The first piece of advice I give out always remains unchanged. That advice is this: go get a locking teacher. A good locking teacher can take you from a complete beginner to an accomplished locker if you be the good student and practise and apply what you learn.

When you learn from a teacher, you will get to learn about how to do the moves and what makes the style work. You also have other benefits such as being able to learn from the teachers’ experience and past mistakes they may have made when learning themselves.

If your teacher is not someone you will meet in real life but a virtual teacher then I would recommend learning from a DVD rather than individual locking tutorials. Tutorials are good for getting started but are never going to be as complete as a DVD will.

A DVD is much more likely to offer you a more complete training, as well as shed some insight into the dance and style as a whole rather than just be centred around certain popular moves.

In addition to regularly learning from a teacher, another important piece of advice I would share is to try and learn from someone that was involved at locking’s inception, someone that was involved in the creation of locking.

No one can give you a better understanding of locking than the people who created the steps, who made the dancing what it is and saw it all through their experience.

I have only been afforded the chance to listen to Don Campbell speak once but it was very educational and gave me a much better understanding of where the dance came from, why things were done the way they were and what they were expressing as they came out to dance.

If you are able to get hold of footage of the lockers, this can be very inspiring and you will be able to watch the creators in action and see where the dance started.

The other piece of advice I share is something which makes learning and growth possible…stick at it. It may take a while to get used to new steps you may learn and to really be able to groove with the music as you dance, but anything worth accomplishing is worth spending time on.

The freedom that comes from being able to just strip away layers and let your personality come out as you dance can be immense. It can become such an uplifting experience to express yourself when that music kicks in that all you want to do is dance.

If that’s something you wish to experience and music can have that effect on you, then stick at it.

The clinch is also used as a way or tiring and fatiguing their opponent. Pradal Serey uses more stealth and and shifty fighting stances which differentiates them from most other forms of Southeast Asian Style Kickboxing forms. Elbows are also used more often than in a lot of other styles. The elbow has been responsible for more wins than any other strike used. Fighting has been going on within the Southeast Asia Region since ancient times. Eventually Combat Sports developed as a result of this.

The Khmers in the Angkor Era developed and used armed and unarmed martial arts styles. In fact there was a style that closely resembled Pradal Serey around the 10th Century. People think this could be the reason that the Khmers had such great success in Southeast Asia during that time period. Angkor also used an ancient form of this Combat Sport with other weapons as well as War Elephants to go to war against Champa from Cambodia and Siam from Thailand. Around the 10th century, they controlled most of Cambodia, as well as Laos, Thailand and Vietnam.

Because of this, Cambodia has had a huge impact on Lao as well as Thai Culture. The Khmer have a belief that Kickboxing in Southeast Asia started with the Mon Khmer. Many Europeans around the Colonial Period were not in favor of Pradal Serey because they considered it too brutal.

The French adopted the idea of this sport but made some enhancements to it, which included timed rounds and the use of boxing gloves to prevent excessive injury. In the old days matches used to take place in dirt pits with rope wrapped hands and very few rules. Seashells were even wrapped around the knuckles of some boxers to make the fights more brutal.

1. Search for a DVD that will help you learn how you are using your body as you dance, not just do the moves. You want to dance with feeling, not just be a man made robot capable of pulling off a few moves.

2. Aim to get hold of a DVD that will teach you how to be funky when you do the moves. It’s all about the funk, whatever you do in locking has got to be funky and it’s a big part of the dance.

3. See if you can get samples of the instructor’s teaching style to make sure that it suits you. Teachers have different ways of explaining things and you are bound to find some that you are more comfortable learning from than others.

4. Learn from teachers that have expended a lot of time and energy into learning locking. In other words you want to learn from a teacher that will have some of their own knowledge to pass on, as opposed to someone that has learnt it as a fourth or fifth choice dance style.

5. Don’t expect one DVD to teach you everything! One hour of teaching would just be skimming the surface.

6. Make sure everything is broken down for you. When you are in the learning stage, you want to know exactly what each part of your body is doing and when. You don’t want to second guess!

7. Select the right level. If you are a beginner, start at beginners!

8. Make sure your instructor knows who Don Campbell is!

9. If you are buying a locking DVD, don’t expect a popping and locking DVD unless it says that’s what it is. A locking DVD will normally be just that – just locking included.

10. Make sure your instructor knows the difference between popping and locking!

11. Expect to work hard – don’t select a DVD because you think it will keep you seated in your chair.

12. Do your own research. In addition to getting your hands on a DVD, learn about the history of the dance, get to lessons and learn as much as you can about the dance style you are studying.