tallgeese

10/10 am: 2.5 mile run pm: BJJ: Worked on escape from mount, escape from side. Reviewed arm bar. 30 min free roll

Sweet. Last year I did the samurai thing. Steve-o came down to trick or treat with the kids as well and did a great Tony Stark outfit. This year...don't know yet. I'll probably wait till the week of and scramble to put something together.

10/9 2.5 mile run neck bench pull ups curls air squats abs Moving away from pressing heavy weight and into more of a conditioning level of pushing weights. Maybe some work on fundamentals later after the kids settle down for the night.

Another post I agree with to a great degree. Competition is great, it's a fantastic way to pressure test movements that you're working on. Quite frankly, it's as close in some ways to a fight as most people will get. It can be invaluable for building a "pre-combat veteran" for an encounter and to stress inoculate an individual artist. One issue that always comes up is that no competiton will ever mimic a real fight. True. However, the proper venue can still pressure test technique. Saying a modality is not perfect and therefore worthless does not hold water. It's a training tool. Use it as such. Martial artists need to wrap their head around this. MMA gets a bad rap from trad guys because it doesn't account for tactics outside the realm of it's rules. What they often overlook is that look at it outside this, and it's a great microcosm for testing one's unarmed skills on many levels. It's a training modality. If used properly it can benefit any art. Now, where RW makes an excellent point is that often we choose poor modalities. The heavy emphasis on point fighting has developed poor tactics from many schools.

I don't really agree with your points here. I don't think movies have had that much of an impact on the state of Karate right now. Ip Man wasn't a mainstream movie, not in the U.S. anyway, and the people who watch a movie like that are likely Martial Artists anyways, and wouldn't be swayed to the "ineffectiveness" of Karate because of a movie fight scene. Capoeira is also not a very common Martial Art, as in its availability; perhaps your area is different, but I've never seen a school, even in travelling. Just my thoughts, but I don't think Karate has been affected by these things as much as its been affected by the arrival of MMA and BJJ. I have to side with bushido man on this. There is defiantly more impact on karate these days from the influx of BJJ and MMA. Some of this influx has been a good thing. Karate has been begging to be modernized in certain ways for some time now. Science and psychology have both moved forward, the methods we use to train in our arts should relfect if we want the most out of them. Another point I'd like to make is the last one about the idea of teaching students not to fight. Unless you're specifically talking about training for competition, which I'm certainly not opposed to if that's your goad, I think it's irresponsible to teach anything other than this. To fight, to deploy your skills out side of organized contest means a situation has arisen that threatens your well being. Anything less is not worth the risk and an abuse of what you're doing. So if you're a coach and telling your guys the best fights are the ones you manage to get yourself into in the real world and win, then you're essentially teaching them to violate the law. Fine, but you'll eventually lose student base to jail. People who really like no- holds barred conflict on the street probably haven't been in one.

Around 20 lbs. I know, not insurmountable. But not fun. Remember, I'm old, and I like wine. And carbs. And sugars. Well, you get the idea.

There is alot of good reasearch you can do yourself on the internet, books, and dvd. It won't replace learning with a coach, but there are things you can take away. Interestingly enough, I just did the same belt thing in regards to iaido. Same with folding of hakama and a kimono. It's just little things like that which can help you figure out if you'll be into the things you're going to be expected to do. It can help you get a jump on terminology. Never being a traditional kind of guy, I don't know Japanese names for most kempo things I've done, let along the parts of a sword, or the phases of a sword kata. This again, is where the internet can be very useful. I think you hit a real point when you mention, you learn what you will learn. This is just good research to see if you are really interested in the first place. I think the usefulness falls off after that. Actual technique and the "feel" of how an art is supposed to go is just often too precise or (in the case of the feel) esoteric to be captured by these types of media. I see a lot of inexperienced grapplers trying to hit crazy ADCC level movements before they understand fundamentals, or get the idea of flow. They do this because they are trying to learn from you tube and the like. I think the technical aspects of learning things from another art via media are much more valuable once you've spent some time in a given art. In BJJ, I think that moment is probably around high purple / brown when taking apart video of technique becomes useful and productive. By then, you've really got a handle on the technical aspects of the art and a firm understanding of fundamentals.

10/8 Drilled same side D'arce choke, moved into modified D'Arce from partner turtled, then finished with choke from bottom side. 30 min free roll. Seriously, the Great Lakes NAGA is like 4 weeks away and I just noticed. How am I going to cut weight by then? I really need to stay on top of these things better.

And a first season marathon leading up to it. Which is where I intend to be planted thru the course of the day to catch up.

10/7 2.5 mile run neck shoulder press weighted pull ups deadlifts abs

10/6 BJJ nite: Drilled bullter fly guard passes. Counter to pass. Coutner to coutner. 6, 2 min rounds butterfly v. pass 30 min free roll

Welcome. Keep us posted on how the tournies and training for them are going once you have them lined up.

Welcome aboard KF!

Right. That's the biggest thing I look for, the feel of the place. Do I like the way the students hold themselves. Is there a prevalent attitude about the place. Things like that. Espicially if I'm considering training there. I look at the dynamics of the students and instructors with one another. That's a big indicator to me in regard to teh emphasis of the school. I also look at if the school is accomplihing what it purports to do. If it's supposed to be a combative school, I want to see if what they are doing is combatively sound. How have tehy adapted new training modailites? Do they train live? How do those sessions look? Too out of control and wild is a bad sign, it goes to a lack of proper technique and training at upper ranks. So constraied and presices as to look rehersed and pristine is equally bad, suggesting that they don't really know how out of control and chaotic a brawl can be. If that's not the focus of the club, how are they doing at acheiving their goals. If you're looking for a pure BJJ school you should be seeing more technique and less spastic movements in their ranked guys. If traditional oriental arts are the focus, then they should display the form and power you'd expect from high level practitioners. Really, for me, once you get past the attitude, it's about how well the school is accomplishing it's mission.

While learning the specifics of an art is a bad idea from any sort of medium other than an instructor familiar with both the art and teaching, one thing that can be valuable by immersing yourself in texts on a given art is a fundimental understanding of what it's about, what you'll be expected to do at a given level, and a familiarity with it's history, traditions, and terminology. I've been doing a ton of reading on iaido lately and checking out video because I'm considering picking it up. While I won't really learn any technique, at a deep level of understanding at least, it can learn the underpinnings of the art. For instance, it's far more formal than anything I've done before, and relys heavily on Japanese terms. This, I can get a grip on proior to deciding if it's for me. Further, an idea of how practioners move is important. That you can get your head around by reading. It's an important step in researching what you're looking at doing that gets overlooked or misused often.

10/4 3 mile run neck pullups bench curls deadlifts

First off, welcome to KF! Glad to hear that you found it useful in your search. Next, congrats on your promotion. My base art was a kempo based art and you'll find it very effective and a great well-rounded experience. Keep us posted on how things are going.

10/3 Back to training! Knee held up well. Drilled holding back mount, ankle lock from back mount, wrist lock from back mount. Moved on to wrapping variant of a mow and arrow. Chained this with an escape effort from your partner and triangle. 6, 2 min rounds of submission from back mount v. escape from back mount. 45 min free roll.

Congrats! Love the acceptance speech

welcome aboard KF!

I've seen that trend as well, karate organizations utilizing kata to teach ground concepts. I've never been a fan, since it seems like revisionist spin and not much else. It strikes me as odd that most of us will say that learning mas from a textbook alone is a bad idea;however, some organizations will use kata, a moving textbook, to teach ground work. Pre-UFC 1 there was no talk of ground work passes along in kata. There were no teachers really saying "this is what this means". Now, we're making stuff up, in an environment entirely different that the ground, and saying it works because it's in kata. I hear what you're saying about a pure BJJ school. I was involved in mma for years doing grappling. It wasn't until I was in an academy whose sole focus was BJJ that I really feel like I started to appreciate and understand the ground game.

The first thing that pops to my mind in regard to the MT round house is that it attacks a different target than is practical for a traditional round kick. Just my thoughts. In regard to the focus mitts, I ask because it's an area of interest to me. I've been around kempo based systems for years as well as MMA. Throw in some boxing here and there and what I've noticed that while trad ma-ists might use focus mitts, they usually use them more statically than other forms. Let me say, MOST karate schools tend to use them in a manner less than optimally. So maybe they are not MMA exclusive, but again, it's a look at the methodology that goes into their use.

Just a question to the more traditionally minded karate practitioners out there who've been around a bit. Have you or your school modified or adapted your training methods since the advent of MMA. As we all live in the post-MMA martial world now, and it's had such an impact both in sport and ma training it would be interesting to see how people have adapted in regards to it. No judgment here, just curiousity. I'm not getting at who has jumped from karate to MMA, although I'd be curious to the thought process, but more to the kin of has your training methodology been altered to deal with what we've seen come out of MMA. More focus mitts? In a live setting? More free sparring? Access to ground tactics? Defense against ground tactics? If you've addressed these potentially new concerns where did you go for information? More cardio? Did anyone add MMA training to their individual routine? Why? How has that worked out with your traditional background? has there been room for both? This just stems out of discussion some CT guys and I were having during training the other day and I'm curious about the impact with the people here.

Welcome to KF!

Similar. However, the list you put forth has more to do with preparation prior to an event and leading to the event itself. The OODA loop has more to do with how decisions get made during the ongoing event. It takes into account things prior, but only to the extent that they effect decision outcomes at the point of violence (in this case). It's also wider in focus to consider the arena of conflict. Observation takes in the entire surrounds, not just the individual combatants. In most circumstances, this can effect choices one makes greatly (ie. cover, concealment, egress) It's also important to note that of all the ways we can accelerate our loop, by Boyd's own admission and other significant warriors who've studied his work, Observing becomes highly important in the whole equation. Generally speaking, the one who sees the enemy first, wins. This is important when we talk about self defense when we look at how important awareness is in the whole process. Howe spends quite a bit of time in his first book talking about observation and how to shorten the loop here while still maintaining the value of observation.