Starturtle

Heh, its been a while since i've posted here. Guess its time to end my forumiting and acutally start posting again.... Anyways... Coco, it seems your problem is your mindset. You are forcing yourself into a conflict that you cannot win. Therefore, unless you have a burning desire to loose, you need to decide to win. Don't scoff at the simplicity of that statement, ego is the quickest loss one can make. Once you decide you want to keep your body in a non-beat-up state, figure out what it takes to keep it that way. If the fight is avoidable, avoid it. If it is not, or you are unsure, make damn well sure that it happens under your rules/playingfield/whatever. Engage them how you want to fight, don't be caught offgaurd or forced to fight there way. To do so, with your skill level (and probably, even if your really skillled), is suicide. Its all about the mindset. You must look at the situation realistically and persue the best option. Also, someone brought up earlier that you should attempt to escape the moment you can. This is good advice, but if these are just punk kids, escaping might encourage and enbolden them even further. I would recommend that your first fight stay your last. Of course, if you soundly beat them, the possiblity exists for full fledged retaliation. Thats a judgement call your going to need to make. Hell, both situations could occur, so I would personally be ready for both situations, if at all possible. Me telling you how to fight 2 guys shoving you would be worthless. Not only are there only a gazillion different scenarios that could evolve from it, but I don't know you. You listening to any technique advice from me would leave you trying to think how to perform an action you'd never done. You must think about how YOU can win, and then do it. How I would win won't help you much. Good luck.

We train with both sides equally. Which side you spar with is really up to you, but since we train both sides equally you fight with both sides equally.

Oh, ok. Yea we do use them then. Ive just never heard the term bogu used before. We do full contact sparring with pad protection. And yes, my instructor is pretty cool. Im lucky to be practising under someone as knowlegable as he.

Im affraid I don't know what a bogu is. Could you define it please?

I agree. First time I got hit in the head, well, whoa. Ever since then i've been very aware of where my guard is. Hmmm, to practice keeping your guard up... Without head contact allowed, I would recomend that you drop your whole "zeroing in" thing when they drop their guard. ALWAYS keep some guard up, even in attacking. And try to keep that guard foccused in your upper-body area (face, sternum, etc). And since partial contact to the head is allowed, treat every contact there, accidental or purposfull, as a lost match.

Getting away from eastern use of the bow.....The British used a 6ft bow named the longbow to fire arrows farther than any other army. British law dictated Archery would be the best sport available (like soccer is now to much of the world) to take advantage of the weapons long range. British armies would conqure foes with a litterall sky of arrows before their oppones archers could even retailiate. So is the bow a fighting art? yes. Is there a MA developed specifacly around the bow? I doubt it. Oh yes, and the mental state of mind that Eastern archers were in is called Atari. It is the mental discipline of litteraly seeing only your target. For example (and this is a cut down version of the whole story): There was a contest to see who was the best archer. The target was a brightly painted Koi (fish) on a flag atop a high pole. The object was to shoot the arrow through the eye. Every archer fired and misses, except one. Later, when asked what they saw, every archer that missed said they saw a koi against the blue sky. The one that hit the eye simply said, "the eye". A japanese philosopher would remark that since all that existed was the eye, how could he miss? That is an example of atari.

I suppose you could touch a life support system keeping someone alive, and then they will die..... But there is no "universal" single touch, golden gun attack with a 100% chance of fatality. Sorry.

You can buy smoke bombs at a fireworks tent. You can buy high-quality smoke grenades off the internet. You can learn to make smoke bombs off the internet. Ninjutsu incorporates much more than learning how to make slow-burning explosives. However, if you are more intrested in those, then ninjutsu will be a complete waste of time. Even though I know little into the training of the art, ninjutsu is a broad, extensive survival/stealth/martial art/etc. To try and focus on such a small part of the art does not show true intrest in it, it shows intrest in flashy, smoky, hollywood effects.

As I understand it, the Ninja were a sort of rebel in Japanese society, and developed sufficent skill to challenge the samuri. I don't know when or, more importantly i belive, WHY they were rebels during whatever period they were rebelling in. As for ninja cammo, again, as I understand it, they would dress for the occasion. During the daylight in forests, olive drab. In a city, street clothes. Whatever worked best for staying concealed or unsuspected. As for black camo, there are two explanations.: A) solid black cammo like SWAT teams wear, is probably for pure intimidation. No one can be sneaky when you are expected, your wearing heavy body armor, and carrying high powered submachine guns and grenades. B) Cammo not predominatley black, but black/grey, would help break up the outline of the person againts grey/black material. This would make the cammo bearer harder to identify and correctly target. Using black here would be perferable to color, since streets and builidings are gernerally a greyish color.

No, I do not watch UFC. And no, I have never sparred a grappler (ill be starting that about next year, as i previously stated). Notice I also claimed that in order to win you must know both systems (or at least some of the OpFor's Sys). And I never said I'd KO them in one move. But if your charging me, I have more options than you do. If your over 10' away, I can do Knife attacks, Elbow strikes, Knee strikes, and kicks. If your close up, lateral Elbow or a knee strike will stop you. Even if you have abbs of steal, running full swing into my knee strike will probably slow you down just a bit. If the elbo strike hits, you will probably be knocked out. Of course, if your not hit with enough force from these attacks to stop you, youll be on top of me, and that is a bad place for me to be. Maybe you are right though. Im sure you have more expierence in a match of this type. My entire thesis in this situation is that whoever is doing Karate can hit the grapler before he is put on the ground. If he is put on the ground, its grapple vs grapple anyways, and its no longer about karate.

This is my unbiased analysis of Grapling vs Karate. First off, why are these two being compared? Karate teaches grapling and grapling teaches strikes, just not to the same degrees as the opposing system. With that said, I belive karate would win in a fight with a pure or mostly pure grapler, simply because both participants start on their feet. The grapler must get me down before he can harm me. Some arguments for this is a full out charge at my leg. Not to sound stupid or anything, but why not move? A sidestep followed up with a quick knuckle punch and side kick would end the fight quickly. Im not putting down grapling at all - I plan to take JuJitsu once I reach my green belt. But Their are two many ways IMO that karate could counter a charge, which would be the only way to close distance fast enough. I will, of course, also admit that if put on the ground, the grapler can end the fight with one choke/hold. What it comes down to is Skill in each martial art. If the skills are both low level, then I would say karate would probably win. If the combatants are both 1 dan and up, it comes to their knowledge of both systems, not just their own, to win. This is only my opinion. I can not speak for any martial art style other than Nippon Karate-do Genwa Kai Style Karate and Sankai style jujitsu (my dojo teaches both). This is an extremely limited field of experience I know, but hopefully this will help stop this crazy feud.