Toptomcat

Do you have an opinion on Chi Sao competitions? What about kakie, an Okinawan training practice that appears to be at least superficially similar?

Try Google Maps, it's a useful resource. There might be a better and closer place than you think.

I think it has something to do with the fact that they permit, and somewhat specialize in, leg locks: they may be too dominant in competition with the added leverage provided by gi pants.

Sambo is a Russian style that primarily draws from judo and karate: its practitioners compete in judo gi tops and shorts that are quite short.

Never watch a sambo tournament if short-shorts put you off

Elaborate. Do you mean who taught Gichin Funakoshi and who taught his teacher and so on?

Put it this way- Taekwondo and Shotokan aren't more different than Shotokan and many other karate styles universally recognized as being Japanese, like Goju, Wado and Kyokushin.

My ridgehand is not quite as swingy as DWx's video, but definitely closer to that than RW's video. I routinely hit the heavy bag with a full-force ridge hand and have not had any injuries. What frustrates me about it is that I don't know why it works. It seems like it'd just be a haymaker-type strike, easily seen and slipped or blocked- but whenever I get someone into a corner it seems to hit quite consistently when I mix it in with other strikes. I also use a regular knife hand to the head that comes in a lot like an open-handed soto uke, usually preceded by a step to the opponent's side and the use of the other hand to sweep aside the opponent's guard.

They aren't Shotokan and they don't say they are. They're descended from the same Okinawan systems all other modern martial arts that call themselves 'karate' also descend from. They also mix in some other things- but then Wado-ryu is recognized almost absolutely universally as a karate style and they freely admit they mix in Shindō Yōshin-ryū jujutsu. Mind you, your sensei may have his facts mixed up but the general thrust of his point is a valid one: in my experience the American kenpo systems have a huge and systemic problem with fraud and substandard teaching, and having contempt for them in general is not something I'd write off someone as being unusually closed-minded for. The good schools are fewer and farther between than they are in many other branches of karate.

It's worth noting that before he even called it 'karate' Gichin Funakoshi was calling the art he learned 'Ryukyu kempo'. That's the term he used in his first book on the art, before the 'karate' terminology caught on.

Yeah. One of those interesting things about Judo is that it's a better self-defense art in Toronto than it is in Miami

I see. By 'have no access' to BJJ or judo do you mean that there are no schools in your area, or that you simply haven't yet convinced your parents to let you take either style?

Why the singling out of Tae Kwon Do as 'not karate' by both of you? 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. The only martial system that all of its major founding figures can be historically verified to have shared in common was Shotokan karate. Tae Kwon Do is a Shotokan karate lineage that happens to focus on kicks and use Korean terminology rather than Japanese. The fact that those high up in the style's hierarchy like to distance themselves from their Japanese roots for political reasons doesn't change that.

Silliness. There's plenty of more general-use pads that work just as well when held at that level.

You're 13, which means that you almost certainly have access to your school's wrestling team if nothing else. If you have no access to BJJ or judo, use that.

I've incorporated a full range of boxing punches into my hand work and I still use ridgehands, mainly as a power shot to a cornered opponent.

But he has no grappling background and no training partners with a grappling background. Attempting video learning in that position is begging for a serious injury.

Welcome to the forums. What kind of events are you talking about, where? Tournaments? Seminars? Fights by big-name Wado-trained guys? Political developments within Wado organizations? You'll need to be more specific to make this a meaningful question.

The problem lies in those who train half-heartedly and believe they know how to defend themselves. There's such a thing as training that's so poor that it's worse than never having been trained at all, training that creates a false sense of security that can be actively counterproductive in keeping people safe- and there's a great deal of it out there.

The systems identifying themselves as 'kempo karate' in the United States have their origins in a blend of Okinawan, Japanese, and Chinese martial arts that got their start in Hawaii in the thirties. While quality control is a serious problem in a lot of such systems, and there are a lot of McDojos in the kempo karate world, there are those who have made a good fighting art out of it, and the terminology- while odd and perhaps somewhat misleading- is not truly fraudulent. The biggest influence on them by far is still the Okinawan and Japanese martial arts that influenced most modern systems of karate, so they have as much claim to be called 'karate' as anyone.

'100% traditional'? Whose traditions? Those of your teacher? Your teacher's teacher? The founder of a particular karate substyle? The 20s-30s pioneers of karate- Motobu Chōki, Chōjun Miyagi, Gichin Funakoshi and the like? The traditions of the Naha-te, Shuri-te, or Tomari-te? Those of the Fujian White Crane systems that influenced them? Those of the Shaolin monks who are said to have originated Fujian white crane? Those of Bodhidharma, who is said to have originated the martial traditions of the monks? Thinking that way isn't very productive- it's turtles all the way down. Far better to think of what makes a martial art effective, and why. Your way of fighting may very well be a worthwhile one, and very close to how the original Okinawan martial arts looked, but neither of those two things necessarily follows from the other.

However it may be related to Japanese Karate, but it is indeed not Japanese Karate. It is still a Korean art that is labeled as a Korean Karate style, not Japanese. To illustrate, lets look at Ice Cream. Ice cream comes from milk, it is not milk but it is made from milk. The end result of Ice cream is something completely different from milk. The milk that it came from is not what it used to be. It is now Ice Cream. Its essence has changed, its look, its texture, its flavor, it is no longer milk it is now Ice cream. Milk and Ice Cream are both Dairy products, but still two very separate and distinct things. The difference is closer to that between french vanilla ice cream and vanilla ice cream, really. It's a Korean martial art that also happens to descend very directly from Japanese karate, and the similarities far, far outweigh the differences. I say this as a current student of both.

True, but it has videos on how to do the takedowns and someone explains on how preform themWho will be your partner, though? If my brother will agree to it then him. Even though he hasn't ever done anything as far as Judo or any other style like that, we would be able to practice one specific takedown in various postitionsYou will not learn anything useful, and you will have a high chance of hurting either yourself or your brother. I cannot stress this enough- find a place to train. There really is no other way. Find a dojo, please.

Legs are strong, and the head is a very valuable target. Kicking high undeniably involves risk, but there's a high potential reward involved as well- a hard blow to a very vital area. With careful study of how to identify and minimize the risks involved, high kicks can become an intelligent risk to take under the right circumstances.

But they won't teach you how to actually do them to someone who knows what they're doing unless you have a pretty good understanding of how grappling works in the first place, which is what you go to a grappling class to get.