The Hustler- Book Review

The Hustler – Sword play and the art of tactical thinking is a beautiful book written by Maija Soderholm. A lot of the book focuses on deception in combat, and it’s funny because this book slipped onto the market quietly, and just how good it was has spread by word of mouth among the FMA community that already knew of Maija and her work. I hope this review will change that and open the book to more martial artists from different backgrounds.

First things first, why would a book on Sword play and the art of tactical thinking be of interest, to say a boxer or any other empty hand martial artist? The answer lays within the context of a swordfight; the sword is relatively unique in the weapons world because it was solely designed for one thing only, to kill the enemy. Most other weapons, such as the spear or knife, have many different uses outside the fighting context, but the sword has a single-use. If you make a mistake in a swordfight, you’re probably going to take a cut, and that’s going to be hard to come back from. Hard to come back from in this context probably means death.

Facing off against an adversary where you both have swords combined with the relevant skill is probably one of the scariest moments in close combat; you have to strike cleanly without being stuck, high skill indeed.

Hit without being hit.

Since 1984 if you joined my boxing club, you would have heard the following advice on the first night and repeated after that, mouth closed, chin down and hands up. They were followed by train to hit without being hit. A fist in the face may not be quite as lethal as a sword strike, but it has the potential to be.  It makes sense to learn how a swordsman tactically deals with the combat challenges they face, how they cross no man’s land, how they make clean cuts or stabs and how they get out to safety. You can then transfer that skill to your empty hand, or other weapons work.

This book is so good Maija does a great job of introducing the reader to the fight; there is a real cross over here for all of us. Further chapters include why and how we fight. Strategy, an introduction to the game, how to play that game, and how to train it.

All laid out with easy to read and clear logical sub-sections on deception, leading and reading an opponent. Maija has done a lot of thinking for the reader, and she spells it out in a progressive, exciting manner.

This book is a must-read for all my training partners, and I would recommend it to all of you.

If you choose not to buy this book, please don’t complain to me when your training partner does and uses deception to put three feet of steel through your gizzard or a fist through your nose bone.

Take the hint because, as my Dad used to say, “There is no such thing as second place”!

Effective Grip Training Methods for Martial Artists

Fangs for the memory…

Most of history’s warriors accepted that you needed skills in stand up, clinch and ground to be successful. It’s been a core concept in my KORA curriculum since it was a mixture of Combatives, Muay Thai and Judo over thirty-five years ago. Whether we seek it or not grappling happens, and when it does, we had better be able to deal with it.

My grandfather used to call wrestling gripping or the battle for grips. Grip strength has been highlighted is every grappling system I have trained in, and because of its direct connection to forearm strength and stability, it has always been something to work on in stand-up arts and weapons training. If you are holding onto people or things, it makes sense to optimise your grip.

Here’s me talking about grips for the knife in 2012.

Since 2012 I have revised a few of my ideas on the thumb on the pummel ice pick grip due to the skill of the Piper guys and in particular the writings of Nigel E. February.

(3) Piper Blade Combatives | Facebook

I still mainly use a full grip as I was taught, and when I posted a video on the little bit of Irish stick I was taught; I got a couple of emails about my full grip.

The seam grip

The seam grip is where you have most of your fingers on the stick, but except for the thumb which runs along the stick or weapon’s length, it can be seen at 0:27 on my 2012 knife grip video above.

There are two reasons why I’m not too fond of this grip and why I was taught not to use it by people very experienced in hitting people. The hand is stronger when it’s curled into a fist, and it can take impact better when it’s wrapped together. Secondly, the thumb is the key to unlock any grip on anything. Do a quick check on weapon disarms which involved capturing the limb or hand fighting and you will see the leverage is directed against the thumb. This is cross-cultural, and that’s usually a good indicator it’s based on experience.   

I believe the seam grip is a direct invitation to either disarm yourself as you hit or be disarmed if your arm or stick is captured. So, we don’t use the seam grip unless the student wants to. I am sure others disagree, and I am very open to debate.

Grip Training

For grip strength training, I use larger and regular sticks and kettlebell workouts. I find I get the best return for my investment time from that. I also grapple a lot under normal circumstances, and jacketed fighting helps a great deal.

If you don’t have access to equipment, you can use a towel or rope to hang from as you pull yourself up or you can do Hindu press-ups, and every time you curve down to the floor, you can grip the floor by trying to close your fingers. As you rise, release your grip. It works best on mud or sand. Whichever training method you choose, please make sure you consider your safety and take competent advice from your coach.

Grip training falls typically into two separate categories, isolated such as grip trainers or inclusive, where you are training a combination of things at the same time like kettlebell swings. You will notice it’s often your grip that goes first.

The video below from the excellent Garage Strength YouTube channel shows some great ideas of both.  

Forearm strength and stability is directly connected to the above, and I will do a further post on that later this year.

Happy training and stay safe.

Traditional Dances of the Labourdin Carnival

From this blog: Le carnaval labourdin (patrimoinepaysbasque.com)

The kaskarot are the main characters of the ploughd carnivals. They wear hats adorned with flowers, ribbons and colorful decorations on their costumes, and hold two sticks in their hands. Organized in groups of eight, they perform makila-dantza (dances of sticks), as well as danced jumps, marmutx (dance of small sticks), xinple, kontra-dantza (contredanse), soka-dantza, fandango and arin-arin.
Alongside the dancers, boys and girls, are the flag-bearer groups, besta-gorriak (red jackets), ponpierrak, kotilun-gorriak (red petticoats), jaun-andereak (gentlemen and ladies), bear and, depending on the village, other characters.

Boost Your Sparring Skills with Lonely Dog’s Instructional Downloads

Tired of getting walloped by your training partners in sparring? You may like to invest some coin into Lonely Dogs instructional downloads. Benjamin is a great fighter and coach.

Go here for instructional downloads go here: Lonely Dog (gumroad.com)

Lonely Dog in action




Boxing Meets Rugby: Learning from Teddy Thomas’s Performance

Teddy Thomas breaks through to score France’s first try during the Six Nations match between Scotland and France. Picture: Getty Images

I trained people for Boxing, Thai Boxing, full contact stick fighting and MMA but the greats always had something special. Its not only doing their job well but also with flair. It’s not enough to just win, it’s about doing so whilst demonstrating amazing skill. Teddy Thomas is a great example of this on the Rugby field, wonderful.

KORA Virtual Reboot

It’s been over a year since my research group, and I got together to train. Due to the current COVID-19 pandemic, face to face training is still not on the table for a while, but I had the idea that we should start slotting in regular zoom classes once a week. The purpose is to stay in touch, do our class warm-up and some other solo exercises and train and explore some technique.  I hope this will allow us to hit the ground running when we can all get together again.

The research group is non-commercial, and as a result, it is small and is made up of smart, intelligent people who mostly have a lot of experience martial art-wise.  

Despite my initial inability to send out the invite correctly, we managed to get together today. It’s funny because I use Zoom and MS Teams a lot for work, but when it comes to personal or social meetings, which are a different context, I am an amateur. Also never really taught online before.

I enjoyed touching base today, and also teaching again was great. I realised that my teaching skills were a little rusty, but my wonderful sense of humour is still intact. It was great to catch up socially and chat about the arts we love and explore them together again.  

Without people, there is no martial art.  


Unlocking Savate: Mastering Boot Kicks for Combat

Savate offers many advantages and options to the martial artist, including control of range, timing, and unusual angles, contributing to its deceptive approach to combat. A key difference from other arts is how the boot or shoe is used in combat to supercharge techniques.

I was a Muay Thai player from the early eighties, which meant I trained barefooted, except when I was down the Western boxing gym. I used my shin to make contact where possible and my instep as a second-choice fallback position for my round kicks.  There is a concept in Muay Thai of kicking without fear, to be so conditioned you can unload power in every kick. Not so easy when your instep bounces off shins, knees and elbows. Part of avoiding collisions with unwanted objects is the correct use of deception, something Savate excels at and something I will cover in a later article.  

The remarkable growth of MMA means that most of us are training on wrestling mats for safety. Still, one trade-off due to the matted area is mostly barefoot training, which means many students do not consider the advantages of using the shoe.

One tip is to wear footwear when training boot kicks. It seems obvious, but many people don’t and don’t get the best out of their training. There are some nice Savate shoes and boots that work well, which you may like to consider. Over the years, I have trained in trainers, shoes and walking boots to get the correct feel and impact.

Part of any Savate study should be studying how to use the shoe, the toe point, the heel, and the shoe’s rim where the sole meets the upper; these areas can supercharge your kicks. Most kicks can be thrown with the heel as the striking area.  The toe of the shoe can be used on kicks to direct the force into a tiny area to increase penetration and increase the kick’s range.  The toe can reach around or behind defensive shields to attack vulnerable areas such as the liver, sternum and back of the head.  

Wearing dress shoes or walking boots is better for your feet in general but can also offer increased protection, especially if you have steel toe caps. The protection you gain will allow you win collisions you would otherwise have lost, this enables you to kick without fear.

In my class, we broadly split shoe-wearing during training into two areas, hard shoes for impact training, ideally on equipment or suitable protection and soft shoes for drilling and sparring.  

1989 Richard Killick teaching the use of boot kicks to Marcus Trower.

Boot kicks can be safely trained, but it requires qualified and experienced coaching as they are dangerous. In the eighties, I got very good at relocating dislocated knees. The targeting of the kicks is considered an in-house secret in my style.

Once you have the kicking motions down and know the targets, you need to create the openings to apply your art. That’s a whole book in itself.

Marcus Trower

It’s been a while since Marcus Trower passed away in 2019, and it’s only really now I feel able to write something to pay tribute to him and his life that will hopefully do him justice.

I first met Marcus in 1986 when he joined my boxing and Muay Thai club in Merstham, near Redhill in Surrey. The curriculum covered boxing, Muay Thai and stick fighting. The club was an off-shoot hybrid from the Thai Boxing club I trained at, and I was the coach by default as no one else wanted to do it.

I was a young teacher, and my teacher had given me the following advice; to spar with every new club member on the first night they came. That way, we all know where we stood and if they got naughty to smack them. During our sparring, Marcus did something probably more of a mistake than everything malicious, and I shin-kicked him in the head a little harder than I should have.

Despite the rocky introduction, post-training, we got to go to the local pub and became firm friends. It became clear during our post-training conversations in the pub or at his house that Marcus was more intelligent than I. I used to tease him by asking him a question, and if he did not know, I would fake disbelief and remind him that he was the most intelligent person I know. That good humour teasing was something that reminded part of our relationship for its duration. 

In Muay Thai, the coach will often pick a range for the student to excel at based on their body type and in my case, I was so tall it was clinch range. The Thai clinch is a range where the grappling aspect can be trained full out, and despite being smaller than me, Marcus always caused me problems in grappling, and he seemed to enjoy the grappling element more than the striking part of the art.

During this period, Marcus was in a dusty second-hand bookshop in Fulham, London. He found a book by EJ Harrison on Wrestling. I know this because whenever we met for training around his house, he would tell me about it. I never thought much about why we trained, but Marcus always searched for the answer. He was a natural researcher and started visiting bookshops and museums. This research resulted in an extensive book collection and a pile of A4 notes and notebooks.  

1989, Marcus Trower and Richard Killick grappling on the lawn, much to Bernard’s dismay. Marcus is showing me how to make my opponent make mistakes from the bottom.

Marcus realised something profound we were in danger of losing something very precious, our grappling heritage. In these early days, Marcus would track down former folk style or old school Catch as catch can wrestlers who were often in their seventies. We would visit them; they would often demonstrate in their living rooms whilst being interviewed. During this period, it’s fair to say Marcus’s research focus was on Great Britain. He quickly expanded that research and travelled to Thailand, India, Mongolia and Brazil, basically any country where people wrestled, and it turned out they wrestled in most countries and cultures.    

I did my best to keep in touch with him, and I often caught up with his father, Bernard, as we travelled to work in London on the train. From time to time, Marcus would teach grappling in my MMA class. Marcus would return from his travels and show me his research notes that had become a potential book and his excellent photos; he had natural talent. Marcus’s book, The Last Wrestlers, covers most of this and details his journey. I recommend reading that because that’s his story to tell.

The book that started life as a research book became the journal of an epic journey.

Marcus, the person, was brilliant, articulate, caring and a great encourager. He had many friends and was a great interviewer because he cared. When we met up for our stay-in-touch catch-ups, Marcus used to tease me that I was in the book, but he had now taken me out to encourage me to write my own story. Marcus’ influence on my life and others was so significant and positive he is the first person people ask about when I meet former students. Marcus encouraged me to write, research and do my own thing. I think he won our long-running humour battle.

I realise this tribute is martial artsy, but that’s the context of my meeting with Marcus; he would have edited this tribute while explaining the writing rules again. The truth is I was lucky to have met him, and his contribution to my life outside of martial arts was also enormous. He is very much missed by many, and a little of him lives on in all of us.

“The whole world loses something whenever someone is stopped from doing what it is they were sent here to do”. The Last Wrestlers by Marcus Trower. 1967 to 2019.

The Last Wrestlers: A Far Flung Journey In Search of a Manly Art

Top photo from Hana Fazel.  

A fantastic, well-written tribute: Marcus Trower 30 June 1967 – 05 June 2019 – Commas, Characters and Crime Scenes (marcustrowereditor.com)

A little bit of Irish Stick and English Cane

This video is a part of a piece to camera practice I had to record quickly before taking a media presentation workshop at work. There’s an important safety message, followed by a little section on using the walking cane and how to use the stick the Irish way. Finally, there is a section on enhancing your skills by training solo with a sledgehammer handle. Feedback on the content from Martial Artist has been very positive. My media training coach gave me a long list of things to improve or useful hints to improve my presentational skills.

What little on how to use a cane and Irish stick I have, I got from my Father in the 1970s and early eighties. His Father came from Kerry in Ireland, not some extensive system, just how to wallop people at range with a stick or grab them and do the same. It’s incredible how fast and hard you can hit with the Irish grip. I don’t personally lay my thumb along the stick, I prefer a full grip, but that’s my personal choice.

It’s great to see that people are interested, once we can, I will film some more with a training partner.

A little bit of Irish Stick and English Cane – YouTube