OneKickWonder

In my style we are taught to fully extend. That advice is great. If you want to have chronic joint pain after a few years. My advice would be, never fully lock out. Quite apart from the stress that puts on your joints, it leaves you vulnerable. If your opponent catches a fully locked out arm or leg, you're basically asking for your knee or elbow to be forcibly hyperextended.

Hand techniques are often neglected in Korean arts. I have the opposite complaint that we focus too much on kicking. I can understand your frustration. But, what if your instructor is the real deal? What if he or she is not interested in the impractical show moves and wants you to learn a combat art? In a real scrap, kicks should be kept fairly low to avoid loss of balance and to reduce the risk of the leg being caught. And they should be simple. The tornado kick for example, perfect it is your youth. Try doing it effectively when you're 40plus and carrying your fair share of old injuries. That's not to say kicks are bad. They are a great training tool and I guess they have real uses. But your hand techniques. Think about your blocks that you're getting bored with. How practical are they as blocks. Imagine a punch or kick is coming in at full speed. Do you have time to do a perfect block? Think about that for a moment. Then think about the movement of the block. What else could they be? While your hand is going up to your opposite shoulder for example, what is your elbow doing? What could it be doing if modified very slightly? Think about where the hand goes when blocking. Is it knocking a punch or kick off course or is it doing something else? Think about what the other arm is doing when blocking. Think about the motion in preparing to block. In a knife hand centre for example, hands come to the hip first. Is that just setting up for the block or is that an action in itself? We're often taught that a block is a block, but as you move up through the grades, if you haven't started to realise it for yourself yet, the instructor should start to reveal, that blocks are anything but blocks.in fact they are useless as blocks. Far too slow. But they are quite forceful actions. Think about how a high/rising block might work if your opponent has hold of you and us too close to punch or kick. Think about what your knife hand block might do to an elbow of somebody that has got hold of you. There's a lot going on in hand techniques. Your instructor no doubt wants you to develop the techniques and the muscles that support them, so that by the time you figure out what they really are, they will be formidable techniques. Not show techniques. Not for competition. But maybe to keep you in one piece in a real scrap. That said, he should be teaching kicks too though.

I'm a member of the WTSDA so the late GM JC Shin, who was a student of GM Hwang Kee.

Because it's not formalised as one. It's quite literally close combat. There is no lineage of former masters that dictated what it means. It's literally just the Israeli army close combat. Every army has its way of training for the eventuality that a soldier mat fund himself unable to fire a gun to neutralise an enemy. They all call that part of training various things like unarmed combat, combatives, hand to hand combat etc. The Israelis call there's krav maga, which just means something like close combat in their language. I agree with your definition of the words Krav Maga, but it is very much still a style. It may not follow with the same kinds of traditions and lineages of Eastern styles, but it is definitely a style. It is a style in the sense that it is characterised by extremism violence and the determination and ability to enact extreme violence by any means. That's as far as it goes in terms of being a style. What it most definitely is though, is martial art. Possibly far more so than formal styles that are misleadingly referred to as martial arts. My reasoning on the latter point is this. The term martial art comprises 2 words. The first, martial, means pertaining to war. The second, art, is often misunderstood. In modern use, art is often taken to refer to aesthetics, but an older and still valid meaning of art is skill set. Therefore martial art means war skill. Krav maga is a martial art. It is a skill set for fighting in a non civilian role. It is not self defence. It is not for competition. It is for breaking an enemy's body when you end up either too close to shoot or otherwise unable to use more conventional warfare. Ironically, most martial arts are not martial arts. They are styles though. Practitioners can be judged and graded based on their ability to show specific techniques or forms. But they are not martial arts. They are not war skills. OK, many started off that way, hence the term, but have not been martial arts for a long time. That'd not to criticise any of them. Or their practitioners or enthusiasts. I make no judgement. It's just how it is. But I will concede on one point. Krav maga is now a popular term in civilian circles. Gradings will no doubt happen in civilian clubs, and no doubt somebody has taken elements from other systems to incorporate under the name Krav maga. That doesn't make it Krav maga though, unless in those civilian clubs they're encouraged to eye gouge and grab testicles and hit each other in the face with the butt of a rifle and otherwise do whatever they can to subdue one or more opponents.

Maybe avoid this popular format: Attacker makes it clear that he's about to attack, while also giving away massive clues as to the type of attack. All this from around least 10ft away. Attacker runs slowly forward with knife already out, or punch chambered etc. Defender touches attacker's wrist. Attacker takes a diverse and roll. As long as you avoid that format, you should be OK.

Thanks. But what I really meant was, specific principles for entering the fight once an attack has begun. We all know to avoid trouble in the first place. To be honest, if we need training for that, then we have a bigger problem that probably can't be fixed with training. I was thinking more about specific principles of body positioning, technique selection etc.

Isn't that what sparring's for? No. I can't say this with any degree of authority because different clubs have different sparring rules. But note that last word there, 'rules'. Sparring has them. Sparring is great for cardio, for honing reflexes, developing good judgement of range. There are many good reasons to spar. But sparring is not fighting. I sometimes worry that some of our students think they can fight just because they are good at sparring. Being good at sparring means you are good at applying the techniques you've been taught, within the rules you were taught, against an opponent who is also following the same rules. That is very different to fighting. The answer to the question, how do you know this works, should always be, I don't. Techniques are developed to give us options. A good teacher will never claim that something always works. A good teacher can teach you that something 'might' or 'can' work, but it should always be backed up with other options and the readiness to switch to something else the instant it becomes apparent it's not working. For example, if you get an armlock on, but your opponent starts to slip out, rather than trying to force the technique to work you should immediately switch to something else. A swift kick perhaps to create distance from the inevitable incoming. But to attempt to answer the original question, modified slight to how do I know it CAN work? Practice against willing training partners who will steadily increase the resistance and decrease compliance. Every time they neutralise your technique, try to figure out how and why it failed. In an armbar for example, perhaps your opponent is still able to punch you with his free hand. Figure out how come, adjust, try again. Repeat many times against many opponents until you can dominate in the vast majority of cases even against full resistance. My post was a stab at humor. Fair play But you'd be amazed at how many people genuinely believe that sparring is fighting practice. It's a misunderstanding that I think can be dangerous. It's one thing to develop confidence, but it mustn't be false confidence. I also sometimes think sparring can actually be counterproductive in some cases, depending on the rules. Consider where punches to the head are prohibited. I wonder how many skilled martial artists geysers out of the habit of guarding their head.

If I am willing, as well as not shy, in defending strangers, imagine just how much more I am willing to do anything and everything when it comes to protecting my wife and/or kids with unmitigated resolve!! Fatality outcomes are always a possibility, and that's not what I want to happen, however, when it comes to my wife and/or kids, then let it me so with cause!! A perfectly natural and understandable emotional thought there. But what about practical ideas?

I'm thinking that in tang soo do (my current main style), as well as in previous styles I've trained in, most of the training kind of follows the format of, when YOU are attacked, do this. So most of the training is geared towards dealing with positioning and such for an assailant that is focused on you. To defend another, one has to attack. Of course there are plenty of techniques that can be used offensively, but I feel that our training perhaps doesn't really prepare us for that. At this point, it's just primal instinct rather than training I think. But then surely we must think about how our actions will affect the person we are protecting. For example, let's say in a street robbery scenario, a thug places a blade near the wife's face. If we make a grab or try to kick the assailant, will we knock is balance such that he cuts the wife unintentionally? Or in a more active confrontation, what if out intervention by kick or punch accidentally catches the very person we're trying to protect? These are purely hypothetical scenarios of course. I just wonder if others think these things through from time to time, and what general ideas are out there.

I'm glad to read you're probably not as hurt as you thought. Out of interest though, how do you do pushups without putting pressure on your big toes? I'm interested because big toes are now next to useless, so I'm always looking for ways to train as normally as possible without them getting in the way.

Isn't that what sparring's for? No. I can't say this with any degree of authority because different clubs have different sparring rules. But note that last word there, 'rules'. Sparring has them. Sparring is great for cardio, for honing reflexes, developing good judgement of range. There are many good reasons to spar. But sparring is not fighting. I sometimes worry that some of our students think they can fight just because they are good at sparring. Being good at sparring means you are good at applying the techniques you've been taught, within the rules you were taught, against an opponent who is also following the same rules. That is very different to fighting. The answer to the question, how do you know this works, should always be, I don't. Techniques are developed to give us options. A good teacher will never claim that something always works. A good teacher can teach you that something 'might' or 'can' work, but it should always be backed up with other options and the readiness to switch to something else the instant it becomes apparent it's not working. For example, if you get an armlock on, but your opponent starts to slip out, rather than trying to force the technique to work you should immediately switch to something else. A swift kick perhaps to create distance from the inevitable incoming. But to attempt to answer the original question, modified slight to how do I know it CAN work? Practice against willing training partners who will steadily increase the resistance and decrease compliance. Every time they neutralise your technique, try to figure out how and why it failed. In an armbar for example, perhaps your opponent is still able to punch you with his free hand. Figure out how come, adjust, try again. Repeat many times against many opponents until you can dominate in the vast majority of cases even against full resistance.

Hapkido and aikido have the same meaning linguistically. The both translate as something like unifying energy way, referring to how they fundamentally work. They don't try to put force against force. Instead the defender will merge with the attack and then steer it to his own will. So is hapkido a rip off of aikido? I don't think there's a quick answer to that. But I think we can start by asking, what is aikido? The founder of aikido was a former soldier and traditional martial arts enthusiast. He was well versed in the classic arts like kendo and jujitsu. But as a soldier he was also well trained in more modern (at the time) combat skills. Word is, he was a brutal man in his day. As he grew older, he looked more to the spiritual aspect of things, and decided martial arts should be good to develop body and mind, while also giving skill for self defence, but without causing permanent injury or death. So he took all he knew from all his styles, chucked out the offensive moves, and focused on defence as well as the art of movement. So aikido is Japanese, in that it was a Japanese man who compiled it from all he'd learned. But a great deal of aikido can be seen in tai chi. Which is of course Chinese. So is it a rip off of tai chi? Again, the waters are muddy. China and Japan have traded for centuries. They've fought a few times too. They both influence each other. A big part of tai chi is of course qigong, the meditation and movement aspect. Japan and Korea have kigong, which is the same thing exactly. Did they copy each other, or did they all figure out, along with Indians and Persians and everyone else they interacted with that this is a good healthy meditation practice? So what of hapkido? Well it's pretty much Korean aikido except it's not. Sure it shares principles and techniques, but hapkido is still a hard style whereas aikido is more a soft / internal style like tai chi. And of course hapkido will be influenced by aikido, but given that Korea is next to China, aikido takes from tai chi, and tai chi is Chinese, I don't think it's too hard to imagine that hapkido might also take influence from Chinese arts directly. What of tang soo do. The way of the Chinese hand. Incidentally an old term for karate was tang te. Same translation as tang soo. So perhaps both styles are one and the same. I believe they are. But tang soo will of course have its own Korean influence. All in all, I don't believe the Korean arts are a straight rip off of Japanese arts, but of course they are heavily influenced. Political history makes it impossible for them not to be. Which brings us nicely to politics. The Japanese occupied Korea for more than 40 years, and in that time tried hard to destroy Korean cultural heritage. So when they left, it's only fair that Korea wanted to rebuild it's own identity. Korean karate became tang soo do, and later, the state commissioned the official creation of taekwondo. The name was a deliberate attempt to distance their art from karate (because the old name for karate was tang te, same as the Korean tang soo). The government summoned leading martial artists and asked them to create a unified style that would outshine Japanese karate. On that note, traditional karate is not very showy. Kicks are very much secondary, with all focus on close range hand strikes. But it is awesomely effective. So how do you outshine karate and at the same time distance yourself from it? What about shifting the focus to great big very acrobatic kicks. This can be seen in everything from the arts themselves, to the much more subtle clues. Notice how tang soo do and taekwondo logos often show kicks, while karate logos often show a fist. So in summary, sorry for the long post, but I think the Japanese arts influenced Korean arts, but I think it's unfair to say the Korean arts are just plagiarised Japanese arts.

Thanks, but I didn't mean about defending a stranger. I meant defending my wife or kids should the need arise.

There's no shortage of discussion and tuition of self defence. But as a husband and a dad, I sometimes take the format of 'do this to enable your escape' or the 'best aware of your surroundings and avoid threat' scenarios with a big pinch of salt. I'm middle age man. Slightly overweight. Fit for my age but nothing against 2 or 3 people on their late teens or early 20s. And I usually have my wife and 2 young kids with me. Stun and escape is something that means little to me. So I wonder, who else thinks about having to intervene/intercepte? And what general principles do people think about in this regard?

Studying Funakoshi's book, karate do kyohan, it is almost the same book as my tang soo do counterpart. The main difference I see though is in approach to self defence scenarios. In particular one step sparring. There is see a fundamental difference. At this point, perhaps I should mention I also trained aikido for a while, and tai chi in its combat aspect (kung fu). Funakoshi describes various defences against various types of attack. The general idea with most of his defences seems to be to surprise the attacker by moving in the opposite direction to where instinct would normally drive you, it turning into the attack or towards the attacker rather than trying to move away. So far the two styles largely still match, but the Funakoshi describes very simplistic strikes to vital points, whereas tang soo do often favours aikido style joint manipulation and takedown techniques. I think neither is wrong. They're just different possible solutions to the same challenges. I suspect that if done well, the tang soo do approach has the scope to be more effective, especially against a stronger attacker. But Funakoshi seemed to want to keep it simple and do things that are not too far removed from natural instinct. That carries the advantage of course that it's more likely to work under pressure and in blind panic than trying to establish an effective joint lock. Aikido is, in my opinion, extremely effective at joint manipulation, diversion of force etc. But sadly lacks the effectiveness of hard striking, which I think are essential as a distraction if nothing else. I think tang soo do tries to effectively combine both strengths, but sometimes fails due to trying to teach too much in too little time. In aikido, you will spend many hours practicing one lock, but there's no striking. In karate I think lots of time goes into developing excellent striking techniques. Tang soo do tries to cover everything, but I wonder if in doing so, it spreads itself a bit thin perhaps. This is why I'm thinking of doing some time with shotokan. I've had karate experience (wado ryu) but not shotokan. I've trained for a while in aikido and kung fu. But I've never had so much as a single class in the style that I think is the single biggest influence on my current style.

Tiger balm is ace. One of its key ingredients is wintergreen oil, which by weight, is about 1000 times as potent as an anti inflammatory as aspirin. Sounds great but not that much of it penetrates the skin. I think there are far better products than tiger balm though. But tiger balm is 'traditional', and it's distinctive smell is like the cologne or musk of the martial artist.

It's amazing what you learn after the damage is done. When you start reading up on possible treatment options. The cartilage in the big toe joint is of a different composition to what's in the bigger joints like knees. It's much softer basically. If it tears or is crushed, it can heal with scarring. New cartilage is unlikely to grow, but scar tissue can effectively stitch the rip back together. But only if it's kept relaxed and still for long enough for that to happen. When you end up with a gap in cartilage that is not healing quickly enough, perhaps because you keep testing it, there is a secondary mechanism that kicks in. Nobody is quite sure why. Some think it is the body making a last attempt to protect the joint. As far as I know there is no definite answer yer as to why, it happens, but it's well known and documented that it does. That is, the bone is stimulated to grow in place of the injured cartilage. You really, really don't want that. That's what's happened and us still happening to me. Little spikes of bone form on the normally smooth joint surfaces where cartilage used to be. Cartilage in the toe is kind of like rubber. It can absorb shock when healthy. Bone is not. The bone spurs keep growing, slowly displacing the remaining cartilage, and range of motion diminishes. For some, this degenerative process stops after a while, and you're left with a toe that still works to some extent. For others the long term outlook is a condition called hallux rigidus. Basically the whole big toe joint fuses and becomes one bone. If that happens the range of motion is nil, nada, nothing. Sorry, not trying to scare anyone. I just don't want another person to make the same mistakes as I, and no doubt countless others, have made. Proper rest and recovery time will probably mean that in a couple of years, if you can even remember this, it will be an amusing anecdote about when you bashed your toe. And if you miss grading, ask yourself this. What would the grade prove to you? Would it prove that you have really learned something about marshal arts and your own true self? Or would it prove that you're prepared to risk years of pain and limping just for a new belt colour?

I smashed a big toe joint in an accident. I knew it hurt but didn't find out until a long time later that it had broke. A&E missed it when they xrayed it. But they did advise no training at all for at least 12 weeks, and to keep all weight off for at least a couple of weeks until the swelling has gone. Now comes the cautionary tale. For me, this was 3 or 4 years ago. I ignored the medical advice. I returned to training the following week. I did limit some of the things I did, and didn't kick anything or anyone for a while, but far too soon after injury I was jumping about on it. The pain never fully went. I'm fact at one point it got much worse. It's ruined now. I've basically ripped up all the cartilage in there. Osteoarthritis is in there now. I still train, but I've had to modify some techniques to work for me. There are some I'll never be able to do effectively. It's also not unusual for me to have to stop training for a few weeks at a time if I knock my foot a certain way, it becomes very painful for days or weeks. All of this because I ignored medical advice and thought I'd man up. If I'd followed medical advice at the time, my broken bones might have set right, the torn cartilage might have scarred over and at least regenerated a bit, and the whole accident might have been ancient history. So my advice is, take it easy. Keep weight off as much as possible. Absolutely don't flex your toe more than absolutely necessary yet. Give it a few weeks to recover. Focus on upper body and hand techniques in the meantime, or study theory. And in case anyone is thinking, man up, it's just a toe, in normal walking with each step a force equivalent to several times your body weight goes through the big toe joint. If pain stops it working effectively, your gait will alter and in no time you'll have knee and hip pain too. Look after your feet. They're important

Because it's not formalised as one. It's quite literally close combat. There is no lineage of former masters that dictated what it means. It's literally just the Israeli army close combat. Every army has its way of training for the eventuality that a soldier mat fund himself unable to fire a gun to neutralise an enemy. They all call that part of training various things like unarmed combat, combatives, hand to hand combat etc. The Israelis call there's krav maga, which just means something like close combat in their language.

Hi all. I think I might not have explained my point very well I know that nothing is hidden in forms. What I was really wondering, given that forms appear to just keep giving, is at what point do we decide that we 'know' them? To explain what I mean, the very first one I learned, a very basic form, is kind of considered outwardly as nothing more than teaching turns and transitions between basic stances. Yet even now I still keep seeing things in there that I'd previously missed. For example I discovered that if I don't do the turns, but do the footwork and hip action of the turns but in a straight line, then we instantly see the makings of leg sweeps and hammer fist strikes etc. All in a very basic form. I feel sure that I'll find more information it over time. Likewise the later forms also keep revealing things. Sometimes I see awesome things, sometimes I repeat a movement that I've done many times and try to imagine opponents in front, behind, to the sides, with or without weapons, striking or grabbing, yet still fail to visualise an application. I know it will come in time. So in my example, clearly I don't yet truly know my later forms. But as in the case of the earlier ones, where I keep seeing many applications for every move, can I say I know them? I'm not really looking for the impossible, for someone to tell me whether or not I know it. It's more a rhetorical question to stimulate discussion about different views on what forms mean to each of us.

I kind of agree with the sentiment, but to pick up on semantics, krav maga having been mentioned, krav maga isn't a style. I suppose anyone who has ever had a fight is qualified to teach it, because it's not a style. It just means something like 'close combat'. But semantics aside, yes I agree. But there's another side to it (I don't sell it by the way). My own observation is that in any class, you will find a small number of martial artists, and a much larger number of people subscribing to a fantasy. The minority look for details. They have a thirst for knowledge. They question everything. They want to test things and experiment. Whereas the majority I believe want the next belt, maybe a few trophies. They want to boast to their friends that they know a hundred different ways to break an arm. They want to believe they could fight 10 attackers, provided the attackers wait for a signal and then step forward with a straight right handed punch, or grab their wrist then wait patiently for the signal to dive. Trouble is, you can't sell to these people something like 'fantasy ninja seminar' so that all the real martial artists know to save their money, because the fantasy ninjas themselves believe they want the real thing. And that's fine. Life should be fun. But it does add an interesting challenge to the real martial artist when trying to decide with limited budget and time, which seminars to attend and which to ignore.

I was thinking about my training to date. So far, I know a total of 11 different forms. Yet I feel like I don't Know any. That is to say, I know them well enough to demonstrate them. I can even recognise a few applications from them. But I don't feel I really know what each movement means. Many of my fellow students are happy to learn the dance. And that's fine. Good for them. But I believe there's a wealth of knowledge embedded in forms. Many say 'hidden', but I don't believe that to be the case. I think they teach movement options. But I sometimes wonder if it would have been more obvious to students of bygone times who might have trained more, and probably fought more, who would see the intention more easily. So I wonder, how many forms do folk here really know, to a level they are happy with. And do we accept what we're taught, or seek out our own ideas through experimentation?

Hi all. According to a Tang soo do book online have, the art is 'uniquely Korean'. But when I ordered a book by Gichin Funakoshi, which was originally written much earlier than the Tang soo do book, I quickly realised they were pretty much one and the same. I'd like to point out, I don't care about the politics. But as someone very interested in finding the roots of what I learn, do we think it's worth switching to a shotokan class for a while? Would I be right in my conclusion that they're the same style but with different branding, or are they really different?

I know this is an old thread, but here goes anyway. I returned to martial arts just before I turned 40. I'm doing OK. There's a gentleman in our class who is older than me, and unlike me, he'd never trained in anything before in his whole life. So he started from the very beginning at some age after 40. He goes to all the competitions. I don't take much interest because I personally am not competitive, but I do know he keeps coming back with loads of trophies.

Hi. My kicks suffered badly after a foot injury. Even after I resumed training, it's taken me months to start getting them back. It's not through lack of flexibility or strength of the big muscles that we all focus on. It took me a while to realise, it's because my feet became weak. After my injury, without realising, I was compensating with how I loaded my feet. Consequently they went weak because all the little often neglected muscles were not doing much. Since realising this, I've been doing strength exercises every day specifically focusing on the muscles that support the arches, the muscles that operate the toes, and everything around my ankles. Slowly my feet are starting to respond better, and my stability and accuracy is coming back.