JohnC

To help boredom make sure you've set measureable goals that require you to work with intensity and keep your head in the workout. If you're listening to music, watching tv, chatting with your friend, then you're not working hard enough. For example, I just finished an aerobics run after being off for a few months due to injury and rehabilitation (broke a toe and jammed another one). I used two pieces of equipment (a versa climber and an eliptical trainer). I trained on these 2 times per week with 3 days rest between training sessions (I'm 55 and workout every day but do different objectives (e.g. aerobic, strength, technical, fighting, flexibility) each day to give myself recovery time). My objective was to increase my aerobic capacity so that I could maintain sustained activity for 1 hour (i.e. 1 class period). I started with 10 minutes on the versa climber at a 8 inch step and 60 RPM immediately followed by 10 minutes on the elliptical at a level 3 (out of a possible 10). My training timeframe was 12 weeks or 24 sessions. I increased the intensity of the session each time by increasing some combination of time, resistance, RPM and monitored these effects via a heart monitor to make sure I stayed in my appropriate ranges. Bottom line is that at the end of 24 sessions (12 weeks) I was doing 30 minutes on the versa climber baselining at 8 inch steps, 60 RPM for 3 minutes (aerobic heart rate) followed by 2 minutes at 14 inch steps at 55 RPM (performance heart rate (i.e. anaerobic training)) for 6 intervals. This was immediately followed by 30 minutes on the elliptical with baselining at a level 3, 60 RPM for 3 minutes (aerobic heart rate), followed by 2 minutes at a level 8, 60 rpm (performance heart rate), for 6 intervals. This met my original goal of sustained effort for 1 hour. I found my limiter was that my legs weren't strong enough to push the higher rates for the sustained periods. My wind was ok but my strength endurance was not. So, I'm currently doing a 12 week session where I'm working on the elliptical (I can't easily change resistance on the versa climber) to train that. I'm starting with 30 minutes broken into 5 minute sections where I increase the resistance in each section while maintaining heart rate. I've started at level 1 - 6 in my first session to begin baselining and found I was reducing RPM by 2 - 4 beats each section to maintain heart rate. I'll increase intensity each session. My goal is to be able to maintain a 60 RPM rate moving from a level 4 to a level 10 (i.e. increasing grade / resistance) while keeping my heart rate in the high aerobic / low endurance range. As I'm also working strength in this 12 weeks, I think I'll actually better my goal, but we'll see. Last comment is, when working with intensity be sure you give yourself appropriate recovery time. You grow stronger during recovery NOT exercise. Most people skimp on the recovery time and wind up over-training and getting injured. At my age (even as an experienced athlete), I find I need roughly 48 to 72 hours to recover from a specific type of workout. Younger folks (or better athletes) can usually get by with 24 - 48 hours. Back to the original statement, if you work with intensity to reach specific measureable goals, you won't have time to be bored and you'll achieve results, not just spend time in the gym. The focus is to IMPROVE performance and if you don't see significant improvement over reasonable timeframes (measured in weeks not months) then your training plan needs to be changed. (For example, and no offense meant to anyone, go onto the "training log" thread, take a few people posting actual data (e.g. weights, reps, sets) and look at improvement over time.) Hope this helps.

Unfortunately many attacks are NOT preceded by a lot of talking. Thus, the idea that one will have time to say things like "leave me alone" or even "stop" may not be a viable assumption. This idea is based in the assumption that altercations begin small and then escalate in a relatively smooth continuum. This is simply not true in many cases (especially when dealing with criminals and / or people drunk or on drugs). Hence again the idea of trigger points. My interest is in, if you believe trigger points are good, then how do you go about setting them, because, by definition, this is when you GO, regardless of what has happened before or expected to happen in the future. I'd also argue strongly the if one can't define this state then, regardless of training, one will very probably never GO, as one will be caught in "analysis paralysis" or fall back on the original belief (stated above) that one can weather the 'first strike' and still be able to effectively respond. Your thoughts?

The gist seems to be pre-emptive strikes are a good idea on the street with a concern about legalities. RBSD teaches the concept of "trigger points". That is, establishing certain actions (e.g. attack moves) / distances (e.g. touch my fence) / behaviors (e.g. threatening, aggressive posturing) before a confrontation which will trigger the pre-emptive strike. This idea is based in two facts: first, that most people find it very difficult to actually throw the first punch (i.e. pre-emptive strike). Second, that the longer one takes to initiate action within a confrontation, the harder it becomes to initiate action (a fact many times known to the bad guys (whether explicitly or implicitly), as well as fear responses and the effects of adrenal rush). By creating trigger points and training them, these hesitations cease. Trigger points assume that all discussion of legalities, aftermath concerns, etc have been taken into account in the setting of the trigger point. LEO's, for example, mostly set their trigger points at "resistance" and / or "perceived threat" and then follow a quickly escalating continuum approach to the violence of the response (which is usually one to two steps higher than the perceived level of resistance / threat). This model doesn't really translate well for the average citizen, for a variety of reasons. Thus: Question: Your thoughts on the above? Question: If you agree with this approach, how do you go about establishing your trigger points (the focus here is not what the trigger points are but how you arrived at them)? Question: Do you actually train trigger points or assume that you will react per plan if a situation arises?

Last time I looked Tokaido made Karate gis not Judo gis. Thus, I'm not sure they'll hold up against serious Judo action. However, you mention MMA and Judo in the same sentence and I'm a bit confused because MMA really doesn't include much throwing (i.e. Judo's main focus). If you mean you're doing ground work then Tokaido's heavy weight may work for you. Hope this helps.

A couple of other topics (e.g. one punch, one kill) also bring up this issue. Many MA premise "let the other guy throw the first punch" or MA is defensive only. This assumes that one believes he / she has the ability to 'take' the first punch and then still be able to mount a viable defense. This assumption is dubious, at best, because few real fights are 'fair' (e.g. same weight class, ability, one-on-one standup), especially if weapons will be involved. Question: Is it time to revise this assumption and teach preemptive strike, as the RBSD folks contend?

That's the spoof of Der Arnold that is always bringing up Da Rules

As with most things, it depends on what you're going to do with it. If you're going to use it for combat purposes, you want a wood that is fairly resilient while still being hard and tough. Red Oak has worked well for me for both nunchaku and bo. Another attribute is weight. You want something that has enough weight to do damage but is still light enough for you to handle (one problem with using teak or ironwood is how heavy the weapon becomes). Lastly, you want something that won't splinter or chip on contact (a problem with rattan) and can be easily lightly oiled so that it doesn't dry out and crack (wood weapons must also be maintained unless your in the use a few times then throw it away and get a new one school of kobudo ). As with Joesteph, I also have a rosewood jo that has stood up fairly well. For tournament / sport purposes the above probably isn't very useful as the objectives are different. Hope this helps.

You might try Raymond Feist's stuff starting with Magician: Apprentice through A Darkness at Sethanon (4 books). This is his early stuff and, although the entire series (15+ books) is OK, personally I found that the later books became less good. The story lines run for 3 - 5 books each and then time jump to a new segment of the saga. I really enjoy Jim Butcher's Dresden Files as modern day sword and sorcery. I don't much care for his other series. SciFi had a TV series based upon the books that gives a fair approximation but, in my opinion, the books are significantly better. Mary Stewart's handling of the Arthurian legend is the best I've ever read (The Crystal Cave through The Last Enchantment), seriously good writing that happens to be fantasy. Just a few thoughts. Hope they help.

One of the issues in BJJ is to not get mentally locked into getting / retaining a particular position / hold and to flow with the fight dynamic. This idea results in 'flow' drills that focus on how to move from one position to another and how to control the opponent during movement from one position to another. I'd like to share one such drill just for discussion's sake. Unfortunately, for brevity, you'll need a basic understanding of BJJ to fill in between the lines and get the moves. If you have specific questions, please post and I'll try to give a more detailed answer. Question is: do you do flow drills and, if so, do you have any you'd care to share? Start in guard. Knee drop pass to 1/2 guard (if you go directly to side control with this pass, you'll miss the 1/2 guard transition). Pass to side control (if you go directly to mount with this pass, you'll miss the side control transition). Hip switch to mount. Move off mount to Kesa Gatame (headlock). Switch to Kata Gatame (front shoulder choke). Move around to North / South. Pass to Rear Back. Sweep to Rear Top. Step off and roll opponent over (face up) to Knee on Belly.

Thanks for the review. More grist for the mill

I"d offer that Fantasy is a pretty big field. For example there's a big difference between Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and Butcher's Dresden Files but both are essentially 'sword and sorcery'. Can you narrow it down a bit?

As yet I have been unable to find any credible evidence that "all fights go to the ground" or even that the majority do. The few attempts that I have seen to validate this idea tend to dispute the statement. The idea that one should seek to go to the ground as a standard approach on the street or in combat seems a tactical mistake in my view, for a variety of operational reasons too numerous to enumerate. This does not imply that a knowledge of grappling / ground fighting isn't necessary, as the other fellow might take you to the ground and you need to be able to fight. However, just because one knows how doesn't necessarily make it the best strategy.

Brian, Jurgen Von Strangle is my hero

Japanese culture includes spending a lot of time on one's knees or sitting on the floor, even now, thus the Aiki training. I'm not sure it's meaningful anywhere else. Personally, I try to stay standing as much as I can, especially against a standing opponent.

I'd offer that those that fear death in many cases see it as an ending rather than a beginning. An interesting take given that most of them also say that there is an afterlife which is presumed to be vastly better than this one.

Wally Jay's and George Kirby's stuff are good starting points. However, Japanese Jiu-Jitsu (JJJ) has a VERY differnt flavor from Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ). The first Jiu-Jitsu book I remember reading was Bruce Tegner's back around 1960 Hope this helps.

A quote from World War II ran something like this, when the gestapo came for the Jews I did nothing because I wasn't a Jew. When they came for the young men I did nothing because I wasn't young. When they came for me there was no one left to do something. This is the slippery slope that "the fellow could have walked away but didn't and so he gets in trouble" leads to. A second argument is "enlightened self-interest" (implied above) which essentially says, one needs to include the welfare of the group and the long term impacts of one's actions in making one's decisions. This applies in that by making the self-centered short term oriented decision of not risking getting in trouble for resisting these behaviors / not getting involved, one creates / enables a much larger long term problem by enabling a general deterioration of the group's good life. (and, yes, I understand the legal implications of the above ideas and am not advocating the simplistic idea of vigilante-ism. I'd argue that these kinds of operational moral decisions have merit for discussion, else we're simply building pie-in-the-sky "enlightenment".) To bring this back to the "internal arts" focus, as trained MA do we have any moral duty to help the helpless, to become involved, to risk or is the idea that internal development is essentially ascetic and limited to one's isolated and self-centered physical / spiritual development only? This is the Spiderman question of "with power comes responsibility". That one side-steps a confrontation may be good in the instant but if the aggressor then moves on and hurts another less able to defend themselves do we have any responsibility for letting it happen or is our world limited to those things that only affect us in the 'now'? (And, again, I understand the surrogate question around 'it's the police's job to handle this'. The problem with the argument is two fold: first the police engage after the fact and thus have little pre-emptive capacity, second, they usually aren't there when the incident happens, which means that even though "punishment of the perp" may happen at some later time, the damage is done). I realize these are philosophical / moral questions rather than technique-cal ones. My interest here is in the practical real world application of MA knowledge and the 'why' of it rather than the how. In my view if these operational conundrums are not discussed then one moves to the argument of why learn all this stuff as one will never use it. Your thoughts?

I haven't seen any chest guards that offer any significant protection that would fit comfortably under a karate gi. If you want to pursue, I'd suggest the foam ones would be your best bet, due to the 3/4" -1" padding thickness. Any of the well known brands would probably do. Hope this helps.

People continue this kind of behavior because they have learned they can get away with it. Additionally, many times this experience of 'getting away with it' leads to escalation into even more troublesome behaviors. This silliness began back in the 50's with Dr. Spock saying that there was no such thing as a "bad boy", leading to the 'unconditional love' idea and so forth. However, in my view, we have created the world we live in, as we and our parents, are the ones who 'bought into' the approach and passed the laws allowing animals to wander the streets. The old west may not have been as 'civilized' as today but they were a lot more polite. Knowing that the other fellow may very well take personal Offense with such behavior does tend to dampen it.

To have universal meaning requires standardization (one of the reasons folks have moved to certifications to establish knowledgebase in contrast to degrees). As standardization probably isn't ever going to happen, then having a common meaning for what "black belt" means won't either. In addition, with a lot of folks now studying many arts over their time instead of one, a person can be a high Dan in one and a low Kyu in another. Which rank is correct? Lastly there is always the difference between someone who has / did earn a rank there / then but really isn't very good here / now, for whatever reason. Should keeping their rank require recurrent certification? Bottom line, I gave up a long long time ago paying attention to what belt someone wears. As Sensei8 put it, the proof's on the floor.

MMA_Jim brings up something I'd like to pursue a little further. I find on discussions that folks seem to assume one should train for fighting Randy Coture at the local hangout on Friday night or the latest super Ninja in the alley behind the local store. I'd posit that this scenario is highly unlikely and wonder if the discussion should be centered around more likelier scenarios? Secondly, if one does happen to get into such a scenario then why in the world would you fight someone bigger, heavier, younger, faster, better conditioned, better trained hand to hand, instead of picking him off with a bullet in the back from a scoped rifle from 600 meters out while he's on the pot with his pants down reading the newspaper ? (Hyperbole aside, point being why would anyone fight hand to hand if the odds are really good you'd lose?)

Ryukasagi, I hate it when that happens I saw this episode. Interesting.

WNM Do ya nae ken the idea of sampling? (And I'm going to let this one drop here. )

I prefer to leave roughly 1 inch protruding to enable butt strikes and facilitate tuite. I'm not sure the counter-balance argument is meaningful.

Forgive me for quoting personal experience, as it's the only kind I have.