New podcast! There are lots of different martial arts and innumerable approaches to them. We all need to find an approach that we enjoy and that will most efficiently help us achieve our objectives. In my case, I feel any martial art that I am to invest time and effort into must achieve two key things:

It must be both live-preserving and life-enhancing.

I feel any worthwhile martial arts needs to achieve both objectives; one without the other is not enough.

In this podcast, I breakdown what “life-preserving” and “life-enhancing” actually mean to me and hopefully cover a few interesting talking points along the way.

A couple of weeks ago I spoke to Jeremy Lesniak of Whistle Kick Martial Arts Radio! It was a conversation quite different from others I’ve had. We covered many topics I don’t normally get to talk about. We talk about martial arts and life, the fear I felt in early training, mistakes I have made, my rebellious streak vs. taking instruction, the culture of my home dojo, why I don’t want anyone calling me “sensei”, why we don’t line up by rank, why there will never be “Iain-Ryu”, my debt to karate and the past masters, the nature of my dojo’s curriculum, and a lot more! It was a really wide ranging conversation and I hope you enjoy it!

All the best,

Iain

This podcast discusses how martial artists often try to reinvent criminal violence into a good fit for their chosen system; instead of adjusting their system to fit the inescapable realities of criminal violence.

Problem should define the solution. The “solution” should not try to reinvent the problem!

This is a widespread and insidious practise in the martial arts. Traditionalists, modernists and even “reality” based systems do it; albeit in differing ways. Because actual violence is thankfully rare, this problem can go unnoticed but it has many serious problems.

In this podcast I talk to Peter Consterdine 9^th dan! Peter is undoubtedly one on the most influential martial artists of the modern age. I can’t think of anyone who has done more for practical karate and practical self-protection than Peter.

Along with Geoff Thompson, Peter kick-started the “reality revolution” in the UK in the early 1990s and therefore provided the platform for people like myself to get our voices heard. Peter is also one of my most influential sensei and it was Peter who graded me to 6^th dan.