I have no doubts that Marcel would twist me into a knot if he wanted to, but I laugh so hard at the fact that if you fly out and train with him they guarantee you will get a promotion. Not that you will increase your skills, not that you will see results in your training, no, you are guaranteed a belt promotion. I have no idea how much training for two days with Marcel Louzado would cost (his site says he charges $135 an hour), but I am grateful for the honesty in advertising. So please send in your donations, this blog writer has belt to buy

Wouldn’t it be cool if we took (insert sport) and added (insert cool noun)!

Some ideas I’ve come up with using this process are

Wouldn’t it be cool if we took sking and added Rocket Launchers!

Wouldn’t it be cool if we took baseball and added motorcycles!

Wouldn’t it be cool if we took hunting and added the Statue of Liberty!

As you can see, it works. Well it seems I’m not the only one who thinks so, apparently even back in 1949 they were doing this, and without the aid of the Internet…and that’s just silly. I give you blind folded boxing.

Now the girl who walks around and smacks you if you aren’t being aggressive enough is awesome.

Don’t forget to share this with your friends

Good news friends, I think we will be alright this time. And if either of the two men are amoung my readers, please contact me and we’ll get some lessons set up for you.

This is what your parents think you do when you tell them you do MMA

Thats nice honey, I hear its good for your flexibility

This is what you tell your friends you do in MMA

 What other martial arts think you do

What you really do

And I'm not sure which one you are in this picture

]]> http://www.sagacombat.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=800 0 http://www.sagacombat.com/blog/?p=794 http://www.sagacombat.com/blog/?p=794#comments Thu, 03 May 2012 16:42:09 +0000 admin http://www.sagacombat.com/blog/?p=794 [...]]]> I’m not really sure if this counts as martial arts related. I mean, tazers are self defense weapons, which is related to martial arts… so if you take a hand full of MMA rejects and make them play a weird football/soccer hybrid, surely this counts.

Well it doesn’t matter anyway. Of the eight people who read this blog only three are aware that its martial arts related anyway, and the other five are personal friends or family who read the blog out of guilt. Which I inflict on them. So click on share tabs…or I’ll make you feel guilty

Thanks Dad.

Anyway, Ultimate Tazer Ball. Have you noticed that if you put the word “Ultimate” before any sport, it always lowers the IQ of the average participant? Well in this case, you get a gient soccer ball (which you are perfectly alowed to carry in your hands) and try to get it into the opposing team’s goal. And you have tazers which you can shock the life out of your opponents. I know what you are thinking. Why? Not sure, its nice to know that there is something less intellegent then Shock Fighting but I’ve posted a video of it anyway.

I just saw this in the news, a family Angela Harrison, 36, her husband Brandon Harrison, 27, and his 17-year-old stepson Gage Ford were arrested for running back yard MMA competitions. Someone is making a documentary on the subject, I’ve got a preview below.

Somehow I doubt that no matter what they say, Dana White of the UFC isn’t sending talent scouts to watch poor people beat the sense out of each other. You do have to love how they try to make this out to be a family and community event. I will say this once more, if you want to see how tough you are, there are plenty of legal and legitimate MMA organizations that will even have a doctor on hand. They will even pay you money to fight, and the UFC does pay attention to these events. But I am assuming that people who fight in these events don’t read blogs… or eat solid food very often. But hey, its America, every man has the right to part with his health in the manner he chooses.

Anyway, we are in a life long quest to get the most bang for our buck (or Loonie or Real as the case may be) and that holds true for martial artists. A very wise person (who will not be cited here because I’ve forgotten who it was) once said to me, “You don’t choose which martial art you want to train in, you train in what is near you.” And I have found that to be very true. But sometimes the martial art of choice not only is in your area, but there might be more then one location within reasonable driving distance. Then our Consumerism rises up to action. If there is one thing I know for a fact in martial arts, its that there is no such thing as a good teacher. Teachers will always fall into one of two categories. Near god-like and Awful. Believe me. Go find a martial arts school and ask around about its instructor. They will either tell you that master “fill in the blank” can knock you out by spitting at you, he was a world champion in something and something else, and will most likely be chosen to be the next Pope… and he’s Protestant! Now ask around on the other side of town and you will hear that he never train in any martial art at all. His beard is a fake and was stolen from a homeless child, and he was caught on that “To catch a Predator” show. So the quest to find a new martial art school is more difficult then you might think. More after the jump

The first question is always price vs perceived value. School number 1 might charge $100 a month and have classes four times a week, School number 2 charges $150 and has the same number of classes, but an awesome training facility, School 3 charges $70 but only has classes twice a week. Which one has better value? My personal experience is that there are only two kinds of martial arts students. Those who are there everytime the doors open, and everyone else. If you are of the former group, (those who are trying to have relationship problems)  school three isn’t for you. For everyone else, ( or as I like to call them, almost everyone else) are you really planning on coming more then twice a week? And I don’t mean, what do you feel like doing Sunday night when you are all healed up and rested. I mean how many times are you going to go out and get sweaty and beaten during a normal week of things going wrong. School 3 might be your best bet.

So returning to all of you pre-burnout hard core martial artists. We all love to train in and around awesome equipment. We love to strut around in our compression shorts in the locker room after class and talk about the “sick choke” we pulled off and how we plan to cut 35lbs and fight as a light weight…in three weeks. But lets face it, most of training requires a partner and a mat. So after the first week, most of us might work best at school 1. That goes double if you will promise to stay at school 2 for us.

So basically, take the school with the best price for the amount of time you realistically think you will spend there.

The other big question is what is a good price for martial arts lessons? Lets look at that. I live in a small town in the southern US. To rent a decent space on a more or less main road will cost you between $1000-1500 a month. For the sake of easy math, lets say $1000. Utilities are more expensive for a business then for a home, so you can factor in at least $250 for them. If the instructor likes having students, you’ll want to factor at least $150 in advertising, and lets say a another $100 for insurances. So what are we up to… ok $1500 a month just to exist. That’s no money for equipment, a pay check, or when someone leaves the lights on over night. If you are charging $50 a month as tuition, that’s 30 dedicated students that have to pay a month, just so the instructor can have the fun of working for free. Lets say he wants  to make some money himself (or herself!) and wants to make at least as much as the place costs him, we bump things up to $3000 a month, which means you need a school of sixty constantly paying students to support paying a teacher a whopping 18k a year!

So factor that into the amount of time the instructor will be at the school. 18k is a nice part time job if you are only there twice a week. If your school has classes most nights a week, its understandable that the instructor would charge more. The YMCA charges around $40 a month just for the fun of watching you make excuses not to go.!

So end result is that there are several things to look at, but the going rate for a up and coming martial art school is about $100 a month (give or take a little depending on the area). If you are paying too much more, you might check and see what the difference is. Some times the difference between martial arts schools and food at the grocery stores is just the label

I really tired hard to find a picture where Diaz looked more intelligent, but I guess there isn"t one.

So I hear that Nick Diaz will be returning to his roots by doing a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Supermatch at the up coming World Jiu-Jitsu Expo set to take place May 12th at the Long Beach Convention Center in Long Beach, California. Which basicly means it will be an MMA match without the parts that are interesting to non-martial artists. When I first started watching the UFC, I asked my karate sensei why the fighters spent so much time hugging each other and rolling around on the ground. Using his vast understanding of fighting, he told me that it was because they didn’t know what they how to fight, and that he would knock them out easily. Heh, and the rest is history. These days I sit there and grind my teeth watching less then perfect boxing as I pray someone will take the other guy down and work a nice submission.

As a martial artist, I am really interested to see the outcome of this “BJJ Super Match” The Diaz brothers, both BJJ Black Belts under Ceasar Gracie have long been renown for their submission abilities. But that’s in the world of MMA. When you step back into the world of total grappling, you find people that have done nothing but grappled for the whole of their lives! I would be very interested to see Diaz show case his talents like this. The WJJE website says that they still haven’t named who Diaz will be fighting, but I’ll keep an eye out.

Reminds me of a friend of mine, he told me he didn’t want to do all that punching and wrestling junk, he just wanted to learn how to put a guy down and walk away. Now why didn’t we think of that?

More after the break

Bat fighting, now why isn’t there a martial art dealing with that? I would totally watch some full contact bat fighting.

All of you Judo and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu folks hear me on this one right?

Because you can’t see ninjas…get it? heh heh…oh, its getting late….

Always loved this one.

Couldn’t joke about martial arts without including Chuck Norris, because he won’t let me. heh. Have a good night

Of course I wouldn’t want anyone to think that I have a fair and unbiased opion of this.

So I had to include this one too. Honestly I can’t tell the difference between this video of some Brazilian Jiu Jitsu guys making fun of ki knock outs and the real thing.  I really liked the ki armbar in there. Five points to them.

You can no defeat when I wear energy cape!