It's hard to know if this is sports related or very bad method acting! It does have to be seen to be believed. Steve Mclaren, England's great-sch ever (total) football manager-sch, we salute you!

When I was growing up and getting into martial arts, watching kung fu films and hearing about the legend of Bruce Lee, I also stated buying martial arts magazines> One name which would crop up on a regular basis was Benny "The Jet" Urquidez. Referred to as "The Jet" due to his speed and accuracy when striking, Benny Urquiduez contested over 200 bouts in his fight career including some 58 title fights. There is some dispute over whether his record - win-lose -draw - is 58-0-0 hence making him undefeated in 58 fights, or, as two of the fights were deemed "no contest" and in some quarters one fight was seen as a loss - his 1978 bout against Prayout Sittiboonlert - in which he loss by decision as you can see below.

To say The Jet was a proficient or even prolific martial artist is somewhat of an understatement. He gained his black belt in karate at the age of fourteen, going on to gain black belts in eight other martial arts disciplines. He is also credited with having introduced full contact karate/American kickboxing to the West, having before that competed in points only semi-contact karate.
Undoubtedly a great fighter he fought and won fights in five weight divisions - there will always be a slight cloud over his achievements due to his own insistence of maintaining a record of never having been defeated.
What is not in doubt and cannot be disputed is his talent and ability, which he took into films. His slighty unusual look, descended as he was from Blackfoot Indians and Spaniards, gave him the perfect "deadly henchman" look. This is showcased brilliantly in a clip from the film "Wheels on Meals" when he fights a very youthful Jackie Chan.

These days The Jet still imparts his vast knowledge of martial arts at his gym in Hollywood. He also teaches film and stage fighting, whilst retaining a zest for the path - martial arts - that life had set out for him.

Checking out crossfit training on youtube and came across this. I'll try it at some point and report on the outcome. There are loads of these crazy crossfit vids. This what we trainers do in our spare time; explore more ways to nurture and torture! Coming to a class soon! Enjoy.

Below is a vid of K1's top ten knockouts from 2007. But for sheer guts and getting-off-the-canvas determination number four takes some beating!

In my classes on Thursday and Friday evenings, the warm up is skipping. The Friday guys are happy to skip away, the Thursday guys however groan as though I've just asked them to dig a deep hole and get into it! Here, for my Thursday evening guys, is a little inspiration.

Women fighting, specifically fighting on film; artistically, well choreographed, looking as though they can actually fight, has always held a bit of a fascination for me. women fighting in films is not a new thing. the The late sixties and seventies martial arts boom, led by Bruce Lee, whose more story and character driven films, revolving around a strong moralled, good ass-kicking lead, appealed to the Western masses, showcased, ever so briefly, a fighting woman. In Lee's worldwide hit film one of the chief exponents of females fighting on film made a brief - fighting appearance. Angela Mao (seen above as "Lady Kung Fu") plays Lee's sister in Enter the Dragon. We see her in a brief flashback as she tries to fight off some bad guys, eventually electing to take her own life rather than be taken. Possibly because of the women's movement and colourful music seen of the seventies, the empowered female made fleeting, if sometimes comical, appearances in cinema.

Generally they tended to beat up men. The prospect of two women fighting wearing more than a bikini and executing proficient high kicks at one another was not one that really took off in the seventies, or even much in the nineties. there would be a bit of wait before we saw two women squaring up in a less than obscure straight-to-video film. A big star, within martial arts circles, was Cynthia Rothrock, was the goto girl for seeing a woman kicking, punching and handing out justice the old fashioned way in the eighties and into the nineties. An accomplished practitioner of five martial arts, Rothrock made and continues to make, a career as woman who could fight without pulling hair or scratching eyes out. By no stretch of the imagination an accomplished actress and, probably due to some of the stuntmen she had to work with, alot of her better known works, the American productions, always looked sped up and fake. But as the clip below shows, she could do it the Chinese way.

More up to date, we have had Michelle Yeoh - the other woman in the clip above - and Ziyi Zhang, both of whom have a fantastic fight scene in "Hidden Dragon Crouching Tiger". On the big screen Sharon Stone and Rachel Ticotin have a brief fight in "Total Recall". Though for a great fight scene between women, the scene involving Uma Thurman and Lucy Liu in "Kill Bill: Volume One" is a modern day classic. In fact every fight scene in the Kill Bill films is brilliant. Check out the Uma Thurman versus Vivaca Fox clip below.

On television women being able to hand out the odd can of "whup ass" has been evident for over a decade. Lucy Lawless' Xena was probably at the forefront of strong fighting women through the nineties. With her more demure sidekick, Gabrielle, played by Renee O'Connor, they smacked up marauding hordes across mythical lands right up to 2001. In the noughties we had Kelly Hu in the martial arts showcase that was "Martial Law" and present day we have Yvonne Strahovski in the spy drama/comedy "Chuck". For the martial arts lover there is plenty of action to be seen on our screens. The answer to the question'"can she kick it?" has to be "yes she can!"

SEPP BLATTER, the FIFA president, has mooted an idea to introduce by 2010 a system that “protects” home-grown footballing talent by having a numerical quota system. The “six-plus-five” (rolls off the tongue!) quota system guarantees that every footballing team, worldwide, will eventually have to field a minimum of six home-grown, as in eligible for the home country’s national team, players. The English FA sees this as veiled attack on the cash rich Premier league. The major leagues in world football; English, Italian and Spanish, attract footballing talent from all over the globe. They attract the best players because: They pay the best wages and they offer the most glory; league championship medals, champions league, UEFA cup. Even for the teams within these leagues which cannot realistically challenge for top honours, for players from smaller footballing nations, the wages and the televisual exposure make the working environment appealing. As ever, media exposure and hyperbole make the lot of a professional footballer something that is difficult to see as anything other than glamorous. The image of all footballers being millionaire playboys is flawed. Of course, those in the top teams do not struggle to pay their bills, but in the lesser teams, many of these young men have to think about accumulating enough money in a decade to last into dotage. So it is no surprise that a talented footballer from a poorer nation would jump at the opportunity to ply his trade in one of the cash rich leagues of Europe.
The six-plus-five rule would hurt a lot of these young footballers and push up the price of already overpriced home-grown players. The argument that this system would give young home-grown players more chance to progress is flawed. This will simply give home-grown players more reason to not try as hard. The Premier league has already shown how some, home-grown, players have flourished, whilst others have bemoaned the influx of foreign players. Frank Lampard, a player seen as overweight and pedestrian in his West Ham days, blossomed at Chelsea in a team filled with foreign talent. Danny Murphy, a talented midfielder player, felt that he had to leave Liverpool to advance his career. Not that his career has blossomed since he moved on. His career has been patchy at best. Nor has he enhanced his national team call-up potential.
To summarise, six-plus-five is a compromise on quality. It would not help the national team, being in a team does not automatically make players better. If that were the case the Scottish Premier league would not be a two horse race, Celtic and Rangers, every season, come think of it, the English Premier league’s title is only contested by four clubs, one of which, Chelsea, can boast an English spine to the team. The six-plus-five system may be dead in the water before it gets going, as there is the small matter of European law to overcome. This will not stop Sepp Blatter from trying to push through the rule.

It is well documented that Ricky Hatton balloons up to twelve/ thirteen stone (180 lbs) which is two stone plus above his fight weight of ten stone (140 lbs). I found quite an interesting interview with his strength coach, former bodybuilder and trainer, Kerry Kayes. Bringing his bodybuilding expertise to Hatton's camp at the behest of Billy Graham, Hatton's trainer. He outlines a little of how he helps Hatton achieve results.

click pic.

KERRY KAYES

Usain Bolt - you couldn't make the name up! - broke the world record for 100 metres on Saturday 31st may, with a time of 9.72 seconds. that was two hundreds of a second faster than the previous time, held by the 100 metre specialist, Jamaican compatriot and serial big meet choker, Asafa Powell. Bolt, whose preferred distance is the 200 metres, had already laid down a mark of his potential in an earlier race, clocking a time of 9.76 seconds. For a man who claims to have a poor start and also shares with his fellow speedster, Powell, the alarming habit of slowing down ten metres from the finish line, the question is just how fast can he go? Showing admiral composure to focus after two false starts, Bolt also managed to hold off the challenge of the current world champion, the American Tyson Gay. Gay's achievements also include being the current 200 metres world champion and the burden of being the man to banish the tarnished image of America's brash and arrogant, not mention drug scandalized, athletics. If Powell can get his mind right and Bolt and Gay maintain form, the Beijing 100 metres will be a real race to look forward to. I, for one, cannot wait!

To open with a few relevant, but somewhat worn out clichés; people in glasshouses should not throw bricks and cheats never prosper. These are phrases, though well known and possibly even felt to be true, life sadly does not back up either statement. Persons with less than salubrious lifestyles routinely comment on, write about and or criticize or pass comment on situations or persons they are no better than. There has been a lot said about Dwain Chambers in the media recently. At his recent appearance in the Birmingham trials, he was warmly received by the British crowds, yet the vilification he has received in media circles is a little extreme. My personal stance on cheating, however it’s done, is, to be truthful, somewhat draconian. I believe that acts of duplicity - lying to gain an edge - are worse than stealing or assault. It is an act of disdain and shows scant respect for others. Having said that, to use another clichés, I do not believe that “a leopard never changes it’s spots”, any man or woman can change and there is always a choice, more than one path that person can take and if there is no such thing as redemption of character, what is the point of incarceration? The British athletics association (BOA) handed down a sentence of two years plus a lifetime from Olympic competition to Dwain Chambers. Beside the obvious loss of a career, he also, quite rightly, lost all his sponsors. In the interim, Dwain made some ill advised comments, to the effect that it was not possible to run at the speeds and achieve the times he craved, without the aid of chemical assistance, thus in one fell swoop he inadvertently accused every world class sprinter of being, at the very least, susceptible to the lure of performance enhancing drugs. The strangest thing is that, aside from his obvious physical change, the substance which he admitted taking - THG (tetrahydrogestrinone) - did little, if anything, to enhance his performance. So why such a furore over Dwain Chambers? Others have been caught before, admittedly not as high profile, but caught nonetheless and they have returned to their sport unaffected by the ballyhoo that seems to surround Chambers. What is even stranger is the fact that it is people within athletics who are so vociferous in their objections of him returning to the sport. Anybody who knows about athletics, sport in general, knows that, especially track athletes, only make money one of two ways; appearance fees at track meets, which they have to be “invited” to and sponsorship. Chambers somewhat unfortunate aggressive image does not lend itself to sponsorship and the pious breast beating of “clean” sports people pretty much ensures he will not have any major sporting sponsor. As for being invited to major meetings, the likelihood of that happening within Europe is slim to none. Outside of Europe his earning potential for running really fast is diminished even further when one considers that even double Olympic champion Michael Johnson in his pomp was hardly beating off the offers in his own U S of A!
I believe that, handled properly, Dwain Chambers could actually encourage youngsters to get involved in athletics, by showing them that perhaps failing, not a drugs test but in ones initial endeavours, does not mean there is no way back or that you have to give it up and go and do something else. If he can face the barbs, the sticks and stones, the inevitable obstacles the various governing bodies try to construct in order to restrict his progress, perhaps he can show that with perseverance and a refusal to be cowed even those who seemed beyond salvation can turn their lives around.