Toptomcat

The design of the chokuto was imported from China prior to the Heian period: after about 1200 I don't think any were made except for temple swords. If you really wanted to fight with one I suppose a Chinese jian art would be the way to go, or some other non-Japanese sword art: the oldest surviving school of Japanese swordsmanship dates to the 14th century, considerably after curved blades had become the only game in town. As for the ninjato, there's considerable doubt as to whether they even existed in actual Japanese history.

Classically, there's the tinbe-rochin, the traditional Okinawan pairing of a small shield (archetypically made from a turtle shell) and a short spear. It's one of those strange little corners of kobudo. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q349Gt1gLlY

Point-sparring competition can be quite tough for people who don't practice it regularly- I'm frankly not surprised that it ended up that way, since you seemed to be trying to figure out how it worked at the day of the comp, which is about as far from ideal as can be imagined. Even guys who have years of experience in point- guys who train specifically to win point tournaments- can get tripped up in the vagaries of the degree of contact allowed to one target or another in a given federation, or in a given tournament. Yes, the judge's histrionics were probably unjustified, but you shouldn't have expected much of anything other than a DQ considering the degree of preparation you walked in the door with. Sorry to be harsh, but dem's the breaks. Also, it probably didn't help that you threw a hook: point karate can be kind of provincial, and given the same amount of contact they'll penalize a hook nine times out of ten and a gyaku-tsuki or backfist one time out of ten.

They're both Japanese, and you wear a gi and belt in both of them. That's about it for the similarities. (It's not even the same kind of gi!) Shotokan is a striking art, focusing on punches and kicks: Judo is a grappling art, focusing on throws, trips, pins, joint locks, strangles, and wrestling. This means that the body mechanics involved are drastically different: you may even find some of your Shotokan reflexes hindering you. Don't let that discourage you, however. Judo is a great martial art to cross-train with Shotokan because it's so different- it covers situations Shotokan doesn't, which is immensely useful from a practical perspective.

I think by 'last a while' he means throughout an entire workout rather than over years.

Jack Dempsey and Bruce Lee were fans of a vertical-fist 'falling step' straight lead, and neither of them were really sine-wave people.

Glad I could be of help.

Both Lee Won Kuk's and Hwang Kee's studies in Shotokan can be historically verified- there are records, witnesses, dojos that were in the area they lived at the time. I don't think Lee Won Kuk has ever himself claimed that he learned taekkyon or other indigenous Korean martial arts, only that he was exposed to them in some capacity in his early training. Some of his students have claimed it on his behalf after he left Korea for political reasons, but to my knowledge he himself never did. As for Hwang Kee, his own interpretation of events is that he tried to learn taekkyon, was refused by a teacher of it, then went home and tried to teach it to himself from what he saw that teacher do- which I think anyone can agree is a terrible way to learn a martial art. Taekkyon's status as an art suppressed by both the Japanese occupation and before that the Neo-Confucian Korean government meant that at the time either man might have learned it, the art would be taught in secret, making historical verification one way or the other impossible- and thus creating a big temptation to stretch the truth when it later became politically fashionable to have a history in native Korean arts. It's much like the 80s 'ninja' boom in America- they're said to have been 'dishonorable', 'secret', 'outlawed' fighting styles, so nobody could reasonably be expected to produce historical documentation that said they were taught by a real Japanese ninja, so everyone and their dog ran around saying that they taught ninjutsu. So, again- whether or not taekkyon and/or Silla can trace their historical roots back to the Hwarang, you'd have a hard time arguing that Tang Soo Do can trace its roots back to either of them through Lee Won Kuk or Hwang Kee.

Not really. The art's nominal founder Hwang Kee claims to have been influenced by seeing the practice of, but never actually having been taught, the native kicking art taekkyon, and to have had some experience in an unspecified Chinese martial art, the Korean study of either of which could conceivably trace their roots to the Silla or Hwarang- but it's all a red herring. Precisely who Hwang Kee studied with and what the historical roots of those arts are is all but irrelevant to the modern practice of Tang Soo Do. What you really need to do to see the historical roots of Tang Soo Do is to give the art itself a long, close look. It's an art taught while wearing gis, with chambered punches, a colored belt system with ten junior and ten senior ranks, versions of the Pinan, Naihanchi, Ba/Passai, and Jitte kata, sweeping forearm blocks, and a fundamentally similar technical syllabus to karate. Compare the differences between a Tang Soo Do school and a Shotokan school to those between a Tang Soo Do school and a boxing gym, or Muay Thai school, or Baguazhang school, or judo school, or jujutsu school, or Japanese koryu school, or capoiera school, and it will rapidly become apparent where TSD's roots really lie.

Speaking as one of the 'finish immediately before impact' crowd, I've always thought that the specific biomechanical explanation for it was that it helped to involve the shoulder muscles.

"Yakusoku Kumite".

The history of the Korean martial arts is really tough to get solid information on due to a concerted and deliberate campaign of nationalist revisionist history on the part of the government and the highest political levels of each of the styles. Essentially, nobody wants to acknowledge the (huge) influence of Japanese martial arts in the present crop of KMA due to the historical beef Korea has with Japan. If you want reliable information, look for something written by an academic historian or journalist- someone who's not a practicing martial artist of either a Korean or Japanese style, and preferably not of Korean nationality or ethnically Korean. Look for lots of angry, negative reviews about the horrible, vicious lies it's telling about Tang Soo Do, about how their teacher told them it wasn't true, etc. etc.

You have an E-mail.

The typical term used for those is Sanbon or Gohan Kumite. Google those and you'll find plenty of results- though not all of them will necessarily be applicable to your school or even Isshinryu in general.

Can you be a little more specific?

Not 'front of the hand'- front hand. The back hand is seemingly all that's ever used for strikes. And I'm not saying that stance doesn't work well in that ruleset- obviously, as you've said, it does, or it wouldn't be used by all the top-level competitors. My question is why- what characteristics of that stance make it ideal for competition of that type?

Would any of you Shotokan types care to educate a full-contact barbarian raised on a steady diet of K-1, Sabaki Challenges, Kyokushin and Daido Juku about how to watch this? There are so many stylistic oddities. Why does no one ever strike with their front hand? What exactly are the rules for how kicks are adjudicated? What is going on with the frantic strangeness that happens when someone loses their footing? Why is hands-at-waist-pointing-straight-forward the only game in town stancewise? What, in short, should an educated consumer of point-sparring kumite know to make sense of it all?

If a gym caters to foreigners exclusively or nearly so I think I'd be worried about the quality of the instruction. The only reason to go to Thailand to train is to train like the Thai!

I wouldn't really be concerned about the technique in that clip. The student pictured is making yellow-belt mistakes, which is perfectly reasonable at his rank of yellow belt. If you're really worried about the quality of the instruction available there, you might want to upload a video of some of the more advanced students- preferably the instructor- performing kata and sparring. We'll be happy to evaluate it for you. (Though the karate community is fractious enough that you'll never get 100% agreement.)

Wow. With the training opportunities you have, and with it so firmly in alignment with your goals, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that it would border on foolish for you to refrain from starting a striking art as soon as possible.

Put me in the camp that says it can do nothing but good. There will always be a certain amount of confusion when sorting out how to integrate striking and grappling skills, figuring out which of your reflexes and instincts from one are counterproductive in the other: it can come when you come into striking from a grappling background, when you come into grappling from a striking background, or at the beginning when you're just working out both. You might as well get the confusion out of the way as soon as possible!

When using straight kicks to the front of the leg, watch out that you aren't doing it when the targeted leg is fully extended. Straight kicks to the front of the knee are generally avoided in full-contact arts because (assuming a properly conditioned leg) they typically have negligible effect but have a small chance of hyperextending the leg to the point where one or more tendons rupture, if it's quite straight and has enough weight on it. Round kicks to the thigh- as more commonly seen in MT- are much safer, while also having more effect for 98% of the time.

Do work your way up to it, though- don't just start throwing full-force kicks to the leg with no prep. Legs are a lot like the torso in that they'll take a phenomenal amount of punishment if you condition them well, but not very much at all if you don't.

A great deal of kumite is an excellent way to turn mere surface understanding of techniques and principles you've been taught by kata and kihon into deeper understanding- the kind of deeper understanding that comes from seeing those techniques and principles in a context closer to that in which they're intended to be applied than is seen in kata and kihon.

Both. If I'm fighting a guy who has to fight 99 other people and I'm hitting him hard and he's hitting hard back and not quitting, you can't help but respect that guy. Kuma, I understand your sentiment, but I got the impression from soheir's post that it was more about impressing others (beyond the participants). Chitsu You have one post from someone that says you'll get a lot of respect, then immediately afterwords said that it's not *all* about respect, and one post that says it's mostly about testing oneself but also tangentially involves respect. I don't think there's a lot of room for misinterpretation there unless you go looking for it. Complete a difficult task in a certain field of endeavour and experts in that field will respect you- but there's nothing that prevents the emphasis being on the innate virtue of accomplishing a difficult task, not receiving the respect.