joesteph

Class with the boys and another student - backfist and punch combos, first against separate hand-held targets, then against the same target - backfist, punch, kick combos against BOB, then when BOB "fell" from the blows, jump on BOB and whack away at nose and ears - self-defense techniques - grappling with our teacher (They cheated; it was supposed to be one at a time, but . . .) - I also worked with the other student, who is friendly with the boys. He'll be five and the boys are invited to his birthday party this Saturday. Photo of them together in Photo Album section of KarateForums. Home Leg stretches Front swing kicks Kicking exercises lying on floor: - roundhouse and side kicks Forms: - Pyung Ahn Cho Dan - Chil Sung E Ro Hyung - Pyung Ahn E Dan Testing for promotion this Friday. I'll have had no classes this week for myself, not even tomorrow, Thursday, as class is cancelled. Have had substitutes for my last classes. If not for home study, I wouldn't even try it.

I really enjoyed that song when it was out. Another famous (if you're old enough to remember) number was BEachwood 4-5789. The girl (in those days, "girls" was okay to say for women of all ages) sang, "And my number is BEachwood 4-5789. You can call and ask me for a date any old time." Of course, it was a much more innocent time than when Tommy Tutone (spelling?) sang Jenny's number.

Iaian Abernethy's Jissen magazine is online and free of charge. I has its own web site now, at: http://www.jissenmag.com All you need enter is your name and email address. A confirmation email will come to you with a link to click to confirm. You can even examine back issues.

This is why I'm glad I'm taking self-defense JuJitsu as the complement to Soo Bahk Do. There's enough separation to avoid conflict as much as possible.

Welcome to KarateForums!

It's actually quite interesting, DWx. I was surprised to find this included on p. 3 of the article: Professor Mike Donovan, an ex-middleweight champion, in his 1893 book The Science of Boxing, advocated using using a three-knuckle landing, vertical punch. Jack Dempsey was an advocate of the three-knuckle, vertical punch, as it worked well with his "power line" theory (similar to the Wing-chun centerline theory). I'm not familiar with Donovan, but I did revisit Dempsey's Championship Fighting. I was already aware that he favored striking with the last three knuckles of the fist, the ring finger's knuckle as the center from which a line is drawn down the forearm. However, I noticed (because I was looking for it) how many illustrations there are of vertical strikes--including Dempsey's "line." However, there are a number of illustrations of horizontal punches, making me wonder if it's what you're aiming at (and perhaps distance) that may dictate the better punch. There is a reference to a simple experiment on p. 6 of the article: - Stand with your arms hanging naturedly at the sides. - Keeping your hands and wrist motionless and using only your shoulder muscles, raise your arms in front of your body to shoulder height. - Now close the hands into fists. The result the author points out is horizontal, but I've found that if I start with my hands at my sides, raise them one at a time instead of together, they're at 45 degrees. I can also start with them at my sides again, then reach out, and find they're at 45 degrees. When fighting, I believe the one arm at a time example holds truer than both arms at the same time. I think the author favors the horizontal punch, which is not a problem as I see it, but I was looking for the 45 degree punch to be included; I didn't find it. Perhaps the author didn't want to include anything controversial. You can likely write a book on this, but I was very happy with the article. Thanks DWx!

Don't gymnasts put something on their hands so that they have better grip control while doing their routines, White Owl? A sporting goods store might have just the thing, the same that gymnasts use--and they have to hold on for dear life or else they'll go flying!

I remember meeting a brown belt in Tae Kwon Do some time ago, with whom I'd had a conversation about the Isshinryu vertical fist and the TKD horizontal one. He told me that the benefit of the horizontal fist is that, when there's impact, the twist tears the skin. I don't think he thought of this himself; I think he was told this either by a higher belt or his instructor. And, no, I didn't ask him if he'd ever witnessed anyone's skin being torn by a horizontal punch. I just let his "observation" pass. I'm not knocking the horizontal; if it works for someone, s/he should use it. Personally, I believe the vertical and 45 degrees are best for me, and I've found that, at full extention of my arm, with a boxer's twist on the ball of the foot of the side/arm that's punching, my fist goes horizontal.

Class with my sons - Sparring with torso gear on, each boy taking a turn with the instructor and with me, a tap from us to the "V" (Velocity logo) button on the protector being responded with punches and kicks against us - Sparring with torso gear continued, but with one another, just to punch (really it's a tap when you're seven years old) the "V" logo, but also a kick against the torso gear (also appears to be a tap--the boys have kicked me much harder than I observed with one another) - Pyung Ahn Cho Dan* *At home, after McDonald's and homework, redid Pyung Ahn Cho Dan with me in the living room.

Leg stretches Front swing kicks Kicking exercises lying on floor: - roundhouse and side kicks Forms: - Ki Cho Hyung (Il, E, Sam Bu) - Pyung Ahn Cho Dan - Chil Sung E Ro Hyung - Pyung Ahn E Dan

I thought there'd be more interaction between the dancer and the martial artist, but he obviously doesn't have a romantic bone in his body, sitting down and meditating while the lady wants to dance. No wonder she moved on to the other guy!

Whoever did the smiley faces must have been in a terrible mood!

Hey! Congratulations, John! Great choice for Member of the Month!

Cute photos. One link seems to be saying that the rat's name is "Bug," and some responses have "she" in them. Hmmm . . . Remy is not only a rat, he's the best chef in Paris according to "Ratatouille." Maybe we can play matchmaker?

I'm assuming you mean contact point sparring, Axispower. If it's non-contact, you can't allow a kick in particular to be grabbed. The apex of the kick comes short of your opponent, from one to several inches, often the latter. There's a pause, whether for a split-second or call it a nanosecond, as you switch gears to retract your kick. That's post-apex, and that's when the late blocker (he may not even realize his timing) or grabber consciously grabs your leg. You, the kicker, followed the rules of no contact, and so you're actually vulnerable post-apex. If you didn't follow the rules, there would have been impact, meaning burying your foot in his gut at the apex of the kick, something he's far less likely to grab after being struck. (Not impossible, as a [beefier?] Muay Thai fighter might take a roundhouse to the obliques [ouch!] and then trap the kick.) I'd say someone grabbing your kick pre-apex, i.e., on its way to the target, but who does neither a redirect nor a sidestep out of the way, is going to be holding your leg while it hits home. I sparred non-contact with a white belt last class, and what I like about him is that he's also in his fifties--plus, the guy's face lit up when we sparred. During a sparring session, I have to remember the difference in levels we're at, so I'm not going to try a flurry or crash into him (a non-contact trick, especially if you're shorter and want to infight); however, he was grabbing (likely thinking he's "catching") my front kicks at the start of retraction--i.e., post-apex. We're simply told the tournament rules, that there's no grabbing, that grabbing is contact, but I think that just saying it works better with kids (who accept rules w/o analyzing why). I didn't even say anything to him, and wound up figuring out what to do if my kick is grabbed. The next sparring session, perhaps it'll be noticed by our teacher, or his partner will say something to him.

Class--self-defense JuJitsu - mitt work punching with a vertical fist - mitt work punching and then front kicks with the shin of the lead leg - Muay Thai kicks against the kick shield; knee strikes followed - joint locks that resulted in take-downs and pulverizing the downed opponent - blocking and turning the attacker around into a choke hold - use of stick to strike five points; sticks then put down and "replaced" with hammer fists to the same places (practiced later with BOB) Home Leg stretches Front swing kicks Kicking exercises lying on floor: - roundhouse and side kicks Forms: - Ki Cho Hyung (Il, E, Sam Bu) - Pyung Ahn Cho Dan - Chil Sung E Ro Hyung - Pyung Ahn E Dan One-step sparring exercises; Self-defense techniques

I added it to Favorites, Michi. I noticed how, when he lifted the chair, in order to "stab" with it, as he calls it, Bass had the legs in a diamond shape. I also liked that when the one-hand choke/throat grab occurred, he did a move I'm familiar with, but I know it as a wrist break; he added in an elbow break that's nothing fancy to execute. The only place I have a problem with is at 3:17. Someone's grabbed his shoulder from behind, and the next thing you see is Bass turned around and pulverizing the guy. There seems to be a spot missing/cut where he executed that turnaround. It's an interesting video, that's for sure.

I believe it to be easier for many martial artists to accept acupressure points, that certain areas simply have a greater nerve cluster and so may be the focus of martial arts applications. In Soo Bahk Do, the claim is that a punch should be delivered to the "In Choong," the area between the nose and the upper lip (the "mustache"), rather than to the chin, to hit a nerve center in the face. When a friend of mine was working with another friend and me in Isshinryu, he showed us a nerve pinch that he'd learned about at some point. If grabbed by an opponent (say you're a teacher and there's a troublesome teenage student), there's a spot that I call the "flare" where the pectoral muscle merges with the deltoids. I put one hand on his shoulder, as though grabbing him, and his hand came up, his first two fingers and thumb seizing deep and pinching me there--hard. There was a kind of jolt that caused my hand and arm to twitch "up," releasing his shoulder. When he did it with the other fellow, who was taller but slim, he jumped and swore it was a tickle he'd felt. I have no problem with thinking of nerve centers and acupressure points in martial arts techniques, Bushido_Ruach. It's just that I don't think of them as debilitating if they're within the peripheral nervous system. If you're speaking of the central nervous system, meaning a strike that can damage the spinal cord or brain, well, that's a much different story.

There's already a "Knife Position" topic and thread, and postings by JohnC and Tallgeese made reference to replacing the moves of the knife with the hand for unarmed training purposes. Today, I had a very good class in self-defense jujitsu, from punch and kick combos to joint locks and takedowns. Towards the end of class, Sensei produced foam sticks, and we practiced five strikes against air: collar bone, other collar bone, lower ribs, other side lower ribs, then a poke to the solar plexus. I thought of the stick as a police baton, and he is a police officer. Then we dropped the sticks and made hammerfists, striking at exactly the same points with the "new" weapon, except for the solar plexus, which was a punch. We ran out of time to use other than the right arm, but when I came home, I took a short stick, tapped BOB as we had been training, dropped the stick in favor of hammerfists and punch, and included the left arm. Being a rightie, it took some doing to get the left to capture the rhythm the right had, but it worked. The edit was that I'd accidentally typed "palmheels" originally, instead of hammerfists as we were taught in class.

The vertical fist is faster, GhostFighter, not only in getting there, but also in retracting. It's also harder for the opponent to see if it comes from a rising position (as in your hands were down, you found you had to throw a punch quickly, and so your fist rises from that position that wasn't "on guard"). Another way that the vertical fist is faster is with repeated punches. That horizontal twisting motion takes time, and if you compare strikes against "air" or against a target, you can throw more left-right-left-etc. punches if it's vertical rather than horizontal. Of course they're both good, solid punches (quality), but sometimes speed for more is just of the essence (quantity). A funny thing noticed about the vertical fist is that, if you go to full extension, the climax of the punch will likely naturally have the fist be at 45 degrees. This is more evident when punching air than a target, but, concerning punching through the target, you might just touch the target still vertically, but the climax of the punch, within the target, will likely be 45 degrees--a bit of a turn that you don't even have to think about performing.

I agree that it's very good for the higher dans to do this, and on a regular basis, Rateh, but I feel that six months is a rather short period of time, and I'm not at all surprised that it takes a year for the "new" way to be incorporated in all the schools. I'd have thought it'd be done annually or even every two years. On a bit of a tangent (my apologies), what's a related problem is when you have guest instructors who have you practice somewhat differently from your teacher. As Sir Toppemhat admonishes in the Thomas the Tank Engine series, it causes "confusion and delay."

Home Leg stretches Front swing kicks Kicking exercises lying on floor: - roundhouse and side kicks Forms: - Pyung Ahn Cho Dan - Chil Sung E Ro Hyung - Pyung Ahn E Dan Class - Ki Cho combinations - One-step sparring - Stations: one to beat up BOB using only punches and ridge hands, then move to roundhouses against a WaveMaster with an "arm" on it like an opponent, next to a WaveMaster that had the kids' squeaky targets for elbow strikes and more ridge hands, and finally to a kick shield, practicing stepping side kicks* - Forms - Sparring *I showed a friend forearm strikes to the neck after he complained that ridge hands against the BOB station took their toll. He preferred them. Tutored before class by a dan member in one of the self-defense techniques I had trouble with yesterday, then after class by a dan member in all three of those techniques. The first dan member worked on a certain technique to help me have it flow better (instead of "this is the first step, this is the second . . ."); the second dan member showed me an elbow shot to the opponent's chin that's within one of the techniques, but not emphasized.

Social change is usually the result of conflict within a society; experimentation within a martial art is likely the result of changes in society, therefore a questioning of what has been handed down, that it is deconstructed, then a decision is made for major or minor--or no--change. Society may have a rule that had made perfect sense when it was implemented, but, as time has gone by, the rule has been scrutinized, people get into trouble breaking it, not out of disrespect but because of relevancy, and often the powers that be legitimize the change. This can be applied to a martial art organization if we think of it as a society. It's a conflict perspective that results in positive change, a growth. If a society refuses the change, it can mean social unrest. If an MA organization entrenches itself, it can mean breakaways.

For my green belt test, included in the wrist grab escapes is the escape against the two-handed grab of one of your wrists. I still think of these as training exercises, giving you a point of reference that's the wrist grab rather than, say, the lunge punch. I've only been able to practice with a live opponent on-and-off, and there are three of these in the series that are the latest--and least practiced--of all the wrist grabs. When I have been able to practice with someone, I believe that they've been "cooperative" (which is necessary when you're just learning something new), but then last night I had the perfect partner, a guy who's about average height, but definitely over 200 lbs and with a large frame, maybe an extra-large one judging by his wrist size. He's a white belt, and grabbed good and tight, messing up my smooth escape and counter in two of the three techniques. Obviously, he didn't have a copy of the script. In the first one, I'm to drop my arm and weight in a certain correct manner so as to loosen the grip, then turn my hand and body in such a way as to pin one of this arms against his chest; next comes a control technique and an elbow strike. The most important thing to do is to be able to pin that arm, not simply free your wrist, or else the technique isn't being carried out; if you pin his wrist, you will be able to carry out the rest. I was not dropping my weight correctly; I was not turning my hand and body correctly in terms of leverage; I was gripping a very large wrist and "muscling" the counter. Bad time in Bedrock. I had to work on this some more with him to get it reasonably right. The second of the three he didn't know he was supposed to "lose" when grabbing involves dropping my arm and weight correctly again, grabbing his hand with my free hand, and use both hands to lift his now-grabbed hand. A joint lock would then be applied, followed by a punch to the solar plexus. It was my incorrect weight drop and grabbing his wrist, not his hand, with my free hand that was messing me up. Instead of using two hands to apply the joint lock, I was using one, because I had seized wrong. I got into position for the punch and executed it, but the technique was done sloppy. I did do more practice and improved, but I'd love to work more on this one. This two-handed wrist grab may or may not be something for me to be concerned about in real life; if someone were in exactly that postion with me, I'd rather go for his face (poke the eyes, break the nose, knock out his teeth ) with my free hand. However, in terms of training, it's an opportunity for me to learn my own body's control, and utilize technique rather than go for brute strength.

Home Leg stretches Front swing kicks Kicking exercises lying on floor: - roundhouse and side kicks Forms: - Ki Cho Hyung (Il, E, Sam Bu) - Pyung Ahn Cho Dan - Chil Sung E Ro Hyung - Pyung Ahn E Dan Class - Ki Cho combinations - Self-defense techniques - One-step sparring exercises - Pre-testing board breaking side kicks against rebreakable practice board After Class - Used the dojang to practice my highest forms - Practiced most difficult self-defense techniques* *At home after class, watched DVD of these techniques at regular and one-fourth speeds