Saturday, November 24, 2007

Human weapon

Has anyone seen this show? It airs on the history channel and is a must see for anyone interested in martial arts. The show also includes the history of the martial art, why it was formed, etc.

The basic outline for each episode is these two mma fighters travel around the world to train under a specific style for a few days. Once the training is complete they fight the champion of that style. The training mostly consists of learning one or two techniques from each sub category of the martial art. For example they will learn a technique from people who teach the martial art as a means for street self defense, and from people who teach it as a competitive sport. Then they try to implement these techniques in a full fight. They mostly fall back on their mma instincts during the fight, because it's hard to use techniques you just learned when they are not muscle memory yet. They always manage to do well though against the champion, so I think the fight is kind of set up, or at least the champion is not trying his hardest.

They have covered most of the mainstream styles such as Okinawa karate and tae kwon do. But they also do some of the lesser known martial arts such as krav maga (basically it's a french self defense style). It's a great show for a martial artist, but also for those just generally interested in history.

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