Spouses Learn Self Defense and Rape Prevention

By Cpl. Tatum Vayavananda

Con­cern­ing threats to indi­vid­ual safety and secu­rity, any­one can be a vic­tim. But the Fam­ily Readi­ness Office of U.S. Marine Corps Forces Europe and Africa is try­ing to help even those odds by offer­ing Marine spouses a Rape Pre­ven­tion and Self-Defense class at MARFOREUR head­quar­ters, last week.

Along with Marine Corps Mar­tial Arts Pro­gram tech­niques, that have been mod­i­fied specif­i­cally for the course, the class empha­sized sit­u­a­tional aware­ness, plan­ning ahead, and min­i­miz­ing risk in real-world sit­u­a­tions, such as in a park­ing lot or leav­ing a hotel alone.

New Martial Arts Facility Offers Training for Marines

By Cpl. Thomas A. Bricker

To storm the beaches of Nor­mandy, June 6, 1944, thou­sands of United States ser­vice mem­bers had to be trained to assault the beaches with­out fear.

On the 68th anniver­sary of the mon­u­men­tal amphibi­ous bat­tle, Marine Corps Logis­tics Base Barstow opened a mar­tial arts train­ing facil­ity for Marines so they can con­tinue to be the nation’s ‘force in readiness.’

The facil­ity con­tains numer­ous sta­tions to work out; each ele­ment is designed to phys­i­cally con­di­tion dif­fer­ent areas of the body, and sev­eral fight­ing pits to allow spar­ring ses­sions dur­ing workout.

Marine Week Cleveland Demo WOWS Crowd

By Lance Cpl. Michelle Piehl

Com­mu­nity mem­bers are able to get a unique look into the heart of the Marine Corps Mar­tial Arts Pro­gram dur­ing Marine Week Cleve­land, June 11–17.

Tech­niques rang­ing from basic punches to com­plex dis­arm­ing maneu­vers wowed audi­ence mem­bers in Pub­lic Square dur­ing a pre­sen­ta­tion, June 12.

“It’s nice to see the actual com­bat they can do with or with­out weaponry,” said Hillary Duch­nowski, a Lake­wood native at the demon­stra­tion. “It’s won­der­ful for the com­mu­nity and the city to see what these men and women do every day for their coun­try. It’s very impressive.”

Marines Dominate Joint Service MMA Championships

By Cpl. Christo­pher Duncan

Ser­vice mem­bers of all branches faced off in the 2012 US Mil­i­tary Mixed Mar­tial Arts Cham­pi­onships, at Camp Pendleton’s 53 area gym in Camp Horno, May 12.

A total of eight teams, com­prised of 112 mil­i­tary mem­bers, com­peted for place­ment titles and prizes. One team came out on top with nearly every mem­ber per­form­ing with strength, speed and deter­mi­na­tion to win.

Aha Aina Features Martial Arts

By Ms. Vickey Mouze (USAG Hawaii)

Army vet­er­ans shared their knowl­edge and skill of an ancient Hawai­ian mar­tial art here, April 27.

Thomas Kaulukukui Jr. and Jerry Walker taught Sol­diers and their fam­i­lies about lua at the Aha Aina, or ban­quet, lec­ture series, hosted by U.S. Army Garrison-Hawaii’s Native Hawai­ian Liai­son Office, founded to build rela­tion­ships between Sol­diers and their fam­i­lies with the Native Hawai­ian community.

“Lua comes from a time when men grap­pled with each other and beat each other with clubs; this was before firearms,” said Kaulukukui, who served in Viet­nam as a para­trooper from 1968–1970.

Soldiers Put Skills to Test in Combatives Tournament

by Sgt. Steven Peter­son
10th Moun­tain Divi­sion Journalist

Sol­diers sta­tioned on Fort Drum par­tic­i­pated in the 10th Moun­tain Divi­sion Com­bat­ives Tour­na­ment held April 25 and 26 at Magrath Sports Complex.

The tour­na­ment was open to all active-duty and reserve Sol­diers in the area. It pit­ted all who came to com­pete within the instal­la­tion against each other.

Before the matches began, instruc­tors from Fort Drum’s Light Fighter School gave a Mod­ern Army Com­bat­ives demon­stra­tion, explain­ing some of the main rules and the pur­pose of the technique.

Marine Corps Fight Club 29

By Lance Cpl. D. J. Wu

It was another early morn­ing. It was cold. I knew there were going to be nine fight­ers in the tour­na­ment but I didn’t know what to expect.

I went to the meet up spot a lit­tle early as usual, just so I wouldn’t miss anything.

The first two peo­ple I met were a cou­ple of guys I’ve never seen before. It turned out that one of them was a vis­it­ing coach from Marine Corps Air Sta­tion Cherry Point, N.C., and the other was a stu­dent from the Marine Corps Communication-Electronics School and new to the team.

Three Soldiers Make U.S. Olympic Wrestling Team

By Tim Hipps

Three Greco-Roman wrestlers in the U.S. Army World Class Ath­lete Pro­gram earned Olympic berths at the 2012 U.S. Olympic Tri­als for Wrestling, April 21–22.

Sgt. 1st Class Dremiel Byers, Sgt. Spenser Mango and Spc. Justin Lester won their weight classes at Carver-Hawkeye Arena to earn spots on Team USA for the 2012 Olympic Games, sched­uled to run from July 27 to Aug. 12, in Lon­don. All three Sol­diers are sta­tioned at Fort Car­son, Colo.

Two-time Olympian Byers won the 120-kilogram/264.5-pound divi­sion in two straight matches of a best-of-three final series against Michi­gan Wrestling Club’s Steve Andrus of Man­hat­tan, Kan., by scores of 1–0, 1–0 and 2–0, 2–0.

Judo Instructor Honored for 15 Years of Teaching

By Lance Cpl. Kasey Peacock

For the first time on Oki­nawa, an Amer­i­can was rec­og­nized by the Oki­nawan Judo Asso­ci­a­tion with an award for instruc­tor of the year at the Oki­nawa Budokan in Naha April 7.

Paul E. New­man, the deputy camp com­man­der on Camp Kinser, received the award for his more than 15 years of expe­ri­ence as a Judo instruc­tor on Oki­nawa. New­man instructs four days-a-week at the Kadena Air Base Judo Club and co-instructs a Sat­ur­day and Sun­day class at the Koza Ath­letic Park.

“Teach­ing Judo is all I have ever wanted to do,” said New­man. “It was some­thing that I excelled at, and I devel­oped a really strong pas­sion to want to teach it.”

Langley Hosts Krav Maga Training

by Senior Air­man Jason J. Brown

More than 20 mil­i­tary and civil­ian police offi­cers from the Hamp­ton Roads com­mu­nity par­tic­i­pated in a Krav Maga train­ing course at Lan­g­ley Air Force Base, Va., April 2–8.

The class, held in the base sta­tic dis­play hangar, trained par­tic­i­pants in the art of Krav Maga, a form of non­com­pet­i­tive self-defense focus­ing on strik­ing, wrestling and grap­pling techniques.

Krav Maga was cre­ated in the late 1930s by Imre Licht­en­feld, an Israeli mar­tial artist who devel­oped the prac­tice to defend his Jew­ish neigh­bor­hood against anti-Semitic gang vio­lence in Bratislava. Cur­rently, all Israeli sol­diers, includ­ing Spe­cial Forces units, learn Krav Maga as part of their basic mil­i­tary training.