Kratos Combatives

26/04/2026

My old badge from my early HEMA days close to more than 3 decades ago, sadly the paperwork was not sent to HQ and was not registered properly, so it is not officially recognized and not registered due to the lack of paperwork, despite having paid a lot of money to be able to train full time Escrima and HEMA for a year. But the badge was back then the proof of being a member of the guild and only given to members and those who taught a class in HEMA, at the Wing Tsun Escrima Latosa HQ club for all of Scandinavia.

It was a an offer for the unemployed that was free and paid by the state, but I had a full time job but I cut a deal for paying for the training and not officially be registered for having completed the 1 year course. I was the only one who showed up for evening training as I had changed my work schedule to be able to train as much as possible. I am not the kind of person who cares about diploma and belts, I am doing it to become better in what I train and not for the status.

Sword and buckler was my favorite sparring weapons, I didn't follow the medieval HEMA manuscripts i99, but used them as separate independent weapons, if one of them parried the other would attack, kind of like double sticks, spada y daga, single hand sword and buckler as a crushing blunt bone breaker. With 2 handed swords i followed the old manuscripts but If I ended in a bind, I would apply pressure to sneak in a stab or a cut by changing the position of my torso and other sneaky tricks from knife fighting experience.

This is where I have my foundation in HEMA by learning from the system that John Waller founded and his son Jonathan has evolved together with Master Steve Tappin from the beginning.

A lot of sparring experience with really good training partners helped me to evolve faster, despite being a dangerous approach sparring with steel swords with no protection gear with a lot of pressure, it gives a natural fear of not getting hit that you become used to with time. Accident were often but not deadly or with permanent injuries, but it was scary to see your training buddy falling to his knees while screaming and the blood pouring from a wound in his face that was not visible until after the screaming stopped. I have been stabbed with daggers into my glasses and bounced to my forehead and left a stab wound, even swords have bounced on my glasses that have a titanium frame and saved my eyes so many times.

Except for a single accident after 45 minutes of sparring with a high intensity after training with my favorite sparring buddy, the opponents sword bounced from my buckler into my forearm, that freaked me out as it connected hard with the bones and it felt like it was on inside, all I could see was a huge cut and assumed it was on inside and went into chock as I was told it would be game over for me. That everyone runned around in panic shouting that I was going to die didn't help me, but one of the instructors was fast and lifted up my hand and bandaged it, and got a taxi to take me to the ER immediately. Luckily the deep stab was on outside of the forearm and required only 4 stitches.

I don't mind that this kind of accidents happen, but not the nurse in the ER that screamed at me that she refused to carry me as I was going into chock, she didn't want to give any pain medication to not screw up the diagnose that was pretty simple, stab wound from a sword, having to wait almost 3 hours with an intense throbbing pain was unnecessary suffering, as they didn't monitored if I was bleeding so much that I could have died, they didn't care about how extremely painful it was.

The doctor that stitched me up had been awake for over 2 days and was very tired, I nearly passed out a lot of times from the pain as it was not a straight stab wound but Y shaped as the swords were pretty banged up.

I don't believe that it would have made any difference if I was given something against the pain, as the day after it hurted again a lot, as the local pain medication had lost its effect and I had to attend a weekend seminar with knife fighting a week later and hoped that the stitches wouldn't be ripped off, so for once I had protection on my left forearm. I received a comment of thanks for going easy, but it was for protecting the stitches that were not even a week old and needed another week to heal properly.

I am not known to be sensitive to pain and have the opposite reputation of being the toughest man on the planet, which is no longer me and is a label that gives more problems than benefits. But I would say that my best student who became the master, Morten Juhl Agerfeldt is the one who deserves that title now, and he has surpassed me in different skillset, so I can proudly say that he is my combat laboratory Kratos Combatives best practicioner.

He was always younger, stronger and faster than me, but I had a lot more experience with fighting with a blade, a lot of different traps that I could surprise him with, but I told him every tactics, fakes, counters, counters to counter, all the trick I knew, as I wanted to find solutions for my own best tactics that I didn't share to anyone else, only to a few people to become better by exposing myself to my own most effective attacks and combos.

I would never have becomed so much better if it wasn't for having him as my training partner and was willing to go all the way, no matter how painful and hard it was, fighting multiple opponents as much as possible, when ever it was possible taught us a lot new things. This is true no matter what kind of martial arts systems you train or what kind of sport you practice.

The only way to evolve is to have a good training partner, even better if he is stronger and faster and a well trained martial artist on a high level and open to new ideas, but not so open minded that his brain falls off the head into a hole of BS martial arts, claiming to have discovered the ultimate truth and are echo chambers.

My old EHCG badge from my early HEMA days over 2 decades ago, sadly the paperwork was not sent to HQ and was not registered properly, so it is not officially recognized and registered due to the lack of paperwork, despite having paid a lot of money to be able to train full time Escrima and HEMA for a year. It was a an offer for the unemployed that was free, but I had a full time job but I cut a deal for paying for the training and not officially be registered for having completed the 1 year course. I was the only one who showed up for evening training as I had changed my work schedule to be able to train as much as possible. I am not the kind of person who cares about diploma and belts, I am doing it to become better in what I train and not for the status.

Sword and buckler was my favorite sparring weapons, I didn't follow the medieval HEMA manuscripts i99, but used them as separate independent weapons, if one of them parried the other would attack, kind of like double sticks. 2 handed swords i followed the old manuscripts but If I ended in a bind, I would apply pressure to sneak in a stab or a cut by changing the position of my torso and other sneaky tricks from knife fighting experience. Staff is also an interesting weapon that I used to test if I could hit so hard that I could disarm my opponent, I only managed to push them into positions where they barely could hold it in one hand in a stretched out position, I never managed to make them lose it. Maybe if I had more patience I could have come closer to my goal, but there is the risk of getting trapped by clever opponent and being set up for failure.

This is where I have my foundation in HEMA by learning from the system that John Waller founded and his son Jonathan has evolved together with master Steve Tappin from the beginning. I discovered things that I had wondered about in Joachim Meyer book Art of War, the response to my questions about their weird stance was it was due to the pants and shoes, but I later discovered from learning footwork with knife that it is the fastest way to move forward and back, to the sides with triangular footwork.

A lot of sparring experience with really good training partners helped me to evolve faster, despite being a dangerous approach with no protection gear and it gives a natural fear of not getting hit that you become used to with time. Fighting with protection gear was even more fun as all the obscure techniques had become reflexes, that surprised me that they felt so natural to do.

Except for the accident after 45 minutes of sparring with a high intensity, and the opponents sword bounced from my buckler into my forearm, that freaked me out as it connected hard with the bones and it felt like it was on inside, all I could see was a huge cut and assumed it was on inside and went into chock as I was told it would be game over for me. Luckily it was on outside and required only 4 stitches.

I don't mind that this kind of accidents happen, but not the nurse in the ER that screamed at me that she refused to carry me as I was going into chock, she didn't want to give any pain medication to not screw up the diagnose that was pretty simple, stab wound from a sword, having to wait almost 3 hours with an intense throbbing pain was unnecessary suffering, as they didn't monitored if I was bleeding so much that I could have died, they didn't care about how much painful it was.

I am not known to be sensitive to pain and have the opposite reputation of being the toughest man on the planet, which is no longer me but I would say that my student who became the master, Morten Agerfelt "Popeye" from the Kolding Combatives, the local Kratos Combatives Laboratory is the one who deserves that title now, he has surpassed me in different skillset, so I can proudly say that he is Kratos Combatives best practicioner.

I have spent more time with perfecting combat shooting, while Popeye has refined his skills with Kalis Illustrissimo. We choose different paths to what we feel is the best way for us individually, not by a system from above that fits all, as we all are unique but share common interests and views that also are beyond martial arts, science that makes us understand everything better and our common interests in bhuddist traditions, mainly the Tibetan.

When training killing science I believe that it is necessary to have a moral compass and nurture it to not become a monster, but to have one that only shows up when it is triggered by pain from an attack, hellbent on annihilation of your enemies.

I have learned to control my hidden monster and can shut it down if it is just an as***le who hurts the others that they are training with, last time I was going to annihilate a person who took revenge on others for his failures and deliberately injured them, so I had to exclude him and punished him for his actions with a soft smack stick enough, by having him try to defend himself against the same 2 simple attacks, a forehand and backhand strike with soft smack sticks, to the point of when the other who had his nose smashed returned from the bathroom and stopped the bleeding, he didn't feel the need for revenge.

I gave him a last chance and he screwed it up again and while he was sure that the technique I was teaching was not realistic, despite being used in greco-roman wrestling, Practical Wing Chun, a lot of FMA systems, silat styles and other martial arts. I asked him if he was wearing a cup to protect his balls, he tried to resist as much as possible, but a very low intensity kick to his cup and a underhook with head control throw spinned him so fast and while I was furious and almost in killing mode, but as soon as he landed safely I laughed at him and it took me back to a normal relaxed state of mind, in just a few seconds.

22/09/2025

A funny thing is that the vast majority of my friends didn't know about my martial arts experience until lately as I never had any need to tell them about it, they have seen me compete in a few tournaments and that was the only times that they became aware of my passion, seeing me compete in a submission wrestling and the fist Latosa Escrima world elimination tournament which surprised them how brutal it was for people who have never seen it.

I have always seen my martial arts training as something very personal and a challenge to myself and not against others, as I had the philosophy that there are always bigger fishes in the ocean no matter how good you believe that you are, you can always encounter someone who is better no matter what title or whatever piece of paper as evidence evidence of how "superior" you are.

I have always preferred to be the eternal student instead of being what I call "master of disaster", when the ego is so full that it blocks the ability to accept that you can never reach the state of perfection as there is always room for improvement, refuse to reflect that you can learn more from others that train another style, stop believing that you are the only one who has discovered the ultimate truth, be open to have been wrong with previous assumptions and not the ultimate master by being on the top of a hierarchy in a single organization. The title master is not good for a lot of egos and creates more problems than solutions for improving your skillset.

What matters is not how many years you have trained but how many hours you have spent during a single month and years, training twice for an hour every week for several decades is not the same as training several hours every day for a few years 5 times every week, with no resistance training of complying that makes you look good to outsiders, getting exposed to sparring against some of the best fighters from the beginning, which doesn't need to be full force but experience that you have to be humble to be able to continue, despite constant defeat for a very long time before you feel like you have a chance to survive sparring and training in general. It forces you to leave the ego before training in most cases and it keeps the worst psychopaths from training as they have a hard time experiencing defeat on a regular basis, but I have seen an increase with what I view as the wrong psychological profile training as MMA and BJJ as it has becomed so popular.

My personal approach with my identity towards other people should not be based on my martial arts skills, something that is hard to understand unless you really are genuinely interested in martial arts culture, but on everything else that I believe matters more in personal relationships as your shared moral values or different views, serious political debates on opinions with no condescending views except if they are truly repulsive, common interests like movies, creative artist you like to watch or listen to or food cultures that you like to explore.

My father was chocked when he saw me fight an elimination knock down tournament in the late 80ies and win in my weight class in the biggest bracket with 3 fights in the junior division that was an experiment. I was awarded the title as the best technical fighter for my KO and control of my opponents from the senior division, I sadly destroyed my 🏆 on my way home on staircase in the train station, no photos and I only saw the video footage from the tournament once and it is lost as it was never digitised. He was a very loving person and he had never smacked me, but he said that he was happy to never have slapped me after watching one of my most brutal fight and KO.

My performance show in the break with breaking boards with a split flying kick with persons sitting on top of the others shoulders with one jump try to break several boards on opposite sides of each other failed, I only broke the boards on one side as the problem was that it requires those holding the boards to keep a very stable position. The 3 first persons failed breaking the boards that they usually had no problems with and had never failed before, but the first failure spread the insecurity and created a huge pressure that made them all fail and being the last one with an insane flying kick didn't help as everyone's flowstate broke down. When you start to focus too much on not failing and focus on perfect technique, the odds of failure rises and that is seen in every kind of sport, the loss of flowstate.

I used to show the rules for what techniques were allowed in the beginning of knock down tournaments for 3 years, by showing them first in slow motion and then with full speed. The last technique looked so realistic with a flying spinning heel kick, but it was due to the other that suddenly tried to KO me in the end of the demo, I lost my temper and the crowd went crazy about how insane control it looked like, I didn't want to hurt him as we both had to compete but I didn't pull the force of my kick with the last technique, he didn't get any injuries and won his weight class.

Mastering any kind of art is a lifelong journey and not a destination, depending on personal perspectives the goals can differ, but my own is the one that I should never believe that I reached the top of the mountain, but find better routes to a top with no end.

21/09/2025

I was so surprised that the first time I had the possibility to spar with steel swords with the proper protection equipment, that a lot of techniques that I was not sure that I could do under pressure were possible, suddenly they felt natural and could ecexute them without thinking about the proper moments to use them.

I can only conclude that the vast amount of full intensity sparring and sword play training to perfect the techniques was so efficient that the transition was easy, that I learned from the EHCG and even if the paper work of my membership was not delivered to the HQ by our club. I had paid a lot of money for training and I was even an instructor in sword fighting and had a class every Friday and assisted regular training with HEMA training. I believe that all the people who I have trained with me, remember that I was part of a very small group that trained regularly and as much as possible from the beginning, when the best expert in HEMA John Waller and master Steve Tappin created the EHCG.

I was surprised that I got the EHCG badge to only discover many years later that my personal info and money was not sent to the HQ of the organization. It was partially due to a training opportunity for the unemployed, I was working full time and not eligible, so I could only participate by accepting not getting a piece of paper as evidence for having completed the one year intensive instructor course training full time Escrima and HEMA, I paid a lot money for a course that was free for the unemployed that I didn't mind, so I expected that when I got the membership badge that it was legit and not later receive a message that I violated the rules of membership of the EHCG as I wasn't registered as a member, I started from the beginning since before the creation of the EHCG under the guidance of master Steve Tappin.

15/09/2025

That is a pretty close to my own porcupine defense fighting style against attacks, countering punches with my elbows and also kicks with my elbows. I also use hammer fist and elbow attacks on limbs to inflict maximum pain and have a structure that doesn't collapse, but also strikes that breaks down structure.

I was so lucky to learn gunting from one of the best and most experienced Escrima instructors in Europe, how to destroy my opponents limbs with roots from knife fighting, he had a lot street fighting experience and one of the most feared street fighters in Hamburg and the whole organization in Europe, he worked as the top bouncer in the red light district. I was lucky to get free private lessons from him at a summer camp, something that he only taught very few people and was very secretive about it, he did it due to a request and recommendation from our Scandinavian head instructor that I really wanted to learn that from the only one who had trained that and could teach it.

It was not officially not allowed in the system that I trained to teach unarmed FMA fighting, as that was only delegated to the Ving Tsun students to learn unarmed single combat, I know that this sound very strange but that was the politics in the organization that I trained back then, but I was lucky to be there when our master did it anyway against the orders from the rest of the organization.

An art that I have spent a lot of time to perfect, combined with sharing information about how to find the placement of nerves in between the muscles in general and not specific points with one of the best acupuncture and acupressure healer with a background in Tai Chi and other Kung Fu system. Later I had my toolbox expanded by some of the top FMA and IMA instructors in the world.

14/09/2025

The 2 styles shares a lot of similarities but the lack of glowes changes a lot both positive and negative, elbow strikes to the head and headbutts in Thai boxing have some clear advantages but the big gloves has some negative consequences. In the end it is not the song but the singer that makes a lot of difference, combining the 2 styles would improve both.

31/08/2025

Arm scissor is the most painful experience I've had, I screamed so high that other wondered why and they also screamed when trying to experience how effective this hook is.

31/07/2025

This was essential to survive slash wounds, I always get annoyed with the depiction of gladiators with a six-pack, a small slash wound would be killing blow as the distance to the organs would be too close and nearly impossible to treat, they were the few slaves that had medical treatment due to their high value, not even the richest merchants could afford medical treatment. The first book on medical wound treatment was based on gladiators and was used for over a millennium.

The pictured Gladiator was the actor and expert in all things 'Gladiatorial', Emanuele Vaccarini (R.I.P.), was the head teacher at the Gladiator School in Rome. He often shared his expert knowledge in numerous gladiator posts on my page and is sorely missed by all.

Despite what Hollywood shows us, champion gladiators were elite athletes, heavily fed with a large calorie count, so while they would be big, strong, and very muscular, they often carried a higher level of body fat than the movies would have us believe. Fortunately, these and many other 'Hollywood History Myths' are being regularly debunked.

Numerous ancient sources describe their food intake as 'barley and beans,' with high meat and bread consumption, and regular meals - five a day according to more than one source. This was the standard intake for athletes who won for their masters, with honeyed meats, quality wines, female or male companionship, or similar luxuries as incentives and rewards.

The link between animal protein and muscle mass wasn't quite understood, but trainers realized that heavy meat stews with beans and bread put a lot of weight onto their fighters. They even had the big men train with heavy objects such as heavy wooden beams, large sandbags, and boulders because this type of training made them stronger and bigger. A heavy carb intake made big men bigger, and that's what counted. This extra energy helped them train, and a shallow wound could often be survived due to protective layers of fat.

This individual was a brute force fighting machine, so the bigger he could get, the safer, stronger, and more lethal he would be. This gladiator is a Murmillo, very similar to a Thracian - tall, broad-shouldered, wide-waisted, with massive thighs and a barrel chest. If you can visualize a male powerlifter or 'Strongman' competitor, that's what the elite-level boys would have looked like. Literary sources, graffiti, inscriptions, skeletal remains from famous 'Gladiator Graveyards,' and even toy figurines sold at the games confirm all of this.

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IMAGE: Gladiator School of Rome. https://www.gruppostoricoromano.it/en/