XtremeTrainer

How about if you have lots of experience in a martial arts style that doesn't use rank? In a fight you might be just as dangerous as somebody who has a black belt in a style that uses rank but your style doesn't use rank so you don't hold any official rank, how would the courts look at that?

In the long run perhaps, but when you're experiencing it I would say its more like "pain is weakness entering the body"

I see. I've never been an exclusively high kicker so I've never experienced that myself but if you've ever seen videos of Chloe Bruce, I would say over 99% of her kicks are high kicks where they're at head level or higher. Very rarely have I ever seen her throw even a mid level kick. I wonder how she would be at low kicks, if she's just too used to kicking high to be good at low kicks.

Why not? You learn the most from teaching.

Well yes the Gracies did train smart but they trained hard too. I do know that wrestling was done as far back as the Greek empire and probably earlier. The Greeks had wrestling, boxing, and Pankration which was their own form of MMA. I don't see the invention and development of firearms as something that would cause the grappling arts to be any more neglected than the striking arts. Neither grappling or striking arts are that good against firearms so if anything, it stands to reason that if one would be neglected due to firearms being used, both would be neglected.

Well Bruce Lee took it to the grave.

I am against being a purist in any one style because I find it too limiting. No style is perfect and by taking on another style you can fill in gaps and compensate for weaknesses in your first style. For instance Im primarily a Karate stylist, I like to fight on my feet and use strikes, but I've also taken up BJJ because grappling and ground work are areas that Karate is, from my experience, severely lacking in, and those are areas that BJJ emphasizes and specializes in. So that way, by training in BJJ if Im up against a grappler I will know how to defend against them. As for the Gracie's success in the martial arts, an instructor once said its not because of their style but because the Gracies work hard. I believe that. The Gracie style is not in any way superior to any other style the Gracies just work really hard. Had the Gracies specialized in some other style, for instance had the Gracies specialized in Karate they probably would've been just as successful.

It is closely related to the thread I started about using martial arts in self defense but its more specialized in that its more about stances. The main reason I started this new thread instead of add on to the first thread was because the first thread has seemed to dry up, where Im not getting any more responses.

You're partially right. You do want to train with methods and techniques that you would use should you ever be in a real fight but at the same time there are certain training methods and techniques that you would not use in a real fight but are nonetheless good training methods to help you be better in a fight. Two examples would be katas and high kicks. With katas, if you ever do get in a real fight you're certainly not going to start doing your kata but katas do teach you certain patterns of movement and combinations of techniques that can be very effective in a real fight. With high kicks, kicking to the head level of a standing opponent, those look great in the movies and for show but they're not usually effective in a real fight and you might never use them in real fights, but it can still be good to train with high kicks since by doing so it helps develop strength, speed, control, coordination, and power that would transition to the low and mid range kicks that you would use in a real fight.

Royce Gracie is best known for his background in Jiu Jitsu but I heard he also has a Karate background. Supposedly he has a black belt in some style of Karate and he also trains in Muai Thai. Anybody know anything about this?

In a previous thread I started I talked about how you don't use martial arts in real self defense situations. "You do but you don't," which means that you might use various martial arts techniques in self defense situations but you do so without thinking about it and without planning to. Its been talked about in the thread, you just go by what works best in the situation and what you've developed into muscle memory. As such Im wondering what the use of TMA stances in "real fights" would be. TMA stances are great for training but in a "real fight," in a street confrontation, a self defense situation, what would their uses be? When expecting trouble or when faced with a condition where you would use self defense you wouldn't drop into a TMA stance but that's not to say you might not sometimes use TMA stances in such situations.

So in many of the posts in this thread people have talked about muscle memory and reacting spontaneously without thinking about it if you are in a self defense situation. So in terms of using martial arts in the street or in self defense you could say, "You do but you don't" and that's what it means.

Lets say you train in a martial art, or multiple martial arts. If you're ever in the situation where you use it in self defense you don't really use it. You do but you don't. You don't say to yourself "Im going to use Karate," or "Im going to use Jiu Jitsu," or "Im going to use Miai Thai," or whatever. You just do whatever works best in the situation. You don't think about using a Karate Front Kick or Reverse Punch, sure you might end up using such techniques and they might be very effective in the given situation but you don't think about it. So this is what I consider a key to being effective with martial arts in self defense, if you're in a self defense situation don't think about using Karate or whatever other art, just do what comes to you without thinking.

I've seen some martial arts schools that have what they call the Black Belt Club. Not all students are in the club but the way it works is like this, if you're in the Black Belt Club you would come in more often to train and sometimes you would stay longer and keep training when other students who were not in the club would leave. The idea is that you would get a black belt faster than students who were not in the club. The tradeoff was that you had to work harder and put more time into it.

I do know they're very restrictive with firearms in the UK but knives too? Will you get in trouble for carrying a knife? Even if you don't carry a knife I would think you can keep knives in your house so a knife might be a good weapon for home defense in the UK. Now depending on where you are in the UK, in Scotland I believe they play lots of golf so carrying around a golf club might not be out of the ordinary. A golf club can obviously be used for stick fighting.

That would depend and it would depend not only on the practitioner but also on the style. In most styles you start out learning unarmed fighting and then later on learn weapons but there are styles where its the other way around. With filipino stick fighting for instance you start out on day one learning to fight with weapons and you don't start learning unarmed fighting until you become very advanced in stick fighting. But it depends on the style and it depends on the practitioner. I've been training in the martial arts for close to 30 years and its been relatively recently when I seriously got into TMA weapons training. I've been training with the jo staff, bokken, sais, and katana. But that's just me, some people start weapons training much earlier than I did.

For traditional martial arts weapons my favorite would be the katana, the samurai sword. I also like european broadswords and great swords but those aren't from the traditional martial arts of the far east.

Back in the old days weapons such as the bo staff and the nunchaku were very effective and practical and the classic samurai sword was perhaps the most famous of martial arts weapons from back in the day. That's now how it is today though. Today, in a world with modern guns a samurai sword or any of those other martial arts weapons from long ago would not be very practical and effective. If somebody wanted to learn to fight with practical and effective weapons in this day and age I would say that instead of learning how to use traditional martial arts weapons I would recommend they learn how to use guns, to take shooting classes and that such shooting classes should involve tactical use of guns, tactical movement ect. not just standing there and shooting at stationary targets as you see people do in the shooting ranges that you find at gun shops. However, when it comes to guns there is the legal issue. The legality of buying, owning, carrying, and using guns varies greatly from place to place and somebody might live of spend most of their time in somewhere where they're very restrictive with guns. In that case training with guns for self defense would not be practical. Also, when talking about the practicality of TMA weapons, guns are not TMA weapons. So that being said in my opinion the most practical TMA weapons in the modern day would be sticks and knives. Sticks are relatively easy to come by. Everything from tree branches to baseball bats to umbrellas, you name it. Knives are easy to carry with you and while some places might put heavy regulations on knife carry, generally speaking they are less restricted than guns. It is highly unlikely that you will be carrying a samurai sword around but sticks and knives you are much more likely to carry or to have around.

I agree but as I said, if all other factors are equal. So if you got two people training and their training is of equal quality the one with more quantity will progress faster. Now as I said I do agree that quality is more effective than quantity, but what I believe is most effective is to have both.

Well as I said in my first post, if all other factors are equal. If all other factors are equal the person training 3 times a week will progress faster than the person training 2 times a week. No. Not necessarily. If two people are identical in every way, and have identical lifestyle diet etc, we could assume they will have identical recovery rate. Every time we do any form of physical training, we actually injure our muscles. I don't mean as in properly hurt ourselves, I mean that to stimulate the process of strengthening muscles, we have to work those muscles to the point were some muscle fibres become physically damaged. When this happens, the damaged muscle is actually weaker than it was before, because you've just worked it to its limit and damaged it. That sounds bad, but as long as you don't go too far, it's perfectly normal. Different people have different recovery rates. The recovery rate could be plotted on a graph as strength over time following exercise. In that case, you'd see strength fall immediately after exercise, then gradually rise again. If you never exercise again, at some point the line would reach the level it was at immediately before you did exercise. Shortly after, it would rise further, at which point you are fitter and stronger than before the exercise. If you continued to rest for even longer, the line would start going downhill again as the muscle begins to atrophy. The point at which the line on our graph returns to the pre exercise level is our recovery rate. For some people, it might be as short as 24 hours. For others it could be as long as 10 days. Now let's say for our two identical martial artists, it turns out that recovery rate is 2 days. Then you're right. The one that trains 3 times a week will progress faster. Now let's say their recovery rate is ever so slightly longer, at 3 days. That's not unrealistic. Now the person that trains 3 times a week needs to somehow fit a total of 9 days recovery time into a 7 day week. It can't be done, so they gradually burn out through over training. Our 2 day a week person on the other hand only has to fit a total of 6 days recovery into a 7 day week. That works, so he gradually becomes fitter and stronger and more able. You do have a point there. It is possible to overdo it and train too hard and too often so that you don't make a good enough recovery in between training sessions in which case you get diminishing returns and your over training becomes detrimental. But somebody who trains for an hour Monday, Wednesday, and Friday vs somebody who only trains Monday and Friday, for most people taking one day off in between training sessions, especially when its only for an hour during your training days, should be adequate. Also, much of the martial arts is not physical. Much of the martial arts is mental and there's also intellectual knowledge that you build up as you learn martial arts. Such stuff does not require the kind of recovery time that physical training does.

Well as I said in my first post, if all other factors are equal. If all other factors are equal the person training 3 times a week will progress faster than the person training 2 times a week.

Its been said that martial arts can't be rushed but still, its common sense that a person who puts more into it will get more out of it and will progress faster. For instance, lets say there's somebody who goes to a martial arts class and they go in twice a week. Now, there's somebody else going in three times a week. All other factors being equal the person going in three times a week is going to develop knowledge and skill faster and will progress in the martial arts faster.

So I got lots of responses that talk about all different possibilities. YMCAs, churches, ect. Thank you all, you've been very helpful.

If you don't own a martial arts school but want to teach martial arts Im wondering if you could rent a room from a YMCA for a certain time each day and teach at the YMCA. It would involve making a deal with the YMCA on renting and teaching.

I find that hard to believe if it was a TKD school. If anything TKD would be 99% kicking not 1% kicking. But if this was just one class maybe they were doing something different that day. I would have to see how class runs on a day to day basis.