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by: TrevelyanKian
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Which country do you most strongly associate with martial arts? If you said Asia, that's understandable. After all, Asia was the continent that gave birth to many of the most popular fighting arts in the world.

Karate, Jiu Jitsu, Judo, Taekwondothe list of fighting styles and hand-to-hand combat disciplines that originated from Asia is seemingly 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.

You'll find that much of the world's best hand-to-hand combat and fighting styles are very similar to the Greek fighting techniques. In fact, the Greek techniques often rival the others!

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.

There are many martial arts that draw focus away from-and in some cases even completely disregard-the use of strength as an effective fighting component.

However, lots of Greek fighting techniques rely on a great deal of strength. You need strength for grappling and striking techniques, for example.

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.

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