lit-arate

Obviously. So, what would be an example of your response?

Since we have a plethora of different styles on this site, I'm curious to read how different styles agree or disagree in technique, etc. So, let's compare our style's "typical" response to, for sake of ease, a right roundhouse punch (or straight, if your style doesn't do roundhouses). You pick which foot the opponent uses to step, your starting stance, etc. I'll start (obviously). EPAK: My Kenpo reflex would be the technique called "Five Swords." Step forward with right foot to check their right shin while doing a right inward block and left outward parry. Right hand chops the throat as you turn to a forward stance with an upward thrusting palm to the face, loading the right hand at the same time. Turn back with a right uppercut to the solar-plexus/stomach while covering high with left. Bounce off, step to the side and left outward chop the temple (since the opponent will hopefully double over with the uppercut) while raising the right hand, turn and settle on a right downward chop to C7. From there, I would probably go into an aikido take-down, so I'll stop. I hate all the videos of this technique on youtube, but here's the best I could find. This guy moves like a robot, strikes like he has t-rex arms, and is rigid as stone. So, imagine him moving more like the second video (my instructor doing a different technique): This technique 2:03With this movement 1:10Aikido: With my limited aikido knowledge (5th kyu), I would probably do a variation on yokomenuchi iriminage. Starting left foot forward, step through to upper right corner and bring left foot to follow while parrying the strike with the right hand. Shuffle in to close the distance while continuing their momentum by guiding the punch around to the opposite side of their body (it looks as though you are trying to make them choke themselves), pull them close with left hand. Tenkan (left foot circles counterclockwise so that you end up facing the complete opposite direction) and continue the momentum so that the movement of their arm carries them toward their left. Tenkan right and pull them the other direction (since they will be fighting to go that way, anyway), drop, then step forward with right, brining your right arm straight up under their chin, then pointing it down over their back toward the floor. Then, in true aikido fashion (sarcasm), I would bust out some EPAK and kick until they stopped moving. Sometimes I have trouble with the whole "harmony" bit. (Just kidding) (Mostly) I wish I were 1% as awesome as Shihan Tissier: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZef071snTM What would your style do? Videos would be awesome.

There are a lot of great suggestions for what to do when you commit, here, so I'm not going to redundantly offer another. What I will add is that, depending on your stride-length and speed, and the opponent's aggression, you don't have to fight every time someone comes in at you. I tend to do well in sparring because I control the fight; I decide when and how my opponent and I will engage. If you get to the point where you can read exactly how aggressive an opponent is--that is, is this particular forward movement going to drive through you, or will they abort if you move away--then you can make those sorts of decisions. In my mind, there is no dishonor in running away if you come back to win the fight. Okay, maybe there is dishonor, but you still won. (As I said at the beginning, though, this depends on height and speed. If you're 5'4" and medium-to-slow, then please disregard this suggestion. )

Biological entrenchment of sex/gender difference has its roots in modern science--by which I mean the science of the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries. A cultural discourse of male superiority in some sense predetermines that science will prove male superiority, meaning that if people think the male body is superior, they will find evidence for male superiority. What if one turned this whole article upside-down, based on the second to last paragraph: One might get arguments about how men should not fight because they are less flexible, take longer to heal, get infected, and suffer brain trauma more readily. Those sound like rather convincing arguments, to me. More importantly, however (at least, as I see it), making general statements about a sex's ability to fight is an act of scientific reductionism. One will probably never read an article entitled, "Should skinny people fight?", or, "Should small people fight?"--but it would be more apt. I, myself, am male, 6'6" and 185ish pounds (aka. more stick than muscle), have rather thin skin that takes a relatively long time to heal, and knees that never quite recovered from injury and growth spurts. I would sooner argue that I shouldn't fight, rather than a woman in peak condition. I would suggest, ultimately, that this reticence to allow women to fight each other, or men, stems from a cultural insecurity signaled in this article by the dismissively short paragraph about pregnancy. The author sees it as self-evident that, because women can have babies, their status as fighters is in a state of perpetual question. Most men and women don't like the idea of women fighting, not because of biological or universal truth, but because we don't like the idea of someone punching our mothers.

This is certainly true, but unfortunately, so do people. I would suggest that it depends on exactly what you want to do with your karate training. If, in fact, your instructor is not recognized, that will only matter if you want to train in the same style under a different teacher, later, or if you want to teach it, or maybe even if you want to attend major seminars. In EPAK--and I would guess other systems, but that is the only system I know in this capacity--the black belt ranks are often as much or more political than they are skill-based. If you achieved the rank of nidan under Sensei X, and Sensei X is on the outs with Y's Lineage, then everyone under Master Y may regard your nidan as so much cloth--unfortunately, even if your technique says otherwise. Many black belts at the dojo where I used to train did not wear stripes to indicate degrees of dan, because we all knew it was more than a bit questionable. If, on the other hand, all you want to do is train with this sensei, then you may as well not worry about rank, or affiliations, since nobody else will ever ask. You and your sensei will know, and honestly, that might be preferable.

I would guess that Aikijutsu is probably pretty darned close to aikido, and this sounds like at least one possible way to look at what I'm doing. Perhaps I'll make sure that I've got things from a rather entrenched stance, and then work on maintaining stability with fluidity. Thank you, all.

I know this sounds awfully mystical, but I would suggest that the attitude of rank that you bring to your new style matters more than the rank holding your gi together. That makes me want to vomit, it's so cliche, but bear with me, please. In the aikido dojo where I train, there is a girl with her brown belt in goju-ryu, a girl with a black belt in tae kwan do, a guy with a black belt in tae kwan do, and myself (black belt in American Kenpo). The tae kwan do guy and goju-ryu girl wear their previous rank, and tend to act as if they have earned that rank in all systems: they are resistant to suggestion and help, constantly question the efficacy of a technique, and correct students who outrank them in aikido. I only just found out that the other black belt in tae kwan do is a black belt, and many people in the rather small dojo still don't know my rank in Kenpo, because if they ask, I just say that I "have some other experience." I'd like to think that she and I are more pleasant for the other students and the sensei to teach. My point is, you can wear your green belt with the attitude of a white belt--or, more properly, a black belt: know what you know, know what you don't know, and be willing to learn about both.

There's a rather marked difference between American kenpo and Chinese kempo, as far as I understand it.

Thank you for your responses thus far. This is an excellent restatement of my question. Obviously, to execute an aikido throw properly, one's hara (center) has to move, but does that abstract center tie directly to one's body? If I can, by stabilizing my center and moving it with the ground, so to speak--as in, "punch with the ground," given my hardstyle background that uses the whole body in a strike--is that proper, or should I be more fluid?

I see martial arts rather more as drag (I mean that in a good way) rather than training to be of any "warrior class." It's cathartic, a chance to blow off steam, release pressure of contemporary society by transporting ourselves to a different one: credit-based consumerism is unstable, convoluted, not at all meritocratic; martial arts are structured, hierarchical, and based on ability (mostly). Most of us, I suggest, will never be in any "warrior" situation, since even an intense bar brawl or gang attack is hardly a lifestyle, but rather, a moment of combat in a life probably not dedicated to constant warfare. This is not to say that what we do isn't life defining--it gives us responsibility, order, fortitude--but that the life we take on when we enter the dojo is a different life, a different character than the rest of our lives.

I've never heard of it, before. With which association/masters are you? In the Planas line, at least, there are only "shorts" up to three, and then "longs" through six. If short-three/long-three is any indication, though, I imagine "short four" would be a strong-side-only version of long four (?).

Well, I guess we know who's going to be eaten first. Now, my experience with BJJ is a sum total of nil, but based on my relatively limited time with Japanese Jujitsu and Aikido, I would beg to differ with you, JJN. Sure, if you go to the ground with them, you're going to be in trouble, but as has already been suggested, they're not going to feel pain; I fear my Kenpo strikes are just going to increase my chance of getting bitten. However, if you could elicit a bite attempt, and then use the zombie's momentum to hip-throw or iriminage, I think it could work. After all, if they're the lurching kind of zombie, their hara is already out of whack, and if they're the crawl-vertically-up-cathedral-walls sort, they're going to be moving so fast they won't know what hit them. On the other hand, now that I think about it, they're probably just going to pop right back up and keep coming. Randori with two-hundred zombies would probably not last long. Thank you for bringing this up; this is a serious problem that needs to be addressed. I, for one, feel incredibly unprepared.

This is not a "which style is better" question, so fear not. A bit of background: I trained in American Kenpo consistently for twelve years, and as regularly as school breaks during college after those years. Now, in graduate school, I have taken up aikido. I recently tested for 5th kyu after three months of training, which is a bit accelerated (due to my previous experience, apparently)--and from hence stems my question. After the test, my partner (marital, not martial) commented that my stance compared to my testing partner was much more stationary. That is, in hindsight, where he tended to move with me when I was uke (attacker), I tended to move him around me, when I was nage (defender). I believe this comes from my relatively hardstyle karate background; the first rule of Kenpo is: "Create a base," or solid stance. My question is: Is this alleged stability a positive, or negative characteristic from the perspective of aikido, or even other grappling arts? My Kenpo training tells me that if I want to throw someone, I need to remain stable, but part of my limited experience in aikido tells me that I should "move with my partner." Where does that line end, if it does? Ultimately, at my level, should I work on following the uke, or is it preferable to move the uke around one's self?