granmasterchen

4th dan from ohio, now currently training in japan. i will apologize now though, i know very little korean terminology, my instructors always spoke in english and gave the techniques an english name. But i am sure that we can understand each other.

i agree with karatekid, you need a good foundation before you start to cross train, otherwise you will just get confused.

20 a month for my original art when ever i get home to train back in the states, over here on the base prices average around 35 to 40 a month...

attack with lightning fast attacks and NEVER let up. In order to make the bully intimidated by you, you have to intimidate him. Use speed and be more ferocious than ever, if it comes to a fight that you have no choice of getting away...then let him have it, tear into him with combos and never stop, keep attacking every opening you see, and use your speed to keep moving, dodge and weave, get out of his way and keep attacking....

if i want to end the fight quickly....the best spot and easiest, in my opinion, to hurt someone is the neck. no matter where you hit them on the neck the fight will most likely be over. a nice chop to the throat or back of the neck, or even the sides of the neck....pretty short and sweet. ---THERE are many vital points however, it all depends on what technique you are using. and the attack depends on the level of threat as well. if it is a life or death fight and you want it over quick, i would suggest the neck, groin, solarplexus, kneecaps, back of the neck and spine, eye gouges, temples, boxing the ears, spearhands to the arm pit and so on....all depends on how violent you want to be ...whether you want the attacker dead or only hurt

i've never done the bat with the shins. What is the whole idea or thought behind that, if any? Is it just the same as doing any other break? This will end up rather expensive in the end...oh well, i just hope there is a large turn out for the event.

LuckyBoxer, i dont have a website yet, i am still waiting for my wife to help me out on that, i am rather computer illiterate while she works for computers for a living. I am breaking 3 inch thick bricks. about 6 inches wide and about 18 inches long,,,,my best guess, i could be off...but i do know that they are 3 inches in thickness. i have done ice before, but the most was about 6 inches worth. Probably doesnt help you out much luckyboxer. No hot wires need for that.

i just broke 12 inches of cement tonight with my elbow...but i only have a small bruise...no injury,....sorry....no injury recently at least.

Please only post if you are concerned with breaking. I have a tournament coming up in sept (not finalized yet), i was asked to perform a breaking DEMO for the opener of the tourney, so this is for an attention getter, NOT competition. My plan was to break 4 inches of concrete with a palm strike, then move to the next station for 4 inches of concrete with a reverse punch, then move to the power break where i would do 8 inches of concrete with an elbow strike, then pick up one of the cinder blocks and elbow strike that while someone holds it , and finally have the fellow instructors of the area break boards on my body.(both arms, both legs, back and chest) Tonight i broke 12 inches with an elbow strike, so i am THINKING of doubling that to 24 in, i am also THINKING of moving the first two breaks up to 6 inches of concrete, and then only have ONE board broken on my body and have that done on my breaking arm. what do you think? any ideas on how to make it better?

I am in a search of really great books of martial arts knowledge. The best book that I have read, but I forget which author it was, was the BOOK OF FIVE RINGS. I have read several different versions of this translation of Musashi but one author I found to be very great....but thats not whats important right now. I am looking for your help in finding me some more great books to read and learn more. I dont want any of the basic how to do this or that. I am looking for writings on the higher learnings of martial arts. So please help me if you can so i can add some nice books to my collection and hopefully learn some new stuff to make me feel ..... like more of an artist instead of sports player if you know what i mean. Thanks in advance

Yes, i know how you feel, I have been trying to do more searches of this higher internal understanding and all ....it is a slow ride....but I fortunately have some people that train in internal arts that are willing to help me out. Let me know with a private message if there is anything in particular that you are looking for

nicely written spooky. I am glad that I grew up with the shotokan influenced TKD....because in all honesty this olympic style stuff just doesn't sit well with me. Other forms that are shared in karates and some of the older TKDs and TSD are niahanchi also known as the tekkis in karate.

sounds like you already have it figured out. Good luck and train hard

sure, if i understand you correctly, i teach martial arts to the military so everytime that i move to a new base i have to start all over...but that's fine with me, i only want to open up peoples minds to the martial arts, after that it is all up to them whether they seek further training or not, and if they seek me out that is a good sign that i am doing something right. In the very least i keep in contact with all my former students via email and help them out with any martial arts questions that they may have at the time being.

i find arnis to be a very good art along with great self defense applications. The important thing to keep in mind is that when you train you must train hard, in all styles it is up to your methods of teaching and the way that you apply those methods to your training. So in that regard any style can be a great style as long as you train properly and have proper guidance..... yet to reitterate my point and the point of the thread , Arnis is a very great art if properly executed...

nope, i trained in ohio, i just currently live in japan because i work with the US military and i currently teach martial arts over here..... yep i did my hard core training back in the states....with all the old school instructors, bill wallace, bill wall, and chuck norris to name a few of the higher blackbelts in my art forms

i study a bit of everything and incorporate it into my own unique style....and what i train in overall is full contact

i apologize for how i wrote that...i was going off of a brochure from the instructor here on the base and i was trying to simplify it and apparently i did make some mistakes while thinking ...my mind got ahead of my fingers....sorry for the mistakes....i hope that the gist of the style was interpretted well.....again my apologies

ninpo budo taijutsu a japanese art that has survived the centuries (900yrs) and involves the classic ninja, stephen hayes, hatsumi sensei, robert fraser are some examples of the great masters of the art. after you reach tenth degree there are five more degrees after that to represent each element, the fifth being the VOID, the teachings are from the classical 9 ninja scrolls (densho), the style as taught here in japan at my base in in tokyo by hatsumi sensei and fraser sensei is as follows kihon happo- 8 historic basic combat movements kata/henka- historic models of movements derived from actual combat jissen teki- fighting skills using practical body positioning for safety goshin jutsu- self defense skills ningu- weapons training including long and short staffs, knives, swords, chain and rope along with others these five areas are taught with emphasis on taijutsu(ninja 's body arts) taijutsu consists of: taihenjutsu- skills of escaping harm, such as footwork, body shifting, breakfalls, jumping, rolling and diving dakentajutsu- offensive and defensive parrying, punching, striking and kicking skills jutaijutsu- grappling skills to include locks, holds, chokes, throws and counters to any of the above...... let me know if i can help more

well i thank you all for helping me out, I have 17 months before i leave japan, maybe then i can run into one of the two instructors that i know who know about it and learn it then...unless i happen across it somewhere.....but it doesn't look like that will happen, well thanks again for your help

as a reply back to DLopez: my school isn't big on the terminology, so the actual term of kata means the same as forms, shadow boxing , hyung or anything else, we just use the term kata there.... In response to rmclain: my school is not big on the sport katas or forms....we are not big into tournaments and spend most of our time training for street survival situations, so in that aspect i would have to say that I dont see my school as having that form for a sole purpose of being a sport based form .....if that makes any sense

basically (now edited) i was just stating some of the physical things we had to do (incase you skipped all the above statements to see what others have written) i just want to see if anyone else trains hard in their dojos or dojangs or what ever, what kind of traingings do you do, and how do you feel about the different trainings? does it make for a better martial artist or not, or is it just simply different, I just want to know everyones' view on this issue, Thanks again, sorry about the long paragraphs and such.

i alternate my legs and stances...i can block both of their legs just fine, from one side i can easily block shin to shin, from the all i have to do is make a slight turn in the angle of my leg and i can block their other one, if i want i can use this angle and turn to change my stance all together and allow me to get in close and block their leg up into them, make them lose balance and start in with the arms. It has worked for over 20 yrs for me

it was a moodukwon taekwondo school that i attended....whether or not that is where the kata originated from i dont know. our style kata list is as follows: the three basic katas: basic forms 5 pinan, heian, pynahn (spellings vary per school) basai 3 nihanchi, nihinge, tekki(spelling vary again) then the korean kicking kata(??????????) my style as you can see has a strong influence in the tangsoodo and karate style katas or forms...but i have not gotten a translation if there is one of this specific kata as to whether it is korean or a japanese form or something altogether different

I personally find that too many schools are focused on a) making money or b) building self-esteam. neither of these is bad or wrong, but i still think the focus should be on the training and to me that means training hard. I have seen many schools that dont train hard core like I did when I first started out in the martial arts. My school wasnt too bad, it was what I considered standard practice. I trained there for several years before going on to the military and touring the world. I found that many schools dont even perform situps, pushups, and stretches! I have seen schools that do not believe in contact in fights and those that do not believe in sparring yet these are schools that advertise deadly fighting arts. I have also seen the schools that only teach 30 min classes or something like that and some schools that teach once a week or less. Back in those days we would do a huge amount of physical training...we would knock out thousands of jumping jacks... I remember several times where we would do 500 push ups, 200 on your knuckles (and we only trained on hard wood floors, or out in the gravel parking lot), 100 finger tip push ups, 100 clapping pushups, and finished it off with regular push ups, we did one handed push ups, 1500 situps at a time, leg lifts for 30 min +, we would run 15 miles for testings, we did the balancing on poles and get hit in the legs with sticks and boards if a stance was wrong, we would break boards over our bodies, and put ourselves in very painfull situations by being the "volunteer for a knife or gun self defense", we trained with real knives and learned to take cuts, we would do laps of duckwalks around our large dojo, and learned to do falls, sweeps, and takedowns on the hard wood floor. We trained everyday for a minimum of 1 hour and 30 min per class, with several back to back classes. We sparred full contact to the knock out or submission of the opponent just like the early UFCs.... we did classes of pressure points and vital points, nothing like willingly taking pain and being submitted to knock outs with out fighting back. The way we learned our catstances was to stand in the stance for 45 min....intense pain after awhile, but after that you never get it wrong. We would break bricks with our heads for our black belt test. We did real life street self defenses where we would have to fight off 4 or more attackers at once, and then the attackers would have weapons, then we would blind fold you and you would have to fight them off. Our testings lasted from sunrise to sunset for several days....one mistake and you fail, anything from your wrist bent wrong on one punch to a stance being slightly off...you failed and waited six months to retest or even up to a year. We would train in all situations from buildings with no fans or AC in temps over 100 degrees, to training outside in the middle of winter when it would get into the negative numbers. We would do one leg deep knee bends (painful), and then there was the weapon training...we would lie across two chairs(feet on one and upper body laying on the other) then you would open up your gi top, to show bare skin, we would lie a cucumber across our chest while another student took a katana and cut it in half...we would also do this with cucumber against our throats from lying position and standing positions. We would spend hours beating our forearms together against anothers forearms (forte) and the same with our shins, we also punched boards and bricks and steel for hours to build up callouses and to prepare us for breaking drills, we would take an apple and place it in a five gallon bucket fill the bucket with sand and spear hand through the sand to get the apple....aaaa the memories of those days and my favorite school. So I started this thread with the intent of giving people knowledge of some of the things that we used to do back in the old days and to get some participation from others on grueling things that they did that would now be considered "too rough". Now I know that many have trained even harder...and I am not saying that our training was harsh, I am saying that was normal for us, and what I see today just makes me shake my head.... Thanks.