DarthPenguin

Hello and welcome. I'm relatively new here myself and everyone seems friendly so am sure you'll get on well

He is better than me then... main style is karate, back foot is generally pointing at a 45 degree angle depending on what I'm doing, but when I started Iaido the back foot wanted to point forward, that's been very hard to correct that, they kept calling it my karate foot! He is batman, he is better than us all! He has the two powers of being obscenely rich (i think they said in a relatively recent comic that he is a trillionaire now) and unbeatable plot armour - he beat up Darkseid after all!

only way i could see it working would be with relation to variants of techniques: in my main style my toes point this way when executing technique X but in new style they do this way. Then since he can already perform the technique, he adjusts it and 'masters' a new style that is a variant of his first. I am also picturing it like : he is a BJJ BB and gets shown a Sambo, Judo, Luta Livre etc. variation of technique/new technique and since he is already amazingly skilled and remembers it perfectly he can just 'do it' Batman sometimes seems like a lot of writers sat round a table playing a game of one upmanship to decide the craziest things they could get away with for him. I used to say that a fight between Batman and Superman would go like this: Batman moves threateningly towards Superman; gets obliterated by eye beams from Space as Superman has instantly left the atmosphere/ a mountain is moved and relocated instantly on top of Batman etc

Congratulations! All the best. And i hope you have been blessed with a good sleeper!!!

Congrats on the new arrival! Hopefully you have been blessed with a good sleeper!

Totally agree with this 100%. I have always been extremely wary of self defence courses as they can breed a false confidence in someone and could lead to a very nasty situation. That second of thinking "i could do X" rather than just running can lead to something very nasty. As a taster to things that someone could learn over the longer term in a proper class environment i can see the benefit, but otherwise, unless taught extremely carefully they are risky. Personally if i was to teach one i would opt for simple, easy to remember techniques that can be practised in a solo manner. For me, the things that come to mind are: - a simple jab - a simple rear hand punch - the 'technical stand up' from the ground with hands raised to defend yourself - low level front kick to knee - the concept of bridging on the ground (this can be practiced to build strength and then leads naturally into getting someone off you) All of the above can be practiced alone, without a partner to get used to the movement. Things like defences from grabs etc in reality rely a lot on feel, judgement of which technique to use based on opponents positioning, relative size etc and i think that would be hard to get across in a self defence environment Possibly controversially i could also see the value on demonstrating chokes on people and being mounted/pinned. Not everyone has had this happen to them and they may have an unrealistic view of the unpleasantness and think 'oh i could get out of that easy' or believe some of the silly ideas like "if they try to choke me like that i'll punch them in the balls or eye gouge them". Teaching them that this is not the case may be a very valuable self defence lesson

Interesting post! One addition i would make (for instructional style books mainly) would be Pictures / Images : Quality and variety of pictures used to illustrate technique/information. Are there sufficient angles covered and are the images easy to follow Personally i would also slightly amend the uniqueness of information one since if it is instructional based then there should be some commonality of information with other sources on the technique, though i would expect some individual input or opinion from the author. in my personal book collection the only real technique based martial arts books i have are for BJJ and you can notice a large difference between publishers and authors. I have a couple that have excellent content but the pictures are not easy to follow at all and some others that while they have less content are a million times more accessible. I tend only to purchase ma technique books for BJJ since there are so many techniques and variations on them that i might not be shown all that i would like by my coach as they are focusing on something else. With something like Karate though it has a bit more of a syllabus so i can rely on my instructor to show me all i need to see and then i can adapt my personal style accordingly.

Seems sensible. It also reminded me how different things are in the USA compared to over here - we now see the occasional 'high street' location for a martial arts club, but it is unusual - strip mall style classes were never a thing over here. Usually most styles seem to be taught in the evenings, a few times a week, by an instructor/s in a rented space for the session - could be a sports centre, a church hall etc. Full time academies have started to spring up a little more now but they seem to be mainly BJJ or MMA schools (though there are both a Taekwondo and Hapkido one near where i live - but it is very much an exception) Over here the issue seemed to be that the 'better athletically talented' individuals moved towards styles like BJJ, Muay Thai and MMA (if it can be called a style) with many fewer people taking up a more traditional style, so they seemed to start trying to remove barriers (making it easier to progress; gentler training etc.). Some styles just make it hard for adults to train it - as a personal example i decided i wanted to try Judo and started looking into classes. There are judo clubs all over the city but almost all of them refuse to take adults (certainly beginners). Only a very small number allow adult beginners to come along which then also reduces numbers. Thankfully for me, the class that my son attends was one of the few that would permit an adult - though at another of their locations!

It's always good to find a senior instructor that realises they don't know everything. I still remember a seminar i attended with Rickson Gracie several years ago, where he openly said he was now teaching the guillotine choke in a different manner than he had always done before (as his son had shown him a new variation) which he thought was better than his own one. For someone of that level to think in that manner was quite refreshing to hear!

I don't think the multitude or organisations and splintering that has occurred helps either, is like a more extreme version of the crazy amount of alphabet belts in professional boxing. In the bjj world everyone just focuses on their instructor lineage and doesn't really bother about their governing body (unless entering IBJFF competitions). You are a X Belt under Professor Y who got their Black belt from Professor Z etc Maybe a solution would be to adopt a similar model for karate. Individual instructors could then monitor the standard of their lineage - it would become well known that the Instructor McDojo tree was made up of Mcdojo's and people could easily avoid it. The disparate bodies could then arrange tournaments/competitions that align with their institutional viewpoints. So a JKA tournament, a WKF tournament etc. Would be quite a shift in emphasis but it might help

I've never understood what is wrong with having distinct styles that focus on different areas of combat - current opinion seems to be that everything needs to include everything. I always quite liked the approach that GSP (i think it is uncontroversial to rank him as a top 5 all time MMA fighter at worst) took to training - whereby he learnt the art itself and then adapted it to his personal style for mma. He achieved a 4th dan in Kyokushin. Wanted to learn ground fighting so he got a bb in bjj. Wanted to improve his wrestling so he took up wrestling directly etc. In my opinion if you try to learn the arts separately, you can learn then much more deeply and find the techniques that work for you personally and integrate them into your own personal style. If you learn mma then you learn the style that your coach has chosen, which works for them, but if you are extremely different physically/style wise from your coach then it may not suit you e.g. i am 6'4" and about 225lb (in American measurements ) so what suits my much smaller coach may not suit me at all. Nothing wrong with having a karate school that focuses on karate; a taekwondo school that does taekwondo; a bjj school that just does bjj.

Now that is interesting! I look both proud and happy all at the same time! You passed up an opportunity to pretend you were presented your belt by someone who looked miraculously like you (but who wasn't you obviously!)

Hahah thanks! Means i get a snazzy icon for a while when i post!

Honestly, if I were in the GMs shoes then as long as he brought me some beer then it would, in fact, be fine. Haha, yeah it would have been the same with me too, but this guy was mega old school - he had a lot of rules that must be followed (eg no stubble; suits immaculately ironed; short hair etc) so not the kind of guy who was likely to accept the beer!

Understandable, but also then should be more pleased with the success!

Congratulations, sounds like you approached the process with integrity and were not just wanting to be "given a belt" which is always important! At the skill level you will have going for your Yondan it seems reasonable that they can assess you this way - realistically your technique should already be very good or you wouldn't have made sandan, so if they have things they are watching for / want to observe they can just watch for them. Also, being in a video could even make it harder - there isn't the chance of someone else being tested at the same time splitting attention / something else in the environment distracting them - they will be solely focused on you. If they are unsure if something is correct they can actually rewind and rewatch it, rather than having one chance to watch it in person and either make a decision or ask for a reperformance. You've put in the time and the work, satisfied a panel of grading instructors, and obviously performed to a high standard. So well done!

A lot of the high level ufc fighters also had their initial exposure to martial arts via a traditional martial art such as Karate or TKD and then subsequently added more skills. I remember when Rory MacDonald was coming up through the ranks in the UFC they kept talking about him as the first of the new breed of fighters that had solely trained in mma all their life and not transitioned across. They kept saying that it would be the wave of the future but it doesn't seem to have been. Look at the top fighters now. Most had a background in some "defined style" rather than just mma. Lots of them are black belts in karate and/or tkd. A lot of the grapplers are bjj black belts and also judo black belts etc. I think people used to keep their background quieter though for some kind of "cool factor". They would talk about their BJJ BB but not other styles etc but that is now changing. For example Robert Whittaker. Excellent fighter, but for years they didn't really mention his karate bb, now they mention it a lot. I think the success that MacGregor had using his slightly unorthodox striking, as well as that of Machida made it cool to talk about again. (MacGregor seems to have lost a step in his stand up since he switched to a more Thai style). Going back a few years the only fighters i can think of (i am likely missing a couple) that actively mentioned their karate background were GSP and Machida. Now quite a few more do. As someone mentioned above the slightly unorthodox style of striking, compared to the predominant thai style, might just be an advantage to some strikers and throw off their opponents timing. Might just be that people were not confident to try these techniques until they had seen someone else have success with them - think how many more calf kicks are seen now etc.

Admittedly, I may not be explaining my questions properly, myself. I'm a bit confused, because--and this is just my interpretation--you've essentially stated that the movements of kata are not combatively applicable, but you're saying that you see kata as developing the ability to flow between martial arts techniques, like shadowboxing with pre-defined combinations. Shadowboxing, though, is intended to be directly combatively applicable, and if the techniques of kata are not, then I'm not sure how they can be likened to shadowboxing in a meaningful way, nor do I see how they even qualify as being "martial" techniques, at all. Additionally, what value is there in practicing combinations of techniques that don't have combative applications in the first place? And we agree that practicing kihon is important for learning to perform techniques properly, but what is "proper?" I would argue that, if the techniques are martial in nature, then combative functionality should be the measure of what is "proper," but if the techniques aren't combatively applicable, what, then, is the metric by which you judge a technique to be "properly" performed? Am I making sense, or just muddling things further? Sometimes, I can't tell, lol! I think we actually have a similar view but are phrasing it in a totally different manner (and both not phrasing it the best!) I think there can be a benefit to practising combinations of techniques that don't have a pure combative application in the first place, if you are clear that you are practicing them for other benefits such as co-ordination, improved movement etc in a way that would directly transfer into other more applicable techniques. In this instance i would view it similar to doing weights or some other exercise to improve a specific quality : best example i can think of from other exercises is i personally found i noticed an almost immediate benefit to bjj from performing the barbell snatch as the hip explosion was directly transferable) I agree wholeheartedly on the "proper" definition too. I had an interesting conversation on this topic with my old bjj coach years ago after a seminar with one of the Gracies. He performed a few techniques differently from my coach (who is a bb under him) and i found it interesting. My coachs response was that there is a theoretical way to perform a technique but they should all be adapted for our own body and what feels comfortable to us/works for us. Simple example he gave is that he is 5'8, i am 6'4, so we will naturally end up in slightly different alignments when performing arm bars etc For combative application i personally think/find that only drilling against a resisting opponent and/or sparring let you really develop the timing, distance and confidence in your technique (though admittedly my time in bjj might have coloured my perspective on this) for it to be reliably combat applicable Is always interesting to get different perspectives, and i think we actually do have the same view, we are just expressing it totally differently - reminds me of one of those conversations when you say "but i mean this" and someone says "ahh, when i said X i meant Y but yeah if it's that way i agree with you, i'm just referring to that in a different way"

I've got one that has always stuck in my mind (more because the guy was a little mental tbh). This was years ago (and when i was part of a uni club) and a guy appeared at training one night with nunchuku (similar to the story above) and a little bit strange. He stuck around for a bit though and tried to learn. Two things he did always came to mind : 1) we were travelling to a tournament and he appeared with a 'carry out' (Scottish vernacular for a lot of alcohol in a carrier bag) and when we all asked him in a shocked fashion what did he think he was doing he casually responded it was fine, he had brought a beer for the Grandmaster too! 2) He suddenly vanished one day and i then saw him a couple of weeks later on crutches. I asked him what happened and he said he had been out for a training run and came across a 20ft or so wire fence. He then decided to climb it and when he got to the top he just let go and dropped to the floor. To quote him direclty he did it because "i felt invincible". He shattered both of his legs, breaking them in multiple places, and was on crutches for ages (though he eventually didn't need them anymore and recovered) He has always stuck in my head as one of the crazier people i ever met in the martial arts!

This is an interesting take, however, not the first time I've heard it, either. I'm kind of the opposite; I really like finding some applications to apply to techniques from the forms. I don't know which one's you don't particularly care for, but I've seen some that are very similar to the techniques done as they are in the forms. I take it you're not a fan of Iain Abernethy? I think his stuff is good (and he is much much better than i am!!) but i do think some of it does seem to be adjusting the kata to demonstrate a bunkai. This isn't saying that the techniques he is demonstrating are not effective etc just that i think they could be taught as techniques / sequences in their own right rather than as being lifted from a kata. Again though is just a personal view. I would like to note that i am not disputing the validity of what is being taught - more disputing the 'packaging' of it

This may be getting a bit off-topic, and I'm not trying to be inflammatory or confrontational, but I can't help but ask the question; what do you think kata were designed for, and why were they built the way they were? If it was just for body control, awareness, and coordination, then why would they bother to design the kata the way they did? Gymnastics/acrobatics accomplish the same things--arguably far better--so why not simply do that? Weightlifting, too, has proven to have the same benefits. Seems like a waste of time to do kata if they have no other purpose, especially given the fact that the Okinawans who developed karate had plenty of access to both gymnastics/acrobatics and weightlifting, and many actually did those in addition to their kata. Kihon training also accomplish the same things, but the basics are essentially just movements already used in the kata, which you've already said aren't useful for application, which then brings the practice of basics into question, entirely. What, then, makes karate a "martial" art, exactly? Sparring? The only sparring most karateka do, nowadays, was invented in the 1940's/50's, more-or-less, so that certainly doesn't get back to the intent of the art. I have seen it argued that the kata and kihon improve your sparring, but really, the skillsets used in the vast majority of modern kumite are completely different than the movements, postures, and mechanics you use in kata and kihon. That, again, begs the question of why not just do gymnastics/acrobatics or weightlifting while training sparring, if they essentially serve the same purpose as the kata and kihon, but more effectively? That's what modern competitive fighters tend to do, already, in fact. I possibly didn't phrase it the best (and i knew it would be a controversial view!). By co-ordination i meant more body co-ordination and awareness when flowing between different martial arts techniques. I think of it as more like planned shadowboxing in a sense, though where you don't pick the techniques. I have always thought that katas/forms are designed to teach the practitioner to 'free up their movements' and learn to have greater freedom to perform different movements/techniques in a sequence than they would have possibly done themselves as an example of a combination from a pattern in a former style you threw a head target backfist, then dropped to a lower target backfist with same hand then back up to head backfist with other hand. In reality it is a combination i doubt i would ever throw in a fight or have tried myself, but it teaches movement and hip rotation. I think basics / kihon are important to learn a technique and make sure you are performing it properly either in isolation or short combinations; then move into kata which helps you practice techniques in larger sequences and then onto sparring which lets you see if you can actually perform the technique properly under pressure. Everyone is going to always have different views on this one and is very much a personal opinion with no right or wrong answer tbh

Personally i think Kata is good for picking up body control and awareness of where your limbs are / how your weight is shifting etc. It is good for co-ordination etc too. I especially think it is good when you are having to perform it at a tempo that isn't your personal natural temp for performing a combination. What i am not a huge fan of is the bunkai tbh. This will likely be controversial but it does seem rather contrived / shoehorned it often. It looks like take this technique in kata X, change it so it is a totally different technique and perform it like this. This is the application of the technique for fighting. No it isn't, it is a different technique that is superficially similar. It is especially apparent (in my view) with the 'hidden throws' etc that when performed look noticeably different to the technique performed in the kata This isn't me saying the bunkai are not decent and are useless, just that they aren't in the kata (in my view!)

Totally agree with the above. Myself i got an extremely bad arm injury that took 1.5yrs to get full motion back. what i would say is that all gyms are different - if you think you are getting hurt a lot then maybe a new academy would help Myself, i just got back on the mats relatively recently and i decided to move academies. My old academy was an excellent school but too many 20year old killers for me now and was an injury waiting to happen. I found out a former training partner from years ago is a BB now with his own school. Much more chilled environment (though standard is still high) but feel less like someone will injure me!

There are a LOT of injuries in pro wrestling though. Whether or not it is 'real' they are extremely tough guys. Easy ones that come to mind from years ago as Steve Austin's broken neck; Brock Lesnar's broken neck; HHH's badly damaged quad etc. What makes it even worse is if possible they finish the match!

Who do you have winning the big grudge match? Personally i can't see anything other than a Colby win. Ignoring his personality he just seems a much better fighter. Masvidal, to me, just seems like a hype job. He has never really impressed me much and when he steps up in class gets found out. Only thing that would be good from a Masvidal win would be if he won and was forced to put his BMF belt on the line vs Chimaev. With a belt like that if you turn down an opponent you should be stripped!!