SevenStar

what do you define as flashy - I use head kicks in ring fights. My friend is a black belt in tkd and I've seen him land a jump spinning back kick in a street fight. ANYTHING can work - if you can make it work. I personally can't make a jump spinning kick work in a fight, but apparently, he could.

see above. if you want to fight, don't half step - fight. you can't really FIGHT with people in your gym - that's where competition comes in. sparring is a training exercise, as is bagwork. competition is where you fight. That's not to say that you can't spar hard - you should. but the mentality of that is not the same as the one present in the ring.

good is a relative term... we don't know what you're trying to accomplish - your workout out may me good for something that you aren't trying to achieve. What is your goal? However, right off the bat, I notice a lack of back, shoulder and lat work.

well... are you looking for full contaact gear or point sparring gear?

I like twins. ringside has good eqipment as well.

we used them, though not quite a bit. Granted, it wasn't pure kali (jun fan/jkd) so that could be why. They have silat integrated with it and we would knee with every takedown - if the opponent's body goes down, the knee comes up. We also did low line kicking and had it integrated with several drills. There is a kali group that trains at out club now, and I've seen them kicking as well.

yeah - they are scored like boxing now, basically.

you should definitely look into it. Let us know how it goes. I'm sure you'll enjoy it.

I don't disagree. My only point is that many parallels do exist. For example spiraling - sport fights spiral on some level - they use listening, following, pushing, yielding, borrowing, etc. but they don't name it like the chinese do. That doesn't mean that it isn't there on some level, just that it isn't named and classified.

as has been said, to get better at kicks, you need to kick. horse stance will not develop your roundhouse.

you guys aree comparing apples and oranges here. Body builders are in shape - but by their standards. They wouldn't last in a ring because their cardio isn't on the same level. On the other hand, the avg mma will not be as strong overall as the avg body builder - two different focuses in training.

good posts, grenadier. On the flexibility issue though, unless you are freaking huge, then that shouldn't be an issue. that myth has been disproved for ages. flexibility has never been an issue for me or a few other big guys in class.

weight will indeed help is power, so long as he's adding usable muscle mass and not fat. speed is only increasable to a certain degree. who punches faster - tyson or mayorga? who do you think punches harder? Why? excellent point about sparring though.

that still doesn't address the point of movement - that is the biggest mistake I see people make on the heavy bags - the don't move, they only strike, standing in the same spot. That reinforces bad habits. I'm a thai boxer... we're about power as well, however, you also must move - see above point about movement. we'll just have to differ on that one. sparring is ALWAYS about skill improvement. it's a training drill. competition is the battlefield. sparring is where you learn. If i want to spar and one person doesn't want to, I find another. There always seems to be at least ONE person. If they are less skilled than me, than I focus on one or two aspects that I need work on anyway and work those.

kali has kicks. and knees. they don't do any groundwork though - or at least we didn't.