O.C. Ulf, please tell us something about your martial arts background. Which are the roots of your martial arts career? U.F. My first martial art was Wado - Ryu (a style of Karate which has only pointfighting tournaments and a more traditional background) and I studied this art for about 3 years. After that 3 years I started looking for something else, because karate only consisted of punching and kicking. I then came into contact with Judo - which I was only interested in technically - and Ju Jitsu in its German concept. With the Judo tournaments I never felt comfortable and avoided competing in most cases. After a few years of learning its concepts I lost interest in this art completely. Ju Jitsu came to be the center of my martial arts interest for several years until my studies of sports science at the humboldt university where many of the old GDR trainers and scientists were located now boosted my knowledge about training science, biomechanics and anatomy not to mention general knowledge about human movement concepts. More and more my curiosity and ambition to improve the standard of "my" martial arts started annoying the officials of Ju Jitsu in Berlin. Continiously trying to improve I was more and more able to detect mistakes and obsolete concepts in the movements and general procedures of the Ju Jitsu art. Still being a Self Defense Trainer more than a tournament fighter I was fascinated by the much superior solutions of Wing Tsun and Jeet Kune Do. Experiencing this completely different approach to the same problem (defending oneself efectively) I treid to learn the basics of any martial arts I could get my hands on in order to look for the general similarities behind the different systems.

O.C. What experiences did all this cross over search bring to you and how did it influence your further development? U.F. I broke with the given curiculum and no longer studied with the goal to graduate, but to focus on scientifically developing a new approach to teaching, learning and understanding martial arts. I had found many brilliant ideas in several martial arts concepts, who seemed not to fit with eachother. More than that a Wing Tsun man for example in most cases has no intention to learn about locks, regarding them as useless just because there is a way known to him to counter many of these. On the other hand the same guy will be unwilling to recognize that there are certain tricks to counter the central way of his style. To make a long story short, I tried to take a neutral and scientific view on every style and began extracting the special abilities that defined this art. After that I tried to combine incompatible looking special abilities from different styles by trimming them in nuances and it seemed to work. I now reevaluated the importance all these movements and created a new teaching approach. Alltogether I did not invent something but moreless reconfigured the vast amount of ideas and movements with scientific precision. I called this style Mijikaido - Jitsu (being translated as the art of short ways as I hope). I have started working on a book bringing my idea of martial arts from its basic movement concept to the philosophy of my Mijikaido - Jitsu style to a broad audience.

O.C. What about your competion career? Give us some information about your MMA activities! U.F. Being disappointed by the lack of support for my efforts to bring Self Defense to a higher standard, I had a time where I tried my new sports science knowledge in working out. I tried modern ways of weight training and with the years gained more and more muscle mass. I started competing in Karate tournaments aged about 20 in the 70 kg division and I competed in Ju Jitsu tournaments in the absolute division weighing about 96 kg. So I had the expierience of fighting with many different bodyweights. All these competitions where amateur competitions and did not include real full contact fighting. In the end I was not able to move with the speed and agility I wanted to in my heaviest times. Finally I started training to prepare myself for trying new borders (I saw UFC and was caught by it from the first moment but at that time I would never have guessed that I would fight Full Contact MMA once) and found out that the 85 kg division was "my" class. I still could take a look in the mirror feeding my vanitiy but was much more agile again. In the beginning of this year me and my closest students founded the "Fenriz" MMA Team because we had much success in semi contact tournaments applying the Mijjkaido Jitsu systems ideas on Fighting. In my oppinion the MMA scene in Europe is just developing and the interest in our sports will erupt like it did in america and japan sometime ago. This is the year we want to qualify for the top of german mixed martial arts or getting a bitter lesson of what we have to learn by failing in this effort.


O.C. Thank's Ulf for the Interview and much success for your Fight against Lars 'Bad Boy' Besand on 8. Mai 2004 in Oberhausen!