I’d developed cellulitis in my thumb the week previous as a result of biting off a tiny piece of skin at the cuticle. I’d visited the Emergency Department five days earlier and had it examined, when it first began to swell. The human mouth contains more germs than a dog’s, apparently.
Are boxing, MMA and kickboxing unique in terms of the way each style deploys hand strikes?
Yes.
Ben Edwards is, without a shadow of a doubt, one of Australia’s most exciting – and experienced – combat athletes. Few fighters are qualified to comment on MMA, boxing and Kickboxing: Ben has excelled at all three.
T.T: How did you come to striking? Was it through a traditional martial art? How were you initially taught? Did those elements of style change once you started kickboxing?
B.E: I used to punch the shit out of my punching bag when I was a teenager.
Jim Armstrong, Dean of Raw Combatives, deals with the vagaries of combat described by Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman in his seminal books On Combat and On Killing.
Grossman devised a scale to chart the way in which an individual’s motor control deteriorates when the heart rate becomes accelerated by the stress of an impending human conflict. While all accelerated heart rates result in a deterioration in performance, psychological stress is a different stimulus that brings a unique set of problems.
Do you have to train for the same activity differently, depending on the stress, even if the skills you employ are the same? Grossman says you do, the US military believe him and this is what Jim Armstrong thinks about it.
“Discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life.”
Susan David,
During her TED talk entitled, ‘The Gift and Power of Emotional Courage.’
There’s a problem with ‘modern’ gym training: you’re expected to leave your brain at the door. In reality, whether this is a good or bad thing is irrelevant; it’s not actually possible. Your mind has a habit of following you everywhere and demands to be involved in everything.
Ben Edwards is a beast. After making a significant impression on international heavyweight boxing and kickboxing, he is poised to make an elephantine splash at the deep end of the swimming pool of MMA. He fights Absolute MMA stalwart Jeremy Joiner this Friday night in Canberra on Monaro Fight Circuit 26
Published in ‘Mayweather VS. McGregor: Money Fight’.
“The public has been hoodwinked. It’s the biggest farce in boxing history,” says Peter Graham, former world champion heavyweight boxer, kickboxer and mixed martial artist.
ABC Radio National ‘Life Matters’: The Exercise Room
What is a runner’s high? Can you explain what’s happening physiologically and psychologically?