Martial Arts News 4.15.08

• Maui holds Interscholastic League Judo Tournament.

Each of the five teams competing Saturday in the Maui Interscholastic League’s third judo tournament of the season had multiple individual champions.

• Northwest Karate Academy in England cleaned up at a tournament.

NORTH West Karate Academy achieved medal success at the English Karate Federation National Championships in Sheffield at the weekend.

• Karate sensi trains students for amateur MMA fights.

Fight Night at Thaishodo Martial Arts Academy is about to begin, and for the next hour, Terranova’s MMA fighters go at it during heated sparring sessions they hold every Friday night.

Terranova, a fourth degree black belt in goshin ryu karate, plays referee as his students emulate their Ultimate Fighting Championship heroes, guys like Matt Serra, Chuck Liddell and Kenny Florian.

As MMA grows, this story makes me wonder if dojos and dojangs will have trouble keeping students unless they add MMA?

• Mike Adams defends his position that MMA is good for children.

I received quite a bit of feedback to my recent article that asked whether children should train and compete in Mixed Martial Arts (MMA). Most of the feedback was critical of my advocacy of children’s involvement in this sport…So to clarify my position about what’s really going on with MMA and children, I decided to write this follow-up piece.

Here’s the part that’s interesting:

I will argue this all day long with anybody who cares to take me up on the matter, because I can tell you from plenty of personal experience that training in martial arts makes kids LESS violent, not more violent. Martial arts do not teach violence, folks. They teach discipline, self-esteem, physical fitness and mental acquity.

I can honestly say that a good martial art’s school run by a good instructor can and does do what Adams says. Most martial arts schools–be they Chinese, Japanese, or Korean–usually have a philosophy that underpins their training. If it’s a good school they’ll take this philosophy as serious as the training. However, I just don’t have enough experience with MMA or the schools that teach it to weigh in on the topic. That having been noted I do think that the sport presented on television misrepresents those of us who hail from the traditional martial arts.

• Martial Arts Video features Part 4 of the History of Shotokan Karate.

There’s quite a few free videos at this site so it’s definitely worth a look.

• Martial Arts Humor has two videos up from Russia.

Humor is certainly…subjective.

That’s a wrap for this week!

~BCP