granitemiller

The warriors show is good too.

A good shot to the groin will end the fight, although there is a delayed reaction for about 30 seconds but once the pain kicks in the attacker is done.

18 is a lot! I have not done Hangetsu, and we include Gojushiho to your list. My personal favorite kata is probably Empi, although I am not as good at it as I would like.

The first episode was Apache vs. Gladiator and the Apache won. I liked the weapons analysis, however the combat scenario did not cut it for me. I mean if a Gladiator (someone who trains everyday for life/death battle and does nothing else) has someone down on the ground - the fight is over, that person dies. Same thing I think with the Samurai vs. Viking - yes there is a samurai superiority bias, but a viking had a shield that they would have used to block the strike and then the viking would have overpowered the samurai. Maybe they should have those weapons experts actually go at it to see what is really effective?!

Welcome to another Shotokan Karateka! Question - how many kata do you have to know for nidan, and what are they?

Not for sparring - but SD okay

I will check it out too

Hope the elbow gets better

I see your point here. I think that the concepts of fighting came first, and the methodologies came second, which then became incorporated into kata. It is a matter of preference, learning how to fight thru kata is a time proven method. Learning how to fight thru hands on training like MMA is another. Some roads are shorter, some are longer. I guess you need to decide where you want to go, and then choose the path to get there.

And thank you for the Spanish Lesson!

MMA training is very worthwhile and the practical knowledge it gives is great. They also work out very hard.

What I meant by '"crept" is that while Master Funakoshi made changes to the katas and so forth for the mainland Japanese, the old school Okinawan katas came back into the Shotokan schools on mainland Japan over the years. So "crept" here means "come back into". I looked up the Spanish and it said in the dictionary: deslizado but I am not sure if this is right. What you wrote "slow transition from one movement to another" is the word "creep", meaning slow movement. Crept is the past tense, and the way I used it meant that the old forms slowly came back into Shotokan. I should have used more standard English, sorry about that Espina.

What I meant to say from "school to school" is not so much within one school system (eg: Joe Smith school of MA in San Diego and Joe Smith school of MA in Los Angeles), but within two different schools of the same style (eg: Joe Smith school of MA in San Diego and Dan Fran Martial Arts in Toronto)-both of them Shotokan - you will see slight variations in the kata (eg: a hand drops lower in one than another at a certain place, etc).

RBSD training is definitely realistic and a lot is learned from it. MMA training is for sport and while somewhat realistic, it is not "realistic" in terms of using on the battlefield (I would never go to the ground exposing myself), although we can and have learned from MMA as well. I guess in the end no training is bad!

Yes, I agree, however it is interesting how the Okinawan parts have crept back in. My school uses Okinawan methods.