A new hybrid

As I was making my way to the station to go into town, a car passed me covered in graphics advertising the business. These things normally don’t catch my attention yet this time there was something about it. The company was called Hybrid Kickboxing and I was intrigued, so much so that I checked out the website when I got home.

What piqued my interest wasn’t the kickboxing, I have never been one for martial arts, or even much for any sporting activity, but rather the word hybrid. It is a word that has been around a long time, in horticulture for example, where two different plants are brought together to make a new one. Hybrid tea roses spring to mind.

Meaning something of mixed origin or composition, hybrid is a common term now in vehicle manufacturing. A mix of internal combustion and electric engines gives us the option to migrate from more polluting to less polluting forms of transport, apparently and most people are clear what the word hybrid means in this context.

Since COVID the world of work has also changed. Though mixed working styles have been around for ages, indeed I have been enjoying them since the eighties, they have now come very much to the fore. Hybrid working will hopefully be around for a long time to come, despite the prtiestations of Rees-Mogg and here the word has come to mean a blend of working from home and in the office, something having two kinds of components that produce the same or similar results.

I suspect though that the word hybrid is starting to take on a new meaning, that of being modern, new or innovative. Hybrid is becoming the new digital. Attach it to any phrase and it lends a degree of freshness.

I say this because I have looked at the website and cannot find anything more about Hybrid Kickboxing. Is it two martial arts coming together to create another, a blend of different styles or the ability to apply two methodologies at once? Perhaps the owner is implying that the business is new, fresh and appealing to the young.

If I see him again, I could ask.