I will provide a video on my Atacx Gym Capoeira Youtube Channel visually displaying the exercises in the combat drill portion of this blog in order to help you more properly perform the exercise. As always, please be sure to acquire medical clearance and proper physical assessment prior to engaging in any rigorous activity, including anything written in suggested by or inferred by anything that THE ATACX GYM does. Safety, health, happiness and fulfillment are paramount. Okay? Okay! Now with THAT out of the way, here's the link to my Youtube Channel and my Google+ page. Please subscribe and support us; we need to keep dialogue like yours and ours alive and vibrant or else this, too, shall pass (as Mestres Bimba and Pastinha feared it might and strove all their lives to ensure that it won't).
ATACX GYM CAPOEIRA YOUTUBE.COM
http://www.youtube.com/user/ATACXGYMCAPOEIRA?feature=mhee
ATACX GYM CAPOEIRA GOOGLE+
https://plus.google.com/u/0/110203915257741904005#115815378086837182823/posts
Today's blog deals with probably the core and most recognizable aspect of capoeira...the Ginga. Now, my research on this matter includes a number of excellent books including the works of the illustrious Nestor Capoeira. In his second book [CAPOEIRA: ROOTS OF THE DANCE FIGHT GAME] Nestor cites a wide variety of sources but primarily the notes pictures and works of two European artists (the French Debret and the German Rugendas) and the very knowledgeable scholar Muniz Sodre as proof buttressing his claim and nowadays confirmed as very likely fact unassailable that the union of dance and fighting technique in Capoeira had not occurred until the utterly crucial period of 1810-1830. It is not the purpose of this particular blog post to delve into the many vitally important socio-politico-economic events and occurrences and the truly extraordinary and potent personalities that had the highest magnitude of impact upon capoeira at the time. Instead I wanted to focus on the fact that the ginga neither was birthed simultaneously with capoeira's inception nor has it remained the same as time has passed. I want to invoke a crucial and widely accepted aspect of capoeira at this time: capoeira then now and always has been hyperadaptible, chameleonic, capable of guile trickery cleverness dissembling deception that makes it look like one thing while always hiding cultivating and maintaining its essential soul core continuity and expressions.
For the purposes of honoring and maintaining the viable self-defense and martial art aspect of capoeira? The very first thing that has to change is the general prohibition against combat functionality extant in faaaarrr too many capoeira organizations practices rodas etc. The first expression of that change is that now contact is being made. Skillful blows throws holds weapon use training methodology etc etc that can and will stand equal to any tech from any martial art anywhere need to be reinserted IMMEDIATELY directly into the very heart of the practice of capoeira. And the first area that needs a complete and total overhaul is the capoeira ginga and concomitant fighting stance.
A truly excellent example of what I mean can be shown by Anderson "The Spider" Silva. Go back through his illustrious UFC career and watch his fight with Patrick Cote...in particular the footwork and elusiveness and utterly superb dominating ring generalship that he displayed in his first and second round vs Cote. Anderson vanished on Cote, who was utterly frustrated by his complete inability to touch Anderson no matter how he tried...whereas Anderson drilled Cote with flying knees, punches, kicks, takedowns, and anything else he wanted to do at virtually any time that he wanted to do it. The utterly uneducated crowd was wholly baffled by Anderson's untouchability, and instead of being completely and totally bowled over by a man showing that he could fly in the ring like some MMA reincarnation of Besouro? The brain dead crowd boo'ed Anderson. They were expecting the human wrecking machine who'd mercilessly destroyed Leben and Franklin etc. Instead they were presented with the near perfect Titan of technicians whose blows carried the destructive might of a demigod...and they didn't know what to do. They didn't appreciate and thrill to what was in front of them. But we will have a better result because initially all who see us will be adherents of and devoted to the ginga.
If you add weapons to Anderson's jaw-droppingly dazzling footwork and technical display as well as the concomitant tactical considerations? THIS IS WHAT THE MODERN FIGHTING GINGA SHOULD LOOK LIKE. It is what MY ginga looks like. I always receive compliments on my footwork, how full of malicia it is and how difficult to even get close to hitting me it is...and that was literally since my first week of capoeira classes with Mestre Roque some years ago. I unveiled my ginga at Mestre Amen Santos' and Mestre Roque of Bodysport Capoeira's workshop here in Long Beach CA last year (2011) and was the talk of the workshop. Here's why:
The fighting capoeira ginga blends every method of actual fighting and performance oriented combat footwork from boxing to fencing and more,and completely transcends them. With the fighting ginga? You're a flyer--a voador--without ever having to leave the ground (even though you can leave the ground and do so more impressively and realistically than any less functional or dysfunctional capoeirista or martial artist). You literally can't be touched by other martial artists. I hold black belts in many disciplines and I'm a boxing kickboxing and wrestling coach to boot. When I use my fighting ginga and couple that with the knowledge of the kinds of attacks and methodology of other martial artists who DON'T know capoeira? I've literally never been touched with a scoring blow. Whole rounds would pass and nobody could do anything to me. Wrestlers would not only fail to take me down or clinch with me, they for the most part never could sequence their movement and footwork well enough to even hope to set up a shot clinch or takedown. Same with my kenpo, hapkido, judo, taekwondo, tang soo do, hung gar, shaolin gung fu, boxing, kickboxing, fencing, kali, iaido, MMA, and other brethren. I hold a black belt at least and a Coach's rank in almost all of the above disciplines, so I am in no way denigrating them or saying they're inferior. I love those arts. I have blogs and youtube Channels devoted to many of these arts. But without a doubt, Capoeira is the undisputed, undefeated, unequaled, inimitable MegaMaster of Movement...and all martial arts, all sports, even scientifically so far our data leads us to posit that all LIFE can be traced to movement in some way.
Mastering the combat ginga will unlock amplify and empower your martial arts in ways that you have never ever eeeeveeer dreamed. I'm still on this path myself; I'm still being routinely dazzled by what this study of footwork offers.My preconceptions and unconscious beliefs in limitations are being routinely atomized by what I discover when I move. It's a never-ending journey and I will move and groove until I can't move and groove any more.
Here's the bare bones shallow basics conceptually of what I do: I combine my direct experimentation and experiences with the performance methods and sciences of boxing coaches and Olympic coaches dealing with sports mandating movement that correlate to what I am doing and/or what I hope to do, and I even study the works of anatomical from experts from other martial arts like Doctor Ron Chapel's articles on movement, his ideas on what he calls PAMs and BAMs...and inculcate them into my own expression. There is a whoooollle loooot going on when I move, and it looks amazingly, deceptively similar to what you see others do. But it's more than that...literally. The combat ginga is everything that you thought you knew about every martial art sport and science that covers and/or impacts footwork plus everything that you don't even know that you don't know. It's the ginga+fighting practical free running+every martial art and sport's footwork+gymnastics+performance science+ psychological spiritual and emotional harmonious stimulation and elevation and more. It's the Rhythm of Life and The Dance of Death. We need to groove to it, move with it, flow with it, fly with it, become it express it transcend it.
If you don't do the combat ginga? If you can't actually fight any and all comers with your ginga no matter what the situation you're in or the martial artist you face? If you can't pull off practical floreio's in a fight or conflict or while evading blows weapons etc or negotiating the traps pitfalls and obstacles of life? Your ginga sucks.
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Friday, January 6, 2012
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
IF YOU CAN'T FIGHT? YOU CAN'T DO CAPOEIRA.PERIOD.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wj9AN4OCd8c
TESOURO TO ACHILLES LOCK
http://youtu.be/VNDO5O2qs1o
REAL WORLD GINGA AND AU COM CABECA VS SINGLE AND MULTIPLE OPPONENTS
http://youtu.be/mpegUtGIspM
PASSAGEM DE MEIA LUA TO REAR NAKED CHOKE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCoczuoDlSs&feature=related
Most of us know the most important aspects of the hotly disputed,controversial roots of capoeira: by and large,most knowledgeable objective scholars recognize that capoeira is a hybrid martial art with roots in Africa...perhaps most especially Angola.There were various martial arts in Africa which the Africans were forced to bring to Brazil due to the horrors of Portuguese slavery and Portuguese slavers.While in Brazil,the various intelligent,intrepid,clever,witty,amazingly strong Africans crafted a fighting form that was a result of the synthesis of the dominant most effective African martial systems that survived the passage from Africa to Brazil,and refined this potent admixture under the very noses of the slavers to face and overcome the infinite degradations of slavery.History--written by the slavers--contains the unabashed admission that the Capoeiristas were dazzlingly successful at achieving their aims and goals.
Right off top,we see in a history written by,left by,and acknowledged by the most intense haters of freedom--the slavers--that even the slavers themselves know that Capoeira united men and women and children across language and cultural barriers which the slavers employed every artifice torture device trick terror cruelty and ploy to keep in place in order to enforce division amongst the Africans.Capoeira shattered,bridged and reached across racial barriers which the slavers very deliberately set up to prevent unity.Capoeira kept rhythm and traded malicia with the very Fates themselves,and reaches even today across the whole globe in complete lockstep with the very March of Time itself. Capoeira first assessed slavery-- this most hopeless of scenarios--correctly,outwitted those who had every advantage that the slaver enjoys over the enslaved,then proceeded to outfight them.
Proceeded.To.Out.Fight.Them.
Therefore however beautiful you sing,however many songs of capoeira you may know or compose,however wonderful you are in the roda...unless you can fight? You're akin to a cake that won't rise in the oven,a space ship with no engine,a nuke bomb devoid of any explosive or destructive power,a gorgeously wrapped Christmas box...sans the Christmas gift.You're all sizzle,no steak.For Capoeira is literally the "Freedom Fight",and it's the trials travails and triumphs of those who fought for freedom with their whole human selves that is enshrined in the songs that we sing,that spawned the movements that we dialogue with in the roda.It's the unrelenting fight to preserve freedom in every sense including cultural heritage and identity that made possible the crafting of the berimbau,the preservation of Candomble. Do you think we would revere Zumbi dos Palmares if he was wholly devoid of Capoeira combat skill like faaaarrrr too many who pollute the roda today are? Do you think we would sing of Besouro and make movies of him...if he was immediately overrun and rendered prostate by the slavers? Do you entertain for even the slightest of moments any doubt that Mestres Bimba and Pastinha were more than extraordinary at using Capoeira to destroy all or at least most comers?
There is nothing wrong with embracing Capoeira for its maaaany noncombative benefits.Its health,its speed,strength,balance,flexibility,balance,spiritual strengthening and cleansing,its fun,its joy,its beauty,its song.But there are millions who engage in cardio boxing or cardio kickboxing...without losing sight for one single instant that boxers and kickboxers FIGHT.Capoeira is looked at by and large in the Western world as being wholly incapable of real world self-defense,when there is literally no martial art in the history of the Western Hemisphere with a record of victories in war,against slavers,on the streets,against repression subjugation domination humiliation and genocide in all of its forms even down to the moment I write this and after I perish and have gone to meet my ancestors than Capoeira has...and we are entirely to blame for this most inexcusable state of affairs.
There are many divisions within the capoeira world,but this blog will not touch on it.Suffice it to say that there are different groups in Capoeira like there are in Olympic and Traditional Taekwondo,or Artistic and Rhythmic Gymnastics.The Olympic and Traditional Taekwondoin (I hold a total of seven black belts and several Coaching ranks,including a 5th dan in TKD Hapkido and several other martial arts too) groups and the Artistic and Rhythmic Gymnastic groups may snipe and wrangle with one another.Each is sure that they represent the superior and more correct expression of their art. I would submit that each are partially correct.The outstanding Olympic athletes in Olympic Taekwondo would be equally astonishing at self-defense as the Traditionalists are,if they saw the value of it and realized that one is not complete without the other...and the Traditionalists would accord the amazing respect that Olympians deserve while plying their trade because...they're OLYMPIANS.And Olympians don't grown on trees.The Artistic Gymnast may feel that she's a superior gymnast to the Rhythmic or Trampoline Gymnast,and many outside of their sport may concur...but they're wrong.The TRUE Gymnast does Artistic,Rhythmic and Trampoline Gymnastics because the True Gymnast is interested in being as skilled as possible and as immersed as possible for their whole lives in...GYMNASTICS AS A WHOLE.
The TRUE Capoeirista is beautiful in the roda,composes and knows wonderful songs,plays all the instruments,knows Candomble and the history of Capoeira both colloquially and via historical research...AND CAN FIGHT.The True Capoeirista is ENTIRELY IMMERSED IN CAPOEIRA AS A WHOLE.The True Capoeirista regularly trains combatively and actively hones malicia along with everything else that capoeira is known for.My Mestre once told me that the True Capoeirista is like a Ninja of the Western World but even more amazing in some respects...not the least of which is because the outstanding achievements of the Capoeirista is in many instances rigorously recorded by those who hate and want to subjugate the capoeirista the most.
IF YOU CAN'T FIGHT? YOU CAN'T DO CAPOEIRA.PERIOD.
I can and do fight with my Capoeira.I will constantly provide video evidence of such along with my blogs and I will give you real world training drills,exercises,sequences (secuencias) and more to help you actually be able to fight.We must remember that Capoeira is,like my Mestre told me that HIS Mestre told HIM:"The Song of Life...The Dance of Death." Only Warriors sing that Song as well as dance that Dance.
ATACX GYM CAPOEIRA is one of the very last remaining homes of the True Capoeirista.We aren't the only ones,but we're amongst the (very unfortunately) truly few and rare True Capoeiristas left nowadays.In this blog,I will share our journey with you.
With Malicia...
Head Coach Ras
TESOURO TO ACHILLES LOCK
http://youtu.be/VNDO5O2qs1o
REAL WORLD GINGA AND AU COM CABECA VS SINGLE AND MULTIPLE OPPONENTS
http://youtu.be/mpegUtGIspM
PASSAGEM DE MEIA LUA TO REAR NAKED CHOKE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCoczuoDlSs&feature=related
Most of us know the most important aspects of the hotly disputed,controversial roots of capoeira: by and large,most knowledgeable objective scholars recognize that capoeira is a hybrid martial art with roots in Africa...perhaps most especially Angola.There were various martial arts in Africa which the Africans were forced to bring to Brazil due to the horrors of Portuguese slavery and Portuguese slavers.While in Brazil,the various intelligent,intrepid,clever,witty,amazingly strong Africans crafted a fighting form that was a result of the synthesis of the dominant most effective African martial systems that survived the passage from Africa to Brazil,and refined this potent admixture under the very noses of the slavers to face and overcome the infinite degradations of slavery.History--written by the slavers--contains the unabashed admission that the Capoeiristas were dazzlingly successful at achieving their aims and goals.
Right off top,we see in a history written by,left by,and acknowledged by the most intense haters of freedom--the slavers--that even the slavers themselves know that Capoeira united men and women and children across language and cultural barriers which the slavers employed every artifice torture device trick terror cruelty and ploy to keep in place in order to enforce division amongst the Africans.Capoeira shattered,bridged and reached across racial barriers which the slavers very deliberately set up to prevent unity.Capoeira kept rhythm and traded malicia with the very Fates themselves,and reaches even today across the whole globe in complete lockstep with the very March of Time itself. Capoeira first assessed slavery-- this most hopeless of scenarios--correctly,outwitted those who had every advantage that the slaver enjoys over the enslaved,then proceeded to outfight them.
Proceeded.To.Out.Fight.Them.
Therefore however beautiful you sing,however many songs of capoeira you may know or compose,however wonderful you are in the roda...unless you can fight? You're akin to a cake that won't rise in the oven,a space ship with no engine,a nuke bomb devoid of any explosive or destructive power,a gorgeously wrapped Christmas box...sans the Christmas gift.You're all sizzle,no steak.For Capoeira is literally the "Freedom Fight",and it's the trials travails and triumphs of those who fought for freedom with their whole human selves that is enshrined in the songs that we sing,that spawned the movements that we dialogue with in the roda.It's the unrelenting fight to preserve freedom in every sense including cultural heritage and identity that made possible the crafting of the berimbau,the preservation of Candomble. Do you think we would revere Zumbi dos Palmares if he was wholly devoid of Capoeira combat skill like faaaarrrr too many who pollute the roda today are? Do you think we would sing of Besouro and make movies of him...if he was immediately overrun and rendered prostate by the slavers? Do you entertain for even the slightest of moments any doubt that Mestres Bimba and Pastinha were more than extraordinary at using Capoeira to destroy all or at least most comers?
There is nothing wrong with embracing Capoeira for its maaaany noncombative benefits.Its health,its speed,strength,balance,flexibility,balance,spiritual strengthening and cleansing,its fun,its joy,its beauty,its song.But there are millions who engage in cardio boxing or cardio kickboxing...without losing sight for one single instant that boxers and kickboxers FIGHT.Capoeira is looked at by and large in the Western world as being wholly incapable of real world self-defense,when there is literally no martial art in the history of the Western Hemisphere with a record of victories in war,against slavers,on the streets,against repression subjugation domination humiliation and genocide in all of its forms even down to the moment I write this and after I perish and have gone to meet my ancestors than Capoeira has...and we are entirely to blame for this most inexcusable state of affairs.
There are many divisions within the capoeira world,but this blog will not touch on it.Suffice it to say that there are different groups in Capoeira like there are in Olympic and Traditional Taekwondo,or Artistic and Rhythmic Gymnastics.The Olympic and Traditional Taekwondoin (I hold a total of seven black belts and several Coaching ranks,including a 5th dan in TKD Hapkido and several other martial arts too) groups and the Artistic and Rhythmic Gymnastic groups may snipe and wrangle with one another.Each is sure that they represent the superior and more correct expression of their art. I would submit that each are partially correct.The outstanding Olympic athletes in Olympic Taekwondo would be equally astonishing at self-defense as the Traditionalists are,if they saw the value of it and realized that one is not complete without the other...and the Traditionalists would accord the amazing respect that Olympians deserve while plying their trade because...they're OLYMPIANS.And Olympians don't grown on trees.The Artistic Gymnast may feel that she's a superior gymnast to the Rhythmic or Trampoline Gymnast,and many outside of their sport may concur...but they're wrong.The TRUE Gymnast does Artistic,Rhythmic and Trampoline Gymnastics because the True Gymnast is interested in being as skilled as possible and as immersed as possible for their whole lives in...GYMNASTICS AS A WHOLE.
The TRUE Capoeirista is beautiful in the roda,composes and knows wonderful songs,plays all the instruments,knows Candomble and the history of Capoeira both colloquially and via historical research...AND CAN FIGHT.The True Capoeirista is ENTIRELY IMMERSED IN CAPOEIRA AS A WHOLE.The True Capoeirista regularly trains combatively and actively hones malicia along with everything else that capoeira is known for.My Mestre once told me that the True Capoeirista is like a Ninja of the Western World but even more amazing in some respects...not the least of which is because the outstanding achievements of the Capoeirista is in many instances rigorously recorded by those who hate and want to subjugate the capoeirista the most.
IF YOU CAN'T FIGHT? YOU CAN'T DO CAPOEIRA.PERIOD.
I can and do fight with my Capoeira.I will constantly provide video evidence of such along with my blogs and I will give you real world training drills,exercises,sequences (secuencias) and more to help you actually be able to fight.We must remember that Capoeira is,like my Mestre told me that HIS Mestre told HIM:"The Song of Life...The Dance of Death." Only Warriors sing that Song as well as dance that Dance.
ATACX GYM CAPOEIRA is one of the very last remaining homes of the True Capoeirista.We aren't the only ones,but we're amongst the (very unfortunately) truly few and rare True Capoeiristas left nowadays.In this blog,I will share our journey with you.
With Malicia...
Head Coach Ras
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