FAMILY MARTIAL ARTS KICK BOXING

 Kick Boxing – Sport or Martial Art ?

We have a lot of enquiries for Kick Boxing, of which are from women, and in deed from parents for their children for self defence reasons. I would just like to offer a few of my thoughts and give a little insight to how we approach the use of Kick Boxing at our schools. First of all, let’s take a look at Kick Boxing and its modern roots. Kick Boxing is an amalgamation of techniques from several martial arts and Weston boxing. If we go back to the 1960’s, we find that Judo and the emergence of Karate was taking off in the United States and soon spreading to the shores of Europe as Japanese sensei’s (instructors) took up residence. Students would come along and join in to view this new fighting system of Karate which was meant to be used to kill the enemy with one single blow. In America and Europe, it was only allowed to develop as a “no contact sport” at that time. This meant that techniques were pulled so not to inflict too much damage but of course, some students wanted to test their skills in a more real sense. In the sport of Judo, you had to hold or through you opponent to the ground. In Boxing you would try to knock him down and in wrestling by pinning the shoulders to the ground. So in Karate you would try to score points by nearly hitting someone by pulling back showing control. In America, Jhoon Rhee, known as the father of American Taekwondo brought out his own fist and foot protection and staged bouts of a new style of fighting competition using the hands and feet. So now the early seventies saw the birth of full contact Karate tournaments on the scene. Karate innovator Mike Anderson together with Don and Judy Quine were the pioneers responsible for forming the first world sanctioning body (PKA) for this new sport side to Karate. This produced stars within this new sport such as Joe Lewis, Chuck Norris, Jeff Smith, Benny (the jet) Urquidez and the legendary Bill (superfoot) Wallis becoming some of the main champions of this new genre of Full Contact Karate. This lead to full contact Karate being promoted world wide and becoming known as Kick Boxing with the first European Championships being held in Germany in 1976. When it took on the name of Kick Boxing with its own rule system it was promoted strongly as a credible Martial Art in its own right. Over the years Kick Boxing has now catered for those that have wanted to train and compete at full and also light contact, or just for the fitness and conditioning side for health and fun. Sport or Martial Art ? I believe that some train to only do their techniques to win in the ring or at tournaments to gain a medal or trophy, but some also train to develop their skills alongside their regular martial arts training style for a deeper understanding and variety, so really, the question is !! Where do you fit in ?? At Family Martial Arts, we train for all the above reasons but also train our TAE KWON DO syllabus with our KICK BOXING side because it is all an art form and every aspect has its place of which I am proud that our core art (TKD) helped with the progression of the more modern sport side of the art of Kick Boxing. Forever progressing and learning to evolve is surely the key to success and personnel development. I hope that you have enjoyed this article and thank you for reading my interpretation in this short view of the modern Art Form of Kick Boxing.

With Respect,

Master Martin

WE ARE HERE TO HELP YOU – We don’t just show you how to “KICK”, “PUNCH” and “BLOCK”. We teach you techniques that may help you “PROTECT YOURSELF, YOUR FAMILY and YOUR FRIENDS”. Use your skills WISELY. YOU MUST NEVER use them to bully someone else!