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I agree. If someone asks you a question regarding why you do something in your style and the answer is along the lines of "because thats how the old masters did it" or "because my instructor told me to do it that way" you are not really doing yourself or anyone else any favours by carrying on the tradition. Unless ofcourse you can answer why doing the thing in question is effective for you NOW. And that its superior to other methods that acheive a similar goal.

Depends on your goal. If you want to be a good artist than i agree. However if your goal is self defence then doing one without the other leaves you with a huge gap in your training. What happens if you start training striking only, and your attacked tommorow, without any choice the assault enters grappling range..... Will you say "hang on mate, could you come back in 12 years, i havnt learned grappling yet"??? In that example i hope you can see why from a self defence perspective knowing a little bit about both ranges is better than knowing nothing about 1 of them.

That certainly seems like some solid advice, thanks for the info KuroTora. And welcome to the forums!

Agreed. And if you are most comfortable striking, or are trying to escape, some working knowledge of grappling will make it alot easier for you to get back to your feet.

If you have to take physical control of another person(which is what i assume your talking about here), then id say the situation is already fairly hostile. Thats exactly right. Having one without the other might be enough, but if you are purely a striker, or purely a grappler, then the last place you want to be introduced to your weak area is mid fight. So i agree with you. If you want to learn effective self defence its important to not only learn, but pressure test all ranges of combat.

Kata does help develop balance, so does alot of other drills. Technique? you do techniques while performing kata, although the particular techniques relevance to self defence is questionable considering they are not directly applicable. What kind of basics? Karate basics? certainly, if your goal is to be good at doing karate then kata would be excillent, but in terms of self defence, or sparring, kata basics are worlds apart from the basics associated with those.

If that were the case then there would never be stories of people getting seriously injured or killed because there were attacked by someone.

Certainly, in the end its up to the individual if they want to do it or not. I personally, from all the information i have read would much rather use a heavy bag and i am happy doing that. Just trying to provide the original poster with information from both sides of the fence so he can make an informed choice.

If you are open and clear with him about what your doing then you would not be doing anything to disrespect him. If however, you go off and do aikido and then at your kung fu class the sifu tells you something and you say "in aikido we do it this way, ill stick with this" then thats a fairly obvious example of being disrespectful. Ofcourse you can, the amount of time and effort you put in will dictate what you can get out of each style. I cant speak from experience with these specific arts, however, you will always find some philosophical and technical ideas that conflict between different arts. Its up to you to accept these differences for what they are and decide what is best for you. Are you? If you are unhappy with your kung fu training, i would definetly talk to your sifu about the issues. If you cant sort out the problems, then find somewhere else to train. The worst thing you could do is continue on, not speak up for yourself and keep training just for the sake of it.

The best way to deal with this fear is to have a gameplan. Dont just expect that if your attacked your martial arts will come through and you will be able to defend yourself without any pre planning. Its impossible to train for everything, so you have to think about the things that will most likely happen and workout a gameplan that can save you the majority of the time. Be active in your plan, not reactive. Then once youve got your basic plan, train hard to make it work by replicating what your going to do has close has possible. From there depending on how far you want to take it, you can start working on the "what-ifs", the things that might happen if your initial plan doesnt work. Talk to your instructor about helping you work out a gameplan, if they cant help, find someone who can. You cant prepare for everything, but KNOWING what you plan to do is a good start. This can relate to all things in life, look at the most successful sports people and bussiness people. Do you think they go into a game or a meeting and hope that what they know will get them through? I doubt it, they all have a very specific, well practiced gameplan that makes them successful.

Found some of the following(i dont know anything about them other than what i saw on the websites): Lehigh Valley Isshin Ryu Karate, Inc. http://www.lvirk.com/home/home.aspx Leading Edge Karate http://www.leadingedgekarate.com/ Asian Academy of Martial Arts and Culture http://www.parkettes.com/classes/martialarts/index.htm Hope that gets you started.

Was looking through some old posts and thought i would update everyone on my current training situation. I stopped training in karate about half way through this year. After alot of thinking (mostly about my reasons for training and what i was getting from training) and changing my mind and then more thinking, i decided that it was best for me to stop doing karate. I havnt really looked around for any other martial arts in the area. Instead i am training at home regularly(more regularly than i ever trained karate) and am enjoying it quiet alot. My training consists of a large variety of things to keep me from falling into a pattern. I include weights, bagwork, skipping, running, shadowboxing, knife and stick training, swimming, cycling, various bodyweight excercises. Im very aware of the limitations of solo training, but also am noticing alot of benifits, including getting more of a sweat and a better all round workout than i ever got in my karate training. And when i get the chance, i still spar with some like minded friends working on all aspects of self defence including scenario training. I have also been doing alot of research into self defence related topics and adding various things to my training including aspects that involve pre and post fight phases. Thanks to anyone who took the time to read this, best wishes for the holiday season, and good luck in training.

I agree with you on most of this. Regarding the basics, if things become physical you want to hope that all the training you have done has taken your flinch reflex and improved upon it, not forced you to forget your natural reactons and re-learn how to perform techniques.

The problem i find is that the majority of martial arts schools these days teach you to be good at that specific martial art only, you wont be taught what to do if someone comes up and starts verbally abusing you, what to do when someone is in your face, someone starts pushing you, someone hits you when your not expecting it, and most of the time you wont be learning realistic self defence. You will be taught, in most cases, some techniques to use in a one on one situation when the violence has already started. Rarely will the training address the before and after stages. You also wont learn how to not be scared when a completely innocent person going about their day walks past you at some distance. You have every reason to doubt your training, because if its like the majority of traditional martial arts training these days it probably doesnt address some very important issues and situations. (like the ones mentioned above)

that article is from Rob Redmond, 3rd dan in Shotokan Karate, and served as the chief instructor of the Atlanta Karate Club from 1984-1999. He tends to write no nonsense articles revealing the truth about karate. Im surprised you havnt heard of his website before.

I would read the following if you want some more info on makiwara training: http://www.24fightingchickens.com/2005/09/29/all-about-makiwara/

There certainly is a difference. If you ask people where they would go to learn self defence, the majority would say "a martial arts school, obviously". Rarely would a person even think about going to a conflict managment course and learning how to run. When martial artists talk about self defence, intentionally or not they often only refer to the physical part of self defence. This is the same thing you will experience in most martial arts classes. When schools have there "self defence sessions" to practice "self defence techniques", the majority of the time they are learning how to escape wrist and lapel grabs against a complient "opponent". The person walks up and without any aggression or conversation, grab your wrist and stand there waiting for you to perform an overcomplicated escape for a situation that is far from reality. The pre and post fight parts are often only mentioned for a few moments, time is not spend practicing the skills required to deal with these parts. Self defence training involves practicing and learning about conflict de-escalation, signs of aggression, pre fight posturing, pre emptive strikes, legal implications, dealing with police interviews, your rights in terms of defending yourself, dealing with post traumatic stress, the possibility of revenge attacks etc. If your martial arts training doesnt include this then you are really only looking at a very small part of the self defence puzzle.

With makiwara training, the most you will do is form calluses on your knuckles, they will look swollen constantly, and probably cause you problems in later life. In the event you needed to hit someone hard, there are still a huge number of areas on the human body that will be stronger than the calluses and the small bones in the hand. If you want some genuine advice... learn how to elbow.

If you look at the length of these guys stances id say they are bouncing to compensate for their lack of mobility.

I find it alot harder to maintain balance and move around efficiently while boucing. Movement is important, but the boucing isnt necissary.

You make some very good points Sohan, i will comment on one: I dont think it really has to be one or the other. However, most people only have a limited amount of time in which they choose to train, therefore spending time at 3 different schools during the week is not really an option. In saying that, what a person does should be aimed towards the things they are trying to achieve, and in my opinion, if your goal is purely self defence, then there are much more effective ways to learn than doing kata and breaking down the techniques into bunkai.

I will add that although while your young it seems like a great idea to condition your body to be strong and put your body through alot of pain and ignore it, but eventually it will catch up with you. Injuries that didnt seem so bad when you were young, getting punched and kicked in the body and head etc. In the long term you wont be doing yourself any favours. And keep in mind that the people training you will be more than happy to take your money and show you how to do all this "hardcore" training, but they probably wont be in your life in 10 or 20 years when the problems will start. And they are not the ones that will have to deal with the short and long term punishment. If you feel some urge to do this kind of thing, i would suggest the same rule for most things in life.... all in moderation.

It taught him how to perform inside and outside block, probably some humility, and the value of hard work? If we take that example, but talk about defensive techniques in general: The karate kid way: 1. Perform the techniques with a sponge in your hand, leaning over, no interaction with another person. 2. Learn some humility and work ethic from cleaning the car. 3. Eventually perform the technique with mr miyagi throwing a punch and holding it out in the air while you block. The other way: 1. Learn the mechanics of proper defence, including a good guard, footwork, movement. Drill those using various means that directly relate to the actual technique. 2. Practice the technique against a partner throwing proper punches at you. Starting slow and gradually building speed. Realising you cant stop the punches like you thought you could is quiet a humbiling experience. Getting better at it requires the hard work. 3. Finish by using the techniques while your partner is throwing random singular, and combination punches. If you are trying to learn a technique and those are your 2 options, i know which one i would choose.

What are you trying to achieve from training? This would give us a better indication of which martial art, if any, would suit your goals.

Part of me agrees with this, and i think its great that you enjoy the training. However, i would say that there are some cases where some training wont necessarily be better than none. If we are talking from strickly a self defence perspective, and the training teaches you bad habits, gives you are false sense of confidence, teaches techniques that are ineffective, outdated, or require alot of fine motor skill to work, trains with a passive partner who freezes and falls to peices after you do one technique and calls that self defence. Then that training obviously wont help you. The thing with having no training at all is that you are unsure of what you can do, however, you are not blinded by what you think combat should be like, or what technique you think you should use, or over confidence you might have gotten from second rate training. If the training enhances your natural reactions and contributes to making the way you naturally move stronger, than this is clearly an advantage. If however you are being taught to go against your most natural reactions and re-learn how to move, then is that training really better than none?