is the European representative of DBMA and a member of the “Council of Elders”, hence the guiding force and coach for many European Training Groups and Clans.
He is studying martial arts since 1983, and is a student under Guro Marc “Crafty Dog” Denny since 1998. He fought his first Gathering 1999 and got his full Dog Brother dubbing just 3 years later. 2006 he got the honour to be admitted into the “Council of Elders”.
He is truly a passionate martial artist, teacher and fighter. His love of stick fighting is evident to all who know him, and his ability as a fighter, to all who have faced him.
How did you first get involved with Martial Arts?
My first contact with the martial arts was at school when I was around 8 years old. We had a school project to make a short (Kung Fu) movie. Sadly I was one of the younger children tied to the tree awaiting the heroes (the older children), to come rescue us…
Two years later I started my first martial arts training with Karate. A few years later I devoted myself to other Japanese martial arts such as: Judo, Ju-Jitsu, and Weaponry.
As a teenager I discovered full contact fighting such as boxing, Thai boxing and Sanda. Above all I felt comfortable as a boxer and attended a variety of boxing tournaments as an amateur boxer.
How did you first come into contact with FMA and the Dog Brothers Martial Arts?
1992 I was attending a Tai Kai Seminar in Luxembourg my teacher had a friend who trained in Inosanto Blend so we went to his Gym to train for a couple of hours on some basics, Sumbrada and Heaven-6 etc.
I became interest in Kali and I wanted to continue training in FMA but I couldn’t find a teacher near me in Switzerland at the time. I started to collect as many instructional videos on FMA so I could continue to learn. It was in 1994 that I bought the Dog Brothers “Real Contact Fighting” Series and it suddenly hit me “Thats cool, I want to do this” and realised that this was the direction I wanted to go, so I started to train with some friends for about 4 years with these videos.
So this was before you had any direct contact with DBMA or Marc “Crafty Dog” Denny?
Exactly, until 1998 I trained just from videos. I would watch them again and again, hundreds of times, perfecting each individual move until the tapes eventually wore out. By then it was clear that if I wanted to go any further I would have to go to the USA to learn directly at the source. So I wrote a letter to the Dog Brothers… Mark Denny replied to my letter and invited me over. Some months later I found myself in an aircraft headed to California.
Los Angeles 1998 (Benjamin, Oli, Jérôme, Marc and Moro)
How did the training differ from what you had been doing on your own?
It was pretty interesting, First Marc asked me to do some Carenza (stick shadow boxing). He commented that I moved quite well and he asked me who my teacher was, to which my reply was “my teacher is the VCR”.
While the 5 day private training we covered a lot of material and mostly he was surprised how fast I could adapt the material. All over all he was impressed that someone could learn so much from just videos.
This first training with Guro Crafty changed a lot in my understanding of Stick-fighting. As far as the fighting went I had already developed a pretty solid structure in “Regular lead”. He taught me to use both leads, means that I could fight with the right foot forward but also with the left foot as a lead. This knowledge of using more sophisticated footwork helped me immensely with my fighting game.
The most important knowledge that I received through all the years of training with Guro Crafty was the understanding of the various fighting styles and the capacity to analyse my opponents. To understand that I will face different structures and the better I can analyse them and the more solutions I have against these different structures the better it is. It’s truly like Sugar Ray Leonard once said “You don’t beat the man, you beat his style.”
Was it hard to find training partners to help you keep progressing when you came back home?
It was harder to keep them because in the beginning we would train just a few techniques and we sparred a lot. I think that in those days because of my inexperience but strong motivation to make full contact sparring, I may have pushed things a little to hard and this is why people gave up and stopped training.
Today I know how important it is to train in an intelligent and careful manner. Efficiency is not the most important thing in training, I think it is just as important to motivate the student and to make the training fun, one of the basics concepts in the Dog Brother Martial Arts is: “Fit, Fun, and Functional”.
How important is it to spar in stick fighting, and when should it begin?
My opinion sparring is an important part of each training. However it has to be bulid and guided carefully. For example, in Boxing or BJJ it is easier to start sparring straight away. On the other hand if the student has little control in stick-sparring, it can quickly become painful… A clear progression from drilling to sparring must be maintained. I developed several sparring exercises that make it possible to do sparring from day one.
Why ‘Lonely Dog’?
It was because of the feeling of brotherhood I felt with the Dog Brothers. It was such a great feeling to be part of this tribe, that when I flew back and saw the vast distance between California and Switzerland, I felt somehow alone and isolated from the “pack”.
How dangerous is Real Contact Stick Fighting?
Of course it’s quite dangerous, we hit each other with sticks. But there are two things that reduce the risk.
First of all, there is our code of not breaking the opponent mentally or physically. but to push each other to the appropriate limits… more about that here: http://dogbrothers.ch/dogbrothers/codex/
The second is how you fight. I want my students to fight in an intelligent manner, to use defence first and to have good strategy. The smarter you fight, the better you use strategy, the lower the risk. But, a fight is a fight and Real Contact Stick Fighting remains dangerous. If you take the risk away then it would not be the same experience…
How to prepare for a gathering?
Keep your fitness at a basic level. Do a lot solo trainig, shadow training, hitting tires, etc… there is no hard sparring for the last 8 weeks prior a gathering, just light sparring and conceptional sparring. Work on your strategy when you do solo training and partner training. The most important attribute is to have your head right and to be ready for the Gathering mentally.
The Dog Brother fights are frequently criticized as being nothing but a wild slug-fest that lacks any technique or finesse. What do you think about this?
Most people have problems to recognize techniques or strategy in a real fight. It takes a certain “fighters eye” to recognize the details of how technique and timing is brought to bear as everything is happening so fast. But for sure does a fighter need to have a certain ability and a minimum of strategy in order to succeed in a RCSF fight without injury.
Is it true that anyone can train DBMA and do so without fighting in RCSF?
Absolutely, DBMA is a martial art that anyone can train. In fact many practitioners just train DBMA without participating at gatherings or fighting with real contact.
Just as the production cars we all drive have benefited from racing experiences, the DBMA practitioner benefits from the experiences of others fighting RCSF in gatherings. The curriculum and practitioner program enables people who want to train and grow in areas such as functional stick fighting, self-defense, physical fitness and spiritual fulfillment.
