tallgeese

1/18 Drilled mount escape via leg entanglement and modified elbow escape. 40 min free roll. 1 round of takedown work.

1/15 Drilled elbow escape. 30 min free roll.

11/14 25 min free roll. No gi.

As I was reading thru the thread I had to really agree with this. More than anything the reason I've been in ma so long is because of this. As to the OP about my style. Originally, I like the fact I was always encouraged to find and learn more. To identify worthwhile tools and (more importantly) integrate them into what I do. It was also heavily designed around principle based training. Later, I'd learn to love the mindset out of the second style of kempo I trained in. I always consider that I'd have never gotten to this point without the training sensibilities of my core art. As a downside, neither of these arts had a heavy ground component. That's been integrated now, largely by the constant desire to the school I came out of to adapt. But initially there was none. Groinstrike is in a much better to advise how that process has gone. I've been away awhile. Doing BJJ so heavily now I love the live roll of it and the art. Above all the art. On the down side, it's easy to get lulled into the gentle side of the art and forget that at its core you're still training a martial art.

This is a great topic and one not talked about enough in martial arts circles. Let me start by saying Harkon has a point. Freezing can always occur. However, the way we train can greatly affect our mitigation of this and we can indeed mitigate it. One of the things to think about is building spontaneous threat responses. It's basically stimulus response training. You need to build into this by taking basic movements of your system and building them against more and more realistic threats. This lets you work from a technical pace to an actual adrenaline response to aggression. For me, this means taking simple movements that are at the core of your art and stripping away anything that is not effective and efficient under combat duress. If you're not sure what those movements are, you will find them as you move into higher levels of spontaneous training against resistive partners. I agree to a certain extent, time is always a factor. Of course, time on task will always make skill sets better and more time of good training is better. That said, I can be in a situation that requires live saving aggression tomorrow. Years of sorting thru theoretical tactics or decrypting kata is can just push competence out to years to reach. By stripping down movements to efficient training patterns, you can start to make this path quicker. Of course, pure self defense mightn ot be your sole goal. If it's not, then certainly you may not want to do this. Or you might do an art for multiple reasons, self defense being only part of why you train. In that case, you'll want to balance your training to include both. But you need to take a bit of time sort out what's the most important factors for your training. Study the OODA loop and learn how to manipulate it to your benefit. This starts with better observational skills. On the topic of learning, read on physiological effects of real combat. Grossman, Siddel, Miller, ect. Studies show that the more you intellectually understand these changes the better prepared you are to successfully deal with them. Train under increasing pressure. This does not mean heavy contact all the time, but you'll need to from time to time. It also means scenario based training. Once you've looked at the tools you want to drill, drill them with increasing realism, and dealt with some contact, then you're ready to go. Set up situations that you might come under fire in. Bear in mind, most of these will be ambushes of some sort. That means that you're not in a fighting stance, you're standing at an ATM, getting in a car, or otherwise occupied while you get blindsided by the initial attack. This can be truly surprising for many artist. But time spent in this sort of situational training can really cut down on the surprise factor you feel the first time your body has to deal with the real stress of a fight. This is how we start to build "pre combat veterans" a term coined by Grossman. Essentially, it means that we're programming in the sorts of responses that people who have been there done that develop and get rookies to perform that way. To do that you have to start being stressed when you train. Let's concede, no amount of training will perfectly simulate this. But you can design training to mimic, and this can go a long way on the street in your first combat. Once you start getting competent with the types of drills we're talking about, try adding a time component. Set up a focus mitt drill to control but mandate control occur in 10 seconds, then 7, then 5, ect. All sorts of simple changes in drills can add stress. Shut the lights off. Add music. Strobing lights. Put them all together. Another avenue that gets overlooked is to compete. In contact events. MMA is great for this because it mandates a wide array of tactics. No, it's not a real fight, but it mimics several aspects of one and will generally be unfamiliar. This is all stress educing and can be VERY beneficial into preparing you for dealing with your first live encounter with no rules or ref. So yes, you can take your art and greatly enhance your ability to use it under fight duress. But it takes some specialized adjustments to do it quickly. Let me know if you've got any specific training design questions.

1/13 Drilled escape from bottom mount 30 min free roll 1 round of takedowns

1/11 Drilled sweeps from bottom side. Kimura and Americana. 40 min free roll.

1/10 Review continues for a second day. Loads of time on arm triangle work and transitions for LE work.

1/9 Day of review on police control tactics for instructors. Went thru protocol. Spent time working new material on armed retention on the ground.

Happy Birthday!

I can understand your frustration and your feeling that you're overlooking some of the prime philosophy of JKD in the club you're in. That's a tough spot, breaking with a club is always tough and it seems especially so in JKD circles for some reason. I think that's due to the animosity between the various sub groups of the art. Glad anything I posted could be of help. Let us know how things play out. For what it's worth, if you want to look at JKD that's doing the sorts of integrations that you're talking about check out Harris International and Prof. Harris' work. I know he's know more in BJJ circles but his JKD is amazing.

Right now I am a wonderful 5 min drive from my house. Prior to that I was about a 40 min drive. I'm pretty certain that's about as far as I've regularly driven, although I've done that a few times in my career. Back in college, we used to occassionally drive 1.5 hours to take privates in BJJ from a blue belt! Shows you how the world has changed!

Nice work!

1/8 Drilled recovery of guard from side mount. 40 min free roll. Couple rounds of no gi 1 6 min round takedowns

1/6 early pm: dept physical- yup, still 20 to 29 (according to the scale at least, lol ) late pm: Drilled kimura sweep from bottom half. 30 min free roll.

1/5 Drilled distancing with the single stick. weights 1 mile on the treadmill

Sounds like a good time. I always enjoy these kinds of get togethers. You've gotten a ton of good advice. I'll just throw in a couple of thoughts. I always kind of like having a fun thing on the first night. For most people, this is sparring or open mat of some sort. A short instructional portion followed by open mat is a great way to get everyone into the weekend and having fun. It's also a good icebreaker if you have people from outside your circle there. You mention doing something different, the long day of training is the perfect time to mix things up a bit. Start with some instruction from one of your instructors. Do a block of that. Then, have an instructor from another style come in. Something very different. Reach out to a BJJ club, or capoeria group, or mma club, something different. Heck, do an mma block, go back to karate on a different aspect of training, then do something else to close out the afternoon. Maybe even a weapon art. The trick is to find some good instructors that will play well with your group and have them come in for a couple of hours to augment your normal training. This kind of thing can offer real growth in what you're doing already for attendees AND introduce them to other aspects of the arts. Good luck and let us know what you end up structuring and how it goes.

The major functional thing you're looking at is insurance. That's what you'll need to safely continue to teach. Everything else is negotiable to a certain degree. But a lack of insurance can threaten you're livelihood and family should something go amiss. That said, it's easy enough to find affordable insurance in the market with some research. While I can't give you specific guidance here, I know enough people that have made it work for small dojos to know that it can be done. As for certificates, that's also easily done. Good quality paper, some design work ect and presto, you've got a nice diploma for your students. At some level, this is exactly what the association you're part of is doing anyway. Legitimacy is easy, to my mind, as well. No matter if you're part of the organization or not they can't take away your knowledge base. Nor can they take away your answer to "who did you get rank under?" That will always be the same. To me, this is the beginning and end of legitimacy. Now, where you will run into problems is furthering your own rank. Here there are a couple of options. You could find another organization that oversees your art and see what their outlook on taking you in is. I'm not bit in the hierarchy of eastern arts, but I have to imagine that multi-dan ranked instructor with students is a good investment for many organizations. Another way would be to develop some sort of relationship with a black belt higher ranked than you in your organization and continue to try and achieve rank that way. Of course, the last option is to no longer worry about advancement. This may or may not be an option based on your personal goals. You'll have to do the math but it sounds like you've done quite a bit of that already. Good luck, and keep us posted on your situation.

1/2 Round 2 on the 8 hour training session dealing with MMA for Law Enforcement. A bit of free roll at the end.

1/1 am: weights 1 mile on the treadmill pm: 75 min free roll. Now back to reality. Headed back to work tomorrow.

2014! Yeah! Happy New Year all! Stay safe during you celebrations.

I think it's largely a matter of maturity and perspective on things. First up, let's look at this from inside the traditional art practice. To address sensei8's original post as to trad arts not being respected I think a lot of good points have been noted. Chief among them that there are a lot of trad artist that have done this to themselves. Claims that are clearly out of line have always been made by people in the arts. This is the best.. This is how you win street conflicts... This is how you defeat x other art.... The list goes on and on. There's probably a great argument that people saying these things aren't truly "traditional" artist. But I argue that this DOES NOT MATTER. Remember, there's the other half of this as well, the outside of trad arts. Those who are either not training ma at all, or train a non-trad art. Perception is reality. Enough of the above claims will taint perception. For those in, there' s always been a -do, -jutsu argument going on and quite frankly even well respected traditional artist can't often agree on which arts are for what. Consider how that looks to the practitioner outside of traditional arts. If there's disagreement at that level for what you're art is about how is a new, potential white belt supposed to wrap his head around it. Compound that by the fact that lots of trad arts have separate "self defense" sections of class (call it what you will but this is the portion of class dedicated to combat application). Now, what is someone on the outside supposed to think if an instructor tells them "tonight we'll work on self defense." What have we been doing till now? is usually the next thing to pop into a new persons head. So, to sum it up, trad arts SOMETIMES have an identity issue. All of these things go towards questionable acceptance. Next, let's look at what's going on OUTSIDE trad arts. You have people like Rory Miller MacYoung, and others, who have extensive backgrounds in various arts, publishing really well thought out arguments about why traditional training isn't meeting reality. This is from guys that have "been there done that" in violent situations. The fact that someone with a background has gone into a fight, come out, and said "we have to rethink some things" is potent. I've lived this working in LE. It's made me radically review training methodologies and tactic selection due to my experience. This is a potent thing. Now, I'll grant you, this is based on a combative outlook for martial arts and not all practitioners of trad arts will argue that this is the primary reason for involvement. But remember, there's a clear identity crisis in trad arts circles. If there weren't, we'd see no "self defense" articles or advertising. Again, I'm not speaking out against trad arts here. I'm just pointing out what my perspective is in regard to the question sensei8 asked. Also from the outside of trad arts, we have MMA on the scene now. This has turned into a great sportive look at combat arts. It's show us what works great under certain constraints. It's not claiming to be for this or that, it's for the purpose of dueling in an octagon. It has great cross over potential largely due to its training methodology. But the product they are turning out is pretty impressive to anyone with an unbiased view of fighting. More important to our discussion, look at how the public will view mma in relation to trad art training. Put two people, each equal in athleticism, into a trad class and an mma class. Now, let's assume each has 0 prior experience and is able to comprehend and follow direction. Now look at the product of each after 6 months, then a year. There's a clear distinction here due to training method that the public can see. On the trad side you'll have some very hypothetical tools. On the mma side you'll have lots of live practice and contact with minimal COMPLEX tools off the table. This sort of thing can really swing public (and martial) opinion. I'm not dissing trad arts here either. i think that 6 months to a year of hard traditional training will give an individual a lot of good tools, but you have to look at what message those differing training methodologies are showing the public. Lastly, there's a maturity aspect as well. When I was younger and into only way way to view the arts (having only that view as background) I was adamant about what was "real" art and not. That was then, with maturity, and wisdom (I hope), it's obvious that there are a lot of reasons to do the arts. Combat is not the only one. It's the most important for me, but not even the only reason for me any more. The MAs are big, and there's lots of room for us each to explore that aspect that we like the most. And one expression of this is no less valid than the other. We just have to be honest with ourselves, and here's the kicker, others as to why we train. I do a lot of mat hours to stay ready for work. I do jiu jitsu these days because I love the art, sd is a distant second. Lots of the disrespect that gets thrown out is probably due to a lack of maturity by artist who just haven't gotten there yet. Give them time, we come around This doesn't mean that we'll always agree on methodology or process, but it means we'll wrap our head around that we all belong.

Welcome aboard! What style(s) do you train in? Look forward to hearing from you on the boards.

12/31 75 min of open mat. Free roll all around!

Go out side to study those things. That's been the history with my circle of arts anyway. It's hard to wrap your head around the concepts of an art that is radically different than yours and has vastly different concerns. For that reason, some time spent by someone at your karate school in a weapon specific art will filter back to you much quicker with much better results. It's not impossible to reinvent the wheel, but why would you want to when there are are arts out there that have been doing it forever. I'm not saying that this needs to be a formal arrangement for years, it can be on a private basis and maybe just until you've achieved a level of augmentation that gives you a base to work from. A great example is Chuck Norris' students being mandated to attain a blue belt in BJJ prior to reaching black belt (by now this might have changed.)