Copenhagen Combatives

29/03/2026

I have 2 complete sets for the whole body except for the helmet as I use different ones depending on the activity. I can recommend this equipment and have tested it for HEMA fighting full contact with steel swords from the Albion, it was with maximum intensity and no injuries except for when banging the head always feels uncomfortable with all the parts of the sword.

🛑 The most important person in your training room isn’t the instructor. It’s the role player.

The instructor sets the framework and the standard, but the role player is the one who brings unpredictability into the room. They create resistance. They introduce pressure. They force decision-making under stress. Without a committed role player, training becomes choreography instead of preparation.

The role player absorbs the strikes, takes the takedowns, and drives the scenario forward at full speed so officers can pressure-test their skills before they have to do it for real. They are the stress variable that turns drills into reality-based training.

When role players are under-protected, intensity drops. Resistance becomes hesitant. Scenarios slow down. Everyone feels it, even if no one says it out loud. The realism fades because the risk feels uncontrolled.

When they are properly protected, everything changes. They can move naturally. Fight back honestly. Escalate resistance when needed. Instructors can push scenarios harder without crossing into unnecessary injury. That is where meaningful growth happens.

Effective training is not safe because it is soft. It is safe because it is engineered correctly. That philosophy drives how we build Spartan Training Gear. Protect the role player, and you elevate the entire room.

That is how you build capability that shows up when it matters most.

29/03/2026

This is the book that I have used to teach my students, a lot of scientific research shows that the most effective way to improve your skills are counter intuitive. I can recommend this to any kind of sport activities, but especially for martial arts as they are using the worst way to teach their students, that is based on old traditions and makes the learning curve very slow to become more functional.

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/

28/07/2025

A tiger claw weapon called a bagh nakh with a bent blade. India in the 1800s.