One of the most neglected aspects of martial arts training is body conditioning. This refers to the toughening up of the hands, arms, and body of the practitioner and not strength and fitness training. Both are needed and the majority of practitioners understand te need for cardiovascular fitness, strength, flexibility, and balance. But they don't always understand the need for the toughening up of the body. If you're going to do martial arts techniques such as punching, palm strikes, finger jabs, tiger claw strikes, etc. you must condition those parts of the body to actually be able to do these…

Using the hips is probably the most important part of making your martial arts techniques effective. Many people will punch and kick and only think of the hands or feet. This is essentially the same thing as focusing on the arrow while having a poor bow at the same time. No matter how nice and sharp your arrows may be, without a good bow to launch it, it will be useless. That's why we always emphasize the hips and feet for proper movement as well as power and health benefits.  

We see martial arts everywhere. In films, on TV, MMA, etc. Now especially, MMA or mixed martial arts is very popular and has to a large degree taken over a lot of the martial arts world. Even martial arts such as Western Boxing seem to have taken a backseat to MMA.   However, even though we may see MMA gyms popping up everywhere and traditional martial arts seem to be decreasing in popularity, it doesn't need to be that way and I also don't think it will be forever. Actually the way I see it, they're one and the same. Many may…

This is absolutely one of the best drills you can do to correct a number of issues including :   1. Not getting your hips and body into your strikes 2. Leaning into your strikes 3. Telegraphing 4. Poor balance   By removing the hands, all you have left is your body. Therefore you have no choice but to use it properly!