About SBG UK

The Straight Blast Gym was created as a non-political location where freedom to use, and discover what actually works in what “is” hand-to-hand combat could be expressed. It was meant as a place where athletes could gather and actually spar against uncooperative partners in all ranges, without worry of “style” or making what “is” combat into what we think it should be.

The training we are speaking of is not an exchange of techniques as such, but actual physical training, sweating, moving, “Alive” training. Hence the term Gym—not academy, institute or school, but Gym.

As the training progressed it began to evolve. All athletes that practise in an “Alive” manner—that is, against uncooperative training partners and not in kata, forms, patterns or drills—will eventually reach a natural state of evolution.

What you do will evolve to work in the environment that is combat. As such, what began as a semi-typical JKD Concepts curriculum evolved into what is now the current Straight Blast Gym curriculum.

The stand-up kickboxing game evolved and changed as the advent of takedowns and ground fighting was allowed in all sparring sessions. Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu played a major and ever-growing role in the daily training.

The “trapping” techniques taught by most JKD and Jun Fan people were replaced with more effective methods of clinching and striking derived from Greco-Roman wrestling and Muay Thai.

Most of the “flow drills” typically referred to as “Kali” or “Escrima” drills were replaced with simpler Alive drills that actually reflected and enhanced the movements used in real-contact stick fighting.

Today, the Straight Blast Gym no longer claims to teach Filipino martial arts as such. Instead, we simply refer to what we do as stick and knife fighting.

The majority of our training now revolves around boxing, wrestling and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, all of which has been adapted to work together and in the street.

If you place any two Kung Fu, Karate, Jun Fan, Silat, Kali, Hapkido or similar practitioners into a cage and tell them they can only strike at each other, then what you would see would resemble bad kickboxing.

If you told them they could do anything they wanted, then it would resemble a bad vale tudo or NHB match.

A punch is a punch, a kick a kick, an elbow an elbow, a knee a knee, a choke a choke, a throw a throw and an armlock an armlock. It does not matter what part of the world it comes from.

If you do not spar—if your training is not “Alive”, but instead a series of dead patterns and “flow drills”—then what you do will not translate into actual fighting.

Free yourselves from the conformity of style, terminology and ritual. Spar against real opponents and always train “Alive”, and so can you.

In the end, that is really what JKD is supposed to be.