tallgeese

Wastelander is largely correct in his statement about the origins of the chambered hand to punch in karate. To expand, the pulling to the hip is also designed to serve as a physical textbook for putting an opponents arm into a position for a straight arm bar take down (reference to a aiki style move here, not bjj). The often mis-quoted "mid level" block outside to inside in many traditional kata is the other half of this as a destruction to the elbow. It has far more to do with this than a single, killing blow application or ring vs. street application. If anything, protecting the head and keeping your hands and elbows in a more defensive position is MORE important in the street than in the ring. Straight lines are made shorter if the weapons are actually up on plane where they will be striking. Not to mention, boxers also understand physics and jabs and crosses should also travel in a straight line from the cover position to target and back. It's a misunderstanding of the kata. This is part of my anti-kata stance. We can now openly train punching and openly train arm bars, and openly train joint destructions. Why don't we just do that and hence more efficiently train for each individual weapon. Using a chambered position is a relic of an older training understanding and cultural paradigm. So if one is looking to most efficiently prepare for multi-range combat in the hand to hand arena, why not train with a modern methodology that more effectively does that? If one still wants to retain kata, I'd suggest moving all hip chambers to the high guard position at a minimum. To go a step further, I'd shorten all stances to combat application. The exceptions being those kata that date back to pre-1940. There are good stuff in there; however, I'd also see that my instructor had bunkai that was accurate to the form. These are actually hard to find. Any post-1940 kata is largely designed to look like the older forms with little to no retention of actual meaning.

Congrats, Patrick!

Alright, so the first 50 mins had me ready to call it the worst eposide of the season. My wife actually commented how absoloutly nothing had happened. The the last 10 min hit and I was ready to declare it the best eposide of the season and my wife was in tears. Our little band has to be up for a civil war after Shane's actions tonight. Febuary should be interesting.

Perhaps an eggplant parmesan or grilled portobello? The portobello is a favorite of mine.

Demonstrations are always a plus as well. I got hooked on my first class thanks to a demonstration at a local festival type thing. I'd also consider getting an out of town expert in to start you school off. Maybe your coach or someone you're affiliated with. I'd also reach out to rec centers and leagues to see if I could work some sort of reciprocal arrangement for the first year or so. For myself, I'd also make sure I had someone else to run the finances of the place. If I did it, not only would it be a disaster, but I probably wouldn't end up charging half the people on the mat. Numbers are good, but number that can actually pay are even better. Market to higher end markets, hospitals, businesses, ect. If you can start getting clients from these areas you're more likely to have people willing to lay down cash for something like ma's. In conjunction with that, really sell privates. Once you're in the upper end clientele you've got a base that will pay to get one on one time to advance more rapidly. Maybe set aside a day or morning for just that. As a hypothetical exercise, this is probably one of the more useful I've taken part in, never know when this sort of thing will come in handy

Justice, I hear you on the cooking thing. I am officially done with the traditional Thanksgiving day feast after this year. I'm not a huge fan of turkey and stuff, ect. So why do I continue to make it year after year. Next year, it's steak or lobster. We'll go from there.

I honestly have no idea where they're going to go with this. It's going to be hard to settle this without either group looking like bad guys. What I do know is that we can hardly wait a week for a new episode and now they expect me to wait several months. How am I even going to make that happen.

Thanks for posting this guys! Glad to see that there is some new blood coming up. Can't wait to see you guys over Christmas and get some mat time in. Looking forward to seeing the sparring footage as well.

11/27 1 mile on treadmill neck work bench shoulder press pull ups dead lift curls abs

GS, glad to hear that you're working the new guys over principles so well. The more I'm around combative situations, the more I realize just how important building a response pattern around principle rather than technique is. They can't start "getting" this soon enough. 11/25 90 min free roll. Out every other round. Some long rounds.

Great mindset article. made even better by references to one of my favorite movies of all time. http://www.grapplearts.com/Blog/2010/11/598/?awt_l=8XPll&awt_m=LmAkVM.672.qkq

11/23 Drilled preventing the half guard. Omo from defense. Then kimura from defense of half. Finished with kimura sweep from same posture. 45 min free roll.

Sweet! 11/22 Drilled take down. Worked randori. Focused on single to underhook trip. More randori. Running the pipe, more randori. 25 min free roll

11/21 Finally, after a three day layoff due to sickness, I'm back. Drilled pummel to takedown x 15 min Drilled maintining side v. escape, eyes closed x 30 Free roll for 30

I liked it alot actually. I particularly like the emphsis the little tribe is placing on training. It's even being conducted pretty well. I also liked the scene when she finally puts it altogether. Priceless.

The flip to this, while everyone would like to be on their feet, they fail to train in the best way to prevent this...by grappling. Working on the ground is only part of BJJ. Taking down and staying up are a big portion as well. Additionally, we can all say it's a bad idea to go to the ground but the fact is we can end up there anyway. Failing to spend time training there puts us well behind the curve should we end up there, no matter the position. It's impossible in the post-UFC era to ignore that component of a well rounded response plan.

I have to respectfully disagree RW. Martial arts, at their core, are about learning to fight. Now, the fact that they can, and have, come to take on other meaning largely due to the post Menji restoration outlook on Japanese arts. But they are still, if trained accurately and with proper mindset, about fighting. It's the martial part of martial arts. I'm not saying that fighting is sole focus of every school out there, but it is at many. Nor am I saying that fight preparation and combative application are the only worthy reasons to study, they are not. But to say that martial art's are not about fighting is to ignore their origins and heart. This is why I talk about matching your goals to where you train. Some people are more worried about the perfect form. Others, are concerned with competition, and several think about self defense first and foremost. It's about training modalities and how you're prepping for combat thru your training. There are plenty of threads about that already, so I won't beat that horse. By you closing argument, one would have to assume that conflict is so unpredictable that it is pointless to train in any way shape or form for it. This is dangerous lines of thinking. Of course you can increase your survivability IF YOU TRAIN ADEQUATELY TO DO SO. Even the arts you've mentioned, specifically to my experience boxing and mma can add useful attributes to your survival in a fight. Bobbing and weaving can get you hit in the face, as can throwing up your hands and deciding there's nothing you can do to prevent it. You might bet kneed in a clinch, but I can testify that if you've prepped your mind to fight thru, there is every chance you'll be able to in actual application. The head butt while having guard? Train a slipping arm triangle or other counter tactic. Any sort of bad thing can happen, but training conducted realistically and under pressure with free form attacks and defenses can GREATLY increase your chances. Martial arts are only non combative if WE choose to make them such or accept instruction that does not lend itself to combat prep.

Yeah, we might get major friction between the two groups over this.

Here's a portion of a classic that's getting harder and harder to find. The Gracie in Action series hit shortly after the country got largely introduced to BJJ after the first UFC. Granted, they are well timed marketing devices, but it doesn't change the fact that there is some spectacular historical footage here leading back to the early days of the art. It also reminds us how the Gracies revolutionized training here in the states and effected the rise of MMA as we know it today. Great on a lot of levels and worth the time to check out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=zkscYQRm4aw

I think I see what you're talking about. One thing we use constantly to sharpen certain aspects of our game, and to drill chains into our heads, it to roll for position. It's a drill that limits one person to a given position, say closed guard. The other is allowed to pass by the means he has at his disposal. If the guard guy submits the passer, you reset. If the passer gets by, you reset. This way you rep a handful of movements until you can chain them and link them and understand them deeper. This is going to be the start of what you're talking about I think. If nothing else, they are great drills for your game. Then, make them harder. have one persone stuck in mount or side to start with the goal of escape. Or do only passes to your off side to improve that aspect.

It's also worth noting, now that you've got me worked up about it , that I can safeetly say that 100% of the fights I've been involved with on the job have ended on the ground. This is not a cut on any standing tactics that anyone here, or even myself have used. Nor is it a plea to train excusively for ground fighting for cops. It is merely a statement of fact. Every on the job fight I've been in, either alone or with multiple officers, has ended on the ground. It goes to the need to control a suspect and take them into custody. To do this, when people fight, we take them to the ground to cuff. It affords ontrol and limits the potential for them to escape. Now, we're not always talking about a wrestling match, although it can look like that. It can be as simple as we put someone down and control them to cuff them while they are face down. If you think about how to train for this, think about positional control. Gaining and maintaining superior body position that allows for the retention of your weapons. I've been party to alot of this. Take down (usually body lock of some dsort these days for me, although I've used others), follwoed by a scramble to mount or a variation, then maintain this while sorting out hand control for cuffing. This is the kind of grappling training cops need to focus on (training at work) if they aren't doing it on their own outside of work. Again, if we look aross the country, it would seem departments are starting to realize this a bit. Others are still lagging behind. After four years of convincing admin, we finally got some inserted into our program two years ago. Sounds good, right? Until you look at the nubers. First up, we take an eight hour training day for all our unarmed tactics. Now, we've determined that, in my experience, 100% of my fights have ended on the ground. And we spend 1 hour working control on the ground. We then prioritize other things that don't get used nearly as much (for us, a look at our use of force reporting would indicate that we rarely use a baton and at that level of force required we are more likely to use chemical agents of fight suspects manually- it's just the treand at our deaprtment). Our baton block is an hour of training that no one used last year. Tell me how our resourse allocation is.... We're in negotiations to change this next time around. As you can see, there is another factor here, that being what the individual department is doing. What are the trends for a given department? You can see by my stated statistics, we have certain tactics that we favor. This might not hold true for Kuma's department, or bushido man's, or anyone elses. When you start looking at developing control tactics programs for this sort of thing, it's important to see what the culture is at a given deaprtment in regard to such matters to see where the most can be achieved.

Having done something very similar, I'd say give it a week. Ice, ibuprofen, rest. Then go back with modified activity if pain permits. Let your coach know so he won't expect you to be doing everything. Keep it taped for sure during activity. If it won't start getting better in a few weeks then get it looked at, but there's not much a doc will be able to do. But you can make sure nothing is weird and get a note to be out of class for a more extended period. Often, this will let you put your membership on hold so you're not paying for time your on the mat.

Do you mean you have trouble feeling your partner's tap? If so, I'd suggest slowing down to increase your feel.

11/17 Drilled taking mount from standing v. open guard. Then to arm bar and arm bar escape. Finished with transition to triangle on escape effort. 45 min free roll. Got to set up and use a couple of new spider guard tactics learned earlier this week.

The total hours hour count sounds about the same for us Kuma. I think we end up with around 40 hours total in basic.