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Ancient Greek Fighting Techniques
Asia is probably one of the first things that come to mind when most people think of martial arts. That makes perfect sense, because this was where many of the most famous and popular fighting arts were born.
Asia is probably one of the first things that come to mind when most people think of martial arts. That makes perfect sense, because this was where many of the most famous and popular fighting arts were born.
From Judo to Jiu Jitsu, Karate to Taekwondo, the list of hand-to-hand combat and fighting styles that came from Asia seem endless.
But although Asia seems to dominate the world of fighting styles, Greece could in fact be credited with creating one of the oldest forms of martial arts in existence. This style is called Pankration. As it happens, it is still practiced by fighting devotees today, and it has helped shaped many of the other fighting styles around the world.
The best fighting and hand-to-hand combative styles closely resemble Greek fighting techniques. If anything, the Greek techniques often rival many of the other styles.
Pankration uses a combination of many different techniques that are also commonly used in other fighting styles, such as boxing, wrestling, striking and kicking. It is also here where techniques such as joint locking and the use of pressure points first came into widespread use.
When fighting an opponent, drawing the focus away from physical strength (or even completely disregarding it) is something that many martial art forms have in common.
Many Greek fighting techniques however rely on a considerable degree of strength. Grappling and striking techniques are good examples of these.
Even the name Pankration is a reference to this being made up of the two Greek words “pan” and “kratos”, which means “all”, and “strength” or “force” respectively.
Today, a modified versions of Pankration are being practiced. In some cases it’s more like kickboxing hybrid and less like the fighting art that was used in ancient Greece.
There is also some degree of blurring with the highly popular competitive sporting event that is known as mixed martial arts. Many mixed martial arts techniques actually stem from the Greek fighting techniques of the earliest days of Pankration.
Even so, the Greek martial art still survives in some form when the techniques are adopted by newer martial arts. Many people are making efforts to make Pankration part of the Olympic games again.