RW

Something I have noticed what intrigues me is how even karate or traditional martial arts techniques are first dismissed by muay thai fighters as one of those "impractical karate stuff", then when someone is actually skilled and open minded enough to make them work, suddenly everyone tries to incorporate them into their MMA repertoire and suddenly "they're MMA/Muay thai techniques". And when a technique is obviously not muay thai, then the technique gets called a funny name and its origin (not muay thai) is supressed. I'm starting to hear nonsense such as the "anderson silva kick" (mae geri kick to the face) or "lyoto machida kick" (jumping front kick to the face).

MMA is a strange matter, technically speaking. It has attracted some sort of "bro culture" in some cases, where it's all "Muay thai, jiu jitsu and wrestling". Everything gets labeled like that, and somehow everything taught as "MMA" is called "boxing" (when it comes to punches), "muay thai" (when it comes to punches and kicks),"wrestling" (everything takedowns) and BJJ (everything submissions). Turns out many MMA fighters have had karate backgrounds (http://www.sherdog.net/forums/f61/30-successful-karate-fighters-mma-1040386/), yet the MMA culture tends to supress/ignore that, unless the fighter is quite vocal about it like machida. For example, did you know that chuck lidell did karate? (I'm breaking this post into two so it does not become a wall of text)

They are not very important. They are essential!!! You must get used to the sentation of your fists/feet hitting a target. You also need to develop KO power. Punching or kicking really fast/hard in a kata will give you power, but it needs to be complemented with the power that comes from hitting pads and heavy bags... they will make your strikes carry some"weight' to them. As for sparring... you need to develop reaction times and reflexes. Someone who has never sparred also sometimes "'freezes" and gets nervous... now imagine if it was a real fight! 2) Sadly, sport karate has in my opinion, done a dis-service to karate as a self-defense form. Point sparring had the right idea (practice strikes without hitting as hard as to make your opponent go to work with a black eye tomorrow, provide some protection -padding, helmets, etc), but people began exploiting points on its ruleset meant to protect the fighters, not making it some sort of game. Ever heard of "blitzing"? : It is exploiting the fact that you cannot hit an opponent in the face, the fact that fights are broken after a point is scored and the fighters' position are re-set and the fact that it doesn't matter if a hit is not stronger than a light tap in order to be considered a point. It's quite effective in point sparring... but show me someone who'd try that in a real fight and I'll show you someone I'd like to sell them a philosopher's stone And that (blitzing) is just one example of the things people are doing that IMO spoiled point sparring.

HAHAHAHAA Even a chimp could beat up the most capable of humans. I am talking Overeem or Junior Dos Santos kind of pro fighters.... There was this news story where a chimp mauled some lady, and in the process someone else stabbed the chimp in the back several times with a kitchen knife, nothing happened. The police came and shot the chimp, the chimp responded by ramming at them, making the cops lock themselves inside their car. Then the chimp went away (shot and stabbed), rested for a bit in some hideout, came back and went psycho again for a bit before finally bleeding to death on his room. And this was a chimp, not even a gorilla.

That must have been a hell of a hit...

Thanks guys!

I rolled my ankle while doing a side kick It hurts a lot, so I went to the doctor and apparently there's no fracture, just (and I quote), "a very bad sprain". How do I treat this? Can I walk after the fourth day? I'd ask the doc, but he is useless...

Great fighters don't always make good teachers. Teaching and coaching is hard to do, and I think an important aspect of effective coaching/teaching is being able to.adapt and adjust how you teach. But look at someone like Bill Wallace. Good fighter, and I've heard nothing but good things about his seminars. Some can do it, others not so well. Agreed

Interesting. Did it go away after warming up? When I warm up it happens a bit less.

Not really.. it's a lot like cracking your knuckles. I may go to a doc... would this be a general doctor?

Do you know that feeling when you crack your knuckles? Do you remember that sound? Well, for some reason since last year my lower back (the tailbone area, and the area right above it) "cracks" in the same way when I do side and roudhouse kicks (mawashi geri, yoko geri). Is this dangerous? Can it be an issue? A friend of mine had his tailbone bones "fuse" together and that caused a lot of wear & tear on his back... can this be my case?

Did you see that TUF fighter (UFC reality show) where Rampage Jackson was the coach? He would teach nothing to his camp, he would bully one of the students (calling him names) and his corner advice in fights was horrible ("don't let him hit you!", "hit him!"). I'd rather never be taught by Rampage... and Rampage is a GREAT fighter... but I'd rather have a less good fighter being my teacher.

Who looks down their nose at Wado? Ask any serious practitioner of Karate (regardless of style) what they think of Wado and I doubt they would look down their nose at it. If you think you would not be into Kata, perhaps Karate is not for you. Not being funny, why don't you try kickboxing? Can I ask Wastelander, what methodologies didn't you agree with? Hi Student4life, actually they are both "non-okinawan" karate. SojoboSOLID POST I practiced both Wado and Ashihara Karate (an Offspring of Kyokushin) I can say Wado definately is one of the best forms of Karate and its ethos can take a lifetime to understand. Wado taught me more about my Ashihara Karate than My Ashihara Sensei did, if you understand where I am coming from. Kyokushin is definately a fighting style of Karate but it takes different ethos into the kata which are the 90% practiced by Wado, ShotoKan and Goju Ryu anyway If Kata is an issue then as stated above Kickboxing/Muay Thai would be a better option. Do you think that kata could be holding karate back? I mean yes, I know about bunkai and "that chudan uke followed by a gedan barai is actually a joint lock to break an elbow and then throw the opponent" kind of applications, and the fact that they help perfecting technique and footwork... for conditioning. While the karateka is doing that, the kickboxer is actually kicking a bag or someone else, getting technique/footwork applied to sparring,dare I say in a more direct manner than imagining and the ocassional bunkai. I'm not saying it's this way, I'm looking for your opinions

My ex-school has the weirdest system: White White w/ one black stripe white w/ 2 black stripes purple yellow orange green blue brown black - - Some instructors had a black belt that was white in the center of the belt The sensei had a black belt with a red stripe in the center of the belt

Does anyone do it? Are there any benefits to it? I've noticed those boards are very easy to break... so I don't think the purpose is to develop strength.

Ground game doesn't seem to be a smart idea in a fight. Have you ever thought "man, X could headbutt Y silly right now" when those guys are on top of each other in an MMA fight? What about when they're pushing each other against the cage?

Martial arts do NOT prepare you for a street fight. Martial arts are either a sport (like olympic TKD or Judo) or a way of living (Budo .martial arts with a philosophy, discipline, etc.) or plain simply, martial arts. I mean, a neko ashi dachi stance or a kiba dachi stance are probably the worst things you can do in a fight. Yet martial arts practitioners will spend hours and hours perfecting these stances. Do you think that having a more aesthetically pleasing or correctly performed tekki shodan kata will help you in a fight? I'm not bashing karate, I mention the above because that's the art I know the best. I could also say how it is irrelevant whether someone can achieve the ultra low kung-fu stances, "crane wing" movements, etc. The more sports-oriented arts aren't exempt from this issue: Try bobbing and weaving like in boxing in a fight, and see a knee smash onto your face. Try that fancy footwork, and see if the other guy just sweeps your feet and makes you trip. Now even MMA is exempt... the easiest thing to do is to knee someone in the nuts while in the clinch, or headbutt ot plain bite your nose off from the guard position. Plus a street fight is not a controlled environment... the other guy will have friends, or a weapon, or grab a stone, or try to bite or something...

Muay Thai's ancestor, muay boran, did have forms, and some of its moves were actually rather karate-esque: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=357hGHv6sJ8 Question is, why would you want to do a muay thai/boran/jkd form?

How is "tiger palm" or "drunkn fist" better than ninjitsu?

touch sparring-exclusive techniques also spoiled karate. While I definitely see the value of touch-sparring, students AND teachers alike are guilty of over-emphasizing this and exploiting the ruleset to produce innefective, useless techniques that in my opinion amount to cheating. For example, people looove "blitzing", i.e. jumping towards the opponent, almost flying, face-first, in order to cover a long distance very very quick and score a quick point (i.e. light tap) on the opponent's helmet or stomach. This technique would be USELESS on a fight (seriously, who jumps face-first towards someone?), especially since the opponent relies on the fact that they cannot be punched on the face (i.e. exploiting a ruleset), and can only score a point (i.e. a tap), not a real, forceful strike. Not to mention that this only works because if they miss, they can fall to the ground or keep running and the match will be interrupted by the referee and opponents will assume their positions again. Tippy-tappy techniques abound now too, where the opponent jumps around with his foot already chambered, waiting to deliver a very quick but weak kick... seriously?

MMA is becoming kind of its own style. You have MMA gym now, in the same way you have karate or taekwondo schools. However, when people enroll in those classes, they usually take a BJJ class and a Muay thai class. On the machida thing, there is a HUGE double standard. So, (according to others, not you), "machida does not do karate anymore" because he does no kata or bunkai anymore. However, Shogun is 100% a muay thai guy despite the fact that I seriously doubt that his training resembles this in any way:

True, but also for having a great product that has show itself to be effective in multiple setting many times. Like more Machitas in the UFC? I agree with tallgeese's assesment here. BJJ made its mark when Royce was winning. More Machidas wouldn't hurt Karate's cause at all. For some reason, there is a HUGE marketing force against karate. Everytime machida wins a fight, all the MMA bros go like "what machida does is not karate, he may have that background, but he does "MMA" now". Apparently, all it takes for an MMA fighter is to use ONE technique that is not karate-like for it becoming "teh MMA". However, a guy doing "Muay Thai" can use submissions, takedowns and pretty much anything he wants and it is still MMA. I put quote marks around Muay Thai because... many MMA fighters simply learn kickboxing with elbows and knees (not true muay thai) yet nobody questions it. When I point out to people in MMA forums that GSP, Chuck Lidell, Seth Petruzelli, Bas Rutten, etc. all have a karate background, I get the same silly reply: "but they do MMA/muay thai now". There's no winning... it's ridiculous.

I think that sums up the decline of the relevancy of traditional karate in a nutshell. Stances, and their mis use has been a major pet peeve of mine since starting in the arts 20 plus years ago. MMA quickly confirmed to us the fallacy that many people already wondered about, that immobility is a liability. If you're breaking up someone's arm who you've just thrown to the ground via joint manipulation then a horse stance is great. However; move it out of this application it becomes less adequate. The other two items are problematic as well. The soccer mom syndrome we've done to ourselves to an extent by allowing kids classes to become the money maker at almost all commercial schools, thus the perceived focus of what we as martial artists do. The stance thing, which is what strikes the biggest chord with me is actually a symptom of a larger, more problematic, root cause- a lack of realism in current training methods. This, to my mind, is caused by a couple of things: 1) a failure to modernize training as new methods and information come to light. 2) a failure on current generations of practitioners to either understand or pass on the combative nature of the arts. In number two, we see the misapplication of stance work that Justice spoke of. Either people don't know what it's for ( a fault of their teachers by the way, not theirs) or they just don't want to take the time to teach a more complex concept (a commercial component that is entirely their fault). Now, when the stance does not work as prescribed in a misunderstood kata, the art gets bad rapped for being ineffective when what really happened was that the practitioner used a hammer to try and drive a screw. That causes a major disconnect with relevancy. 1) Why do those stances exist? I honestly have no idea. 2) You mentioned something really important: MODERNIZATION. Do you think that Muay Thai has always incorporated boxing style punches and ring-like footwork? Nope. Before Muay Thai there was Muay Boran, which had very rigid, different punches and karate-like kata: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPr8cVpBxX0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=357hGHv6sJ8&feature=related Then modern equipment, rules and influences made their way to muay thai. They adopted boxing punches and de-emphasized some positions and kicks. Modern Muay Thai was born. Karate, meanwhile got too static, too regulated, too politicized. Why do people still pull the other hand to their waist when punching? Why do people spend most of their time doing kata and horseback or forward foot stances when they won't fight like that? Etc etc... modernization needs to take place.

While I agree with everything you posted, and I think that your school must be awesome, I was thinking... How heavy is your school's sparring on takedown techniques and joint locks? They're indeed part of karate: What about elbow and knee techniques? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDy8GwbkyeQ These are two parts of karate that for some reason seem to be delegated to kata and drills, but were forgotten from sparring, which is a shame, because now people think that if you want to learn takedowns, you need wrestling or judo, while you need BJJ if you want joint locks and you need Muay Thai if you want knees or elbows. It drives me nuts. And to be honest, stuff like armbars and leg locks are way too hard, people need to practice them with a semi-resisting partner for months to learn them... just to do a kata or drill and imagine you're doing it (like in bunkai) won't do.