Kirves

In my style, the official curriculum is available to everyone on several public websites (at least up to something like 3rd or 4th dan). No secrets there. New white belt students get a paper or two of some basic information about how the training is to be conducted and how to dress and behave in the dojo. That's about it. I'm not an instructor myself, but thought I'd chime in how it is done in my current karate school.

Thanx granmasterchen for interrupting. I was getting winded with the arguing, as I felt it was a bit off-topic all the while. I don't want to judge which way is better, just to know which way people do it. I know there are lots of people on this board who are content with their single art approach, and other people who want it to be as balanced a mix as possible. I was just wondering what the ratio here is.

Notice how I used the term "incomplete" myself in the very first post in this thread. You aren't getting the point here. Sure, a guy who only knows boxing, can be taken down. But for the zillionth of a time, I'm not interested in which one will beat which one up. Understand? Capishe? How many repetitions does it take for you to get the point? My point, once again, for the gazillionth time is this: even though boxing is an incomplete art, it would be cool to be the current international boxing champ. And even though kickboxing, or kyokushin karate, or tae kwon do, or judo, all these are incomplete arts, it would still be great to be a recognized champ in any of these. Now contrast this with MMA, a more balanced, more "complete" art. And the point of this poll is this: which one would you be if you had to choose: a champ in one of the "incomplete" arts, or a "joe-average" in some MMA club in your town. And, I repeat again, please don't start by saying a MMA guy would beat the boxer by this and that technique that the boxer hasn't trained for. That is not the point. Not in this thread. The point is, which one you'd be if you had to choose one: a champ of one-range-art, or an average student of an all-rangest-art.

Exactly. So you are a jack as opposed to master. You know boxing techniques, but not as well as a boxer. You know kicks and stuff but aren't as good woth them as a kickboxer. You know wrestling techniques, but aren't as good with them as a wrestler and so on. So the guestion are you a master of one art or a jack of all, you're the latter. Some of us prefer your approach, some of us prefer to master one art. That is the point of this poll. Now let's just wait which approach the different people on this forum prefer.

But it does mean studying the techniques of boxing & kickboxing & wrestling & submission! Again I refer to my earlier post (did you see it after I edited it, you posted around the same time?), if it takes you one unit of time to learn one technique. And boxing has 10 tech, kickboxing adds another 10 or 15 in addition to the boxing tech, wrestling ads 200 tech, submission 100 tech and so on. If it remains that in one unit of time you can learn one technique, there is no way you can claim that it takes the exact same amount of time to either learn the 10 boxing tech, or learn all the 10+15+200+100 tech. You need more time to learn the larger set of techniques, even if you learn them as "one unit" instead of stydying the respective arts separately. There's only so much you can do in a minute, or in an hour. And add to that the fact that it takes thousands of repetitions for a tech to become a subconscious reflex. Repeating hundreds or thousands of different techniques for thousands of repetitions takes a lot more time than repeating a couple of dozen techniques for the same amount of reps.

Again I repeat: The point of this poll is which would you chooce, not which one is the best. Would the people here rather be a well known master and always-sold-out instructor of a single range, or an average joe of a mixed art. And to your claim that it takes no more time... Well, I have seen people master TKD in a couple of years training 3 hours per week total. So can I master MMA in that time too? Another way to explain this: if it takes me one minute to learn one thing. Then learning 10 things takes 10 minutes. If I have 10 minutes time, how many things can I learn in that time? 10. If we change the 10 things to a 1000 things. How many minutes will it take for me to learn them all? A 1000 minutes. Now you claim that it takes no more time to learn the 1000 things than the 10 things. If we assume boxing has apprx. 10 techniques, and MMA has 1000, then you see what I'm getting at. "Mastery" here doesn't refer to as being a mystical martial arts master sage. Here it merely means, you have learned all the techniques up to an instructor-level (black belt for example, or an instructor certificate) and seem to hold your own in the respective tournaments. Thus my point is, no-one gets good at MMA tournaments by training 3 hours per week for a couple of years. But in some arts you can become the national champ in such time frame. And trying to repeat the point of this thread again: which one would you rather be: the MMA guy who isn't good enough to win any of the MMA events, or the single-art guy that wins trophies and gets paid a lot to hold seminars and training camps. The small fish in the ocean or the big fish in the pond...

Exactly. You will not be a master of boxing tech like the boxer, but only a jack of all trades. But not because you had mastered any one of the ranges, only because you were able to take him to a range he was even less familiar than you. And btw it is not guaranteed you will take him down from the boxing range. Because he is better at that range, he just might drop you before you get the fight to advance to a range more suitable to your strategy. It can go either way... Then how come your arguments reinforce my point? I might also add that you seem to (deliberately or by accident?) misunderstand my whole point. The point (again and again repeating) of this poll is which would you chooce, not which one is the best. I don't like discussing what martial art is the best or whatever. Just like to know would the people here rather be a well known master and always-sold-out instructor of a single range, or an average joe of a mixed art. The point here was not which one would beat the other one up on the street, just to ask which one would you rather be?

I have gotten decent results with Health-For-Life's Synerstretch program. Or try Marco Lala's "Beyond Splits". His site is at http://www.fightingsecrets.com/ Another good try would be Pavel Tsatsouline's stuff, see it at http://www.dragondoor.com/ Or try stuff from Thomas Kurz.

So, basically you think that if one trains 3 hours a week, he should do it in a system that divides the three hours evenly between standup, groundfighting, trapping, weapons and fitness. That means e he gets about half an hour of standup training per week, half an hour ground grappling per week, half an hour trapping, and so on. And you think he would master all the aspects better than if the student just focused the 3 hours on his standup game, or 3 hours a week groundfighting, or 3 hours a week trapping, or 3 hours a week weapons fighting, or 3 hours of fitness? So, your choice was the jack of all trades, as I don't believe you will be good in any of the ranges with only half an hour per week training in it. But that was the point, you either do three hours of a single range and become good at it but not learn much of the others, or you do half of hour everything and don't get that good at any of the specific ranges, or you do 3 hours a week for all the ranges and forget about having a life. I deliberately left the last option away, as it would either assume you become a pro, or that you have no life besides your job and martial arts. So the choice is between getting good at one range or not very good at all of them. Your choice would seem to be learn all the ranges but not get good at them (at least in the context of this poll. Of course if you believe half an hour per week makes you a master of a range then that is another issue altogether.) Remember that the whole idea behind this poll is the situation of the normal "casual hobbyist" martial artist, not a pro, or pro-wanna-be who trains hours per every day like some Bruce Lee enthusiast. The normal "family-man" hobbyist with 12-hour work shifts, three kids and all the life-crap piled up (like fixing the car, mowing the lawn, picking up kids from kindergarten, going shopping with wife and so on) it is common to only train 2-3 sessions a week, ranging from 60 to 120 minutes per session. That is not a whole lot, when you remember that in most class sessions mere fitness and conditioning take up anywhere from 30-45 minutes per class, so the actual time spent fighting and drilling is reduced to maybe 100 hours per week. Some people feel it is better to focus this little time on a single range to become good at it, some feel that this time should be used for a mixed art that divides it into chunks of 20-30 minutes per range. The poll idea here is to ask which one would you prefer, if your time was that limited.

The point was, if you had to choose just one art that you trained for, say 2 or three times a week (like the average hobbyist). I.e. you don't have the time to train all the ranges adequately. Would you then still train in all of them without getting that good at them, or would you focus your few hours of training at one aspect or range and get good at it? Let's face it. If you want to become a submission wrestling champ, you have to train some serious hours per week in SW. If you want to become a K1 champ, you'd have to clock in some serious hours of standup fighting. If you want to learn weapons self defence, you'd better spend lots of hours in the eskrima class every week. Somebody may have the time, money and energy (and lack of life outside the dojo) to do all this, or able to become a pro, but my point is about the hobbyist who is going to invest very limited amount of time to the martial arts.

If you had only two options, which one would it be: become very good in one "imperfect" martial art (imperfect meaning it doesn't cover all ranges of fighting, or is inadequate in some other way in your opinion) or become only a "Jack of all trades", that is, learn an art that you feel is realistic and covers all required ranges but you won't become very good at it. Another way to put this is, would you like to be a small fish in the ocean or a big fish in the pond? A nobody in vale tudo, or champ at K1? A well known and sought after instructor of an "incomplete" art, or just one unknown face among the rest in a "complete" art? I hope you get the jist of what I'm after here... EDIT: Hmmm... I tried to post this as a poll but I screwed it up. Well, just reply with posts.

Slow motion training has it's place. If it is the only thing you do, then you're in trouble. But many arts start with a "relaxed" speed and speed up the techniques eventually. This is done both in a single session, and in the long run as well. If you try to go fast from the beginning, you will tense up and the technique will suffer. Some people use another kind of trick. They don't slow it down, but they teach you only after breaking you physically. After some 500 push-ups, squats and ab-crunches done in a very sweaty circuit format, you are too tired to tense up when you practice techniques.

I do both. If he attacks, I just react. But if I attack, I may use a plan or set up. Sometimes I have a setup for him to attack, but theoretically that is me attacking then... So I didn't answer the poll as I do both.

Karate was used as a generic term for many asian kick/punch arts in the 50s to 70s in the USA and many still cling to that usage. This generalization is not seen in Europe, I only know of it in the US. Maybe it has happened elsewhere too. In Europe, I have never heard of "Korean Karate" or any similar generalizations, here they have used "TKD" and other names from the start.

I'm more interested in finding the favorite author than the favorite book, although if the author has just one good book, then it is okay to just mention the one book. My favorite author nowadays is Loren W. Christensen. Reason: lots of real life info based on experience and the KISS principle.

Here are some interesting books on the subject: http://home.nc.rr.com/ejconsult/karate/t123rev1.html http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1886969884/qid=1056514841/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-7878065-6385755?v=glance&s=books http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index=books&field-author=Abernethy%2C%20Iain/102-7878065-6385755 Also, although I do not completely agree with Dillman's pressure point interpretations, he does have tuite techniques explained in his books, tuite is the grappling of karate (similar to jujutsu), now often forgotten from the bunkai.

Also remember, that while MT only teaches the ring techniques, karate also teaches all kinds of self defence methods like locks, holds, reversals, chokes, grabs, counters and so on. MT lacks all these.

Kihon is the alphabet of karate. You can't write sentences, paragraphs, chapters or books without mastering the alphabet.

Try to attend as many camps and seminars as possible, if you can't attend classes regularly.

Yeah, Loren C. writes lots of good stuff.

Because studying the old bunkai and inventing your own cater to different individuals?

Er...

These so called "ninjas" are always hilarious!

Thanks for the detailed intro!

I would assume every martial arts school includes stretching in their sessions.