THE TRON LEGACY WORKOUT

While there was a ton of action from one of Tron Legacy's villains, Rinzler, two of the heroes, Quorra and Sam Flynn, played respectively by Olivia Wilde and Garrett Hedlund, carried their share of stunts as well, and for that, they needed to be fit.

THE SYLVESTER STALLONE WORKOUT

Sylvester Stallone is a 64-year old man and, as you might have heard, he has a brand new movie that just came out called The Expendables. Wait a minute ... he's a 64-year old man still making old school, 80's style action movies?! And with powerhouses like Randy Couture, Steve Austin, Jet Li, and Jason Statham?! How does he do it?

Okay, okay, fine. Sly's admitted to using human growth hormone to bulk up for his recent movies, but all that muscle he's currently carrying around is more a result of hard work at the gym and a decent diet than the supplements he's taking, however ethically questionable some of them might be.



Sly already revealed his secret formula for diet and exercise a few years back with his book called Sly Moves.I have the book and have read it several times. I like it very much because it not only reveals Sly's current philosophy on working out and eating right, but also his background and how he came to be a big star today.


In the book, Sly talks of all the crazy exercise and diet regimens he went through starting from Rocky I, and how he basically took all his experiences and molded them into something simple and effective. 

THE EXPENDABLES MOVIE REVIEW

Expectations. That’s what "The Expendables" is all about. It has an air of hype around it that just builds tremendous expectations in certain audience members. It has to, what with some of the “greatest action heroes of all time” all in the same movie. As such, I believe that this is the film’s greatest accomplishment, as well as its greatest failure.

I’ve read several reviews of the film and most of them are negative. Almost all of them point to the fact that this is a brainless action film that’s more a waste of time than almost anything else. Others were simply tremendously disappointed because they set their expectations too high and this film didn’t deliver.

Me? I loved the living hell out of this thing.

I didn’t come into this movie expecting a good storyline. Not at all. Sly Stallone has gone on record several times before the premiere that this would be just a balls-out action movie with a very simple storyline. He made this out to be the greatest thing ever, but he always alluded to the action, and never the story.

THE TRAILER:

TEKKEN MOVIE REVIEW 2: THE EXTREMELY GEEKY VERSION

You’ve probably already read my general thoughts on the film, but if it not, please check it out first! This review is basically a continuation of the first one, but with added notes that the hardcore Tekken and fighting game fans might want to know. As such, this contains MASSIVE SPOILERS. You have been warned.

MY TEKKEN BACKGROUND

Anyway, as I’ve mentioned, I’m a huge fan of Tekken but I’m not nearly as into the series as I am with Street Fighter, though. I played it religiously from Tekken 1until Tekken Tag Tournament(the fourth installment in the franchise), but then skipped Tekken 4,and came back only for Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection.I actually haven’t even bought and played Tekken 6,but it has nothing to do with my hatred for the Bob character, I swear. If that was the case, then I wouldn’t have bought and played Street Fighter IVas well, right?

Tekken Movie UK DVD Box art

It’s just that I didn’t have the budget when the game first came out, and I just kept putting off buying it. I’m currently a full time graduate student at one of the top universities in my country, blogger, and I still work out and practice martial arts very regularly, so I don’t have that much free time for video games at the moment. When I do buy a video game, I tend to play that for months and months on end. Right now, I’m currently replaying Grandia because it came out on the PSN, which I alternate from time to time with Super Street Fighter IV.

So that’s my Tekken background in a nutshell. Am I any good at the game? Well, I can say that I’m decent, but nowhere near what many would truly qualify as “good”. I just tend to play around and not take it too seriously.

TEKKEN MOVIE REVIEW

I recently had the chance to see “Tekken”, the live action adaptation of the very popular video game franchise. I am a huge fan of fighting games, and of course, I love Tekken as well. As one would expect, this is a martial arts movie. I have to stress, however, that this is a low budget effort, and what many would correctly term a “B Movie”. So, if you completely despise these types of flicks, then you know what to expect, and that’s pretty much all of the pieces of this review that you need to read. If, however, the thought of this being a low budget chop-socky affair doesn’t bother you in the least, then read on!

THE TRAILER:

SLY STALLONE ON LETTERMAN

Sylvester Stallone was on David Letterman recently, and talked a bit about working with other Hollywood tough guys such as Steve Austin and Jet Li. There's lots of great stuff in this interview including a rather interesting injury Sly suffered during filming.

Sly also talks about former UFC Heavyweight and Light Heavyweight champion Randy Couture, saying:



"if you put all these tough guys in one room together, and let's see who comes out, and you walked in ten minutes later, you'd see Randy Couture sitting on top of us having a chocolate fudge sundae. And we're all, like, gone."


Interesting stuff. Check out the rest of the interview below:

THE PREDATORS WORKOUT

I recently had the chance to watch the movie "Predators".Great action movie, but I personally feel that it kind of pales in comparison to Arnold’s 1987 classic.The writers and director obviously wanted to make it bigger and more exciting than the original, but failed to make the story become totally engaging. The star of the film, Adrien Body, while a great actor, is also no Arnold Schwarzenegger, so that’s something that was probably eating at the back of my mind during the entire film.

But while Brody is no Austrian Oak, he nonetheless still worked tremendously hard to build a very impressive physique for this film. Entertainment.gather.com has a great article about his transformation:

“When asked about how he prepared for this action hero role, Brody noted that he was doing a "challenging" six days a week of training and diet. He was also shooting for the movie 12 hours per day. Brody said during preparation he wasn't drinking alcohol, wasn't consuming any refined sugars and was having no sex. He said he did all that he could to harness a "ferocious" mentality and persona for this character"

BREATHING AND THE KARATE KID

The original Karate Kid movie is a genuine classic, with a story that pulls you in and characters that are genuinely human. The sequel, on the other hand, is a pretty disappointing follow up, as the villains become more cartoony than ever, and the story devolves into a mostly uninteresting piece of fluff. The last time I had seen “The Karate Kid part 2” was most probably more than 20 years ago, when I was still very little. I had very fond memories of the movie, primarily because I found the Japanese landscape that was presented to be so fascinating. While this aspect of the film is still true, sadly, the rest of it just doesn’t hold up. I find the opening sequence to be utterly fantastic, though, but after the words “six months later” appear on screen, things quickly go downhill.

ANYTHING USEFUL?

Alright, but what about the martial arts, the physical conditioning and so on? Is there anything concerning physical fitness and activity that is worth talking about? Yes, there is, and I don’t mean the secret to Miyagi-do Karate, either. Seriously, fighting skills that are patterned after a child’s toy drum are pretty much conditioned in us at, what, the age of 3? Ever see kids in a playground try to honestly fight with their fists? It’ll look something like that, yeah. So, needless to say, it’s pretty useless in real life and isn’t what this article is about.

MEDITATION AND THE KARATE KID

This is the third in a series of articles I've made concerning the Karate Kid franchise. These articles attempt to dissect the fitness and martial arts concepts utilized in these movies and see if they are actually useful in real life or just empty Hollywood baloney. I highly recommend you read the first (where I tackle motor learning) and second (where I take a look at conditioning) articles before diving into this one!

BONSAI

Another piece of awesomeness I saw in the original Karate Kid was Mr. Miyagi’s bonsai habit. Bonsai is used as a sort of meditative practice all over the world these days and is able to instil peace within one’s by quieting it, allowing it to focus on a single, simple task, and shutting out the noise that often clouds our thoughts. Mr. Miyagi teaches Daniel this and is something, I believe, that should be taught to everyone.

CONDITIONING AND THE KARATE KID

After reading my article, Motor Learning and the Karate Kid, someone asked me if I had the same thoughts on Mr. Miyagi’s training methods as I did Mr. Han’s. As a quick review, my first Karate Kid article discussed the two primary training methods used in sports and other physical activities: Blocked Practice and Random Practice. Blocked Practice is the more traditional form training, where the athlete repeats a single movement an endless amount of times to commit it to muscle memory. Random Practice, on the other hand, has the athlete training all the movements he or she has learned and performs them randomly, and as close to competition circumstances as possible.

REVIEW

In the 2010 version, Mr. Han, played by the legendary Jackie Chan, utilizes both types of training methods, to very different effects. Some of his methods are good, since they are actual techniques used by true martial arts practitioners to sharpen their game, including bodyweight and flexibility exercises, and target practice using such implements as tennis balls and wooden poles. However, as a nod to the original Karate Kid, the very first training method Mr. Han utilizes makes use of an everyday action and attempts to relate it to martial arts. This is the “jacket on, jacket off” training method. In my first Karate Kid article, I basically say that this training is completely useless, as the movements it employs are much too different from the actual motions the “Karate Kid”, Dre performs.

WAX ON, WAX OFF

Now, pretty much everybody knows or at least has heard of “wax on, wax off”, Mr. Miyagi famous line from the original Karate Kid. It’s the technique that “jacket on, jacket off” was ultimately derived from, but is it equally as ineffective?

MOTOR LEARNING AND THE KARATE KID

I recently saw the newest iteration of the Karate Kid franchise (simply called “The Karate Kid”), and enjoyed it. It’s not perfect by any means, but there’s a lot to like about it. The fight scenes are choreographed very well, Jackie Chan has an awesome dramatic turn, and China is shot magnificently. I just find the some of the main characters totally unconvincing in their sometimes heavy dramatic moments because of their age and inexperience with acting. In any case, the movie is great for what it is, and you should probably check it out if you’re a fan of Jackie Chan and martial arts movies in general.

Now that I’ve got my general thoughts on the movie out of the way, I’d like to move on to the primary topic of this article: the training mechanisms. In almost any movie such as this one, we have a series of training montages of various sorts. There are two main types of training methods: Blocked Practice and Random Practice.

BLOCKED PRACTICE

Blocked Practice is the more traditional form training, where the athlete repeats a single movement an endless amount of times to commit it to muscle memory. Most of the training techniques featured in the movie are like this, primarily the “jacket on, jacket off” training.

Blocked Practice has been shown to be very effective in teaching newcomers to a particular sport or discipline the ropes and basics, but has proven to be totally ineffective for use in the long run. Once the coach has seen that the athlete has learned proper form from the Blocked Practice, it would be time to move on to something more advanced, more effective, and more fun.


Blocked Practice is also useful at unlearning bad habits that athletes may have picked up playing the game during their childhood. Various set techniques should thus be utilized by the trainer to replace these bad movements with the correct ones before moving on to more advanced techniques and training methods.

MY TRIBUTE TO MORTAL KOMBAT

Past readers of this blog may know that I have a very tremendous passion for the video game franchise known as Street Fighter. I love fighting games in general, and want to try out pretty much all of them. Many born in the 80’s (like myself) very well know of the rivalry the Street Fighter franchise had with its Western, and more brutal, counterpart: Mortal Kombat.

While Street Fighter was based on hand drawn, anime-style sprites with a bit of comic relief thrown into the mix to be friendly to all audiences, Mortal Kombat differentiated itself by using actual videotaped live martial artists performing stunts to be used in the game. The characters, abilities, and storylines were also more inherently brutal, and the game even included “Fatalities”, where you could execute your opponent in various ways, including beheading, electrocution, and so on.

While I personally liked this aspect of Mortal Kombat as a young boy, what really got me hooked into the franchise was the first movie, released in 1995. A cheesy chop socky flick for sure, it nonetheless includes several martial arts fight scenes that I personally, to this day, deem to be classics.

STREET FIGHTER LEGACY REVIEW

I’d like to take some time to give recognition to a recently released fan film about one of my favorite video games of all time, Street Fighter. The film is called Street Fighter Legacy, and is basically a 3-minute fight scene between rivals Ryu and Ken.