Drew

I know I'm a bit late on the trigger, but congratulations Noah! The first of many!

It seems you are happy with the resolution to your situation, and I hope you follow up with charges like Kuma and others suggested. However, going back time and again when this stuff was going down was not wise. I realize your parents and possibly you put money into the place for testing, were under contract yadayada but you can't (or at least shouldn't) put a price on human dignity or safety. You were putting yourself in a clearly hostile and unsafe environment. The instructor's overt dislike of you should have set off some alarms as well. Situations where the person in charge turns a blind eye towards mistreatment of a "different" student tend to get bad fast. The general hazing that you experienced can and has turned to molestation, battery, rape, and I can think of at least one instance where the outcast was murdered. Reading back over my previous paragraph I know I may come off as a little bit extreme, but I hope you take heed anyway. Being a student of martial arts, I hope you can appreciate that the key element in self defense is avoidance. Similarly, though wanting so bad to get better at your martial art that you would endure such harassment is valiant, the better part of valor is discretion. You (and your parents for that matter) did not display discretion when choosing to return after the harassment had reached an intolerable level. Nonetheless, I am glad that you have found a new school. You seem very dedicated and your choice of what is by far the greatest starter pokemon hints at many good decisions to come.

Precisely.

You seem to be the only person who really caught on to what I meant, not to say It's anyone's fault but my own, I didn't really know how to put it. I used several poor analogies, hand fighting really had nothing to do with what I was trying to describe. No, I am talking about rolling, but starting in a position (guard, mount, side control, scarf, whatever) that is likely to occur in mma, not a contrived (i.e. from the knees) position that will not occur. I would argue that starting from the knees and all that crazy knee takedown-battle jits that goes on at jits schools wastes plenty of valuable rolling time by itself. I agree. Not quite. While that can also be an issue, I was referring more to the quality of training in a given range suffering, rather than the fighter suffering due to not getting enough training in a particular range. Ug, this is a mess. For the record, I am very specialized myself. Though I'm working on it, my striking game on the whole is dreadful, it's entirely centered around tying people up and chucking them, so that I can employ my submissions (though better grapplers have recently shown me the error in this as well). I have nothing against specialization, I think treating mma like it is a collection of sports rather than one of its own is unwise.

Shori, I think we misunderstand one another. I absolutely prefer to have coaches that are specialized in each phase of competition. What I was kind of complaining about is that many coaches seem to use their own phase's corresponding medium of competition (Muay Thai, BJJ, boxing, what have you) to train students rather than a more MMA specific setup. For example, I mentioned starting from the knees in rolling, or butt-scooting. In the context of BJJ competition, that's great. But I have never been in those positions, nor do I believe I ever will be, in the ring. It would save so much time to start from any already grounded position. Or just practicing wrestling, hand fighting is dern near impossible when a dude is throwing punches at your face. Another example is practicing stand up with Muay Thai rules. I want you to occasionally set up a take down or throw when we are sparring, just to keep me honest, you know? I'm not training for a Muay Thai match. Looking back at my previous post, I don't think I was entirely clear about exactly what was frustrating me, sorry about that. I think I have rectified it with this post.

Recently, I've been thinking about specialization, especially among trainers, in the context of MMA or any no/few rules confrontation. People often specialize in one area of MA, especially when they are done competing, and their goal becomes get as good as possible at an individual aspect. However, the problem that keeps cropping up is these people lose sight of the big picture, and the techniques they start teaching tend to be a bit short sighted, and cause problems in the ring. For example, purely jiu-jitsu minded people tend to start rolling from their knees when literally any other arbitrary position (side control, mount, whatever) would be better. Boxers like to train boxing without knees or elbows, the threat of kicks, so on and so forth. While I realize that training individual elements is necessary, I would argue that ignoring the ranges of combat directly adjacent to the one being trained is very detrimental, i.e not rolling when practicing striking is fine but ignoring takedowns and clinch entries is not. This problem is not even addressable if you happen to go to multiple gyms (a boxing gym, a jiu-jitsu gym) to fill in holes. But even in exclusively MMA gyms with multiple trainers this seems to be a problem. Thoughts on this?

I think this is a tricky question because whether something should be changed or not really depends on the value each individual puts on what they have. For example, I have a yard full of tall grass right now. I put negative value on tall grass because it harbors all kinds of creepy-crawlies that make me itch, so I'm going to rectify the situation in short order by cutting said grass. If you liked the tall grass, or needed it tall for some reason, you wouldn't change it because you have invested value on the state that the grass is in now. So it goes with martial arts. If you have something that you value highly (and you probably value it because it fits your needs, whether they be recreation, self defense, ring fighting etc.) you are unlikely to want to change it. Lack of change due to lack of need to change - I would argue - is not tradition, it is simply a lack of evolution. The environment isn't changing so neither are survival needs. Tradition waltzes in when the only reason change is not taking place is because that is the way things were done in the past. This isn't inherently bad. We can learn much from history and in many cultures tradition carries more history than the books do. I guess what I'm trying to say is that whether something should or shouldn't evolve is case by case. If you need or want it to, sure. If you just like it because of historical value and don't want it to change, fine. Like fossils or frozen mammoths, tradition can help us understand the past so that we can better plod into the future.

Can you point me towards some primary sources on the death threats?

Threatening your kid with reduced promotion opportunities seems hardcore shady. Unless you mean that they won't have enough teaching staff to do it more often than that unless he helps? In either case if your husband is into mma then why not find a place to train that is less of a hassle?

This sounds like the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition. Yay science!

I've been wondering what the controversy was for months now, I hope this person turns back up to tell us. I'm just so nosy!

I had assumed it was above the knee actually. Turning the knee out and bending it prevents that injury from even being a possibility. I even purposefully catch it on the knee. I guess I'm beating a dead horse at this point though, you've probably already got it down.

On blocking a kick on your right side with your left (in this case lead) leg: If you chamber the leg for a side kick when you do it, they are very unbalanced and easy to knock over with said kick. Fun to play with but can be tricky to pull off at speed.

The thing with the leg deflection is that each time I ask my Sensei he can show me a seemingly different way. The fact that you now say both are acceptable is a huge block falling into place for me! Maybe I should stop worrying about every little micromovement and just be fluid and do what feels best. ((That said, deflecting kicks to my right side with my left shin is still probably unacceptable?)) Arigatou! I know just the part of the leg you must have hurt, pac. That happens when you don't turn you shin out to take it on the tibia and instead take it more in the fibula area. You might look up some Muay Thai videos to help with this. Mas himself studied Muay Thai when working on k-shin.

Well first off howdy,welcome to the forum! Second, your class sounds like a hoot and a holler. To answer your first question, bending your leg when taking a kick is to prevent the knee from becoming hyperextended. Lifting the leg and taking it on the shin instead of the thigh is a common practice as well. How come you needed a shot in your leg? What kind of injury did you sustain? Stomach standing isn't dangerous unless you go crazy with it. Don't let anyone push you into going any farther with it than you feel comfortable with. Medicine ball belly slams are a close cousin of this practice. Personally, I feel that once you've learned to get hit in the stomach there isn't much of a point to practicing it outside of hard sparring, but we all know how k-shin people are As for kata, I've never been a fan, so I can't help you much there. Overall, your class format is pretty similar to the karate classes that I've had, but with a more physical edge like judo class. As I understand it, this is common for k-shin. Good luck in Japan pal, sounds like you are having a blast.

The word "tradition" is the sticking point. To me, a tradition is something that is handed down from one generation to the next as opposed to rejuvenating a practice that has not been done for centuries. I'm probably splitting hairs here, but I hope you can see where I am coming from. K. I get where you're coming from. However, one only has to play the telephone game to realize that information is, inevitably, lost or changed (either purposely or not) when translated from one person to the next. Do that in a room with 100 people and you'll really see it. Over the course of several hundred years, it's probably worse. I realize that these people work very hard and diligently to avoid such degredation of information/knowledge, but it's quite likely that what is practiced today is very different from how it was practiced 400 years ago. This is especially true because it's no longer battle tested. Ryuha develop from one head master to another. After all ryu means stream so it kinda goes with the territory. Actually, most koryu have very detailed densho to back up the practical. The densho are as accurate as many of the medieval manuscripts. In fact the densho is the tradition and the koryu exist to transmit it. It's certainly going to be more authentic than restarting a tradition that hasn't been trained for centuries. There is simply no comparison. K. In an irritated voice: If it isn't in the Jedi Archives, it does not exist. The truth is, there simply is comparison. You can compare literally anything. Now I don't really care about the Historical authenticity of HEMA, but I agree with (Brian, is it?) that there are only so many ways to move which makes it likely we are close to the mark. In addition to this is the fact that HEMA practitioners in general have a very hands on, rough and tumble let's. spar attitude towards training, which we know from the literature was an attitude shared by many of the period practitioners. The best of us are extremely skilled at actually fighting with our weapons and seamlessly incorporating battlefield grappling in and out of harness. I'm not pointing any fingers, but many koryu practitioners do not share these characteristics, and these very characteristics are what matter to me when comparing the two traditions.

I just finished Ape Escape 2 and started on three. They just aren't as satisfying as the original though. Especially given the nerfed super hoop in three.

Well, its my name. For those interested, Andrew was apparently Latin for brave or courageous. My middle name was some dialect of Greek for soldier, and my last roots from the Gaelic for sea warrior. I like my name.

If I'm not mistaken, using the shin to strike with isn't allowed in most American kickboxing leagues. In MMA however, the trend has been in favor of the shin for most round kicks. This is due in part that the shin is harder to seriously damage than the instep. Muay Thai people generally use the shin as well, and given the popularity of Muay Thai nowadays, its no surprise that method has caught on in other sports.

20 at the time. Also, I'm not from Arcola, I'm a couple hours south of it. I stay thin because I have a hard time eating enough to gain weight. I had to gain 10 pounds for this fight and I was miserably full all the time. I appreciate the critisism, there is definitely a lot for me to improve on. Anywhere near Effingham? If you're going to be, let me know. You could stop by and grapple an old chubby redneck. I would love to, I'm only an hour out. Pm me your location and training times and ill see what I can do. Funds are a bit tricky at the moment though so we will have to see.

20 at the time. Also, I'm not from Arcola, I'm a couple hours south of it. I stay thin because I have a hard time eating enough to gain weight. I had to gain 10 pounds for this fight and I was miserably full all the time. I appreciate the critisism, there is definitely a lot for me to improve on.

Being the shameless self promoter I am, and being as this is the only MA related forum I am a member of, I figured I would share my amateur MMA debut here. http://youtu.be/pj0rt6BoTXA?t=31s This was on Feb. 8th 2013, so its been over a month, but better late than never. I know I jacked the term "Mandalorian JiuJitsu" from one of you fellows, I can't remember who, I hope you don't mind. It was funny so I wrote it down as my style on the sign up sheet. I love the way the announcer says it.

They be like whoa? It must have been incredible!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/mihirbose/2008/08/china_seeks_to_prove_point_to.html You made me lol. Though that guy does vaguely resemble a certain snapping turtle to which I almost lost a finger.

Anyone else find it ironic that the trophy is decorated with a sidekicking figure while the kata he performed contains no sidekicks? Congratulations though