Capoeira vs. … Tony Jaa!

This isn’t necessarily Tony’s coolest scene, but definitely one of my favorite movie fight scenes:

Here is a Tony Jaa demo at a Dallas Mavericks half-time show:

The fighting demo is cool. You can tell how they fake the moves, but they are cool and you also see how those must add up to really cool movie [...]

Rickson Yoga

Here is Rickson Gracie doing ginatisca natural in a clip from the famous video Choke:

What is with the really weird breathing technique?
And here is a cool video where he flips over when picked up and looking like he’s about to eat a slam:

Capoeira

I’ve been getting a little bored with my normal martial arts interests of “internal” and “soft” arts lately for whatever reasons.
Capoeira seems like a great cure for that. It is totally off the wall compared to the same old same old. It looks more fun in terms of the sheer joy of moving around [...]

Offtopic: get your genome sequenced for $100

Start-ups are working on technology to sequence your genome for $100.
The most recent figures for sequencing a human genome are $60,000 in about six weeks, as reported by Applied Biosystems last month. (That’s down from $3 billion for the Human Genome Project, which was sequenced using traditional methods and finished in 2003, and about $1 [...]

Biofeedback on the cheap

A friend of mine has got me interested in using gadgets to help measure progress in things like zhan zhuang, qigong, meditation, and thereby help one get better faster (sort of oxymoronic to the idea of “letting go” but what the heck, it’s the 21st century). I read these two tips in a Dummies book [...]

Offtopic: wireless EEG powered by body heat + ambient light

Well, it seems my blogging has really turned to gadgets and neuroscience lately. Sometimes i get bored of the martial arts (gasp). I should probably split up my blog but, well, it’s really for myself, and not so much for publishing for readers (I think there are 3 of you out there that check back [...]

Offtopic: Star Trek tricorder for the brain?

The Pentagon is seeking a battlefield device to diagnose brain injury within seconds by scanning it. Sounds like the Star Trek kind of handheld medical scanning technology will become reality before we know it.
Roadside bombs have made brain damage a grim hallmark of modern war. A RAND study out today says 320,000 U.S. troops may [...]

Offtopic: music practice builds connection between brain hemispheres

Wow. Talk about a good way to get more “whole brained”. What are the “movement-planning regions”? How does that help with movement arts? Rhythm? I should’ve listened to Mom when she said to practice. Oops. From ScienceNOW:
Schlaug says the findings should settle the earlier debate by showing that musical training can enhance neural connections related [...]