Rodney Chico King has been involved in martial arts for over 20 years, achieving black belts across a variety of disciplines. He has provided courses for the Special Defence Force in his native South Africa and is an expert Muai Thai fighter. Currently he is associated with Matt Thornton’s Straight Blast Gym, and travels the World coaching a self-developed, graded system of defense fighting - Crazy Monkey .
Martial Edge: What do you aim to achieve in your seminars?
Rodney Chico King: My seminars are performance-based. A lot of seminars try to teach you lots of things but at the end of it you learn little. I just concentrate on a few aspects of martial arts that can be applied to your training straight away. The primary goal is to enhance performance, and I believe the best way of achieving that is by coaching just a couple of practical techniques that can be incorporated into a sparring session.
Martial Edge: The Crazy Monkey system, as shown on your DVDs, has won World-wide acclaim for helping boxers and those involved in mixed martial arts to up their performance. How did you come up with the idea?
Rodney Chico King: Crazy Monkey came about through observation basically. I’ve seen lots of videos of fighters getting knocked out in the ring and in most cases this came about through that guy not defending himself properly. Doing the Naseem Hamed thing might look very cool, but I wouldn’t recommend it because you’re leaving yourself too open for that KO hit. So CM evolved from my aim to show people the importance of keeping a tight defence: with hands protecting the face at all times, chin tucked in and shoulders hunched.
Martial Edge: I’ve read that you are an advocate of fusing different martial arts together rather than sticking rigidly to one discipline like Tae Kwon Do, Shaolin Kung Fu etc.? What are the benefits of a mixed martial arts approach?
Rodney Chico King: The main advantage of mixed martial arts is that you can work your game against your opponent more easily. Traditional martial arts make great claims about its fighters but they often place more emphasis on pattern work rather than the hard reality of a street fight situation - Karate doesn’t teach you how to do an upper cut punch.? But on the other hand there is no real philosophy to mixed martial arts, so it does tend to attract more of the meatheads!
Martial Edge: What advice would you give to newcomers at sparring who might be afraid of getting hurt?
Rodney Chico King: First off that it’s ok to feel afraid. A sociopath is defined as someone who goes into a situation where they know they might seriously hurt without feeling fear. And you don’t wanna be one of those!? It’s important to pick your gym carefully. Find out what the coach is like and what is the philosophy of the school, and then decide whether it suits you or not.
Martial Edge: Apart from sparring more often and using the techniques outlined in your DVDs, is there any extra ways of improving your sparring performance?
Rodney Chico King: Well I’d say it’s better to ease off on the competition. Often you see guys sparring as if it’s life or death, that shit is pointless. Real learning happens through observation. I don’t want to spar with meatheads because that means I have to go full on as well, and no one learns anything because we are too busy trying to knock each other out. The best type of progress happens when you’re going at about 25 or 50%. You get to concentrate on technique that way.
Martial Edge: Do you use visualizations as a way of improving performance?
Rodney Chico King: Positive visualizations are good for pre-sparring. Affirmations are also useful. It’s all part of modern sports psychology that we incorporate at Straight Blast Gyms.
Martial Edge: Over the course of your martial arts career, have you picked up many injuries?
Rodney Chico King: Not in the last few years. Again that’s down to the way I train. I used to run gyms where it was just COMPETITION, COMPETITION, COMPETITION!? School of hard knocks and all that. Stupid stuff. But in that the last five, six years I’ve changed my approach, simplified it so that my students don’t get hurt so much and concentrate on mastering just a couple of techniques that they can easily perform.
Martial Edge: What would you do if some students started getting carried away, hurting people on purpose?
Rodney Chico King: Some people aren’t very aware of their bodies; they just pound away without being conscious of what they’re doing. In that case I would just tell the guy to chill out, relax. Maybe get him to sit in a corner until he’s cooled off. But if, after I let him back he continued with his Chuck Norris impression, I’d return his money and ask him to leave. Simple as that. It’s not my policy, nor is it the policy of any of our Straight Blast instructors to accept violence in our gyms.
Martial Edge: On a more personal note, would you say that martial arts have changed your life in any way?
Rodney Chico King: The really positive changes have only started happening in the last few years for me. I grew up in a tough neighbourhood in Cape town. I was a skinny kid, used to get beat up a lot. I’d pick different ways to school so the bullies wouldn’t catch me. Sure I learned to fight, won the golden gloves and all that but its only in the last few years that I’ve experienced the transformative qualities of martial arts.
Martial Edge: What does that mean?
Rodney Chico King: Basically how martial arts can change your life outside the ring as well as inside it. We are cognitive people. Often we can find ourselves thinking about things at the office or where ever, over-analyzing stuff. The same is true for sparring. When coached properly, martial arts have the power to merge the mind with the body. When this happens during sparring it results in a BIG rush of confidence because head and heart are in sync. By doing the right things in training, you can also start applying these lessons to your own life. At Straight Blast we’re not about teaching out-dated martial arts from black belt instructors with massive beer bellies. We offer practical, performance-based coaching that will hopefully help people overcome mental obstacles in their lives, what ever they might be.
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