Kirves

There are some good ideas for home training in Loren W. Christensen's book "Solo Training", but granted, it is easier to work on striking techniques than grappling techniques, unless you have a skilled partner and some kind of tatami-matress. Also check out "The Grappler's Toolbox" from Amerross.com. It supposedly has some exercises for a grappler.

I already explained what I meant with "master", I did not mean a MASTER of the art, I meant a "master" as in a sought after instructor in your art/field. If you are the national Hanmoodo champion, only the Hanmoodo population is interested in you. But to them you are a "master" and whenever you hold a seminar or training camp, it is going to be full of Hanmoodo enthusiasts and fans. No matter if other people from other martial arts think you suck in MMA fighting. Again the big fish in the little pond vs. little fish in the ocean -metaphor comes in handy. Yes - here it is! We don't all share your goals! And the whole point behind this poll is to find out what goals people here have! Not which one is doing the best training for your particular goals. Just what goals the people have. Period. Most of circus stunts aren't safe. A lot of what Jackass does on tv isn't safe. Becoming a bodyguard isn't safe. Jumping from an airplane with a paraglider isn't safe. At least from "insurance/liablility" point of view. But if that's what they love to do, who are we to judge. We might not emulate them, but that doesn't mean we're somehow better than them. Exactly. If someone's goal is to win the national Hoi Jeon Moo Sool championship, then training HJMS is the complete way to do it. Depends on the goal. And again: the point here is to know what people's goals are! Not whose goal is better. Good, now we're on the same page. Your goal is MMA and you train for that goal, fine. Someone's goal is TKD and he trains for that goal, again fine. Now let's have people tell us what their respective goals are, some "incomplete" single range art, or an "all-ranges" MMA. Let's stop this useless arguing. You really think it takes as long to become the world champ of Hoijeonmoosool than it takes to win a similar title in MMA? I don't think so, all the contestants in the top HJMS tournaments are just hobbyists. All the contestants in the top MMA events are professionals. Big difference. But this horse died long ago, let's stop beating it, okay? Let's agree to disagree on some issues and leave it at that.

Which -ryu was the karate?

Yeah, it is terrific, but to anyone thinking about getting it: get the DVD as it has the commentary which explains the movie those who don't know what it's all about. You know, the movie is mostly clips from another kungfu flick (from the 70s) that have been re-arranged and redubbed by this one guy who also did the voice acting for all the characters. Plus added some new scenes to complete the new storyline. Most of the jokes are around the bad dubbing/voice acting seen in all kung fu movies, plus the stupid plots and martial arts gimmicks. A great film altogether!

There seems to a lot of misconceptions about the purpose of karate. Some say it wasn't originally meant for fighting expert people from other martial arts, but just for self defence. Others counter that that is stupid, Muay Thai wasn't designed to fight against karate, yet they do well. So many must wonder which is it. So here goes... Yes, originally karate was designed to only work against the street bullies, on Okinawa. What does this mean? It means that mos of the defences are against stupid singular attacks like the haymaker, a lapel grab, a push and so on. The point of karateka always punching the most direct route (no hook punches in old karate) came from this same point, the untrained fighter beats around the bush and so karateka counters with direct strikes that are faster. Now, arts like Muay Thai never teach punching haymakers or grabbing lapels nor do they focus on defending against such street attacks. They assume that both participants are trained and strike with fast and direct punches. So Muay Thai works good against most arts because it already assumes the opponent wil be striking fast combos, using fakes and so on, when old karate often assumes the opponent is not using trained combos but singular street thug or drunk attacks. But this no longer holds true, as the Japanese modernized karate quite a bit and added tournaments into their systems. So the modern tournament karate does assume the opponent is trained, but it still tries to fight with the same techniques that weren't designed for this. That is a problem. And that is also the reason why many modern arts have dropped most of the old karate moves and started using more "boxing like" handwork and so on. These people are a bit better prepared to fight Muay Thai and other people from other arts but still have problems, that are no longer technical but due to lacking training methods. Kyokushin and it's offshoots have adopted training methods similar to those used in Muay Thai, Sanda, Savate, Boxing and Kickboxing and as anyone can see, it is working, Kyokushin is one of the few karate styles that have proved effective against other arts. But there is a price to all this, these karate styles have begun to lose some of the old self defence methods because of this change in focus. Kata and bunkai training is seen as secondary, or for tournament fighting, completely waste of time and you can see it by observing how these modern full contact styles are trained. So to sum this up, today there are many ways to study and train karate and there exists several approaches to what once was a simple civilian street defence art of the Okinawan people.

Isometric stretching is good for making one more flexible fast.

Kali is an excellent fighting art. The physicality of it depends on the school. In the schools I have seen, it hasn't been that sweaty, they mostly focused on technical drills instead of getting fit.

Oh really? Who founded MMA then if it is a single art that isn't just a mix of other arts? Then it must have a curriculum of it's own instead of just training techniques from other arts, right? Where can we see this curriculum? I had never heard before that MMA is a one art. I was always told it is when you Mix Martial Arts.

As I pointed out, TKD was not a good example. I forgot how big a sport it is on the other side of the ocean. Where I come from, most people have never heard that it is an olympic sport (I had, but kinda forgot), we never even see it on TV even during the olympics (the tv-stations feel not enough people would watch it and nobody would advertize during it). Again, we have different goals, not everyone is like you. I might be on the national soccer team, who cares if it doesn't help me in a fight? Believe it or not, some of us do these things for sport, instead of fighting ability. Some people just love to box. Others love to kickbox. Some love to do capoeira and others love to play tennis. Not everyone takes martial arts in order to become the best fighter in the world. No argument about that, but now you just proved my point. It takes "the long run", instead of being learnable in as short period of time. I was talking about the number of the techniques. Of course it takes time to master any art. But some of us like to take the ten boxing techniques and then focus on honing them, instead of wanting to master all of MMA stuff. What I don't understand is how come you can't understand that? We have different goals. Someone's biggest dream is to learn boxing, even if it is not the most complete fighting art on the planet. I just wanted to know with this poll, how many of us here take that approach and how many take the other road. Well, I have gathered so far that anything not done your way is stupid. That (being safe) is not their goal. They prefer to have the danger edge involved. There are lots of sports in this world that are plain dangerous and you should only partake in them if you accept the risks. If you wouldn't do such a sport, doesn't mean they are stupid. It just isn't your thing. And from the other post: But I don't say it makes one a better fighter than the other. You on the other hand had the argument why would anyone study the incomplete art because it would loose to yuor art.

I don't mean just local tournaments. For example, where I live, TKD is a quite a small sport, very low profile. Every man on the street here knows who's the current national boxing title holder. Every martial artist I know, knows who are the current national kickboxing, thai boxing or BJJ title holders. It is common for people to know who won the last UFC. But, TKD being quite small here, I have never heard of anyone knowing who is the current national champ. They aren't told in the news, papers or shown on television. Nobody hears about them, except those who do TKD themselves. That is what I meant about being the big fish in the small pond. I don't mean local tournaments, I mean national or even international tournaments in arts that are so small there are no professional fighters there. Lets face it, if you want to be a pro fighter, do you choose Hoi Jeon Moo Sool as your art? I'm not talking about pro as in career martial arts instructor, but a pro ring fighter. I would bet no, you would choose some other art. So, if you start competing in Hoi Jeon Moo Sool tournaments, you are going to be fighting other hobbyists, even at the national and international levels! Do you need to be a world champ to be good/excellent? Yeah, TKD is much bigger in the States than here, agreed on that. But what about arts like Hoi Jeon Moo Sool I just mentioned? There are lots of arts where even the biggest champs are not professionals. No, he is just national champ, and something like thrird or fourth in the Scandinavian tournament. Agreed on your latter statement, I chose TKD as an example because it is so small here. I didn't mean TKD as the one-only art anyway, I meant any small scale art without professional fighters, so substitute TKD here with something non-olympic. Like Hoi Jeon Moo Sool, or Han Moo Do, or Gensei-ryu karate, or Drunken Monkey Kungfu or whatever who aren't that big but have national and international championships nonetheless. The point was choosing between being the big fish in the small pond (that no-one outside the pond hasn't heard about) or being a small fish in the ocean (who everyone knows about, but never heard about you). Agreed. I forgot TKD was an olympic sport.

Some of Marco Lala's videos are featured in the review section of http://home.att.net/~erik.mann/ But I haven't seen the stretching vids reviewed there. I just gave the link so you could see what is usually said about his instructional videos.

Tell me about it! I let myself get a bit heated up and all sensibility went out the window. This was news to me. It is probably due to cultural and linquistic misunderstandings. First of all, English is not my native language, just something I picked up in school. Second, where I come from, "Jack-of-all-trades" isn't loaded with any negative feel, it is just the opposite of specialization. Some people specialize, others become the jack-of-all-trades. If it has a negative meaning in some other countries, cultures or languages, then I was unaware of that. I personally don't think you will be more than "average" at most in MMA by training so little. Most MMA clubs I know of have 2-3 hour classes every frigging day for that very purpose: to be able to train all of it. In a local club I know of, they have additional morning classes for those seriously training for tournaments. As already mentioned many times in this post, I personally know people who have become champs with "hobby" style training. It is because the competition tactics their respective arts use are simple, and all the other competitors are also mere hobbyists. When all the competitors of a tournament have a similar history (i.e. 2-4 times a week of your average Taekwondo/Shotokan/Judo/younameit) they will do good. But add some people who are professionals and it's no longer possible, this has happened in the bigger sport events like MMA, boxing, kickboxing and so on where the hobbyist who just won the local Tangsoodo tournament full of hobbyists, would get his rear end handed to him just for the very fact that the other competitors are ten times more serious and experienced about it. I am not very interested in big pro events like UFC, K1 or Abu Dhabi, except with some curiosity. But when I am an active participant, I go to a small hobbyist tournament where everyone is basically attending to have good time, not to win half a million dollars and be shown on PPV.

you said karate will never beable to beat bjj that is wrong, No I didn't say that. I said: Notice the word "may"

The "spiritual side" was added to karate by the Japanese. The whole idea of Budo is japanese. The suffix -do was added to karrate after it was introduced to Budo. The -do stuff, like budo, is based on Zen Buddhism, which was very unpopular on Okinawa prior to the Japanese influences. The old karateka didn't train for zen, they trained for self defence. That is clear from any books that research Okinawan karate history, like those of McCarthy, Bishop, and Jalamo (who sadly hasn't written in English). And Jujutsu... Jujutsu was the art of the bushi, the samurai, and as such they followed Bushido. Bushido can't be followed today (well, it could, you'd just have to kill yourself as the feodal emperor is dead ) - Bushido was the warrior code for the warriors of the Bakufu and it was no longer practical when the Bakufu fell. Bushido essentially dictated that your life belonged to the Bakufu and that's it. After that, Zen was becoming more and more of a focus in bujutsu circles and people started to turn it into Budo. This is what Draeger calls "The Classical Budo" (=koryu budo). This kind of budo for example didn't like competing at all, it was totally focused on living in zen. Then during the 20th century, the new competition arts sprang out, karate, judo and the like, with all new ideals vaguely related to the old zen budo, and this is what Draeger calls "Modern Budo" (=gentai budo). So, there are many levels to Budo, and karate existed for centuries, before the Japanese Modern Budo was introduced to it.

AndrewGreen, from reading your posts I get this funny feeling that you are saying: 1. Your art can be learned as fast as any other art. 2. Your art is complete. 3. Other arts are incomplete. 4. Your art can beat any other art by taking advantage of their incompleteness. Geesh, sounds a lot like many McDojo adds I've seen in mags and the web. "Our ultimate style makes you beat any other artist and it can be learned in x simple lessons".

Yeah. Judging on the recent attempts I've made at starting polls, I am not that good at making them. In this poll people thought there should have been a specific "history" option and "love for martial arts" option and "career" option and "spiritual side" option and "thrill of fighting" option and so on. I thought that people would lump all that under the generic term of "fun and fitness", but I was mistaken. On the other poll, seems that instead of answering the poll, some people start saying that the poll guestion is "wrong" because they study the ultimate martial art that can be learned as fast as any other art on the planet and it can beat any other art on the planet as other arts are incomplete but theirs is not. And of course, everyone should stop what they're doing and go to do what they do... Geeh, I think it is not healthy to sit for an hour arguing on the same topic - I feel myself getting ranty! I'll probably leave it at rest now and hope these polls are buried deep in the history pages of this forum.

Now this is where I disagree. But we have already covered that, so maybe we should agree to disagree? Boxer may be a bad example as it is so big a sport nowadays that there are so many quality fighters there, but as I gave another example earlier, I know people who have trained Taekwondo for two years, only going to class three times a week, and becoming a champ. I also know similar incidents in many other arts that are smaller events than boxing. But I have never heard of anyone saying they cound train that little and win an NHB tournament. Then you are saying that Krav Maga is no easier or faster to learn than, say Shootfighting? Then all these people studying KM because it is supposedly a simple straightforward way to learn basic self defence are all wrong, because in the same amount of time they could be good Shootfighters? It is more complicated. It has 100 times more stuff to learn than boxing. Thus it takes more time to learn. You can learn all boxing techniques in a week. Can you learn all MMA techniques in a week? No you can't, because it takes more time to learn a 1000 techniques than 10. Well that depends a lot on the school For example, in the town I live, there's only one MMA school. They do a style of freefighting, where usually use no gloves or any shields and full contact. In their sessions, it is common that you can't recognize which one is which after the session is over. They are all bloodied and bruised. To me their stuff seems very dangerous, and very "hardcore". But I know not all MMA schools are alike. That is the problem with MMA, there's no standard so who knows if we are talking about different kinds of MMA altogether. I do know some MMA schools for example don't allow punches when on the ground. Or some punches. That is a whole different game. If you are allowed to use knees, headbutts, bareknuckle fists and elbows on any part of the other guys body even on ground, it is going to be very dangerous. If you wear gloves, or prohibit punching on the ground, or whatever, the danger level decreases.

It may well be true that karate will never beat bjj in UFC, one on one. But when three punks attack me on the streets, I'd rather kick the first one of them in the knee to slow him down a bit and start running like Forrest Gump. Beer guzzing, drug using street punks are rarely as fast or enduring runners as a fit martial artist. I would not want to stay and fight standing or wrestling with them in any case, no matter what arts I knew.

I like the chess part of sparring more than just attacking whenever possible. I like to test my opponent. Try to find out his weaknesses and strengths. Try if I can lure him into attacking what he thinks is a whole in my defence. See what kinds of indirect attacks I can do. Test new kinds of fakes, see if they work or not. I don't like "just attacking" because for me it doesn't feel like such a game anymore. It is more of a fight where I try to break they guy instead of trying to figure him out. Well, that's just me I guess.

Sure. But if both are just "flowing with the fight", who is going to attack? One of the guys has to decide to do something and if that's you then you'd better have a plan instead of wildly banging at the general direction of the opponent. Actually, this is where Bruce Lee's "Five Angles of Attack" come in handy. He categorized the five most effective ways to launch your advance. These include fakes, lures, misdirections and so on. If you never use these kinds of tactics, you won't become a good fighter, IMO. And Joe Lewis has his system with set-point control being his main strategy. These just to show that any good instructor will teach not to attack wildly but with a plan.

Exactly. Somebody here had the impression that all people have same goals as he has. Someone wants to be a good boxer, now what's wrong with that? Nothing. It is a sport for god's sake. Someone else wants to be good at tennis? Would anyone say "no don't do that, any MMA fighter will kick your ass if you play tennis"? Of course not, as everyone understands that tennis is just one of the sports. And here lies the key: many of us are not serious combat sport professionals, there are many of us who are mere hobbyists, just doing it as a fun sport, good for the body, good for the mind, and so on. You can't say the other person is wrong because he isn't after the same hobbies or goals you are. So we have those who like to study one martial art only as a small-time hobby, or a serious competitive sport, and we have those who study martial arts as serious combat sports mixing everything in sight in order to become better than the rest. That is a matter of personal choice, not an "do it like I do it or be stupid" issue. And my own choice? Nowadays I'm just doing one art for fun and fitness with the hope that it may also help in a possible self-defence situation, but I am not focusing on that. In the past I had other goals, I studied in four martial arts schools at the same time, eventually realizing it was ruling all my life's other activities so I dropped my idea of becoming an NHB fighter. Some of the guys I knew, who fought in the local NHB tournaments, trained three times as much as I did, as they had no jobs, no families and so on. I just couldn't do that with almost daily jobshifts of 12 hours (+commuting 1.5h) and a family with newborn baby. I made a personal decision to remain a hobbyist and as such I study whatever art I enjoy without thinking if it is the best possible mix available.

Yes, it is excellent. All his instructional videos are top of the cream, not to mention his pricing is awesome! That is probably because he doesn't care much about pretty packaging (he films the stuff at his home, yard or dojo with a single cam, doesn't put any fancy package on the cassette, and so on). The info he gives is top knotch.

Karate Kid's fight choreographer was the renowned Pat Johnsson. Mr. Miyagi's fight double actor was Fumio Demura, the respected SHlTO-Ryu karate master. The famous "crane" technique doesn't exist, it was invented by another stunt fighter in the film, Darryl Vidal, after Pat Johnsson said that he wanted something special, something interesting. Personally, I thought the stuff (besides the crane) looked pretty much like the softer Okinawan styles. People often forget that Okinawan karate was not as rigid and linear as the modern Japanese karate. On Okinawa, the term kara-te actually meant "Chinese boxing" (kara=Chinese, te=hand - just to be accurate) and as such, all old karate looks a bit like kungfu. Most of the old kata are ripped straigth from kungfu styles (Hakutsuru from White Crane and so on). An interesting side note: The famous karate bible, Bubishi, is a Chinese book, brought to Okinawa by a Chinese crane stylist - or something like that, I am speaking from my memory only, some facts may be a bit off.

Welcome! Almost another Finn here... Hehe!

Care to elaborate?