It was a normal Wednesday night in Leuven, around 9 p.m. My three friends and I headed to the Oude Markt. One of them knew the owner of a small café there, so we grabbed a quiet table in the corner. It was the kind of spot that was hard to get out of quickly if things went south. We were just chilling. Drinking beer, talking about life, swapping old stories and laughing. Everything felt calm and good. Then a guy we call Jan showed up with his girlfriend. They seemed fine. But his friend Rick was a different story drunk and wired on coke. He’d just gotten out of jail, and everyone in Leuven knew his reputation: robbing people, threatening them, attacking them. Some said it was even worse. We tried to ignore him. That didn’t sit well with Rick. He stormed over to our table, slammed both hands down, and started acting tough, getting right in our faces. We stayed calm and kept ignoring him. That only made him angrier. He turned on one of my drunk friends and started threatening him. My other friend froze. Couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. I stood up and said calmly, “Yo, chill out.” Rick lost it. He grabbed me hard by the back of the neck. Without thinking, I shoved him off with my left arm while covering my head with my right. He flew backwards. He jumped up fast and reached into his pocket. Two of my friends were useless one too drunk, the other still frozen. Rick came at me again. That’s when a huge rush of adrenaline hit me. I planted my foot, twisted my hip, and landed a perfect front kick. He crashed hard onto the stone pavement. His head smacked the cobblestones with a loud crack. The second I saw the knife in his right hand, I flew straight at him. I slammed my body into his with a full body slam, landing in full mount on his chest. I immediately grabbed his right wrist with my right hand, slid my left hand under his elbow, and locked my left hand on top of my own right wrist. I started cranking hard ready to snap his arm if he didn’t drop the knife. Jan jumped in fast. He snatched the knife away from Rick and pulled us apart. My friend Jef wanted to call the police, but Jan begged us not to. “I’ll handle it,” he said. “He’ll leave.” Jan dragged everyone away and broke up the fight.

For a long time we didn't have a word for it in the west, other than distance. Nowadays we often use 'the pocket' to describe striking range. In Japan they use the term maai to describe the different distances between two people in a fight. You have ultra long range where you can run away. You have kicking range. You have punching range. You have clinching and close striking range. And you have the ability to change ranges. This understanding makes you 3 dimensional. Getting outside of your opponents range and into yours, you play with distances and angles. In SFDOJO we had a skull with two sickles on our rashguards to represent the different ranges.

I have a huge collection of videos of my private classes with Jukucho. I will start sharing them only here on Rishinjuku karate Skool. Sometimes as answers to the personal messages I get. @Nicolás Peña about your question on the kick. Look how he moves while spine. Upper body first, to throw the hip and the leg. His whole lower body skeleton is thrown into the bag. More questions? Post them below or send me a personal message or video to look at. Let us all get better together 💪

Many karateka do really well in MMA IF THEY KNOW WHAT TO FOCUS ON. This list can help you you for further research. Many of the were UFC champions. Look them up, study their films and go train! https://karate.com/news/karate-in-mma-the-driving-force

I've noticed now with three other people that when they start hitting the pads or heavy bags that they get inflamed shoulders. It's probably linked to the reverb of hard impact. At the time the doctor prescribed me rest, but what eventually fixed it was going back to training. 😅 Anyone else any advice on how to address this? Both in the sense of prevention and mediation?