Toptomcat

Why not judge training methods by the caliber of martial artists they produce, not their degree of adherence to old methods of the Japanese Karate Association? In my opinion sparring-heavy styles of karate have produced some impressive karateka...

I'm glad to hear that judo is working out for you!

In my opinion there are simpler, more direct, more effective training methods than 'do this rote physical activity for thousands of repetitions and in a month or two I'll tell you what it's for.' That kind of thing makes for great cinema- I liked The Karate Kid too- but if my sensei taught like that with any regularity I would find another school. 'What is the specific purpose of this training activity?' is always a question that should be answered.

...make more chocolate ice cream?

To be more specific, I put "This doesn't really work, does it?" into the 'obnoxious questions' category because it's both excessively vague and very blunt- it's very easy for an instructor to take that as a direct challenge to their competence. Something that specifically addresses why you feel the technique is problematic while being more diplomatically phrased would certainly be a valid question.

The degree of black belt means very little when you don't already know the group of schools issuing it. If it's a really expensive school, I'd keep looking.

Well, there are questions and there are questions. There are good reasons for wanting to keep people from asking obnoxious questions- "this doesn't really work, does it?", "how do I use this if I'm attacked by fifty ninjas?", "what about these fifty slight variations that I made up on the spot, aren't they all so much better?", "why are we bothering with all this standup stuff when I read in a magazine that 99% of fights go to the ground?". But there are other questions. "Does my arm end up parallel to my thigh or slightly inside it?", "Should this be a blood choke or an air choke?", "Why do we chamber in a different way for this kick?", "How do I set this up?" Any school that discouraged questions of that second type- limited in scope to ensure that the answer doesn't take up the whole lesson, pertinent to the technique being shown, and asked solely in the spirit of learning more, without any ulterior motives behind them- would be one that worried me.

Judo, man! I'm not kidding. Just a week or two, please. Give it a look, it's exactly perfect for solving this specific problem.

They make a lot of noise about teaching Muay Thai and MMA on their Web site without apparently having any listed instructors with credentials in either area, which is a little concerning.

This is like 99.9% a 'feel' thing, something video or verbal instruction won't really help with. Get some hands-on teaching.

I think that you're underrating the value of being able to deliver a calibrated amount of force in a self-defense situation: you only seem able to conceive of using martial arts in a warlike manner, at maximum and lethal amplitude. The purpose to which martial arts skills are suited is almost completely different from the purpose to which a firearm or nuclear weapon is suited, and I think your use of the analogy reveals the flaws in your thinking. I think you have a mental model of martial arts that's fundamentally faulty. Choosing some arbitrary rank of karate past which you are learning skills that are suited not to self-defense, but to some other, hypothesized activity- your 'entirely different sphere'- is an exercise in futility: past green belt you simply refine your understanding of distance, timing, movement, and striking in such a way as to benefit the activity of self-defense as much or more than what you learned from white belt to green belt. These skills are the most important difference between a black belt and a green belt: the techniques are tools used to help the student train them. There may be an argument that refinement of those skills past a certain point is likely to be an excessive amount of effort expended for a relatively insignificant gain in personal safety, but it's not one you're making. I think you didn't read my post with particular care- it contains a number of qualifications about how and why I thought what I do goes beyond 'self-defense' in the strict sense, none of which were addressed very explicitly or very well in your reply. I think that you settled on your conclusion before you asked the question and are increasingly displaying an unwillingness to be convinced otherwise or to move past your initial set of assumptions, even when they've been respectfully and rigorously questioned by more or less everyone else who's posted in this thread, and I think that your propensity to psychoanalyze those asking about your argument rather than addressing their points is beginning to border on the tendentious.

"Perfecting white belt techniques" is how one earns a black belt. The progress in a martial artist's training is not a sliding scale of "deadliness," but rather of skill. As we advance in our arts, we do not learn techniques that are more lethal, we learn techniques that are more skillful. Yes, we do become more capable of delivering serious injury, but that comes from the perfection of the techniques that we learned in our first months on the floor, not from learning some secret death-touch. If you still insist on labeling us as warriors, then consider this: Every soldier in the US military learns to use a firearm. Very few even carry guns, let alone ever have to use them. In that regard, are we martial artists not more likely to call upon our skills (unarmed self-defense) than actual soldiers? I also have to agree with GeoGiant; from what, exactly, do you believe that runners flee? It must be some literal pursuer, if our "war" must be and actual battle. Very eloquently and cogently put.

Call me a hopeless romantic, but a big part of why I study the martial arts is so I will know that wherever I go, the strongest man in the room will also be a good one. Self-defense is too narrow a phrase for what I want to be able to deal with effectively: I want to be able to defend others should it become necessary, and ideally to be able to defend myself without risk of lethal injury to the aggressor. Additionally, I think your designation of ‘white belt techniques’ as those that are non-lethal and simple and ‘black belt techniques’ as those that are lethal and complicated is a gross oversimplification. Someone who’s trained to an excellent standard will be better able to calibrate the level of force they use than someone who’s trained to a lesser one, not handicapped by the sheer volume of ‘lethal’ training they’ve absorbed.

Yes. No difference at all, just two words for the same thing. See also: keikogi, dobok.

Someone who's short and heavily muscled can make just as effective use of all of the advantages I mentioned as someone who's merely small.

Take a judo class, even if only for a short time. The first week or so will be almost exclusively about perfecting your breakfalls and getting comfortable with getting thrown.

*Nod* You can screw your hands up hitting the heavy bag wrong, too, but it's a respected and viable method of training none the less.

Look at them and decide what will train you most effectively for what you want to do. My first instinct is that tumbling fits the bill best. Parkour looks cool and is neat in its own right. but I'm having a hard time picturing how you'd apply it to a high-flying wrestling style.

Wow at the first video. The working theory is, almost verbatim, 'fight like a mental patient and hope it scares them off'.

They're all really more shorter-person advantages than smaller-person advantages.

I'm seriously puzzled over exactly what kind of 'elbow strike' everyone but me seems to know without having to have it explained. There are so many kinds- descending elbows, horizontal elbows, rising elbows, reverse elbow thrusts, spinning elbows... Can someone help me out, please?

There ARE other advantages. Your hips are lower, so you have an easier time doing some kinds of throws. Once you get inside, you can find ways to strike that make the defender's long limbs more a liability than an asset. It's easier to hit certain low targets, like the liver, groin, and legs. Agreed that the advantages are far outweighed by the disadvantages, though.

Make no mistake- size matters no matter what ruleset you're operating at. All other things being equal, a good big man will beat a good little man, full stop- even in a real confrontation. Point values reach somewhat more than real combat, true, but don't go from that to the conclusion that size or reach are totally neutral factors in an actual confrontation. If you didn't block because they were too far away to hit you, that's fine- just a weakness of the scoring system of no-contact. But you said they tapped you on the helmet, and there's no such thing as an extreme of someone's reach that they can touch you with their closed fist and still fail to deliver a full-power blow: indeed most straight punches are at their strongest at arm's reach. You aren't getting hurt because it's point and they're pulling their punches, not because you've found some distance that lets them tap your forehead but not punch your face.

Ummm... actually, they do. I can think of several in my area, including the school I train at, that would fit this description. It sounds like you have had some very negative experiences with MA schools, but don't give up, good ones are out there. I've got to second this. There is a lot of mediocre training out there, but there are also a fair number of schools that fit precisely this description. To find a lot of them you're probably going to have to shed some of your disdain for MMA and its associated disciplines, though. There are ways of finding such schools- if you'd like me to help you out, PM me with your general location and I'll try to give you a hand.

Ha! I think I may have found a piece we're missing. Kūsankū is noted in a few sources I've found as a military envoy. This would have provided an alternative source for his martial training while providing a clear reason for why he would've been sent in official capacity. As for any personal association with the Emperor- well, it would be speculation at best, but not unreasonable speculation. We don't even know if it was a sign of favor or disfavor- sending someone far away from their homeland in a diplomatic posting can be a way of awarding prestige, but it can also be a way of gently getting rid of troublesome elements.