Understanding Rhythm and Broken Rhythm in Sparring by Badger Johnson

I’ve talked in other essays about the use of music and tempo and time, and the use of beats to augment your martial arts training. Someone was asking me what the concept of ‘broken-rhythm’ meant. They said that Bruce Lee was actually listening to ‘weird’ Indian and maybe African music with headphones and trying to use that to give him an advantage. Then they said that Joe Lewis, his partner and student back in the day, and a tournament and...

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Big Picture - Training Martial Arts and Self-Defense by Badger Johnson

Let’s try and break down the martial arts/self-defense/physical training into some large concepts. Big Picture elements: Layering your defense methods, for example in the home having motion-control lighting, improved entryways and upgraded window treatments, removing obstructions and so forth. You want to analyze your systems from the top down, from the bottom up, and from the 10,000 foot view and also the low level analysis of details every once...

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Seeing Deeply Part 2 by Stickgrappler

This is my followup to yesterday's entry "Seeing Deeply - the Method and Intangibles" by my friend Badger Johnson. 3 months ago I had shared Badger's essay on his thoughts on How Bruce Lee Trained His Quick Kill to a Facebook group. Badger was "seeing deeply" by connecting the dots and reading between the lines from various sources. He came up with, in my opinion, a convincing hypothesis on how Bruce Lee trained his quick kill. A member...

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"Seeing Deeply - the Method and Intangibles" by Badger Johnson

Everyone wants to be able to see below the superficial. They know about terms such as reverse engineering, deconstruction, going back to the original source, changing the paradigm, but they don't know how to do this in practice. One way is going from the general to the specific or from the specific to the general. Another way is going from the external to the internal. An example of the latter is analyzing the phrases related to dealing with...

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