Without giving too much away – pay for your own seminar – he took us through an EVIL stretch warm-up but gave a few pointers that I wasn’t aware of, and then told us to make our lead leg the “third hand”, and then we went into lots of kicking drills, but drills that involved our partner, making contact, not just techniques on the spot.

Bill’s teaching style is, er, unique Certainly not what I was expecting at all, very humorous and got his point across very well. He’d stop us every now and again to correct our technique, or to give further pointers. He also discussed tactics in sparring, and the point I’ll remember most about the day is that “it’s always my turn”, i.e. if you’re attacking and your opponent is blocking, he can’t attack you. Bill’s plan when he fights is to make the opponent move to block and create an opening elsewhere that he can exploit. Several “volunteers” were used to make this point, and all fell for what Bill wanted to happen, e.g. block a few low (on the belt) kicks, finally exposing their head, then Bill just kicks straight to the head, and it’s goodnight. It should be noted that Bill ‘knocked out’ 13 opponents with kicks to the body, really nowhere is safe

For someone in his mid-60s (sorry, Bill) his flexibility is amazing, and his speed is incredible – but with it he has control. I can throw out a fairly decent height hook kick, but there’s not much control. When Bill was talking to me about I question I raised (going from a counter-fighter to a offensive fighter), he demonstrated how he’d make the change with working on the feints and speed, and before I knew it, bonk, he’d kicked me in the head. But it was just a tap, ridiculously light, but damn quick. Awesome.

At the end, there was a Q & A session (in which I asked my question just mentioned), but Bill also spoke about sparring with Joe Lewis, Tommy “The Hitman” Hearn and a boxer called Virgil Hill, all very interesting and entertaining. If you’ve seen Bill’s videos on YouTube, you’ll see that he favours his left leg – the reason for this is that when he started training in Karate (in Okinawa, obviously), he had his right knee in a cast from a high school wrestling injury, so the sensei said “start training, just use your left leg” and so he did and the rest is history.

What was really good was at the end of the seminar, he told us that we just learnt worked really well if you were Bill Wallace – we had to take what he had shown us and make it work for us, i.e. pick our favourite technique / feint, see what works for us, etc. Very good piece of advice as we are all different, physiologically and psychologically (e.g. I’m an arthritic cripple )

It was a great seminar, highly enjoyable, learnt a lot and yes, I even got a signed photo of him – well, you would, wouldn’t you? A huge thank you to Dean Williams of the PKA for organising it

I was doing a couple of these last traning session, and they were going ok, just a little low. Clearly, as seen in the below video (at 3.30), I should stand on a table:

The chap throwing the kick is martial arts legend Benny “The Jet” Urquidez, and the poor chap being booted in the neck is Yuen Biao – or rather his stunt double

Anyway, it’s inspiring

Giangrosso, owner of the Scott Adkins Fanz site and forum has put together a showcase reel for Scott, which contains clips from Wolverine, Black Mask 2, Undisputed 2 and 3, and much more; it’s well worth a watch

I’ll be buying this as soon as it’s out

Yes, I know it’s in Thai, with no subtitles, but… look! ELBOWS!!!!

Scott Adkins plays Boyka, the antagonist from the previous film, becoming the protagonist here, fighting for his freedom (he hopes). The film boasts quite a roster of fighters, including Lateef Crowder (soon to be seen in the Tekken film), and Marko Zorar as the end boss fight.

I was going to see the film anyway, but this impressive trailer only cements that decision.

Looks good! Incidentally, the trailer comes from the Scott Adkins Fanz forum, head on over and take a look.

H/T to The Movie Blog

Seriously impressive ‘naddage… Is that even a word?

The vids are shown below using YouTube’s clever playlist, er, player – there are five in total, enjoy!

The story focuses on Jin Kazama, out to destroy the head of the Tekken Zaibatsu, Heihachi Mishima, to avenge the death of his mother. Pretty much the entire roster is there: Eddy, Bryan Fury (yay!), Heihachi, Nina, Anna, Raven (not so yay), etc. The fight choreography has been done by an amazing martial artist / stuntman / loon called Cyril Rafaelli, who you may recal from the film District 13, where he starred alongside David Belle.

So long as they shoot the fight scenes well, it should turn out rather well. I found the trailer to cut away a bit too much, but it is a general trailer, not R / 18. The cast includes Jon Foo as Jin Kazama and Lateef Crowder as Edy Gordo, both of whom were in Tony Jaa’s excellent Warrior King – Lateef Crowder had the better fight with Tony Jaa in it, but it looks like Jon Foo will shine a bit more in this film. Incidentally, look out for Lateef Crowder in Undisputed 3 soon, with the always-awesome Scott Adkins.

The rest of the cast is rounded out very well: British martial arts star Gary Daniels looks spot-on as Bryan Fury, Luke Goss (very good in Blade 2) as Steve Fox, MMA star Cung Le as Marshall “cheap” Law, and I’ve pleased to see everyone’s favourite robo-ninja-cyborg-thing Yoshimitsu in there as well, played by Gary Ray Stearns. I’ve only mentioned a few of the cast, so head on over to the Tekken page on IMDB to read up.

Release date is March 5th, 2010 in the UK, but no theatrica release unfortunately – I wonder if it’s in Blu-Ray?

I mean, egad!

Some classic films in there, and some I’ve not seen – bit light on the Jet Li, unfortunately…

Yes, it’s in French, but come on – you really don’t need to speak French to watch Tony Jaa wrestle a crocodile and shin people in the head several times

Anyhoo, after a few runs on it (well, my version of running [jogging]), I’ve started doing tabata or interval training on it. You pick a period of time, e.g. 30 seconds / a minute, and then walk for that period of time, then jog, then run, then back to walking, etc. Basically, you cycle through walk / jog / run for the period of time, repeating as many times as you want.

It gets your heart rate up quicker, and gets you used to short bursts of activity (e.g. martial arts), but with the added benefit of improving your overall stamina. I’m feeling the difference already, but I’ll still be doing long jogs as well.

So, give it a go! There’s some more information over on Wikipedia; it would appear I’m using the fartlek (snigger) approach to interval training.

It’s a bit of a long watch at almost ten minutes, but worth it. Makes you realise that conditioning is as important as correct technique – the guy’s shins have been toughened over years of striking hard objects (mostly other people’s shins), and have hardened as a result. I’m now off to bash my shins with a glass bottle, haven’t done that for a while