GreenDragon

You know you love em...I was surprised this thread made it halfway down the first page without any showing up so I had to fix that. Chuck Norris once ordered a Big Mac from Burger King...and he got it. When Chuck jumps into a pool he doesn't get wet, the pool gets Chuck Norrised. A Handicapped parking sign does not signify that this spot is for handicapped people. It is actually in fact a warning, that the spot belongs to Chuck Norris and that you will be handicapped if you park there. If you spell Chuck Norris in Scrabble, you win. Forever. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is based on a true story: Chuck Norris once swallowed a turtle whole, and when he crapped it out, the turtle was six feet tall and had learned karate. Damn these are stupid...get more stupider here: http://www.chucknorrisfacts.com/index.html

If paper beats rock, rock beats scissors, and scissors beats paper, what beats all 3 at the same time? Answer: Chuck Norris Chuck Norris once shot an enemy plane down with his finger, by yelling, "Bang!" If Superman and The Flash were to race to the edge of space you know who would win? Chuck Norris. In the original pilot for Star Trek Next Generation, Chuck Norris can be seen powering the USS Enterprise warp drive with his roundhouse kicks. Chuck Norris does not use spell check. If he happens to misspell a word, Oxford will simply change the actual spelling of it. Chuck Norris doesn't do push ups, he pushes the earth down!

Thank you for all the great responses, even the tongue in cheek ones. It is great to hear the opinions. I am now convinced that the best way to train would be using both gi AND no gi. Unfortunately, there is only one place in town I know that does it and the schedule just doesn't work. And as expensive as MA training is these days I can only afford one place, so unfortunately, I a m going to have to choose. But it looks like I found a place to train that teached Jeet Kune Do. It is a branch called JKD Unlimited, in the tradition of evolving JKD to use whatever works, these guys borrow heavily from Muay Thai, Kali, Jui Jitsu and even Judo, so I can learn some throws as an addition to the standard single & double leg takedown. Wow, talk about cross-training, sounds good to me! And they train no-gi, so it looks like that is what I will be going with, no gi.

I could be mistaken, but I heard that a Judo Gi and a Jiu Jitsu Gi were different...the Jiu Jitsu Gi is cut to fit a little tighter and a Judo gi is cut to have a little more play. True?

I am looking for suggestions on a good jiu jitsu gi for less than $90.00USD, I might be in the market for one very soon. The search function reveals many threads about this, but new Gi's come out all the time and new members sign up here all the time, so I thought re-posting the question might yield some fresh results. The gameness single weave looks good at $85, but I have heard it sucks...from one person, who sells gis and was telling me the Ouano gi is a better buy for the money $80 (supposedly it is a one piece gold weave)(maybe his margins are better on the Ouano)? Anyone own either of these gis and can comment? Anyone suggest a different gi for less than $90USD that is as good or better?

New guy here, so sorry if this has been discussed previously, I'd be surprised if it hasn't but I am looking for some fresh opinions. I have a chance to train with Charles Allen who trained under Marcio Simas who trained under Carlos Gracie Sr. Needless to say he is going to be quite experienced, I assume a great teacher, and old school...all classes are gi classes. Or I can keep training where I am training. With a young cage fighter who trains no-gi all the time. He is pretty good. I train for self defense and fitness, no intention of competing. So my first instinct is that no-gi is better, I mean, we train in shorts and t-shirts, just like what I'd be fighting in if some drunkard decided to get froggy at a bar or the park. But then again, we get so slippery that halfway through class, we can't hardly even hold on to each other, let alone keep an arm trapped for a lock or bar. That's not very realistic...if some guy and I get into a scrap, we aren't going to be all slippery like that. The gi would give a more realistic representation with no slipping out of each others' grips during training. But I feel like I am wasting my time drilling and practicing things like lapel chokes and fighting for position using the sleeves, pants and cuffs of my rolling partner in class. No fool that I might end up scrapping with will be wearing a gi.

Ah, I thought that might be what you meant, we call it a foot jab. Thanks

Go to a the store and pick up some calcium suppliments (where they sell other vitamins). I don't think this is the kind of thing where you can expect someone to give you a name brand of calcium and an exact milligram per day that will will be best for making your shins better for shin kicks.

If you are already studying Muay Thai then the only thing you will need is groundwork. Although it is very common for people to cross-train brazilian jujitsu, it is not the only way you can get the ground work covered. If they don't have BJJ near you, then look for a judo class, even a regular wrestling class will help out if you are ever knocked off your feet and have to roll with somebody. Taking a class in a less than perfect art will always be better than any book or video.

Please explain what a teep is. I trained in karate (shuri-ryu) and now train in MT. There is a lot to be said for the post that mentioned it all being a matter of opinion. I would expand on that to say that one's opinion of what will work better is based on many factors such as the schools one has been to and the things they have seen or heard about those styles. But what influences what we think will work best is mostly a function of what we think will work best for us and what works for me may not work for you. That being said, the reason I think MT would work better in a street fight for me has to do with wise old saying SevenStar quoted. I really would rather perfect a small skill set than learn many techniques and practice them less. In my karate class I noticed a lot of higher level belts practicing very complex techniques, (those needed for their next belt test) almost exclusively. These techniques always struck me as being somewhat impractical from a fighting standpoint and as a result I felt the higher level people were wasting their time learning to pull off a move that would be of little use in a street fight (and time is not something I have in abundance). A poster mentioned how many karatekas will raise their stance during point sparring. This is very telling...although point sparring is very different from a real street fight, it is still more similar to a street fight than practicing katas is. I would suspect anyone who raises their stance during point sparring would raise it even more in a real fight which would negatively impact the effectiveness of many of the techniques they learned while practicing a low stance in a class. In MT we practice all our moves from that high stance that feels more natural in a real fight. For me that feels right, even if a low stance is technically more stable and provides a smaller target that is easier to guard. Physical conditioning requirements are demanding in a MT class as well. Back when I was studying karate and Tang Soo Do I thought conditioning meant exercise during class that got me in good physical condition. I now realise that conditioning is more than that. It also means conditioning the body to take blows by repeatedly taking blows in class. My MT teacher told me, after my first week or two while I was complaining about how much my shins hurt...he told me that after I had been doing this a while that one day I might hit my shin on a coffee table and only then would I realize that something that used to hurt a great deal didn't and it would surprise me how conditioned my shins had become. He was right about that, but that was not the whole of it. By regularly feeling pain in many different parts of my body, not only have those parts of my body been conditioned to be less receptive to pain but my mind has also been conditioned in such a way that even a paper cut between my fingers doesn't bother me the way it used to. I react differently to pain now. This, I know I never could have gotten from my karate teacher and this I know would be an advantage in a street fight.

What is chi sau? Sounds yummy. Maybe I will try it. Like the butthole surfers said "it's better to regret something you did, than something you didn't do". Oh, btw what was the thread topic again...oh yeah, MT is way better!

I do understand, and that was kind of my point, this other school that taught in what you called the full traditional way, since they are not in a sport MA they are not as ready for a ring fight as a MT fighter would be (generally speaking). You kind of even implied that due to them being more traditional than your school they were even less prepared than your school's students for any kind of fight, in or out of a ring. So if you use ring fighting as your only criteria for whether MT is more or less effective than WC you are taking a somewhat narrow and biased view that will come out with MT on top. Not only is that going to be true most of the time but the reasons it is true are fairly obvious and it has nothing to do with whether or not WC is a good MA. I heard that WC was pretty straight forward, not as flourishy (is that a word) as mantis, etc. and has a reputation for being effective (apparently not in the ring ) so I thought about taking it, but I just don't have the patience for forms.

Yeah, I'm not ready yet either and I've been doing it for 6 mos. Most of the guys in my class are complete beasts compared to the schoolgirls in the karate and tang soo do classes I took (no offence to the skills of the instructors at those schools). One of the guys in my class is training ultra hard for a cage match. And he is not the toughest or most skilled in class, crazy times we're livin in, I tells ya. Really, Wing Chun, not a traditionally spiritual type of art. I know this guy who is training under sifu Fong in Tucson and he made it sound like it was more spiritually centered than my MT class (what isn't). In any case as you said, WC guys do not train with their eyes set on the ring so a liitle bit of my post wasn't complete horsesh*t.

MT has become a sport martial art. The MT practitioners who are any good at it are used to fighting all out in a ring. WC is not a sport art. This has two effects: 1) The WC guys who do decide to compete are not going to be seasoned veterans in a ring, 2) The art itself is not taught with ring fighting being a goal, as it is in MT. And before the people in the MT camp start rolling their eyes at the "we have nothing to prove" angle of WC pratitioners, let me just say that it is more than just an excuse. People saying that have a valid point: MT, in it's internationalized sport style way has lost much of it's origins of spirituality and has simply become the most brutal stand up art there is (IMHO). WC as with most kung fu styles has retained it's philosophies of peace and spirituality. So even if this was not the artists personality before they trained in WC, they are trained to think differently about fighting than a MT practitioner is trained. Anyone good enough in the martial aspect of WC to compete on a world class level will also be spiritually enlightened enough to feel that they do not have to prove their abilities in a ring. I am not saying that makes them better or worse, just different, and it means that you will not see the best WC guys preparing for cage matches against whomever thinks they are tougher than them. Personally, I don't like the time spent on the more traditional philosophies (as well as katas, chi, etc.) taught in TMAs, they just aren't for me, that is why I have chosen MT. But I can not pretend that a sport ring is the best place to decide whether sport art A. is better than traditional art B. In a sport ring or cage the sport arts like MT will almost always prevail, but not because they are inherently better at anything other than fighting in that ring. You people are comparing apples to oranges and trying to decide which one makes the best juice by using an orange juicer. Of course the oranges will make better juice using an orange juicer, doesn't mean there is anything wrong with the apples just because you didn't get a good glass of apple juice. I fear that after taking a break from this site, I have done a binge post, sorry it was so long. 6 mos. of pent up posts all coming out in one blathering blab.

I'll start by saying yes, these methods should be utilized in a street fight when you feel you and/or your family are in danger. That being said, the reason they are against the rules is because they are especially dangerous (except the last few). Chances are, if you are a trained martial artist you will not need to use these techniques to subdue an attacker in the street and if you do use these very dangerous techniques you run a far greater risk of being the one who gets sued and/or arrested regardless of whether or not you started the fight. But I suppose the legal implications of using such techniques will vary from country to country, state to state, judge to judge and are another discussion altogether.