52 Blocks

[Shaolin]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKnrSighDl0

[ghostexorcist]

And the New York Times no less!

[GeneChing]

In Tight, a New (Old) Martial Art Gains Followers
Casey Kelbaugh for The New York Times

UP CLOSE William Pearce, left, and Joseph Raven Ravera practice 52 Blocks fighting at Ultimate Karate in Harlem.
By JUSTIN PORTER
Published: June 17, 2009

IT has developed just below the surface of popular culture in the United States, in the streets, prisons and boxing rings. It’s gone by a few names: Stato, Jailhouse Rock, the 52 Hand Blocks, 52 Blocks and, for short, the 52.

For a long time it has been a kind of martial arts Loch Ness monster: an American fighting form with supposedly sinister origins that many have heard of but few have seen or experienced. No one, it seemed, had any concrete proof that it existed, or at least none they were willing to share.

Until recently.

Several instructors have begun teaching this quasi martial art. Videos are up on YouTube. And the name 52 Blocks seems to be gaining respect as the most accepted. To watch it demonstrated is to see quick strikes suited to a fight exploding in surroundings like a jail cell, staircase or hallway.

Lyte Burly, 34, teaches and trains in Tompkins Square Park in the East Village. He was one of the first to put videos on YouTube. “There was a lot of chatter, a lot of audio but no video,” he said of the discussion forums and Web sites that would offer hints of 52 Blocks, but little information about where to go to find out more.

Mr. Burly has a background in boxing and Chinese martial arts. Now, 52 Blocks has become his main focus.

“They say offense wins fights but defense wins championships,” Mr. Burly said. He said the 52 Blocks’ great strength was what he saw as its ability to let the user control the pace of a fight, while avoiding being hit. When Mr. Burly moves, his compact frame easily slips around and away from punches and attempts to grab him. He blocks punches with the tips of his elbows and drops to a crouch to attack his opponent’s legs.

At the start of a session, Mr. Burly and his student used an empty basketball court. But 52’s flavor seemed diluted in such a large area. Mr. Burly and his training partner eventually moved into the confines of a jungle gym.

Now in a five-foot-square space, hemmed in on all sides by metal bars — but visible — the fighting style’s strengths became clearer. In these confines, Mr. Burly’s size is a clear asset. He shoved his opponent into the bars, using these “walls” as weapons. In tight quarters where a punch might be too long, Mr. Burly used his elbows to strike and shove.

After the workout, Mr. Burly talked about his desire to eliminate the secretive attitude that has added to 52 Blocks’ obscurity — but also given it some buzz.

At a martial arts school called Ultimate Karate in East Harlem, Daniel Marks taught the 52 Blocks on a recent Sunday. The school itself is huge, and often seems more so because Mr. Marks’s classes are usually small. Blue mats cover the floors, and the students and Mr. Marks train in gym clothes and socks.

Mr. Marks — who is not affiliated with Mr. Burly — towers over many of his students and instructs with a gentle, patient manner. After a warm-up that includes jogging, calisthenics and some basic shadow boxing, he teaches specific concepts of the 52 Blocks. Here it looks a bit more like boxing, but with a twist.

It is a style built for the inside game, short hard punches best suited to fighting in tight spaces, like hallways and cells. The guard is tighter to allow for bare fists and is a constantly shifting mosaic of elbows, twists and turns.

When 52 Blocks practitioners hit, they can target anything from the legs to the shoulders. Footwork is taught in small, tight patterns. Rather than dancing on the balls of the feet the way boxers often do, a practitioner of the 52 Blocks has footwork that is closer to the ground, lower and tighter, both in the width of the stance and the distance traveled with each shuffle.

Mr. Marks demonstrated a technique to break the opponent down by first defending against an oncoming punch and then systematically striking at the body’s flex points, like the shoulders and hips. When Mr. Marks talks about hitting an opponent, he’s looking to hurt, but also to force a reaction. If he wants his opponent to turn, he strikes the shoulder, aiming to turn him. If he wants his opponent to lean forward, he strikes the hip. Each reaction is a setup for another. As he showed these different options on a student, he spoke to the rest of the class.

“Your training should take you to a natural pause in the action,” he said. This pause allows a person defending his life to make a choice — finish the fight or escape, an option he advocates. By this time, the student being demonstrated upon is prone on the ground, unhurt but pinned by one of Mr. Marks’s knees.

The goal is to get where you were going safely, Mr. Marks said.

“Or if you got to use the bathroom!” said Mike Baltazar, a new student. The rest of the class laughed as Mr. Marks rolled his eyes.

A man who goes by Kawaun Adon Akhenaten7 — and would not provide another name — taught Mr. Marks 52 Blocks and acts as a kind of guide. Mr. Akhenaten7 lives in Philadelphia and, like Mr. Marks, is large and soft-spoken. He said he learned the style on the streets of Brooklyn while running with a gang of armed robbers, and was impressed after seeing it used in a street fight.

“It looked like a ghetto ballet, kind of like it was choreographed,” he said. “Men threw punches at each other that looked dainty until they made contact. It was barbaric but it was finessed. They were out to hurt each other and make each other look bad.”

Because the 52 Blocks exists practically as an oral tradition, its history is a bit murky.

Mr. Marks believes the system evolved mostly through prizefighting in the southern and eastern United States in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

No black man was allowed to contend for the world heavyweight championship until Jack Johnson in 1908. His victory changed boxing and history. Mr. Johnson fought in an unorthodox manner: he played a defensive game, preferring to counterpunch and capitalize on his opponent’s mistakes, qualities also found in the 52 Blocks. Also, Mr. Marks said, fighters worked for tips, so they often developed flashy, crowd-pleasing moves.

At least one writer in the white press at the time labeled Mr. Johnson’s style “cowardly.” Mr. Marks believes that this was one of the first signs of a style that might have become the 52 Blocks. He doesn’t think Mr. Johnson’s style could have just come from thin air.

“Who taught him?” Mr. Marks asked with a smile.

Mr. Burly also talked about racial stereotypes during this era. He mentioned a commonly held belief that black boxers “couldn’t take punishment,” that they were physically weaker. He thinks that this belief, later disproved completely by Mr. Johnson, may have influenced some of the ways black fighters were taught to box — more evasively as counter-punchers.

FIGHTERS in the ring have often been spoken of in connection with the 52 Blocks. Rashad Evans is a former Ultimate Fighting Championship light-heavyweight titleholder. Speaking by phone from Greg Jackson’s Gym in Albuquerque, N.M., he said that while growing up, he had heard stories about the 52 Blocks from older men when discussing prison fights, and saw what he assumed were parts of it in street fights.

In 2005 he met Daniel Marks at a seminar in Baltimore and found value beneath the legends, stories and memories.

“What it comes down to is just really practical boxing,” he said. From the 52 Blocks, he said, he gained a better knowledge of the use of angles in a fight. He said that while he’s nowhere near a master at the skill, he has seen his game improve.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: June 25, 2009
Because of an editing error, an article last Thursday about 52 Blocks, a form of martial arts, referred incorrectly to a group in Brooklyn that Kawaun Adon Akhenaten7, a 52 Blocks instructor, once belonged to. He described them as “strong-arm robbers,” not armed robbers. Also, because of an editing error, the article referred incorrectly to Mr. Akhenaten7’s name, casting doubt on his identity. That is his legal name, not the name he “goes by,” and he did not say he would not provide another name.

A prison style? Reminds me of the the Xingyi legend of Guo Yunshen just practicing beng quan in prison.

[goju]

sounds fishy and some of this looks like chun

[Shaolin]

Mark my words this is the next trend martial art in 3-5 years.

[LoneTiger108]

sounds fishy and some of this looks like chun

Well, looks more like someones interpretation of Wing Chun with a twist. In fact, if you know anything about the Keysi boys it matches their closed 'mountain' guard more I think.

http://keysikfm.com/

[TenTigers]

similar to Boston Crab as well.
Nothing new, nobody's reinvented the wheel.
I did pick up a cool very tight hook punch from a guy who learned "Jailhouse Rock"years ago. Nose to nose, sort of like a shrug of the shoulders as if you were putting on a jacket. His footwork was also pretty cool-had similarities to Park Bok Nam's footwork drills in his book. He would zig-zag up to you, part shuffle, part shuck n jive, and before you knew it, he was on you. (Also very intimidating when a six foot, jacked, ex-con does it in your face...alot of it is mental, as with all fighting.) That is the hook punch I teach in my school. So choy, sow choy,ngau gok kuen, and the JHR hook.

[goju]

what i find odd about these claims is ive seen plenty of prison fight vids on tv and online and ive never seen anyone show anything that resembled a martial art

just wild swinging evey single time

[bawang]

some old black guy on youtube said its a mix of kung fu and karate with boxing created in the 70s

[Kevin73]

some old black guy on youtube said its a mix of kung fu and karate with boxing created in the 70s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bc9Xp...eature=related

To me, his explanation makes alot more sense. I first heard about 52 blocks years ago and the story at that time was that 52 blocks was a system created by slaves close to two hundred years ago (early 1800's in the US) and passed down in secret all these years. I never bought that story (nor most of the other MA creation myths).

I also don't think that Jack Johnson was trained in secret in the 52 blocks style. I think he was a product of his time as many other boxing experts have stated. Mainly, that due to the racism at the time, Jack Johnson fought a counter-style to carry the other fighters longer in the fight. There was a real danger that if he would have beat the other fighters to fast it could have ended with his life in a lynching mob. Jack Johnson had lightning fast reflexes and could afford to do that.

People also point out that Mike Tyson supposedly learned this system as a youth. His training was done in the early years with Cus D'Amato and really worked the low in peek a boo style. Notice that after D'Amato died, Tyson basically abandoned this type of fighting. All of the D'Amato fighters that were well known used the peek a boo style. Since D'Amato was white, I don't think that he was trained in the super secret style of 52 blocks that ONLY black fighters knew. I think it was effective fighting and was incorporated into the style.

Going back to the video clip, I posted, this seems to support these ideas. A good boxing foundation and then adding on pieces of other arts and tactics that work in a street environment.

[mickey]

Greetings,

Growing up during the time period that 52 blocks supposedly hit the scene, the hand art that was played the young boys in my community was slap boxing. It was a lot more than just that. There were different types of fluid guard positions used and it was not standardized. Some may have come from family traditions. (When I say family tradition, I am not referring to a complete method, but to the transmission of those techniques that worked for one person that was passed on to another. That does not mean that there was never a systemized method at one time, for we are talking about methods used by descendants of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade) Staying in motion made it easier to catch the slaps and counter. It was fun to do and experience. Observing what I have seen of 52 arts (etc.), I see pretty much the same thing, taken up a several notches. These methods I observed existed before the kung fu movie boom.

One of the guard/attack positions involved moving the lead hand (attack) in a figure eight pattern and using the rear hand to protect and follow up (it makes me wonder where Bruce Lee got his strong side forward from). One trick was to fake with the lead shoulder and follow through (slap) quickly with the rear. When I observe the Brothers in practice on youtube, again, it is the same stuff, the same energy and intelligence. By the way, the strong side forward position can be seen depicted in Egypt.

I am not saying that there was no influence from the kung fu boom. I, myself, easily incorporated Wing Chun techniques into my slap boxing. I got it from James Yim Lee's book. It was good stuff and it worked.

mickey

More info:

I remember when I joined my first kung fu school. One of the members pulled me aside to tell me about the empty hand fighting traditions of Haiti. He described it in all of its viciousness, even how the women fight (topless and without reservation).

My seventh grade English teacher, in his seventies at the time, described the fighting methods he was taught while growing up in the South. This included eye gouges, throat grabs, spitting, stomping a person on the ground, biting, elbows, knees, and kicks. It was all out mayhem. And, of course, it included punches.

Before my time, the razor was a very popular weapon to have in the African American community. Even the women carried them in their clutch bags. James Brown made reference to this weapon in the Big Payback, "you may know karate but I know Ka- razor." Unfortunately, the way he said had/has everyone thinking he said "Ka-razy."

[mickey]

Greetings,

I found an interview with Dennis Newsome and it closely parallels what I just posted:

http://stickgrappler.tripod.com/52/newsome.html



mickey

[goju]

it makes me wonder where Bruce Lee got his strong side forward from).

from fencing i believe

[mickey]

Hi goju,

Thanks, I now remember that.

mickey

[Jimbo]

Greetings,

Growing up during the time period that 52 blocks supposedly hit the scene, the hand art that was played the young boys in my community was slap boxing. It was a lot more than just that. There were different types of fluid guard positions used and it was not standardized. Some may have come from family traditions. (When I say family tradition, I am not referring to a complete method, but to the transmission of those techniques that worked for one person that was passed on to another. That does not mean that there was never a systemized method at one time, for we are talking about methods used by descendants of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade) Staying in motion made it easier to catch the slaps and counter. It was fun to do and experience. Observing what I have seen of 52 arts (etc.), I see pretty much the same thing, taken up a several notches. These methods I observed existed before the kung fu movie boom.

One of the guard/attack positions involved moving the lead hand (attack) in a figure eight pattern and using the rear hand to protect and follow up (it makes me wonder where Bruce Lee got his strong side forward from). One trick was to fake with the lead shoulder and follow through (slap) quickly with the rear. When I observe the Brothers in practice on youtube, again, it is the same stuff, the same energy and intelligence. By the way, the strong side forward position can be seen depicted in Egypt.

I am not saying that there was no influence from the kung fu boom. I, myself, easily incorporated Wing Chun techniques into my slap boxing. I got it from James Yim Lee's book. It was good stuff and it worked.

mickey

More info:

I remember when I joined my first kung fu school. One of the members pulled me aside to tell me about the empty hand fighting traditions of Haiti. He described it in all of its viciousness, even how the women fight (topless and without reservation).

My seventh grade English teacher, in his seventies at the time, described the fighting methods he was taught while growing up in the South. This included eye gouges, throat grabs, spitting, stomping a person on the ground, biting, elbows, knees, and kicks. It was all out mayhem. And, of course, it included punches.

Before my time, the razor was a very popular weapon to have in the African American community. Even the women carried them in their clutch bags. James Brown made reference to this weapon in the Big Payback, "you may know karate but I know Ka- razor." Unfortunately, the way he said had/has everyone thinking he said "Ka-razy."

Good and interesting info, mickey.
I've also heard that in the past (possibly 1920s or later through 1950s?) that another popular weapon among some African-Americans, as well as some 'good ol' boys', esp. in the south, was a type of large, non-locking pocketknife variously called: Texas Toothpick, Texas Tickler, or fishing knife. Its intended use was as a folding fishing knife, and some versions also included a fish scaling blade as well. It had a long, slim blade and the handle's end bolster was elongated to a narrow point. They were popular of course due to their shape/size, but also because they could be had for fairly cheap.

Back on point, I find 52 Blocks to be interesting stuff.