Toptomcat

'Vale tudo dueling style' is not necessarily the same as 'street fighting style', though it bears many important similarities.

Show me anyone on a high level of MMA who doesn't cross-train. You're setting an impossible standard of purity, one that is by your own admission regularly violated by Nak Muay.

I occasionally wear my judo gi to class when my karate gi hasn't gotten out of the laundry yet. Since the only difference is that it's a heavier weight, nobody gives me much grief about it.

If the flow of a knockdown match looks like boxing to you, you need to watch more of both. The threat of head punches has dramatic effects on range and the tempo of the match: the presence of gloves and absence of kicks makes the range of defensive techniques available vastly different, and the 'knockdown' vs. 'knockout' criteria for victory make for very different standards of what finishes a fight.

The strictly traditional karate blocks are not terribly applicable to knockdown kumite. Dave's sparring is not the stop-and-go affair you may be used to: even if one strike is blocked perfectly with a textbook chudan age uke another few tsuki will be headed down the pipe, and they'll hurt! This is what a successful competitor in knockdown looks like. As an aside, that's a pretty poor jodan age uke by the standard of orthodox Shotokan: the fist should be facing outward, with the wrist straight, not bent.

He said earlier that his gi sleeves are short: I think that might be why he's getting cuts on his forearms, because he's blocking bareknuckle strikes with bare forearms. Just getting a longer gi might prevent some of the cuts.

Speaking as someone who's changed karate styles three times, grading from white belt each time, it's not really a problem. You learn all sorts of interesting things about how and why the different styles of karate do things, giving you a better picture of karate as a whole and giving you a better appreciation for the reasons behind minute features of your technique. And- provided you keep an open mind and try to learn the new system rather than struggling to impose Wado on it- enough will be similar that if you're a good Wado karateka, you'll be a good karateka just about anywhere if you put enough effort into it.

Oof. Kata are a big part of karate- I train them and like it- but that kind of load would drive me crazy.

This was at a college karate club, not anything for-profit, but our Friday night showings of kung fu movies where everyone chipped in for a bit of pizza were tremendously helpful in keeping people involved, interested, and involved in the club socially as well as for the activity itself.

The General Secretary of the US branch might know the E-mail of someone in the Canadian branch. His E-mail is given here. http://skifusa.com/

One thing that I've found helpful in that reguard is to maintain a clear mental distinction between causing my partner pain- acceptable- and giving my partner a lasting injury- unacceptable.

I love San Da catch-and-sweep counters to those strikes personally, though the rules in a lot of lighter-contact events are rather unfriendly to them.

Take her aside and ask her what she wants out of martial arts. If she sees it primarily as a cultural, social, or exercise activity and is unconcerned with her ability to defend herself, then leave it at that and reach an understanding with her that she will be coming to class and paying full dues, but not continuing to climb the ranks of your system. If she is there because she wants to learn how to defend herself, then calmly explain to her that sparring and partner drills are essential to developing many aspects of karate that are essential to self-defense, such as a proper sense of distance and timing. Explain that the purpose of such exercises is not to 'fight' or maliciously injure others, but to simulate the act of fighting as accurately as possible with as little injury as possible for the improvement of both partners. If she agrees with this in principle, but her problem is a frightened gut reaction to partner work more than a philosophical objection to it, then work out a program of progressively more resistant partner drills designed to ease her gently into sparring. I've found particularly useful in that reguard.

McDojoism is in my opinion defined by exploitative business practices- stunts like years-long inescapable contracts, forcing the students to buy overpriced paraphernalia to advance, nickel-and-diming their students with charges at every juncture they can get away with, and the like. People who are entirely well-meaning, serious, and dedicated to martial arts as they see it can promote martial arts that lack sparring and entirely downplay the physical attributes of MA in favor of their spiritual/mystical aspects. I personally think they're barking up the wrong forest, but being intentionally, actively, maliciously deceptive is not what I think is going on in the vast majority of such cases, and such schools should not be labeled McDojos per se.

What kind of forearm-conditioning exercises are you thinking of? Clashing forearm blocks with a partner, having sensei beat the hell out of them with a shinai, hard muk jong work? I just can't think of anything that would really beat or usefully supplement having the tar beaten out of them on a regular baisis in knockdown kumite.

A knockdown style of karate is one that stems from Mas Oyama's Kyokushinkaikan in the 1960s: they're pretty much the only ones that spar in that characteristic manner, with hard or full contact and with no protective gear whatsoever but no hand strikes permitted to the head. It's good stuff.

Read the rules carefully and thoroughly. They go quite a bit further than just the typical formal codification of 'don't post porn, no foul language, don't be a jerk' that's typically seen on online messageboard codes of conduct, and they're enforced. I confess I skimmed over them the first time around, and that decision bit me in the rear not long ago. That said, welcome! This is a fun place.

You're doing kumite in nothing but a gi, with no gloves, headgear or footpads on? Oh, okay. You're from a knockdown style. There is such a thing as a forearm guard, which you may want to buy. Rock or rope climbing is an excellent forearm workout if you want to get a bit more muscle in the area that's getting hit. Also, there are a lot of people in the MA community that swear by Tiger Balm for bumps and bruises: alternatively there are a lot of people who like some kind or another of dit da jow for that purpose. Neither is for application on cuts, though, only bruises. There are forearm hardening exercises in some branches of karate, but since they mostly consist of beating the hell out of your forearms much like you're already doing in kumite already I doubt they'd do you much good. Hope that helps.

What kind of gear are you using, exactly?

The individual counts for a lot, but to say that the individual is the only thing that counts is to ignore the role of the teacher. There is such a thing as karate that is suited for self-defense and karate that is unsuited for self-defense.

I would go further than you but stop well short of the most enthusiastic detractors of karate. While the technical syllabus of karate is effective, that's not all that goes into a martial art's usefulness to self-defense: there are also a school's training practices. The presence or absence of certain training practices, such as an emphasis on physical rigor and aliveness, can make a world of difference. Regardless of an individual karateka's talent or dedication, if they study in the wrong place their karate will be dramatically less useful for self-defense than if they'd studied in another dojo. An individual's characteristics can give them good karate if they studied in a poor dojo, and excellent karate if they studied in a merely average one, but to discount the role of a school's training practices entirely in favor of the innate ability of its individual students is an oversimplification at best and foolish at worst.

Phoning these folks will probably get you an answer. http://www.skif.ca/

Here's a similar thread that may have some of the answers you're looking for.

I was asking you. I asked because all that sounded like a bit much for one belt, since there are quite often ten before black.

Interesting. How many belts do you have before black?