ShirKhan

Bite them on the nose. I've never been kicked by anyone while biting them on the nose.

First, to look very relaxed, hands at my sides, nothing there but someone half asleep on their feet, easy meat...then run over them like a Mack truck hitting Bambi on the road. Low and fast, in the front and out the back, don't blink or you might miss it.

I'm not a kyokushinkai man, but if someone asks me what martial artist I want to be like, Masutatsu Oyama is the first one that will come to my mind, every time. Referring to a previous post, he did fight boxers, and wrestlers, and in Mexico he had a short career as the world's only unarmed bullfighter. I watched a 5 minutes clip of him on black and white 8mm film of Mas Oyama in a hawaiian shirt and a pair of shorts entering the bullring and facing the bull. He broke the bull's horn off with a shuto in midcharge, then finished it off with hammerblows to the shoulder and ribs. Films of him killing bulls in the 1950's still exist, and his bullfighting career ended when the Mexican government stopped him for "humanitarian reasons". The bulls he killed were butchered afterward, and the areas where he struck the bulls were so traumatized and full of broken blood vessels that the meat was unfit for use. I remember when I was a kid, I thought karate and martial arts were some kind of magic. People like Mas Oyama were very magical, and I know of no one else like him, past or present. Martial arts celebrities come and go, but I don't see any of them trying to repeat Mas Oyama's feats. He was absolutely one of a kind.

Don't fight the bat. Fight the man holding it. You should be rushing in as the bat is being pulled back for a swing. If you're close enough to kiss your opponent, you're now dealing with a man with both hands busy on a useless bat. Figure it out from there.

I know I'll get flak with this one. My favorite fighting stance is hands formed like claws at my sides (at the belt line or just above it), stand naturally with knees a little bent, torso leaning forward a little, chin against my chest, and I rush right in, I want the top of my head under the opponent's chin. I use no defensive stances except in transition between techniques. This is specific to the way I fight now with Black Tiger techniques, if someone had told me to fight this way when I only studied Kenpo I would have said it was crazy.

If someone off the street told me they wanted to know how to defend themselves, and they only had 60 minutes, I could teach them a lot of practical things in an hour. But combat mindset, predatory instinct/fighting spirit, is tougher...that's a kind of thing where you lead the horse to the water and let them take it from there. I can show them what it looks like, but they can't fake it or absorb it, there's a change they've got to get inside. And some of them plain don't want it. There's black belts out there that don't have it with trophies up the kazoo. A weird example is the art called harimau that is found in Indonesia...it has similarities to silat and kuntao, and there are a lot of variations, a lot of techniques and styles. But there is one variation of what they call "harimau" that involves no techniques at all. There people under the guidance of a priest do deep meditation and hypnosis so that with a hypnotic trigger they believe they have become tigers. No joke. And according to these people, historically their village would come under attack by pirates or angry neighbors, and this group of men would recieve the hypnotic trigger and essentially would be the first ones sent to battle, with no weapons whatsoever. To me it reminds me of the "berserkers" of the Viking tradition... But it shows you that perhaps the first best weapon is the mind. You can take a 100 pound girl, and teach her movements, make her stronger, strengthen her bones and her body weapons, give her self confidence, etc. BUT...if you can give her a mindset she can access when she's attacked, that make her predator and her attackers prey...who would be the winner if a 200 pound man found to his surprise he had tackled a 100 pound tiger? Mugger: "What the f?" Tiger: "Oh, goody...they supersized my order..." LOL! The outer changes are easy, the inner changes take some work.

First, settle your weight down, lower your center of gravity, bend your knees, and simultaneously push your chin against your sternum and make your throat less accessible. Step forward quickly with one foot, let's say the right, as soon as your foot hits the ground shift torso left, with left arm make grand circle counterclockwise, breaking his hold and wrapping your arm around his arms. Take advantage of this temporary trap/arm wrap and start hitting full power to the side of his head, keep hitting as long as you have his arms under control, if he tucks his chin and makes the side of his head difficult, you also have his side exposed to rib strikes, you can deliver overhead elbow strikes to his shoulder socket, you can grab the side of his head and push your thumb into his eye. When you feel his arm or arms escaping your left arm wrap, take the R hand you have been hitting him with and cover his face with a claw, (thumb pointing to the floor) and put your l foot alongside and slightly behind his l foot in a heel trip. Push and throw his body with your R hand gripping his face, you are pushing only slightly backwards but most or the force is to your right and downwards...keep good stance as his fall will probably impact your L leg. Draw your l leg back and deliver a r foot stomp right after he hits the floor, then withdraw. Hope my description isn't too foggy.

First thing I wanted to say is turn off your air conditioner. I worked as a roofer in Florida for a couple years and if you slept at night in air conditioning and then tried to get on a roof in the blazing sun in 90% humidity, if you didn't die you surely wanted to. I swore off air conditioning in my car or my house for many years since, which has made some people swear at me...but it's better that your body become adaptable to weather and temperature changes. In the same vein, I keep the temps below normal in the winter (I presently live in Wyoming) and go out walking or jogging on a daily basis no matter the weather. Sometimes I also meditate "I love the heat, love the heat" and actually invite the sun to warm me more...this week I felt I needed a purification of some sort, I shut all the windows with 96F outside, and put in a very sweaty gasping workout, and THEN went to take a hot steam! (With a gallon of water in easy reach). Taking an ice cold rinse and then stepping outside into the cool breeze was like being born again. Of course, the rest of the day I was a lazy bum and very self-righteous about it too. Difficulty brings opportunity.

Classical judo does incorporate striking techniques or atemi, my half-brother went to the Kodokan and was very proficient in striking and breaking. If Judo is your core art, go to your teacher and see if he has any advice on striking techniques or of a striking art taught locally that would blend well with what he is teaching you.

What I was taught is the no-shadow kick sounds similar to the previous post....a kick to the knee that isn't betrayed by any other body movement to "telegraph" a kick is coming. It's done at close quarters. I also saw the post about balancing eggs on the shoulders? You can also balance a book on your head at the beginning...saves the mop, lol...

As a kid I was not too aggressive, tended to disappear into the crowd. In the 1970's I was in high school and I got into football and wrestling and started taking Ed Parker Kenpo...which addressed some of my shyness issues, not others. Learned a lot, but still felt there was a lot missing. In the early 90's I started studying Black Tiger and was trying to find information on anything Tigerish, techniques, forms, systems...just fell in love with Tiger animal styles. Accessed my aggressiveness in TOO big a way, started to love getting into fights...if someone was an a-hole, I figured I was Batman and it was my job to shut them up. Got a wake-up call when I was driving cab at night to make extra money, and I had a verbally abusive customer who threw money in my face. I got out of the cab and basically insulted him and his family and instigated him into fighting. Then put him into the hospital. Then I got charged with felony assault. I've toned down a lot since then, it was a very expensive lesson. I still love Tiger, still practice Kenpo, but I also notice that I don't have that "drive" I used to, an almost addicitive "high" when I was really Tiger obsessive, hard to describe, kind of a drug free "roid rage" because so many training techniques to access aggressiveness I got addicted to at the time...probably because I went so much the other way when I was younger. I guess now I'm looking for balance without sacrificing forward momentum/progress...41 years old and still learning.

I've been in quite a few real world physical altercations and I don't think the aim is to "control" the adrenaline rush or mess with it in any way, but you should aim for being able to think clearly without interfering with the adrenaline rush, and use the rush as your ally. The best way (to me) is to try to stimulate an adrenaline rush in your training. Some of the ways I was taught this I don't think can be taught any more, illegal or liability issues etc. For instance, if during training your sifu walked up and slapped you across the face, hard, the purpose is not to hurt or humiliate you but because it is a guarantee to confuse you and get adrenaline flowing, and if you can fight through that with good form, you are better prepared. Similarly, if a student hit a bag with lackluster performance, he might be told that the bag was really Ted Bundy or a serial rapist whoi had defiled a family member, etc..."then come back tomorrow after you think about that and shown us how you hit that bag". Another visualization was the "Death Fight", you imagine an opponent so powerful that you have no chance of surviving, an impossibly powerful human being, or an animal like a Kodiak Bear. You have no chance of surviving, but if you do this one technique with enough power, you can disable it enough so your family who stands behind you can get away. The Shaolin used to imagine fighting the stone statues of warriors that were posted at the gates, and imagined a stone room with walls closing in that they held back from crushing them as a mental/physical exercise, so the visualization idea is not new. The old Shaolin said that the Tiger stays in the cave, and he comes out of the cave only for one reason (to kill), my sifu had a somewhat updated version of the saying, that your adrenaline was a big dog on a heavy logging chain, who never barked when someone comes in the yard, but smiles and unhooks his own chain when a burglar's hand touches the doorknob. Hope this gives ideas that enhance your training, good luck.

I have from two sources that there is a Lion style among the animal styles of Chinese kungfu, separate from Tiger or Panther/Leopard. (And no, I don't mean Lion Dancing) I have been searching for info on it for a couple years without much success, so it must be pretty rare. Some sifus have told me they never heard of it, while others said it used to exist but it is extinct or nearly so. The one person I saw who performed some forms showed it as being similar to Tiger in hand movements, but stances were from a very low position, and using a peculiar kind of kneeling stance and kneeling/walking advances on the opponent...any posts on this are appreciated!

Fingertip pushups are one well-known exercise. A traditional exercise is "one thousand grabs", you grab at the air one thousand times. It sounds easy, but try it. In the same principle, take a standard "gripper" exerciser ( the one that uses t a pirece of spring steel for resistance), and when it becomes easy, close it repetitively as quickly as possible as many times as you can without rest. Stop 20 seconds then do it again, speed & repetition is the focus. The graduation exercise is the canvas heavy bag. The trick is, you strike with the palm, but grab the canvas of the bag with your fingers before it can fly away. This is what a Tiger palm should be, a concussive palm, then penetrating and immobilizing fingers. The goal is, at least in Tiger theory, you should be able to strike an opponent's body in any area with a palm and then grab his flesh with enough strength so he can't pull loose, or at least so the effort of pulling loose causes him to be so off balance you can easily push him to the ground. The fingers do NOT pierce the skin, like you see in the movies, you grab the loose flesh with enough strength that the person grabbed can't pull loose or at least has great trouble doing so. The one neat thing about Tiger is that the Tiger palm makes it almost a striking/grappling hybrid art. Every palm is both a strike and a grab that sets up for another strike, etc. Done quickly by a master, an opponent's body appears pulled in several directions at once, as if he was being pulled apart.

I also am a Kenpoka, from way back, and in Kenpo I learned to mix it up, but I always found myself in defensive thinking. When I started studying Black Tiger, I learned plenty about accessing my aggression. First is just the approach to conflict. In Kenpo, a defense against an attack is to withdraw to a safe range, block, and counter to the exposed area left by the opponent's attack. In Tiger, you read the opponent's intention, and attack him before he attacks you. They say "attack the intention", in other words, you look in their eyes, and just when they think they're ready, just before they tense to hit you, WHAM. A lot of the training is in visualizations and exercises, some of them a little bizarre, but effective. Some of them involve actively imagining that you actually are a tiger, and doing deep abdominal growls, imagining that your technique is not against a human opponent, but actually a deer opponent which you are hunting because you are starving. This sounds weird, but there is a Tiger form of Silat called Harimau in Indonesia, where the practicioners practice no MA exercises at all, but through a pattern of self hypnosis enable themselves to go into a trance at will, during which they actually believe they become tigers, and no longer understand human speech for the duration of their trance. But, all this weirdness aside, I can say these exercises are very effective. Our sifu would stimulate our imagination in other ways, for instance: If we were working on the heavy bag, he would say, "That heavy bag in front of you is a 300 pound man on steroids. He was released from prison yesterday, and he's high on drugs and he's coming right at you. But he doesn't want you...he wants your mother, she's standing right behind you and begging you to help her. NOW HIT THAT BAG!" All this use of imagination may seem like daydreaming, but combined with physical action it enhances the training. The old Taiji manuscripts say "the imagination leads the chi", in other words, imagining power prepares a path for power to flow. If a woman can lift a car off a baby because of overwhelming adrenaline due to her state of mind, imagining that state of mind effectively prepares that path for greater strength. By the way, I'm not trying to hype Tiger here. You can do similar meditations on your own and enhance your own Kenpo practice. Every time you learn a defensive technique, practice it defensively, then think how that same technique can be used as a sneak attack, balance your attack and defense. Instead of blocking a punch, imagine that is a hand being held up defensively by an opponent which you are grabbing or trapping for a break offensively, preparatory to a finishing move. Think: "Not only can I defend myself against a mugger, if the mugger doesn't see me coming I can mug him. Not trying to criminalize you, here, just looking for balance instead of a defensive-only mentality. After all, if you defend yourself successfully against an attack, and your opponent is still standing, do you attack him or wait for him to hit you again? "Defense only" is good philosophy before conflict begins, but once conflict begins you should have no limitations on what you are able to do. It's also worthwhile, if you are trying to reach greater power, is to combine animal aggressiveness with whole-body power. If you choose to try growling exercises, remember it really doesn't matter what your growl sounds like to others, it matters that your abdomen muscles are working hard, and the air escapes from your lungs under pressure, oxygenating the blood, after this you should study how you feel. The growl is not meant to frighten, it should be like a generator making your body stronger and stronger and raising your awareness and your energy level. The rest of your body should be relaxed, and when you hit with the hand it should come from the floor. One last exercise is to become expert at close-in work. Often juvenile males display aggressiveness by staring the other down nose-to-nose. Close-in fighting not only displays aggressiveness, it also makes it easier to access whole-body power strikes. Tiger practicioners learn long-range strikes, but if they're taking someone down it's always at close quarters...many times it looks less like fighting and more like a collision! When you see a successful fighter, often you'll hear the comment "I ran over him!" Next time you're sparring, see what happens if you just lower your head and immediately rush in full speed, and just push with both hands! Often people are totally unprepared for an outright attack with no preparation. Learning "standing" karate is one thing, but if you can practice "running karate", "joyful attack", then you're at a totally different level. There is a danger, though, to accessing aggressiveness using some of the Tiger exercises. It enhances your physical training and frees your mind to deal with conflict, but it is definitely possible to get too exhilirated with the euphoria of feeling "invincible", and you connect aggressiveness with energy so closely that a drug free "roid rage" type of thing happens, you know you're WAY overdoing it and you need to back off. There's a proverb, "The tiger possesses the earth wherever he walks", which is a saying both powerful and dangerous. To have that kind of presence is powerful, and a good thing...but walking around with that kind of attitude makes you dangerous to yourself and others. That's all I can think of. Good luck.

Whenever I go into a public situation, my first defense is that I restrict or deny my alcohol intake. Presumably anyone who starts something is likely to be more off center than me and I therefore begin with an advantage. My second thought on a crowded dance floor is that if I respond, I very well may be surrounded by his friends, if I get tangled up with one, I might get jumped by five. Then I take a leopard hand with a quick motion strike the fat Viking in the windpipe and try to keep eyes in the back of my head for the reaction from anyone watching. If they saw me move, then they are paying attention, and are also possible combatants. If they just look at the Viking with curiosity as he's choking, dance your way to stage left. I've seen very belligerent people pacified by a simple finger to the throat, but people don't seen to like studying this technique, they file it into a dirty tricks category and don't work on it. If you train your speed and accuracy so you can sit in mabu stance with your hands on your hips, and suddenly reach out full speed and put out a candle flame (without spilling the wax or the candle) and return your hand to your hip with the same speed, then try "pinching" the flame or "plucking" the flame out. Use this same idea when turning light switches off and on, pressing the button for elevators, etc, get it really secondhand and everyday, then you can poke out an eye or strike a throat in the middle of a crowd and chances are good no one will even see it happen.

Palm strikes/double palm strikes are my primary weapon of choice. I've trained my grip strength and hand/finger conditioning so that I can attack a canvas heavy back with a full speed palm and grab it with my fingers before it gets away, then pull it back over my shoulder, turn to strike it again. You can probably extrapolate from this how it would be useful in a close infighting situation. A street situation a couple years ago went like this: attacker opened with an overhand right, in one move I closed distance, left hand in outward block wrapped around his arm and trapped it against my side, right palm struck his throat, then fingers sink into his neck muscles and thumb into his windpipe. Then "stretched" him, pulling him apart between my grip on his arm and on his neck, this made his left hand unable to reach me. I held him like this for about 20 seconds, then gave him some air, and he declared his hostile actions at an end. This comes from Tiger theory, and it's strength comes from a low stance and pre-emptive thinking, if you see the fight coming, rush in and strike for a mass center for concussive effect, then use the moment he's off balance to immobilze him, take him to the ground, or break something. You have to be comfortable with the idea of sacrificing some of your defensive capability, rushing in to very close quarters and taking him out by a main force technique. "Close enough to kiss, close enough to kill." Your body is a moving target, maybe your opponent will make contact, maybe he won't, but you have to KNOW you'll make contact and that you can do anything you want with them once you get there. This flies in the face of theory of many martial styles, which use distance and defensive strength as a strong position from which to deliver blows, and capitalize on an opponent's mistakes made during their attack. Tiger tends to rush in, and with an emphasis on using palm/claw strikes, and especially both palms used simultaneously, both for striking and blocking. Palms can be used in a "pushing" strike, also in a "slapping" strike, learning to use your root strength in slapping takes a lot more time, but takes you to a totally different level, It's hard to describe in text only, but I come from a Kenpo background that is now a kind of Kenpo/Kempo/Tiger fusion, and there are virtues in all strategies. I've worked as both a bouncer and a prison guard, as well as getting into a little trouble beyond that, so what works is important to me. I'd say look into some Tiger styles if you want to see effective strategies involving palm strikes.