tallgeese

2/8 Drilled material from 2/7. 30 min free roll.

Congrats! Well earned.

2/7 Drilled another armbar set up from bottom side followed by kimura. 25 min free roll.

Welcome to KF! It will be cool to see your take on things from a Chineese arts standpoint.

2/5 Drilled arm bar from bottom side, then into kimura. 30 min free roll. 10 min roll with strikes

2/3 Drilled attacks from bottom side. Arm bar and reverse triangle. 40 min free roll. 1 round of takedowns.

Welcome to KF!

2/1 Last day of drilling pure punch block sequence. 15 min of "shark tank" open mat. 8 min round to finish ou.

1/31 Drilled punch block sequence to sweep. 30 min free roll.

1/29 Drilled punch block sequence from guard. 30 min free roll. 2 rounds no gi w strikes.

Welcome aboard KF!

1/27 Drilled punch block sequence from guard. Live drilling. 30 min free roll. 1 round of takedown. 1, 5 min round sparring.

1/26 60 min free roll. No gi.

Karate does have a lot of concepts to it; but, many of them were not passed on in a widespread manner when all the Osenseis passed away. Many karate schools in the West, particularly in the USA (I cannot speak for South America, Europe, etc, but I hypothesize that they're in the same boat), are missing important pieces of conceptual development. Some schools do, however. There are some that do teach Irikumi (in-fighting) and Tuite, development of gamaku (power generation) to achieve atemi (destructive power), etc. These are all part of Ti. See, Ti is largely thought of as the predecessor to Tode and eventually karate. But, it's more than that. Ti is a large core of concepts and methods that is missing from most karate schools... it was from mine, too. It doesn't mean I wasn't a good MA before; we trained hard, sparred hard, grappled hard, etc. But, now that we have it, I can't imagine our MA without it. It doesn't mean Ti is the only core of concepts and methods, either. Many exist, many that work for different people. So... what you're saying is that JKD suffers from the same QC/QA issues as pretty much any MA... Lineages split and go separate ways as practitioners get more experience and think they know better than others; "NO! I'm better! I know what Master wanted better than this other guy!"; "Nooo! I know better!"... Yay! Dojo politics! Lol. Go figure. Similarities everywhere.

1/25 Drilled kimura from side mount. Moved into variants based on partners counters. 30 min free roll. 1 round takedowns.

Welcome to KF!

bushido man makes a great suggestion. I'd also add "Secrets of the Samurai"-Ratti and Westbrook, for general history "Living the Martial Way" Morgan, mindset and conceptualization Hit up the classics: Five Rings Art of War And the new classics: On Killing/ On Combat- Grossman Sharpening the Warriors Edge- Siddle Facing Violence and Meditations on Violence- Miller These aren't necessarily about karate alone, but there's a ton of good mindset material there.

While I have learned to appreciate the artistry of kata, and historical intricacies of some of them, I lean HEAVILY toward partner drills over kata for sd and combat aspects of training. This this isn't your focus, then by all means train in whatever manner is most to your liking. I see no need to learn aspects of a fight in isolation, only to have to go back and decode what each of those mean. It's increasingly inefficient as it adds multiple steps to the learning process and goes against several concepts of modern adult educational theory that states the more a student understands the need for a skill the better they will retain that skill. By making movements difficult to understand in function you move away from this understanding. Shortest path between two points. Also, by doing partner work you learn to manage energy at EVERY stage of learning. This starts the functional side of learning far quicker that memorization of rote technique. This energy also starts to teach the student adaptation on repetition that goes wrong. This begins to build contingency plans into the student's patterns before he has even officially begun to work on this level of tactic. By finding these adaptation points and learning not to mentally freeze when this sort of thing occurs before advancing you've laid the ground work for a much more complete fighter. But this is just me. And it's centered around a self defense outlook.

I'll concur with everyone else. Don't jump in talking about taking a fight. Just show up to the general class, not the fighter's time, and start training. See what happens with the day to day grind of just training at a normal person pace. this will really tell you if you like it enough to go further.

1/24 Drilled Americana from side followed by armbar. 20 min free roll.

Awesome job! Glad to hear that you're giving it a go. Next class will be better, and the one after, and the one after that..... Nice work. 1/22 Drilled side mount specifics. Maintaining during guard recovery efforts. 20 min free roll. 1 round of takedowns. 2, 5 min rounds of stand up. Worked a lot on trapping integration with good results.

I've been around both karate based arts as well as JKD for awhile now, in fact, I was luckily enough to get my first instructor license in JKD last year. So I have gotten the chance to compare and contrast a bit. First up, there are strong points to both. A lot of this is going to come down to personal preference in goals of the student. The two have drastically different training methods. If you enjoy technique based learning then karate will fit better for you. If you lean towards training methodology and drilling, then JKD will appeal much more. JKD has a wider area of concern, from the long stick thru blades to unarmed to grappling and every variant in between. This means that you'll never get a dull day. About the time you're sick of kickboxing range, you'll have a weapon in your hand or be grappling at some range. That said, there's a lot more to cover in JKD and it can seem like it takes longer to get it all integrated. For instance, I'm a JKD guy that does not have a strong (read hardly any) background in stick work. This can be frustrating. However, on the down side, JKD has quality control issues. Some lineages are quite strong, others are not. Some are in between. Add in the fact that some JKD schools will have a heavy FMA focus (Inasanto varieties), while some will be more grappling/ mma focused (straight blast gyms), while others will pursue more RSBD topics purely (PFS affiliates.) This is all great as it gives you a wide array of JKD to learn. however, this too can be frustrating if your training goals are not meshing with the core of the JKD school you're at. No matter how good they are that their product. This can be off putting for people who like tradition and are into that process (which is fine) but can be a phenomenal learning environment for the people looking for the most efficient route between right now and a potential fight. Yes, there are similar movements in karate to JKD in some cases, but the training methods used to learn, and more importantly deploy, those tools will be entirely different. Lastly, you'll begin to look at just about everything you run across and analyze if it will help you in a fight. If it will, you'll train it and integrate it. There are NO stylistic boundaries, only efficient combat. I really like the JKD mindset. That's not to say that it's superior. Just that it fits the way I learn and my goals better. There are several individuals who will be exactly the opposite. And that's cool. But there are distinct methodology, mindset, and tactical differences.

1/20 Drilled Americana set ups from side control. 30 min free roll, 1 round of takedown work.

Now that's a cultural tradition I can get behind!

I will agree with a lot of the thoughts here. First up, train hard is right. And train effectively and train a long time. That's gonna go a long way. Make sure that you're training in something that works well for you and your mindset. On mindset, as someone else said about the fight in the dog, train as if you're life depends on it. It does. How you mentally prepare will dramatically effect your physical capabilities in a fight. Now for the bad news.... Fighting someone bigger and larger (and most often in the case of male v. female violence- predatory) is a losing proposition. I don't buy into the the "size doesn't matter" line of thought. Attributes matter. Always. It's why there are weight classes in combat sports. Because people who train and compete against full resistance and not theory understand this intrinsically. In this, I agree wholeheartedly with bushido man. You MUST focus on escape and evasion in these cases. Even perfect technique can suffer against raw aggression. We see this over and over when high level, elite BJJ players jump into MMA unprepared for their new environment. Despite, in most cases, have far better jiu jitsu than their opponents some of these athletes just do not function well when jiu jitsu starts to include getting hit in the face. Even people who train RSBD can be behind the power curve when first engaged in actual hand to hand combat. The aggression level is overpowering and because we so often train at lower, playful levels, it's hard to make that switch go off. We all say we can, but until it's on one really can't explain the reality of it without safety. So, not to be divisive, or derogatory to smaller stature people, but the reality is that it's a massive problem to deal with the aggressive, large predator animal. The way you train can help to mitigate this, the tools you choose can have an effect (but probably less than training methods.) But understand the major disadvantage you're at in this situation.