Author Archives: Massimo Gaetani

Great free EBook from Ikigaiway blog

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Matthew Absokardu the author of Ikigaiway blog has recently released a free EBook titled “Surviving a Traditional Dojo” that I suggest to all members of CARISMA.

The EBook describes in great details what a novice should expect when entering a traditional dojo with a lot of information about etiquette, behaviour that people in the dojo will expect from you, as well as what you should expect from them and from the master running the dojo itself.

I believe this EBook will also be interesting for people that are already part of a non traditional martial arts club, like ours, to understand what and how other martial artists live their training.

If you are interested, and you should really, please go to the download page of the book and simply download it: as I said it’s free but it has a great value!

10 Years Celebration

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CARISMA 10th Anniversary

CARISMA 10th Anniversary

I would like to thank personally the over 30 people that took part to the celebration of the 10th anniversary of CARISMA on Sat 20 June.

Starting at 3PM the party went on till late evening with a few guests that resisted all the way to the early Sunday morning 🙂

Some pictures of the events are availabile at this page and others will be added at a later stage under the tag BBQ.

A short clip with some of the relevant moments of the events is here:

And finally, as a tradition from previous years I’ll add for those interested in statistics what 24 actived eater and drinkers managed to consume on that day:

  • 2 Kg of Lamb
  • 3 Kg of chicken,
  • 7 Kg of beef
  • 1 Kg of Salmon
  • 4 Kg of fruit
  • 3 Kg of bread
  • undisclosed amounts of olives, dips and other nibbles
  • 2 cakes
  • 6 litres of coke
  • 2 litres of chardonnay
  • 2 litres of merlot-cabernet savignon
  • 6.75 litres of cava
  • 37 litres of beer
  • over 1 litre of palinka
  • some water and coffee

Social dinner 7 June 2009

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Following a well established tradition after the grading session on the 7 June we’ll have a social dinner.  Dinner will take place at “The Ranch” in Histon road.   Good news for those with a passion for Hungarian Gaulash is that the chefs are both Hungarian and there is a possibility to order some portions: please Email me (or leave a comment on this post) to order a portion.

For more info about The Ranch I found this article that reflects my impression of the place.

Every member of CARISMA is welcome to participate even if not grading on that day.  Please come along, let’s have fun together and celebrate those that will have gained a new rank.

Stretching for kickboxing

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High kicks have an arguable use in self defence although they surely display excellent athletic performance and look great.  In kickboxing, particularly in full contact training, many people have adopted techniques that limit kicks level to the waist for power a speed performance: truth is, when a powerful round or hook kick connect to the head it is likely to lead to a KO.

Bill “superfoot” Wallace retired in the early eighties as undefeated world champion in the middle weight of full contact kickboxing. His combat strategy was always based on fantastic kicking techniques that often caught by surprise his opponents and knock them KO.  Wallace was not just good and superfast in kicking but he could shoot double of triple kicks with a single leg, using these techniques in the same way most boxers faint punching techniques.

In this video he shows one of his legendary training exercises to help improving the central split, so useful for side, round and hook kicks:

My thoughts about MAF-UK 2009

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banner-maf-ukI recently coordinated and performed in three demonstrations at the Martial Arts Festival UK organized in Leicester by Kwoklyn Wan, a well known martial artist and Jeet Kune Do instructor who runs a number of schools based in and around the same town.

Choreographing a demonstration always requires some level of preparation while I personally prefer avoiding a complete rehearsal of the whole thing.  Punching, kicking and blocking, attacking and defending is something we do in every lesson so my basic strategy is always to have a script about what will be done but leaving the interpretation to the individuals in order to ensure the performance to be more realistic.  Ultimately a fight cannot be rehearsed.

I believe that the main objectives of a demonstration are:

  • To give a basic idea of  the main techniques in terms of kicks, punches, stances and guards for your particular school or style;
  • To be interesting for the person from the general public that doesn’t have even a basic idea about martial arts as well as gaining respect from fellow martial artists;
  • To show the level of skill of your school or club;
  • To be catchy enough to inspire passers by to stop and watch.

Given the final results and the video we managed to produce I am very happy of the overall experience: all CARISMA members that were there truly enjoyed it themselves.

A point I always try to make in my demonstrations is that we must remember that martial arts are about fighting, personal development, controlled actions and well harmonised attacks and defence.  Movements should look smoothly and effortlessly performed, otherwise we risk to be looking too much like street fighters.  On the other hand the demonstration should be and look realistic: for my taste a bit too many schools were running shows that appeared too much like dancing rather that expressions of fighting arts.

I was highly impressed by the organization of the show itself and I congratulated several times with Kwoklyn about location, quality of staff and their competence, the great variety of martial arts being showed and the workshops run.  I firmly hope I will be invited again to be part of the second edition of MAF-UK next year.

Demonstration at MAF-UK 2009

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CARISMA members at MAF-UK 2009CARISMA was recently invited to run demonstrations of Kickboxing and Multicombat at the Martial Arts Festival UK that was held in Leicester on 4 and 5 April 2009.

A  group of CARISMA members was selected to represent the club in the 3 half hour shows running on Sat 4 April.

CARISMA members at MAF-Uk 2009: the funny/martial version...A big thank you to James Bush, Heley Matthews, Robin Turner, Georgios Evengelinos James Weatherall and Zeb Pietras for their time and effort to help with the success of these demonstrations.

Please leave comments at the bottom, after having seen the video:

If you just want to sweat go for a run

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Some times at the end of those intensive lesson when everybody is pushed to the limit some of my students come to me and congratulate or thank me for how good the lesson was.  Curiously this happens more often when I happen to run a “low tech” lesson with simple and immediate techniques that simply require intense and fast workout.

Kickboxing can be a hard and sweaty job: repeating many times sequences of punches and kicks at a fast pace can surely be a physically demanding task.  At the same time those who feel that a good lesson should be just the one that makes you sweat profusely I suggest to go for a run, do a round of circuit training.

My main goal as a coach is surely to prepare students in most aspects of performing martial arts, including teaching and improving techniques, combinations, balance, foot work, guard, strikes, defence and so on.  When sparring there are also aspects like release tension and being relaxed while having another person in front that is there to punch and kick you.  In certain cases an individual gets stuck in a situation where a certain kick or punch doesn’t work or it is not as efficient as it could be.  These are the times when the expert teacher or coach can really help to  get things working.

To some extent when I enter more complicated areas of training, explain or practice a difficult set of combinations it seems that a smaller number of students find it useful: is it perhaps because the others don’t really grasp the full essence of the lesson?

Beginners course Feb 2009

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For those who have been delaying exercise until the New Year and then missed our very successful beginner course in January, here is the opportunity you were waiting for.  CARISMA is running a new beginners course, starting on the 17th of February to run for 4 consecutives Tuesday and Thursday classes (e.g. 17, 19, 25 and 27).

If you would like to join (or you know somebody who would like to) please do it on that date: the club is very close to its full capacity and we might not run another beginners course for a while after this date.

There is no need for booking: please just turn up at 6pm at Kelsey Kerridge Sports Hall, Queen Anne terrace, Cambridge.

Varsity 2009

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We would like to invite all of our members and followers to watch the Varsity 2009 Kick Boxing fights on the 20 February 2009.  Nine members of Cambridge University Kickboxing Society (CUKBS), both male and female, will fight against Oxford opponents in 3 x 1.5 min rounds Light Continuous Kickboxing.

The show will be held at the Cambride Union and tickes will be available soon at their office.  CUKBS members remember your termcard for your discount.

As known CARISMA is the official coach for CUKBS and this is the opportunity of seeing several CARISMA members in action so please come and support us.