Martial Arts & Self Defense – Defending Yourself Against A Wall Pin Attack

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Most martial arts and self defense students are taught how to defend against things like punches, grabs, kicks, and even weapon attacks. But, what about attacks, like a wall pin – where he has you shoved up and pinned against a wall, car, or other obstacle – where your attacker is using your surroundings as an aid for his assault?

While this article cannot teach you everything you need to know to escape from the exact attack you might find yourself in, it does offer some very powerful strategies and tactics that you can use to turn the tables on him during one of these very dangerous attack-types. So, if this is something that you think is important to add to your toolbox of techniques, then read on.

If not, then this article is definitely not for you.

I’ll assume that, if you’re still reading, you want to learn how to deal with this very common type of attack.

And, before I go into describing some of the strategies and tactics that I want to give you for surviving a wall-pin attack, I want to talk about something else that you must never forget. Okay?

That thing is this. You can never forget that a self defense situation is never like class training? What that means is that, many of the “invisible aspects” of your class – things like:

1) Speed
2) Timing
3) Intensity
4) Your partner’s intention to really damage you, and even…
5) The large, open space of the training area

Will usually be EXACTLY OPPOSITE from what you are used to!

You must be very mindful of these realities which exist in the world of self defense, but typically are not an issue in the realm of sport karate and mixed martial arts. Make sure that, if you are serious about really learning to defend yourself, that your training reflects these realities.

What does this have to do with the topic of this article?

Good question.

And the answer is… EVERYTHING!

Your attacker is not an idiot. He will do everything he can to make sure that he has the greatest advantage in the situation. He is there to win, not to see which of you is the better fighter!

And, that’s where the wall pin comes in.

This is where your attacker grabs or shoves you in some way, and shoves you face-first or backwards, against a wall, and then proceeds to lay his body weight into you to make sure that you can’t go anywhere.

In this moment, you must think outside the box if you’re going to escape effectively and turn things around.

That being said, here are a few strategies and tactics that can be used to get out of this dangerous type of situation:

1) Use the wall itself for leverage. Apply leverage against the stability of the wall to increase your own strength and shove your assailant back. This could provide you with a complete escape on one extreme, to just enough space on the other, to be able to get a punch or kick in against him.

2) Move laterally ALONG the wall. Remember that he is pushing you “into” the wall. If you can remember that he doesn’t have you caged on all sides, you can use the openings to your left and right as escape avenues. Then, once free, you can apply your conventional punching, kicking, or grappling skills.

3) Use deception. When you hit the wall, using your best breakfall and receiving skills to minimize damage, act as though the impact was much worse than it really is. Relax as though you have been dazed or knocked unconscious. Then, when he adjusts to your apparent condition, and the fact that he now has to hold up your dead weight, explode into action and take the fight to him!

Remember that effective self defense takes into account that you WILL be the underdog – that your attacker will have the upper hand – and that, it WON’T be “fair.” So, you must get over the sick sense of “fair-play” and flat-out wrong information that is being passed around as self defense by poor instructors with absolutely no real-world experience!

How To Get The Gunfighter Mentality In Martial Arts!

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One of the most important things you can have, if you want to be a good fighter, inside the ring or out, is the gunfighter mentality. The best fighters, like Chuck Lidells and Anderson Silva, have this intuitively in their personality. The losers don’t.

Interestingly enough, the Gunfighter Mentality used to be central to learning the classical martial arts. I remember training back in the sixties, and everything we did was pointed towards building this ability. While there were many factors involved in the death of the Gunfighter Mentality in training, people like Bruce Lee probably drove home the spike.

Bruce Lee added circling and bouncing to the martial arts. The Gunfighter Mentality depends on stillness, being coiled like a snake, and here was this fellow acting like Mohammad Ali, circling and jabbing and destroying the mindset of the Gunfighter. Now Bruce Lee would have won most any fight anyway, but a generation copied him, and they gave up the deadly zen stillness of the Gunfighter.

Now stillness is the heart of true fighting, when it comes to the martial arts, and there are several good reasons or this. There was much interchange between karate and zen principles in Japan, and people who sat in the zen position for long hours began to see the benefits of sitting, waiting, and cultivating silence. In the silence one could better perceive, could empty themselves enough that their intuitive nature would take over.

When one is silent, just sitting, when one just relaxes, the senses begin to work better, and the world begins to open up. Try it, just sit in a chair comfortably and just relax for a while. The world will start to make itself known, tell you things, and you will become brighter, sharper, calmer.

Once the student begins to appreciate that his perceptions will work better, the true martial arts can be developed. In the silence we learned how to set our stances, to sink them into the ground, and search for the angle set of the leg, the best position to spring from. In the silence we would examine the position of the foot and the turn of the hips, trying to make every single part of our bodies into responsive and explosive machines.

Freestyle matches, instead of dancing around and wasting energy, would be subtle shifts of the body and edgings forward. Instead of throwing a hundred punches, many of which would miss, we would set up to throw one punch, but every ounce of our might would be instilled in that one punch. And, most important, we walked away from the dojo as different people, aware people, patient people.

The Gunfighter Mentality in the martial arts pretty are much dead, and it is unfortunate. Because I believe that if the fighters of today began developing the Gunfighter Mentality the Martial Arts would take a turn for the better. This might not be good for mixed martial artists in such places as the UFC, however, as the techniques might become too deadly.

Digital Arts School In The Philippines Where Creativity Soars

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Innovation and technology has brought us into a world where creativity successfully translates into happiness and entertainment. Pictures and imageries are no longer just simple pieces of colorful shapes and cutouts. Because of the existence of various institutions, programmers and animators have learned to revolutionize the way advertisements and visual presentations are impacting patrons and regular spectators. Today, art is transported to a totally different level.

Speaking of which, there are currently a lot of IT schools offering various IT-related degrees and academic programs. These institutions not only help corporate businesses employ competent and skilled IT professionals; they also help boost creativity and cultivate more ingenious talents that will further advance the industry.

Discovering Expertise

Many are interested in taking up IT courses to explore things that go beyond human imagination. Some choose to master one of the following lines of expertise: 3D animation, multimedia arts, computer graphics, web design, game development, and software engineering.

Obviously, digital arts schools in the Philippines are slowly paving the way to fame. These learning institutions offer more or all of the aforementioned fields of interest that capture the attention and hearts of artists, enthusiasts, and fascinated individuals.

All these specializations have one thing in common: they all enrich and deepen an individuals creative skills. They are not only into forming new talents; they are also into bringing out the best in every learner and in helping them discover and get the most out of their inventiveness and imagination.

Embracing Digital Technology

A scientific discovery is a product of peoples endless attempt to find solution to human queries on how to do certain things in the most convenient and improved way. Digital technology, the output inspired by activities like painting, sketching, drawing, and sculpture, has successfully impacted and influenced the primitive forms of art.

As a type of new media art, many graphic artists and designers believe that this has become helpful for creativity purposes, especially in the presentation process. Through the use of digital media and appropriate software application programs, this contemporary form of art may be utilized to produce the following:

-Computer-generated imagery
-3D still imagery
-Digital photography
-Interactive art
-Electronic music
-Motion graphics
-Manipulation of photographs

Developing Artistic Side

While there are innate talents, people may also acquire such creative abilities through learning. Enrolling in a digital arts school in the Philippines is more than just a fun experience; it is also a worthwhile learning activity that reaps a rewarding career and a more positive future.

CIIT, a renowned learning institution in the country, continues to offer exciting college curriculum on information technology courses. Believing that all individuals have their own artistic side and that they only need to be fully developed, CIIT is more than willing to enhance every ones arty talents. Through the help of the institutions professional instructors who are actually practitioners in their respective fields, students wont just know the specifics of the course, but also the techniques on how to creatively express their minds and eventually secure a rewarding career in the future edging out other competitors in the industry.

Be like Oliver Santiago, a CIIT student whose artwork was chosen to be the cover of the Graphika Manila 2012 book. A freshman who is currently taking up Computer Graphics Design, Oliver humbly attributes his success to his education, knowledge gained, and talents further developed by CIIT.

Enroll now at CIIT, a premier digital arts school in the Philippines.

How A Martial Artist Can Increase Their Kicking Speed With Ankle Weights

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Most martial artists are in excellent health and wonderful shape. Yet to find out how a martial artist can increase their kicking speed one must look to the simple facts of conditioning. It is pushing yourself to get to the next level in your kicking and that means pushing your body as well.

While it may seem crazy the first way to speed up the kicks is to slow down the body. One important aspect of martial arts is the need for long, lean and powerful muscles. To achieve that place an individual must stretch. Unfortunately that seems to be the part of a workout that gets overlooked. Doing stretching properly is even more important since it is to relax and release the muscles not shorten them in pain.

Warmth is the crucial aspect to stretching. Getting up and stretching first thing is not the most effective way to help your body. After a night of sleep and little movement your muscles are tight and slow. Taking a hot bath or shower is a wonderful way to wake up the muscles warmly and get them ready for stretching. Once you are warm start moving to allow the blood to begin flowing throughout the body and relaxing your muscles.

To kick higher you have to get stronger. Do this by adding extra weights to your legs during the day to push your normal activity to the next level. However, do not start kicking when you first put the weights on. Let your muscles get used to them. Just wearing them doing your normal activities is building up your muscle tone. When you feel like you are used to wearing them then you can start with low kicks to let your legs learn the new movement.

Finding a target to kick at is a great way of developing your mind and body connection. Hang something six inches higher than you can actually kick and try to reach the object. This will motivate you to reach the item and will allow your eyes to see and the mind to understand that it has to do more.

When you are used to the ankle weights try kicking with them on after proper warm up and stretching. This pushes your strength to the brink.

Then have someone video record your kick and see if you are wasting any movements. Are you taking too many steps to set up? Are you adding an extra step that not only is taking away from your speed by telling your opponent what you plan to do? Watch the tape and see where you can economize your movements to create a smoother, faster kicking process.

Once you have seen some progress with the weight on take it off to see how much easier it is to kick faster and higher. Your foot will feel light and you will see the amazing difference these steps made to how a martial artist can increase their kicking speed.

History of Buffets, Infusions Restaurant and The Okanagan College Culinary Arts Buffets

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It was the 18th century, and in France the modern day buffet was developed which soon spread across Europe. Serving a meal to oneself has a long and interesting history, but the original term buffet referred to the sideboard where all the various types of food was served, although, eventually this style of eating was converted to modern day buffets.

The second half of the 19th century, especially in the English speaking world, buffets became extremely popular for meals. Lunch, or an informal luncheon which was originally a very light meal that was consumed between breakfast and dinner, and often replacing dinners. Buffets came in two styles of a meal, and started at the fashionable hour of “One O’Clock”. The “buffet” luncheon, and at which time the dining guests would stand while they eat their meal, or the luncheon served at small tables where the dining guests would be seated.

All buffet food must be eaten with a fork or a spoon, and the knife was strictly forbidden at these “buffet” lunches. The essentials of a -buffet- luncheon are covered by these following dishes. All types of beverages including coffee, tea, punch or chocolate which was poured from urns, or brought from a pantry on trays in filled cups. Hot entres of various types which was served on a platter or from a chafing dish, and preceded by hot bouillon. Cold entres such as salads, lobster, salmon, shrimp, crab, potatoes, chicken, and served with heavy dressings. Hot rolls, and sandwiches that were wafer-cut in size such as tomato and lettuce, ham, and many others. Plus desserts such as small cakes and pastries.

Buffets are very popular with people today, because, it offers plenty of food variety at a reasonable price. People with large appetites can feed themselves without waiting for their food to be served. Especially families with children, this is often a very important point when dining out. Buffets are definitely a nice dining alternative to conventional restaurants, because people can get the foods they want in the quantities they like. People can create their own dishes with more meat, less vegetables and fewer side dishes, plus creating salads with appealing ingredients that they enjoy. Buffets offer people the opportunity to try new types of food that they would not order off a menu in a restaurant.

Infusions Restaurant at the Okanagan College hosts several buffets every year, and the last “buffet” was held a week after their Okanagan Wine Festival Gourmet Dinner which attracted a sellout crowd of over 80 dining guests. Guests were treated to a “Five Course” gourmet dinner with special Okanagan Valley wines to accompany each course.

The Okanagan College Culinary Arts Buffet was prepared with the special talents of the new, up and coming future chefs of your favorite restaurants, cruise ships, hotels, ski and golf resorts, all directed and instructed by World Class Chefs. The buffet included fresh meats, poultry, seafood of all types, and of course Okanagan Valley fresh vegetables and fruits.

Infusions and the Okanagan College Culinary Arts Bakery had a spectacular dessert buffet for this special night with freshly made gourmet desserts, and with a delicious assortment of as many freshly made Pastries, Cakes, and Chocolate Confections as a person could possibly eat after the meal.

The Culinary Arts buffet offered a HUGH selection of seafood and seafood platters that were served at the buffet from Sushi Rolls, Dim Sum, Salmon, Coulibiac of Halibut to Shark and Lobster. Dishes containing Gratin of Potatoes & Yams, many types of Pasta with Grilled and Glazed Vegetables, and of course the Roast Beef and Beef Tenderloin, and ALL for $15.00!

For tourists, visitors or people in the Kelowna area and the Okanagan Valley who missed this “Spectacular Feast”, there will be another buffet held in early December at Okanagan College’s Infusions Restaurant.

Infusions Restaurant is run by future culinary chefs in the Culinary Arts program at Okanagan College with instruction from World Class Chefs, and the restaurant offers their dining guests a chance to experience fine gourmet dining at very reasonable prices. James Murray is a successful writer and online Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) expert providing valuable tips and advice for those interested in seo and sem strategies. His numerous articles found on the Internet, provide useful and factual seo and sem information and insight. Some of his websites are : http://www.seo-worldwide.net , http://www.atclickbank.com , http://www.website-submissions-worldwide.com