Tal

what exactly do you mean by 'new', 'established' and 'genuine'. for example kickboxing is about as new a style as you can get and it is well established as a sport. yet some very old arts such as ryukyu kempo are not exactly well established in modern society.

its obviously not easy to see hidden techniques, because there are still many movements in kata that people cannot explain or have only incomplete explanations for. kata are also designed to make you think you know what the techniques are when in fact they are different.

i'm a teenager for another 4 months.

couldn't you overcome that by having longer links? 5 long links could be longer than 10 short ones

i don't know much about the korean styles, but hwa rang do was very much like karate i think, but tae kwon do which was developed from it is quite a bit different. most styles have high kicks to be used against mounted opponents. that is what most flying kicks are designed for. i would say farming rather than gardening tools , but many 'martial arts weapons' are very much improvised. nunchaku weren't invented by anyone in particular. they are just a generic threshing tool. in europe we had the flail which was like a nunchuk but one end had a spikey ball on it. most of these improvised weapons aren't that great against a sword, spear or halberd. the nunchuku/flail is quite effective because of its trapping and disarming qualities.

the orginators of the very earliest karate, which was actually ryukyu kempo would have learnt from eachother as with any MA. however, after time, rival schools of karate develop and they want to hide their techniques from eachother so one school cannot have an advantage by knowing the techniques of another. its not japanese, its okinawan. the okinawans believed themselves racially and culturally different from the japanese and wanted to keep it that way. when they brought ryukyu kempo to japan, they quickly removed material and continued to hide techniques so the japanese were essentially learning a different art. i don't really see what's not japanese about it anyway. samurai schools liked to hide their techniques from eachother, although not in the same way.

i just did a google search on his name and i recognise him. the name just didn't ring a bell for some reason. still, i don't really know much about him.

you ask again why it has to be intentionally hidden. read my first post on this, i think i explained why the old masters wanted to hide techniques. people havn't just forgot; they were never told in the first place. thankfully there are people out there who strive to make sense of the kata and then make known what they find in their schools, books and videos. whether its a way of keeping students hooked is irrelevent; if the techniques are hidden they are hidden. if someone wants to use their knowledge of these things to 'hook' students thats up to them. they are training forms, but they train you to fight. once you get through all the misleading parts of the kata and discover what its really supposed to represent, you get a set of extremely effective fighting combos. obviously you don't try to perform a whole kata if you get into a fight but little chunks of kata can be useful. kata has other purposes too, but one of its purposes is to provide a set of techniques that you can apply in combat. i've used kata on the street and its worked. not whole kata, just two or three steps of kata. for me, its really the pressure points that makes it work. the points attacked in the first movement ensure that my opponent is positioned correctly for me to execute the next movement. the problems arise when you interpret the kata incorrectly. you get a movement that is actually a representation of your opponent's action, and you try to include it in your combo and it screws things up. i would agree that kata/forms are a way of organising training, but they are not just that. they are both fighting and training forms, although they are primarily training forms. but they train you to fight. and my saying that kata hides techniques stems mainly from history and the things the formulators of the kata had to consider when they created them; namely, not letting rivals discover their best techniques.

i've never actually heard of the dude but he probably does all 3. there's no reason why he can't.

some kata movements represent the opponent's actions, not just the practitioner's actions. that is a way of hiding techniques/misleading an observer. people assume that kata movements are all representations of the practitioner's movements when in fact some of them are representations of the opponent's movements. some movements show the actions the defender takes, some show, on the practicioner's body, where to strike on an attacker's body. kata changes points of view constantly, one movement showing the attacker, the next showing the defender, yet mots observers would assume the kata is representing one person throughout. which person each movement represents is hidden. by definition kata movements follow a sequence, yet this might not actually correspond to the sequence of movements to be used in a fight. the direction of movements in kata can easily be assumed to represent the direction from which various attacks originate, when really they may be showing at what angle the practicioner should position himself in relation to an attacker. these are all ways of misleading observers and hiding techniques in kata. i'll use an example of a technique that i think is hidden in kata. many kata start off with the performer placing right their fist in their left palm and holding their arms up over their chest. the fist and palm are then pushed down until the arms are locked out. this is commonly believed to be some sort of salutation. as intented, the movement misleads the observer and hides the true technique. this movement is not entirely representing the performer's body. the right fist is in fact representing an attacker's fist, and the left palm is representing the defender who applies a pressure point manipulation to turn away the attacker's fist. or at least, that is what i believe. in a way it is bad teaching. intentional bad teaching by the eastern masters who tought the americans that went there. to the okinawans and the japanese, the americans were gaijin - foreigners and barbarians - and invaders of their country. why would they teach the americans their secret techniques? instead of teaching them the okuden material, they tought them the watered down shoden stuff. the kata they tought the americans had the same movements as the kata the okuden students learnt, but the what those movements really represented was not revealed. bunkai simply means application. basically how to apply a kata movement to actual combat. i know very little about kung fu and its forms, although from what i do know i believe they are very similar to okinawan forms in philosophy and intent. i.e. they were meant to hide techniques from anyone who was not meant to know the techniques. anyway, as i said right at the start, this is a matter of opinion. no one can go and ask the formulators of the kata if they intended to hide techniques or not. if you don't believe they are intended to hide techniques then fine, as long as you have reasons for it. all we can do is give reasons for what we believe.

you might notice that the style's i have BBs in are all quite different. shotokan is all striking, jujitsu is primarily grappling, and kendo is entirely a weapon art. when the style's you do are very different, you can practice them simultaneously without them conflicting which allows you to advance in them together. i think people who have BBs in more than one similar style are a lot rarer. i don't know many.

i exlpained some of the ways techniques can be hidden in the 6th paragraph of my last post. people do know why kata movements are there. they are there because they represent techniques to be used in combat. what people don't know is what the actual techniques are - they are hidden. modern day martial artists must 'decide what everything is for'; they have no other option; the orginal forumlators of the kata are not here to tell them. "it all sounds to me like you are saying that if you don't know what it is for, then it is hidden." not really. i'm saying that if you don't know what its for, then what its for is hidden, i.e. the bunkai is hidden not the actual movements. and its not just bunkai. i believe the kata are full of misleading movements and changes of perspective to mislead people who watch the kata and try to interpret it. i believe the kata are designed to make you assume incorrect or inneffective bunkai. "isn't it up to you as the student to think for yourself and apply everything you have learnt? to put your pressure point knowledge, grips, joint locks, stances, turns, positions into everything and ultimately, your katas." yes, that is correct. and that is what many masters have been trying to do for decades: to put everythign they have learnt to try and discover the original bunkai of the kata. if someone who knew what the kata orginally represented, they wouldn't have to spend decades. this just shows the success of the kata design: okuden students can be told what the kata represent so they can learn quickly, while rivals or potential rivals must spend years trying to interpret it for themselves.

this is a matter of opinion, because no one can go back in time and ask the original formulators of the kata if they intended to hide techniques in them or not. many people, including top masters, believe the kata are intended to hide techniques. i believe it too, although i think that with study and an analytical mind you can uncover the hidden techniques. this is still just an opinion, but there are good reasons for it. in old times in japan and okinawa, the MAs were practiced secretly and sometimes illegally. one school didn't want its techniques to leak out because other schools might discover them and gain an advantage. many of the best MA schools then where family run things. a family could trust its most secret techniques to only the family itself and perhaps a few very trustworthy friends. anyone else would have to learn watered down techniques. there were three levels of teaching given; shoden, chuden and okuden. shoden was tought to pretty much anyone; it was the basic generic techniques found among all schools. chuden was more advanced and specialised, and tought only to worthy students. okuden was the highest level knowledge and only given to family and trusted friends. in that time, any sensei would only want students that were worthy of his teaching. to prove his worthiness, a potential student would have to spend long periods of time doing chores and menial tasks. the student might have to spend moths practicing a single technique or stance to prove his determination. this could be happening in the same dojo where the advanced students trained. those practicing okuden level could be just on the other side of the dojo doing their secret techniques. how does the sensei cover up what they are doing so that the unenlightened shoden student cannot make sense of the okuden techniques? if the techniques in the okuden kata were obvious, the shoden student could go and tell them to a rival school. the answer was to hide the real techniques in the kata. any treacherous student could go and show a rival school what he had seen the okuden students doing, but he or the rival school would not know the true meaning of what they had seen, because the real techniques are hidden in the kata. i, and a lot of top masters, believe that the kata are constantly changing perspective. one second they are representing the attacker, and the next they are representing the defender. directional movement in the kata could be interpreted as turning to face attacks from different directions, when in fact it is showing how to orient oneself in relation to an attack. in some kata movements, one of the practicioner's arms could be representing the attacker, while the other represents the defender. parts of the kata could show where, on the practitioner's body, to strike an opponent. a fist could represent a grasp on an opponents wrist, and an open hand a grasp on their elbow. finally, there is the matter of pressure points. a lot of kata movements, especially karate and kempo kata, make a lot of sense when you have pressure points in mind. the angle of the arm movements in the kata are perfect for the manipulation of pressure points, yet this is hidden unless you know of the pressure points before hand. early pictures of gichin funakoshi practicing bunkai on others always show him gripping and/or striking pressure points, yet this is far from obvious in the kata. as i said to begin with, it is a matter of opinion and all we can do is give reasons for our opinions. what i have written are the main reasons for believing that kata hides techniques, and it makes sense of the many unexplained or incompletely explained movements in kata.

we have used several things for breaking - concrete slabs, wooden boards (i don't know what type of wood), blocks of ice, big wooden doors (break with a flying kick), bricks, breeze blocks and double glazed windows (wearing mits). we didn't use any heat treatment or anything else. whether they're easy to break or not, it doesn't matter. most of us could not have broken those things at one time, and we failed at our first few attempts, but we eventually broke them. we learnt to do something new, learnt a new way of focusing our strength, and that is all that matters. if you don't learn anything from breaking, or cannot see the point of what you're learning then don't do it. its obviously no good for you, but that doesn't mean that no one benefits from it. people say its for show because they cannot get anything more out of it for themselves. before i started breaking, my strikes were fairly weak and i was rubbish in full contact sparring. once i'd started breaking my strikes got stronger and i became much more effective in full-contact. that's not just me, i know other people as well. in kendo, people are surprised at how strong my strikes are. i can hit harder and faster than all the big guys because i learnt to focus my strength in karate, doing breaking.

robodjs, i know many people who have BBs in more than one style. its not that uncommon. i have BBs in karate, jujitsu and kendo, although in kendo you don't actually wear a belt.

capoeira is often called a 'game' rather than an 'art' or 'style'.

when i tried nunchaku i found them far too clumsy. its more likely that its me that's clumsy, but i didn't like them. i'd prefer a solid stick to whack people with.

i don't think the great traditional MAs were created by someone entirely on their own. most likely it would have been a group of like minded people who developed it together, probably over more than one generation. how do you know that your techniques are going to be effective if you've never tried them on someone before? how can you be sure that you've covered everything? i think you have to be very, very good to create an effective MA on your own. if you have people developing it with you, it would be a lot easier. two people can create a far better MA than one, and if you can get more than two people it will be even better.

i'm thinking of chinte, which means 'incredible hands'. wolverine had 'incredible hands' in x-men, so that might be it

your dojo will probably lend you the armor for some time. i borrowed it for about 6 months then bought some second hand armor. i got the full set of armor for £80 which is just over €100, i think. it was very well worn and not great quality but it does the job. the armor is necessary for sparring because getting hit with a shinai hurts. it won't break bones or cut you but you get very nasty welts and bruises if you are hit by one without armor.

i like catching punches then striking pressure points on the arms and making low side kicks.

if there's no kata then its not ryukyu kempo.

i just got my 1st dan in kendo last week. its an awesome art and i enjoy much more than the other arts i've practiced (karate and jujitsu). the whole dressing up like a samurai and having sword duels thing is pretty cool. the biggest problem with it is expense. you can spend hundreds of dollars on bogu (armor), and the shinais (bamboo practice swords) can break after a while. your dojo should let you borrow at least the bogu for some time, but you'll need to buy your own eventually. kendo is the simplified and safe form of kenjitsu. kenjitsu is an amalgamtion of hundreds of sword schools from between 1000 AD to 1700 AD. it is really a sport style, because people don't carry swords around any more. you still get the benefits common to all MAs; fitness, improved reflexes etc, but unless you get attacked in the billiards club its not much use for defense training is mainly sparring and kata. some schools emphasize the kata more than others. my school does about 20% kata and 70% sparring, with about 10% of basics and other stuff. the kata are different from many MAs because the kata are practiced by two people together, as if they were fighting one another. the uchidachi (initiator, usually the instructor) attacks the shidachi (counter attacker, usually the student), the shidachi then makes a defensive move and counters. the kata are practiced unarmored with bokken, which can either be katana or wakizashi sized. sparring is practiced with shinai and bogu. kendo is also very etiquette heavy. kendo is heavily stylised, with many of the complex and dangerous techniques removed. an old master of kenjitsu would kick a kendoka's butt in a real sword duel. if you want to know more, email me. i'd be happy to answer any questions.

as said already, it certainly can be. i think on its own, its not a terribly effective combative art, because it has been watered down for the masses. if you combine some elements of the original karate and kempo from okinawa it can very deadly.

i've used groin kicks before on the street, and have no problem with using them again. they're incredibly effective, and unless you really whack them hard, you won't do any permanent damage. eye gauging is another thing. a successful eye gauge will result in serious permanent damage, which i wouldn't want to do to anyone unless i really, really needed to. there are more effective things i can do than eye gauges anyway.