instructionals on Squidoo

Are you a boxing enthusiast, a fighter or a coach? Here's a Squidoo page I made on stuff you can read or watch to broaden your knowledge on the sport of boxing. The page is not complete of course, I am updatting it every day, so you better bookmark it! If you know of a good resource on boxing which is not included in my list please leave a comment to let me know!

Spyro Katsigiannis

www.squidoo.com/boxinginstructionals
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Martial Arts Instructional DVDs - The Best Ever (Part 5)

The Fence, by Geoff Thompson



You probably know this already, but Geoff Thompson knows violence. He has worked as a doorman for nine years in the clubs and bars of Coventry during the eighties and those were really violent years. And of course, when you've been shovelling s**t for a long time, you sure learn how to use the shovel in the most efficient ways. Thompson has been also studying martial arts for a very long time - he's done karate, judo, boxing, Sambo, Greco-Roman and Freestyle wrestling, you name it. He's produced more than thirty instructional DVDs on these martial arts, but still, when you ask him which one he considers as the most important, he always answers "the Fence".

What is, then, this "Fence"? It's a self-protection principle, so simple that it becomes sophisticated enough to need explanation. There are three kinds of street attacks, according to Thompson. The first one is the match fight, all but obsolete in our days, since practically nobody is going to honourably ask you to step outside and settle your differences. The second kind of attack is the ambush. The third and most common attack is the one leading to the "three second fight", where your opponent uses stealth, talks his way close to you, so that he can knock you out with a surprise attack. Why would he want to come close to you? Because from a talking distance, you don't have enough time to block his attack - whatever he throws at you, you eat.

So from talking distance, you need a structure that allows you to control your opponent and preempt with an attack of your own, if needed. As Thompson explains in detail in this DVD, this structure is the Fence, a non-agressive hand posture that can be used to:
- occupy the space between you and your opponent so that he can't move even closer to grappling distance,
- monitor his attacking weapons (hands, feet and head, that is) through light tactile contact,
- psychologicaly control him in a subconcsious way,
- launch an attack with your "heavy artillery" (probably the right cross or left hook), in case you don't manage to verbally defuse the situation.
Thompson also describes the signs you should look for to know that your opponent is ready to launch attack (e.g. when he's talking in single syllable words, like "so?", "what?" and so on) so that you can literally beat him to the punch. One of the most eye-opening and amusing parts of the DVD comes when Geoff describes the different variations in which a number of fellow doormen from Coventry used the fence.

The DVD is a digitised version of the VHS tape that has been on the market for quite some time, so the quality of the image is not outstanding, but there's nothing here you will loose because of the analogue picture.

Get your hands on a copy of this if you want to reinforce your empty hand self-protection skills. And regarding the "empty hand-part", keep in mind that Guro Marc Denny of the Dog Brothers, was clearly influenced by Thompson's fence when he came upon the concept of the "Kali Fence", which is to be used against knife attacks, as explained in the DVD series Die Less Often.

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Martial Arts Instructional DVDs - The Best Ever (Part 4)

Becoming a Better Boxer 3 DVD set
by Kenny Weldon



OK, I know I've written about this one before, but that was just a review, now I want to include this in my Top 10, because there are a lot DVDs on boxing out there (and, I hate to blow my own whistle here, but I've seen almost all of them), but this one is better and I want everybody (well, at least the few dozens that read my blog) to know.
Why is it better? Because almost all the other DVDs treat boxing as if it is as sum of seemingly unconnected info, separate responses to separate stimuli. This one treats boxing as a system of movement that is born from this dogma: "Boxing is the art of hitting an opponent from the furthest distance, exposing the least amount of your body while getting into position to punch with maximum leverage and not getting hit".
This means that every movement, every technique, every training method shown here, however basic or advanced is based and built upon a set of fundamentals. So, what Weldon does here is first teach you the correct body structure from which to throw your punches, then the correct way to move maintanining this structure. All the stuff that follows - the correct way to use the equipment (top and bottom bag, speed bag, heavy bag, focus mitts), the ring strategies and so on - are dependent on the degree of your understanding of the basic skills. It may sound simplistic, but, believe me, there are a lot of secrets revealed and a lot of questions answered in these three DVDs.
One other thing: when I say Weldon treats boxing like a system of movement, don't expect to see a geeky doctor of kinesiology presenting the videos. Kenny is an old-timer, tough as nails, that reffers to his fighters as "little pups" or "sissies" - no scientific jargon or political correctness here. He's a trainer of champions (including Raul Marquez, Mike McCallum, Vinny Pazienza and Evander Holyfield), he's one of boxing's living treasures, when it comes to boxing coaches, he's da man.
And a final notice: if you're interested in a "boxing for MMA" instructional steer clear of this... But if you're a wannabe fighter, a trainer who wants to know better or a sweet science afficionado, you really can't spend your money any better than this.

Martial Arts instructional DVDs: The best ever! (Part 3)

Systema UK Fear Inoculation Training Workshop (single DVD available from www.systemauk.com)

Not many resoursces out there dealing with the effects of fear in combat performance. I can think of Geoff Thompson's Fear: The Friend of Exceptional People (this one's a book) but the famous Brittish doorman-martial artist-award winning writer approaches the subject from a philosofical, self-help kind of way. There's also Scott Sonnon's Fisticuffs – Peak Performance Pugilism series of tapes, probably the most scientific sport psychology approach to combat sports I've ever came across, but this one is currently unavailable – I have it in my collection, you probably don't. Then, there's the Systema UK Fear Inoculation Training Workshop, by Systema Russian Martial Art instructors Rob Poyton and Paul Genge.

One of the most important difference between the Russian Martial Art and other, more typical combat systems is that the Russians view combat from a psycho-physiological perspective, as opposed to a purely technical analysis (when attacked by A you react doing B, and so on). The Russian promise is the following: if you can control your breathing when under the stress of combat, then you can control your body structure and movement, which means that you have access to your combat skills, the techniques. Not only is it simple, but it kind of makes sense: the old boxing coaches (perhaps the new ones also) always tell their fighters that they should not hold their breath when cornered... Of course what you must do is one thing – what you can do is a whole different story. Try this experiment the next time you're at the sea or the pool: Swim to the point where water is up to your chest, take a deep breath, dive underwater and lie on the bottom. Have a training partner (or a friend, or your wife, whatever) stand on your chest to keep you underwater and stay there for as long as possible. You probably can handle this for a minute or so - then you first panic and then you start jerking around (like a fish outside the water) in an attempt to free your self and reach the surface. That specific moment you're panicking, you are not hurting yourself. It's the automated way your body is trying to protect itself, telling you that you're not supposed to do this. It kind of works the same way in combat: if, when fighting, you lose control of your breathing, your body tells you that you can't do this, that you should give it up. What happens next is easy to guess.

Rob Poyton and Paul Genge are top notch Systema instructors: not only are they highly skilled, they also have this ability to take what is sometimes taught by the Russian masters in an intuitive way and organise it in easy to understand and practice training drill progressions. This Fear Inoculation Training Workshop filmed live during a 2006 Systema UK seminar is a good expample. The first part of the workshop is an analysis of the way the human brain functions under stress – a bit of scinentific jargon to help you understand what is the specific purpose of this kind of training. There's also a comparison between the Systema way and the ways other martial arts deal with the effects of fear. The second part tackles breath control as a means of controlling your mindset when under combat stress. There are tons of drills here to help you maintain an unimpeded breathing pattern when you're being sweared at, kicked, smashed on the floor by the weight of three persons and contorted by three partners aplying joint locks to multiple joints. Most of the drills are unorthodox, some are slightly sadistic, but if you practice them (I have) you'll find out that they work. Finally there's a third part with numerous drills that cultivate instnctive movement when one is under attack: this is a way to short-circuit the "freezing" effect the adrenaline rush sometimes has on your body. The perticipants start by simply moving out of the way of a surprise charge of a partner towards them and graduate to countering full speed and power punching attacks.

If you don't have a kamikaze or a predator mindset but still want to be able to handle things when in a violent situation, or if you think you have to become some sort of Gothic monster to be able to fight, there is a lot for you to learn by watching this DVD. Really excellent work!

Martial Arts instructional DVDs: The best ever! (Part 2)

Scott Sonnon's Immovable Object Unstoppable Force (2 DVD set, available from www.rmaxinternational.com)

I've written this before and I will write this once again: there are no good or bad martial arts. There are good or bad teaching and training methods! Take Judo for example: they say that the gentle art was nothing but a handful of principles in Jigoro Kano's mind. He used techniques as examples of principles applied. I don't really know what came over his successors, but after a hundred years or so, Judo is today reduced to 108 techniques plus the variations coming from the competitive side of the art, olympic judo. So, if you take up Judo today, after learnng the breakfalls (ukemi) you will then be taught techniques, sets of instructions, that is, on how to perform specific throws. The problem with instructions is, well..., what if something goes wrong, what if your opponent does not want to follow them? In this case most students try to force the technique using muscular strength which is kind of OK, IF they are stronger than their opponents. A small number of students, after years of training, using more or less intuitive methods, finally understand what it is that makes the techiques work, the principles behind them. These are the so called "talented" students. But when it is their turn to become teachers they use the exact method they were taught, the only one they know, using techniques. The rest of the students, the ones that are neither strong nor intuitive, just keep on trying with poor results or quit altogether. They are the so called "non talented" students. Well, I did train in judo for two years and I was not a talented one, so I quit, because I do not believe that a martial art or fighting sport should take more years to learn than it takes to become a neuro-surgeon...
I had all but forgotten about the art of jacket wrestling when I read about Scott Sonnon's IOUF and decided I wanted to buy myself a copy. If you believe that one cannot learn martial arts from instructional DVDs, well this is the unshakable proof that you are WRONG!!! After watching this two or three times (Sonnon's material is packed with info, you need to watch them more that once), and two or three training sessions, I was able to perform the most spectacular judo throws in a totally effortless way, in a dynamic environment (with a resisting opponent). I know this sounds like an infomercial, but it is the whole truth and nothing but.
Scott Sonnon, a former world Sambo champion and former USA national Sambo team coach, is an instructor's instructor. He has released top-notch instructional sets on fist fighting, clinch fighting, jacket wrestling, submission fighting, you name it. But since he is a Sambo man, throwing is where he's best at and in this instructional set (used to be five or six VHS tapes, now two DVDs) he uncovers the lost fundamentals of throwing techniques. These include:
- The concept of hyper-function, which means moving your opponent in a way that his (or her) body is designed to move, as opposed to dys-function, moving your opponent in a way that his body is designed to resist. Your kuzushi (breaking the opponent's balance) will never be the same after that.
- The concept of quantum gripping, or how to control your opponent's whole body when gripping his gi. Includes countering your opponents grip.
- The concept of balance through movement, since humans, as bypedals, are never in balance when standing in one place.
- The concept of controling the Joint Mass Center: when you and the opponent are grabbing each other, you are not two separate mechanical entities, you are one, hence joint mass center. If you control it, it is easy to throw and impossible to be thrown.
Sonnon meticulously explains each of the concepts - sometimes you might he talks too much but not one word here is meaningless, except some of his jokes, perhaps - and then demonstrates numerous, quite impressive applications, including typical judo throws, wrestling takedowns and sacrifice throws.
If you are in any way way interested in the numerous ways to bring another human being to the ground and are wondering (like I was) why Tai Otoshi is so damn hard to execute, then you definitely need this set of DVDs...

(to be continued)


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