brentyj

I wanted to start Ninjutsu when I was 14 and excitedly asked my Sensei about it. He recommended I wait until black belt before branching off and trying other styles. His reasoning was that learning different styles early on can hinder your development in you base art. Resulting in a style that is less effective than the other styles are in isolation. I took his advice and waited until I received my black belt, but still ran into issues with some martial arts. I did Muay Thai for a couple of months but found the stance and kicking style messed with what I knew from my years of Goju training. I sure it may be different for other people, but I decided to stop training in Muay Thai as I found it counter productive. I did however keep on training in boxing as I love the boxing punches (over karate punches) and footwork and find they mix well with my karate kicks. Not to mention head movement, ducking and weaving also complements my blocking. I started training in BJJ when I realised that on the ground I am just as vulnerable as anyone else. 15 years of karate training were rendered nearly useless with a successful spear tackle. I was recently toying with the idea of starting Wing Chun, but decided that ultimately it was too similar to what I already know.

I was lucky enough to live near where William Cheung set up shop years ago. so it was just a matter of popping in and organising a private lesson. Other than that, I would suggest keeping an eye out for your fav martial artists visiting to do seminars and see if you can book in for a lesson. I was originally meant to be training with Lyoto Machida at my MMA gym but he bailed last minute, so my girlfirend organised this instead.

I will definitely keep what I was taught about 'the blind side' and keeping control of the elbows. It seems like such a simple and effective way of keeping people constantly off guard, and something that I will practice in my sparring sessions (both mma and karate). The idea of simultaneously blocking and attacking is great too, I just wish I could afford a wooden dummy for my back yard

Hi guys, thanks again for all your suggestions. Wow what a fun experience! Basically we started by discussing what my background was, and we discussed the similarities between Goju and Wing Chun. Apparently they are more similar than I originally thought! That doesn't mean that they aren't quite different in a lot of ways though lol. We did a lot of wooden dummy work, and I tried to get my head around striking and blocking at the exact same time, something the wooden dummy was very useful for! I learned a lot about working from the blind side, with an emphasis on watching and maintaining control of the elbow. We also went through a couple of 'street' situations, and some other techniques like takedown flattening. I must admit, I really enjoyed it. Maybe after another year or so of MMA, i will move on to Wing Chun. However for the moment, I am content to have trained with such a master of the art (plus former teacher of Bruce Lee to boot!) and would highly recommend Wing Chun to anyone looking to try a new martial art!

Thanks everyone! Just about to get ready, will let you know how it goes

haha while that does sound thrilling, I was hoping for something a little hands on for the hour. Thanks, will def bring up push drills

Hi all, i was meaning to post this earlier but time got the better of me. Basically, my girlfriend got me a 1 hour training session with Grandmaster William Cheung for my birthday. Now, controversy about William aside, I wanted to get some advice on what I should practice with him for the hour. Some info on my martial arts background. I am a first dan black belt in Goju Ryu Karate, but have spent the last 6 months training twice a week in boxing and BJJ. I have no Kung Fu experience at all, especially not Wing Chun. For those who know a bit about Wing Chun, what do you think I should focus on during my hour session? Thanks in advance for your advice PS Quick replies are appreciated, as my session is in about 6 hours lol

Hello again! I thought I would drop back past and give everyone an update of how things are going. Very well, would be the best way to describe it! My relationship with my sensei has completely mended and I believe a lot of my issues came from the fact that I wasnt understanding that martial arts is a personal journey, something individual to the practitioner. One of the posters here mentioned that I 'shouldnt walk away from a problem thats not there'. I find that to be very true and find that my MMA training balances out my traditional Goju training nicely. The best of both worlds if you will. I train harder in kata than I would have, because I no longer resent that I am not as quick as others at it. Rather, I acknowledge I have other strengths and should work on my weaknesses. Lastly, I no longer mind the lack of emphasis on competition and sparring, as my MMA gym has all the sparring and rolling I need. I look forward to what kind of a martial artist this will make me, and the challenges that await

Dont worry, as everyone has said, Karate will always be there. I myself have just come back after 5 years

Wow great responses everyone. You have all given me a lot to think about. For the moment, I think I will continue my goju ryu and channel my competitive side through my BJJ (where competition is highly encouraged) After all, I have only been back for year and , as Sensei says, black belt means master of basics, and there is still so much to learn. Although I am keen to explore different forms of Karate, maybe I should wait until I know a little bit more about my own Thanks again everyone

Just wanted to pop in and say a quick hello. I have been practicing Goju Ryu for over 12 years and have recently found a bit of a love for MMA training. (I hope thats not a bad word around here is it? I have been following these forums for a while and look forward to conversing with you all.!

Hi all! As you can tell this is my first post here, so a big hello to you all. I have been following some of the threads here for quite some time, and look forward to partaking in the interesting and mature disussions that take place here. (Apologies for below being a bit long-winded, but I wanted to properly paint the picture. The is a summary below if you want to skip the wall of text) As the subject suggests, I need a bit of advice (maybe some people have had similar experiences) regarding my training. You see, I have been training in Goju Ryu Karate on and off since I was 9 (I am 25 now). As a child of the 90's Im not ashamed to admit a lot of my inspiration for learning Karate came from Power Rangers, The Karate Kid and TMNT lol. Still, while my friends dropped off I continued and eventually attained my 1st Dan when I was 17. Though I loved training, I found that my skills lied primarily in sparring and kicks rather than kata, which I often struggled more than most to remember and reproduce kata successfully. As a result, I was often the student that my Sensei would use to push the other students in sparring, and to demonstrate proper kicking techniques. At around 19 I went on a bit of a break (traveled, parties, the usually early 20's stuff etc) before coming back about a year a go. After returning, I decided that I wanted to focus on my sparring and competition. Not to mention I have a lot of respect for my sensei, and wanted to return to training under his instruction. The only issue is my teacher is a fairly practical kind of guy. He doesnt like tournaments very much as he basically sees it as pointless and doesnt relate to real self defense (paraphrasing of course). Not only that he has a problem with large egos and sees competition as way people can stroke their egos. The only tournaments we hold (and rarely at that) are inter-club, and even then they are separated into teams so we dont have a singular winner and that everyone gets a go. Sensei will not stop us should we want to go to an external tournament, and may even come to watch, though his distain for the competition in general is obvious. And while there may be some sparring at the end of class, nearly all our class time is dominated by kata and their respective techniques. So why am I saying all this? Well, my time away allowed me to gain perspective on what I actually wanted to achieve in Karate. And that is sparring and competition... the exact thing my club doesnt put any emphasis on. Now I dont intend to slander my Sensei, my respect for his teaching is what brought me back to this club in the first place. However, it is becoming obvious that what I desire to achieve in martial arts, doesnt mesh with his philosophy. To further add to this, about 4 months ago I joined a mixed martial arts gym primarily to get fit and cross train. I ended up taking BJJ classes and muay thai and have fallen in love with the 'hands on' approach (especially in BJJ). Dont get me wrong, I understand the importance of kata, however I would be lying if I didnt find it quite boring and not well suited to me. I have a bad short term memory and often forget the details. Still, I do not think MMA is better, nor do I want this to turn into a 'VS' thread. I believe there is a lot to be learned from traditional arts, especially in a world outsite the ring where there are no rules. However I also believe that there is a lot to be gained out of the conditioning that say boxing provides. Learning via template/kata is all well and good. However, aside from 1 or 2 of the black belts in my club, I am positive the rest would get a real shock should they get ito a real life incident on the street. This happened to me when I was 18, when I was trying to defend a friend who was attacked on the street in the city. I feel as though I wasnt adequatley prepared for the.... 'realness', 'hardness' and brutality of what happened to me. My nose is still a bit disfigured to this day as a reminder that fights are messy and brutal, and not something that kata's really prepare you for. But I digress... To summarise While I respect my teachers knowledge, I feel that we are of different mindsets and do not share the same attitudes in karate. I just dont know what the right thing to do is. Should I leave? Should I explain to him why, or just go? While I like training MMA, my heart lies in Karate. However, I would like to train in way that involves less kata and more sparring. Not to mention somewhere that encourages competition. Perhaps I am more suited to Kyokushin? Anyway, while the subject may have been a bit dramatic, this is indeed a bit of a crisis for me. I feel I am betraying my sensei by even writing this, however I must know if people have had any fundamental differences between themselves and their teacher, and what they did about it. Anyway, thank you to all who got through this wall of text. Its great to be a part of these forums and I look forward to your reply.