Spartacus Maximus

I have a question for anyone who knows a lot about muscle anatomy. I need the name of the leg muscles involved in a kick when the leg is pulled back after extension. I am also looking for suggestions on how to train these and increase kick retraction speed for multiple kicks Ideas anyone?

Very interesting concept and one that I have often considered. In this age there is too much focus on rewards: ranks, grades etc. Too many people care more about the tangible reward and cannot be satisfied with actually learning a skill. I think that doing away with the coloured belts can be a good idea if it helps student focus their attention on gaining and perfecting skills. That way ability and years of training determine where everyone stands. It then becomes obvious who is more capable.

Am I the only one who noticed that the turtles are supposed to be ninjas yet all except one use a weapon originating in okinawan kobudo? Maybe that is because those are the most popular and easy weapons to recognize. Interesting

Weapons are always going to be regulated and controlled to some degree in any modern civilized society. This is obvious for firearms but should also be expected for weapons that are unusual and not commonly seen. People fear what they don't understand so it is not unusual for exotic martial arts weapons to be more strictly regulated than guns. In some places guns may be easily owned legally whereas nunchaku are fully prohibited. For some reason the public and the law sees that weapon as more dangerous than an automatic pistol. This is why I think owning martial arts weapons is not worth the hassles of requesting permission or justifying it to a legal authority. I advise caution and precautions. For example: Keep your weapons locked up and out of sight when not practicing Don't display them or show them to casual observers or people who are not involved in martial arts. Hide them of you must carry them to and from your training place. Do not ever practise with them outside where passersby may see you. Even In your own yard. Finally, if it has any sharp point or edges then you can assume its illegal or very strictly controlled. Best not own any of those. I learned this from an unfortunate incident when I was I Uni a few years ago. I had to run after a busybody called the campus police because she saw me quietly practising with tonfa. I didn't wait for them to arrive because I was not willing to explain. After that rude interruption, I stayed away from that part of campus and kept all my training secret. Anyway, you will get the most accurate answer by asking the authorities directly.

From the accounts my sensei has, his homeland was very different in his childhood and youth. Okinawa was not as calm and easygoing as I know it. Many famous experts such as Nagamine and Chibana were teaching karate in school or police dojo. They all knew each other and some were good friends. There was even an association were experts of every style taught together and exchanged techniques. The toe kick seems to be a specialty of the Shuri-te system originating with Matsumura Sokon. Every shorin ryu school related must have included it at some point.

Well it all depends on what type of teaching style your sensei has. I would go with caution and advise you to keep on training what you have learned up to this point as often and as hard as you can. Especially outside the dojo and whenever your sensei is not specifically instructing you. In many dojos especially those run in traditional Okinawan or Japanese style, it is considered very very bad protocol for a student to ask to grade or when the grading will be held. Students are expected to train and practise until the sensei tells them their skills have reached the level of their next grade. Required training hours are meant as a guideline only and are considered as the bare minimum. Just because a student has completed the time, it does not mean he is ready. Some people take longer and there is nothing wrong with that if gaining new skills is your goal. A common saying is that it doesn't matter how long it takes, so long as you never stop learning and improving.

I like to hear opinions of experienced people and teachers from different countries and areas. The web and most of what I read on the subject shows that it is common for lower dan ranks to run a dojo. Browsing through several websites of reputable schools in Europe and North America, it seems that 3 or 4th dan is quite common. I could probably be able to train with my sensei at least yearly but I could not ask every person I teach to fly to Okinawa/Japan to earn promotions. How far can a 3rd or 4th dan sensei promote his own students before referring to his senior fellows? I am especially interested in SENSEI8's point of view, as he is the head of a school. For him and everyone else, what is the minimum rank you would allow to represent your system and teach it at a branch dojo?

I am probably at least two years from earning earning shodan and I have been considering teaching. My teacher fully supports me and even hopes that I will become his representative. As you can see, this is a very high expectation and an honour I am not sure I can fulfill. I know that in Japan/Okinawa at least a 5th Dan is required to start teaching unassisted. Usually one also needs permission from one's sensei or the hombu dojo. What about outside Japan? What would you say is the minimum rank or number of years experience to be considered credible as the head of a dojo Bear in mind that I am referring to starting a branch dojo while continuing to train under my teacher, not becoming completely indepedent.

I'm starting to think there may be a pattern here at least concerning the shorin ryu schools tracing their lineage back to Matsumura Sokon or more recently to Chibana Chosin. My teacher was a student of Matsubayashi-ryu and then later trained under Chibana's senior student, Miyahira of Kobayashi-ryu. If both Chibana and Nagamine taught the toe kick, then it should have been passed on to their direct students. Using my teacher's age as the benchmark, I can accurately guess that this method was taught from the beginning at least until the end of the 1960s when Chibana sensei passed away. At least for the schools going back to him(Kobayashi-ryu) the change must have originated with third generation students at the earliest. That would put it somewhere in the 80s. That is a lot earlier than I thought. 20 years ago sound like a good guess. Who is your your Soshi's teacher Devil Dog? I'm interested because my sensei learned from Nagamine when he first started in the late 50s and early 60's.

Ha! Donkey's gone wild That reminds me of that Cuban competitor who got kicked out (Yes, pun fully intended) for kicking the ref/judge in the face. I'm a fan of sparring as a learning exercise, not for competition so I can't really say that I prefer either from that point of view. However if I had to choose which one to watch as a spectator I would pick TKD because it is different and some of them have amazing leg speed and balance in all those acrobatic flying kicks. Not nearly enough fists are thrown though

The simplest way to deal with this type of behaviour is to refuse to test the problem student until the attitude is changed. The student will either stay and train or leave. Either way problem fixed. There is no reason an instructor should accept to waste time with people like that. Customer service relations be damned! Students are their to learn but what is the point of going to the dojo if they are not ready or willing to accept being taught?

My dojo time is limited to 2 hours a week but I practise for at least an hour everyday. I made up my own training programme and routine which I follow and change from one week to the next. I also make a point of reviewing anything new I did in the dojo that week, especially the points I was corrected on by sensei. I don't get to the dojo as often as I would like to so I like to get homework. If i don't have anything specific I ask for my teacher's advice on what I should focus on. My karate and martial arts in general are almost an obsession for me. When I'm not training I either reading about it or watching and studying training DVDs or watching my favourite martial arts flicks. For me there is no such thing as too much. I have trained until I was so exhausted I collapsed to the floor more than once before.

I have seen very strict almost military type dojos and family-like dojos. I would describe my actual dojo as more like a family. There is discipline and duties but they are more implicit rather than explicit. I understand them as follows: 1: Maximum effort until practise time ends 2: Always accept training advice from your seniors 3: Help your juniors whenever asked 4: Practise only what sensei says until he ask you to do something else. 5: Never interrupt anyone's practise for any reason. 6. Do not waste your time in the dojo. There is always something to work on. 7. Respect the dojo and treat all your fellows with kindness and appropriate courtesy. 8. Never use any equipment without sensei's permission.

The absolute worst case scenario here is if weapons are involved. This bully sound like the typical punk. He has been beat but still thinks he has to be tough. This can be dangerous because guys like that don't know when to stop and can easily escalate things beyond control. That's why it's a good idea to tell people around you what is going on. If you can get a copy of the Facebook post where he says he will attack you with his friends you have tangible evidence of his plans and it can be used to support what you say. Show that to your parents, your sensei and your school. Another very good piece of advice is watch out for HIM. Know where he is likely to be and never ever let yourself be distracted when you are out and about. This the same advice I would give anyone wether they are dealing with a specific enemy or just in an unfamiliar place. It's the best way to avoid being surprised by an attack, mugging etc. Awareness of your environment is a fundamental point of self defense. Martial skill is useless if you are easily caught unaware. Even the basest animal knows to lookout for predators but this seems to be a lost sense for most humans living a modern sedentary life.

I would not advise you to try to fend off a group. Do not do anything to escalate or encourage aggressive behaviour from him. You have already shown him that you are able and willing to defend yourself. The best solution is to inform adults around you especially your parents and your sensei that you have been threatened. Tell them every detail of the situation and stress that you do not want to fight and are trying to stay out of trouble. Next thing to do is to avoid traveling alone to and from home. Walk with friends from school or your dojo. Plan to use different ways home instead of always the same path. Be unpredictable and hard to follow. This will greatly reduce the chances of the bully acting on his threat. If and only if you have tried everything to avoid him fails and he still comes after you, hit him hard and RUN as soon as you have an opening to get away. Don't just RUN away from HIM but run to someone to who you can explain what has happened. I repeat DO NOT meet him or go looking for him. Ignore him unless he is in your personal space and about to attack you. Otherwise it will not be self defense but a fight.

Stupid and kobudo are two things that should never mix. That goes double when stupidity is coupled with immaturity. I remember a young teenage black belt who nearly took his own ear off with a kama. The kid was visiting the dojo I trained at in japan and he decided to show off a kobudo kata he had just learned. He picked up a pair of kama without noticing an important detail. In japan, kama are a common tool sold in all hardware stores. The blades are more robust, heavier and always very sharp. Anyway as he starts swinging them around he stops in the middle of his kata wondering why others are looking shocked, and finally notices blood flowing from behind his ear onto his gi. He now has nice scar to remind him of that.

Personally, I loathe the concept of government regulation for the martial arts. The martial arts are much too diverse to be regulated by a single governing body. Government regulation usually means that everyone will have to teach and practise following standards and opinions which they do not necessarily share. Many European countries have government federations for martial arts requiring any one who teaches to be a recognized member ranked by this body. This means that ranks earned elsewhere and actual competence are not recognized unless the appropriate exams are passed to the standards established by the federation. This means that if your system is not standard or recognized, you cannot officially teach it no matter how competent you may be as a teacher and how skilled you may be. Of course this only affects those who want to open a school. There are many independent teachers, but it is very hard to do without the federation membership and support. I could not ever accept anyone telling me how or what I should teach. Especially people who do not know or understand what I do. I will teach what I have been taught the same way I was taught. Politics be damned. Government regulation only magnifies all the political bickering that already plagues the martial arts. Take the worst kind of political problems in any martial arts association and imagine that on a national scale for all martial arts... A nightmare indeed!

I'm not familiar enough with Muay Thai to give an informed opinion of Ong Bak. I hope that someone who practises it would comment. If I just judge it by what I have seen, I would say that there are more spectacular techniques than anything else. The most intriguing scene for me is where he appears to be doing a form whenhe demonstrates before his uncle. Is there such a thing as forms in Muay Thai? I thought they trained mostly by drilling individual techniques and two-person combinations practise...hmmm

I tend to use my experience as a reference and most of it was training in okinawan dojos or under Okinawan senseis. So yes, according to that, the word OSS is more prevalent on mainland Japan and even there it is mostly kyokushinkai or offshoots of it who use Oss. It is also used to a lesser extent in other Japanese karate styles. Kendo and judo have always been more popular than karate on the mainland but in Okinawa karate was not, as far as I know ever considered as a base endeavour. Okinawans were always proud of their native art. It has been taught in schools for the last hundred years or so and passed on in families of noble or martial decent. My teacher is an example of this as his father taught the police and his relatives include some famed and legendary experts of the old Ryukyu kingdom. He is also close to Fumio Demura's age, perhaps older. Anyway, I don't make a big deal about the misuse of Oss. If I ever trained outside japan, I might explain it once but I don't think I would insist on changing the dojo habits of people who are not with me. I would be more concerned about the misuse of martial skills than the correctness of dojo Japanese.

Also forgot to mention there is also jumping variations of the roundhouse, sidekick and front kick. All these are done the same manner as the non-jumping ones, only targets a different. The front jump-toe kick is aimed at the throat and Adam's apple. The main idea with toe kicks is to kick straight into the target or upwards at an angle and in. Exactly like stabbing with a knife or spear. For example a front kick would go straight into the liver or it could go up into the arm pit or behind the groin.

In general most people have poor blood circulation to their toes and poor dexterity. This is because of the usual way feet move. We don't usually use our toes for anything other than walking. That is why they must be trained to gain a new range of movement. The best exercise is to practise curling your toes up and down. Do this every single day in bare feet a many times and as often as you can. You can also practise walking around on the balls of your feet or pushing your self up on them and standing like that for as long as possible. The main reason you cannot pull your toes back far enough is that the connections controlling your toes are weak. Only solution is daily practise for at least a year. You should be able to do it eventually, unless you have some sort of physical anomaly or medical problem.

In all styles that I know to train toe kicks, the kicks are limited to front kicks and roundhouse( mawashigeri) kicks. Both target soft areas from the solar plexus to the legs from a standing position. Higher targets may be kicked if a previous technique sets them up. The kicks trained and impact areas in my dojo are like this: Front kick: big toe Roundhouse: big toe Sidekick: heel Back kick: heel Stomp/knee kick: heel

My goal is to become worthy of my teacher's expectations and accurately pass on everything he is teaching me. Second to that is to be able to practise and perform all that I know even when I reach advanced age. Maybe the image of the little old martial arts master with amazing abilities is a movie cliche, but my teacher is exactly like that. If I can do what he can do when I'm his age I know I will have reached my ultimate goal.

I believe you are referring to the movie titled: The Hunted? Also as a reference to what I said about choreography , I highly recommend a British TV programme called ITV. Go to YouTube and search for the ITV martial arts episode. There is a very clear explanation of how techniques are adapted to the movies versus how they are really used. Very interesting. As for one of my second choices of movies depicting fights I would chose an old war movie about WW2 called The Devil's Brigade. I like the hand to hand combat training scenes and fights with the Canadian hand to hand instructor. I saw old historical footage of empty hand training and it was very much like what is shown n that movie

The main difference between a toe kick and a ball if the foot kick is as you said, the more compact striking surface. This allows the power of the kick to penetrate the target. With ball of the foot kicks, less power goes into the target because it is dissipated by the larger striking surface. The difference is the same as hitting with a blunt object and striking with a sharp pointed one. Both will damage the target but the sharp one will cause deeper damage. Clearly learning this technique is not for everyone and the ball of the foot kick does work if done correctly but I am convinced that a toe kick will have better effect in some applications, especially against a larger adversary...with or without shoes. That is why I believe it is worthwhile for me to go through all the painful conditioning.