This year I embarked on a new venture, taking a step into new territory that I had not experienced being as supposedly nerdy/geeky (is there a difference?) as I am. Hmm....just looked up nerd and geek on dictionary.com and yeah, not so pleasant so I shan't be calling myself that anymore. Let's start over...
This year I embarked on a new venture, being the Hybrid Hunter that I am I am always looking to expand my skills, traits and perks so that I am not a one-dimensional character but a hybrid-dimensional character and for those of you perceptive readers this entry is label Hybrid Habits, partly because of my infatuation with alliteration and mostly because this category will hopefully document my hybrid skills, traits and perks, in an objective yet slightly subjective manner (it is my blog after all) so lets finally begin after this long-winded introduction.
For as long as I can remember I've always been interested in the whole art of fighting scene, I suppose these were born out of the numerous martial arts movies I would watch with my family as a child, watching Jet Li, Sammo Hung, Jacky Chan and all those other Chinese actors duke it out in such a fast and fluid fashion I was enamored by them. I remember my Dad talking to me about doing some sort of martial arts, but for some reason I never pursued it, in hindsight, I probably should've. I guess that was the eastern influence upon me, my western influence most probably came from my favourite superhero, that being the Batman. The opening sequence to the Batman Animated Series still gets me hyped, seeing him take on two robbers and winning (naturally) I wanted to be like Batman, but didn't want to go through the tragedy of losing my parents. But this isn't a Batman blog (that'll come later). Then came wrestling, introduced to me by my high school friend, and I don't know why but I liked it a lot, and became fanatical about it, watching it, reading up on it and everything except for the obvious one, doing it. But I'd often dream about doing it, but of course, it was only a dream. After wrestling was the harder stuff, first known to me as Ultimate Fighting Championship, a sport where people of varying fighting styles fight to see who is superior, the way to lose was to either get knocked out, tap out to a submission or have the towel thrown in. To me, it was amazing, better than boxing, and I was hooked. I soon found out the sport was called Mixed Martial Arts, which summed it up, fighters were of mixed martial arts, at least they had to learn to be, to win. But what it all boils down to is that I'm a guy, and guys like the whole violence thing, agree/disagree?
So here we are, present day, influences a plenty from all different places and what did this all lead to? My starting of martial arts, two styles in fact, to keep with my hybrid nature, it wouldn't have made sense to just learn one. I'm learning it at Sinosic Perosh Martial Arts (SPMA) in Liverpool, with the two main instructors being Elvis Sinosic and Anthony Perosh, both accomplished fighters who have fought in the UFC. The first style that I'm learning is called Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, which is the Brazilian adaptation of the Japanese art of Jiu Jitsu, thus becoming Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (notice the hybridness?). It mainly involves wrestling, maintaining control of your opponent and finding a way to submit them, by head/arm/leg locks or chokes. It's very uncomfortable to be on the receiving end of these submissions but rewarding (on the inside) when you pull off a move and tap a person out. It's also a sport made so that even if you are weak, you can still win, which in my case is good.
The second style is Thai Kickboxing, or Muay Thai, which is quite self explanatory in its name, 'Kickboxing', which combines boxing and kicking (more hybridness!). The best known popular example would be from the movies Ong-Bak and Tom Yum Goong, which sounds like a soup you'd get from a Thai restaurant. Put those two styles together and you get Mixed Martial Arts, punching, kicking, taking them down and getting a good position before more punching!
Four months I've been doing this now, and I intend to stick with it for a long while yet, hopefully enter a few BJJ (Brazilian Jiu Jitsu) competitions towards the end of the year and see how I go. Any questions feel free to comment or ask in person/online, but otherwise look for more entries to do with my new found sport, which I'll call Hybrid Martial Arts...
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