White Warlock

Then you read it wrong, because that's not what i said. To me it sounds much to complicated and ellaborate so I have a hard time believing it. Well, as you said, you "haven't really thought about it." I'm not here to convert you, so... frankly, i don't care whether you believe or not. No more than i care whether you believe the Sun revolves around the Earth.

The gun, used for the scene, only shoots blanks. It is designed to give an impressive dispersal of burning gunpowder out of the barrel. In a previous take, a portion of a blank got lodged in the barrel (not a real bullet... just a fragment of a blank). When they reloaded it with a new blank for the next take, the fragment dislodged and was propelled into Brandon's abdomen. From what i recall, it struck his aorta... but i'm fuzzy on this. Anyway, it was a fluke, but such a fluke had to happen eventually. The movie was being made in Canada, where they're able to avoid the unions, guild requirements on having a certain amount of extras, the laws in the U.S. pertaining to movie making, and where they can get away with paying less for more. This, of course, provides a lot more money returns to investors... but screws the people who make the movies (extras and off-camera crew). The main actors come out fine, so they rarely complain. It had become a very common practice to make movies and series in Canada, and it was actually hurting the acting industry as a whole. Same with making movies/series in New Zealand (Hercules and Xena for example). The part about paying less for more is what killed Brandon Lee. The off-camera crew were being overworked and were generally underpaid, so their energy level and professionalism were being undermined. The prop man was supposed to check and clean the gun after every take, to avoid these kinds of accidents from happening... but he was pulled away to take care of some other props and had failed to return to the gun and clean it before it was taken back to the stage. An assistant loaded the gun and... Brandon died a needless death. Nothing mysterious... just tragic.

Jackie Chan is a martial artist, well trained in a myriad of systems. To the point where he has recognized their inherent similarities. Having such insight requires decades of dedication and he has been at it for almost his entire life. He states he is not a martial artist, but this is an indication of his humbleness. He prefers to be considered an actor/comedian and stuntman. Seagal doesn't like to be bothered by fans or paparazzi. He doesn't agree with the argument that being famous entails having to deal with invasion of privacy. Because of this, and the fact there's a lot of people trying to 'falsely' buddy up to him, he tends to be a bit snippity with the general public. As to his ego, he has one. How do you think he was able to be successful in Hollywood? Personal opinions aside, his ego, combined with his skills and his self-confidence, are the reasons Seagal became a successful 'action star.'

Hmm, now i'm debating whether to blush... or swoop.

And thus, i get the last laugh.

Agreed. Vital areas you instinctively know exist. And to not confuse this discussion further, i won't elaborate because we're not talking about vital areas. As i stated in an earlier post on this thread, pressure points are not the same as vital areas. Please differentiate.

Agreed Reklats. During my college years, i would wrestle the bigger guys all the time... and they were easier to wrestle than the little tykes who would pitbull on one of my limbs.

DLopez, i get the feeling you have a different definition for pressure points than that of the Dillman group. Sounds more to me like you're referring to vital areas, but maybe if you describe 'your' training on pps, this could get cleared up a bit quicker. I'm not surprised. I'm also not surprised that you didn't understand my post. Please don't confuse instinct with muscle memory. Instinctively you know where your joints are and how they move (basic mechanics), where you are ticklish (basic anatomy), and leverage vs power (basic physics). The study of pressure points is not instinctual. I get the impression you think i was born yesterday. I was not, so please... no double talk. Some drunk people tell stories and some drunk people exaggerate, as do some 'sober' people. But, if we were to push this drunk angle, this is due to a decrease in inhibitions. Your argument about pain falls flat on its face, as those inebriated are actually less susceptible to pain. One does not relate to the other. Just because it might be easier to fight a drunk person does not substantiate the effectiveness or relevancy of pressure points. Then we are in disagreement. Especially since instinct and 'mind/body' training are not one and the same. You could train yourself to override instinct, as long as 'fight/flight' doesn't override you. As i stated above, seems both of you misunderstood the paragraph on instinct and therein assumed incorrectly what i was inferring. Before i continue with these discussions... may i be so intrusive as to ask how long either of you (nitroice0069, ppko) have been studying pressure points?

Without attempting to sound too facetious, do you normally get an opportunity to do a drug test on your adversaries before being attacked by them in a dark alley? Assuming not, how much 'thinking' is needed before applying the right combination of letters (Li, L, H, P, M, I, C, K, E, Y, M, O, U, S, E)?

I recommend the route of 'assertive' over 'aggressive,' as the latter can bleed into your daily life in a negative way. A training philosophy in san soo is that of predator/prey, where your opposition comes at you as the predator and you the prey. Your job is to turn it around, thinking of your opposition as the prey, thus turning you into the predator. You in the mood for lunch? A little flesh rending maybe?

That's interesting; how do you do that?? In words? That's why you can only really learn it with full contact. It's basically instinctively rolling with a punch (as noted by watching a boxer get a shot in the head), giving your body slight turns to redirect the energy (not allowing a strike to penetrate to the center), and of subduing and displacing the wave created by a hit (energy is dispatched in the form of waves), etc. Of the last, your body is essentially a big bag of water and fiber, surrounding a bone frame, so an impact presents waves that change when encountering the body. A well placed impact can send a wave that penetrates deep and injures organs or break bones. However, one can learn to train the body to absorb and buffer these waves. A hard object does little to defeat a wave, while a soft object does little to buffer an impact. What you need is to learn how to be both hard and soft when receiving an impact, so that when you are hit, you resist the initial damage from the shallow impact with hard and defeat the wave with soft. You essentially suppress the wave, and/or create a counter-wave within your own body. In practice it is much less complicated. With the definition I just gave in the other post, it's perfectly possible. I do the same when I spar with someone. If my opponent has a flaw and he doesn't get it I let him feel it. So, no problem there. I'm not quite sure we're on the same page here. During low/semi-impact practice, many flaws are apparent and they can be pointed out to the sparring partner. But, there are flaws that only present themselves when a person is being pressured with full-on attacks. These flaws are not merely things like having the arm come down as i mentioned before, leaving the head exposed. Many are more critical, such as a person cowering, falling into a defensive 'pattern,' shortfalling with attacks, overfocusing on the upper body, etc. These are things that get worse if you push it in a fight, so full contact is applied to make these problems apparent, but not to get rid of these problems. The practitioner needs to spend time working these things out of their 'habit,' in low/semi-contact before they can full-on spar again.

Aye, attending a few sessions at each school, as a student, is probably the best way for you to find your niche... without spending too much. Some schools offer a few free sessions, others you have to pay. The goal is to find out if you like the instruction, the instructor, the other students, the pace, the philosophy, and whether it works well for your body type. It depends more on the stylist than it does the style.

I'm not in the mood to get into this little contest of wills, so i'll just focus on the topic at hand. I experienced a whole flue of various competition styles, ranging from no-contact to no-holds. Point contact, as practiced by most systems, helps to build technique, but there is a significant difference as to 'what' you have to deal with in full-contact. The transition from point to full is 'smooth' for some, but 'hard' for most others. As to whether you need to change the way you spar, of course. The rules are different and you need to adjust to that above anything else. The rest will come in time, although i do recommend mid-level sparring with a skilled full contact competitor before walking into the ring. Let him/her find your weaknesses, before they get exploited.

There are many reasons why you may not have been able to approach the situation full-on: 1. Concern for your girlfriend's safety very likely interfered with your willingness to go full-on and just let things happen as they may. As such, you were more inclined for 'flight' than you were for 'fight.' 2. There were 7 of them! Even if there was only 1 person, the safety of your loved ones could promote a defensive posture, rather than an offensive one. I've seen, moreso, the opposite (offensive) in guys who really don't care about the welfare of their loved ones and are instead more concerned with the image of being a tough guy. 3. Presentation plays into it. You may have had an underlying fear of 'failing' in front of your girlfriend... and thus, rather than try to fight and lose, you found it easier not to fight. 4. Surprise... you weren't ready, they were. A group is able to psyche' themselves up much faster than a single individual and i'm of the impression you didn't pick that fight. 5. Bully syndrome. The reason they are called bullies, is because they charge in like a bull... throwing you off and generally making sure you stay on the defensive/submissive. Some people study this for decades and grow to be great wife beaters. Don't be put off your game because of a bully... just learn to create smaller windows of opportunity and learn to recognize a bully quicker, so you can pull yourself out of the defensive/submissive position quicker. 6. You may not have had a 'good' reason to fight, therefore you didn't have 'right' in mind. 7. Your goal in any confrontation is to come out alive. You won! Plenty other things, i'm sure, play into this... so stop torturing yourself and instead take this incident as an opportunity to grow... to learn. Spend some good training time to discuss the various parts or to ruminate on it. Run through your mind all the various scenarios, and you'll find out that you probably handled it pretty dang good... considering the alternatives. Last thing is to respect your 'higher' consciousness.

For quite some time i've considered myself reasonably educated on pressure points. I also don't consider them very useful, and there are three main reasons for this: 1. Mind game My earlier example, of being able to tickle your little sister or brother from a distance (not touching them... just waving you fingers around and they fall to the ground laughing their head off) is done because you previously subjected them to a few (or many) 'actual' tickle assaults. This is the basis for why 'some' pressure point systems are based on a misconception. Many instructors of pressure point systems are, in fact, slowly training the minds of their students to be susceptible to these techniques. Such things are witnessed with faith healers, voodooists, cultists, and hypnotists, where a person is given a suggestion, the suggestion is reinforced via stimuli (pain, fear, embarrassment, etc) and that suggestion becomes a personal reality. This is one of the main reasons these instructors are unable to affect their techniques outside of their 'domain of control' (aka: dojo and subordinate students). They simply don't have the position of authority to affect these things, and have not had the time to 'prep' these strangers into being susceptible. 2. Not instinctual The underlying flaw to 'real' pressure point techniques are it is almost impossible to bring such studies out of the 'thinking' process and into the 'doing' process. What i mean by this is, it is exceedingly unlikely that you can train your mind or your body to instinctively apply pressure points during a 'live' incident. Things happen too fast and pressure points become an afterthought. In fact, that's the problem... they ARE a thought. This is because such studies are not instinctive. 3. Chemically influenced To rub this a little further, of the times i have implemented pressure point techniques, they don't work too well on opponents whose muscles are pumped up, who is adrenaline-filled, riding high on uppers, genuinely furious, riding low on downers, drunk as a wild turkey, hyperventilating, generally whacked out of their mind, etc... When you consider that the vast majority of 'life-threatening' confrontations fall into one of the above categories, i would say it's cute but mostly ineffective... when it counts. Best thing to do is focus instead on studying vital areas and making 'that' second nature. And for a shortcut on vital areas, whatever is ticklish, is also exploitable. Vital areas are masses that exist all about the body. It is far more instinctive to learn and generally they are far easier to attack.

Yeah, i would say you got yourself into trouble there Markusan. While many systems can provide a reasonable degree of combat ability after a lengthy study (2-4 years), in my opinion what provides the most in the shortest amount of time is freestyle wrestling (grappling), followed shortly thereafter by muay thai (striking). That is not to say either is better than other systems, only that these provide the basic essentials far earlier in the training program, on average. However, and i keep saying this but keep getting blown off, what makes the biggest difference is who you learn from and how you study.

While i understand your point, i don't agree with your premise. In this particular case, as described by DLopez, it was not an issue of humility, but of a lack of respect and a general disregard for the safety/well-being of the instructor. Possessing humility is quite different from the detrimental effects of positively acknowledging disrespectful and fundamentally dangerous actions. In such a case, talking about the incident to your students by saying, "always have your guard up" is actually encouraging such inappropriate actions and even providing kudos to the student who committed them. That should not be the type of message your students receive. Instead, it should be an opportunity for providing humility to the student who acted in such a way.

ditto

That is one massive paragraph in the middle there. Huge paragraphs are so friggin' hard to read AND comprehend, most readers would steer clear, and yet i'm interested in what you have to say. Seriously, I'll read it later unless you're inclined to maybe break it up a little.

Returning to what TSG is talking about, semi-contact/no-contact vs full-contact ... Of your thoughts TSG, i can only offer my opinions... based on personal experience. Of my personal experiences, semi-contact / no-contact does not teach one to take a hit in vital areas, such as the nose, mouth, solar plexus, thigh, etc, and continue on, without missing a beat. It doesn't teach how to 'roll' with a strike, how to displace the energy from an impact, or how to recover quickly from a hard shot. It also doesn't provide the opportunity to expose one's underlying dependencies and weaknesses. When i used to instruct, i would occasionally spar with my students. I would do this to determine what their fallbacks were. This could only be determined when i 'pressured' them, through rough or full contact. Their tendency to drop an arm, or lean to one side, or any of the other consistent errors one would commit to when fear and pain are clouding your mind. Without full contact, i wouldn't be able to locate these flaws and help my students wean out of them. On the few occasions, in the distant past, where i sparred full contact with persons who had trained semi, i would always pressure them, locate their tendencies, and then exploit them. It was very easy and very disconcerting to them. In fact, one bluntly requested that i stop taking advantage of the tendency, as it was only causing it to become more prevalent. Essentially, because i was exploiting it, the flaw was becoming ingrained. In many ways, it's like how some of you can tickle your little brother or sister, just by suggestion or gesticulation. I totally agree with you TSG, that full contact creates many 'bad habits' and that these habits become ingrained. Habits that may be fine in the ring, but are suicide in the streets. But, i also know that semi/no contact creates its own habits. That of not committing when encountering a 'live' opponent, and of not exposing the various exploitable characteristics of your psyche. Characteristics that truly only become evident when "fight or flight" takes hold.

Hmm, i don't believe i ever used the word, "think." Defense and counters, as you stated. Visualization isn't about defense and counters, at least not in san soo. Visualization is about attack and finish. Yes, muscle memory is important, and i agree that full contact plays a part there in ensuring your reaction skills are not faulty, but when it comes to offense, to attack, it is more a fluid synergy of mind and body... here is where many people flounder (i see this alot with boxers). Ahh, but how do you attain victory if victory is but an abstraction? Let me pop a bubble. Visualization is not a thought process, but a mental snapshot or video. A series of pictures in your mind about what it takes to attain success. Yes, it does go hand-in-hand with muscle memory, in that you train your mind and body to act as one so that when you are in a confrontation and a picture presents itself, the mind automatically recognizes the opportunity and enters the body to complete a series of actions the muscles have previously been trained to commit. Muscles do not see, nor does the body, nor always the eyes for that matter. What sees is the mind, and it is the mind that exploits opportunities, offense, and it is the muscles that react, defense. I assume your use of the words, "no mind" are in reference to "not thinking." Of this, i would agree. I also agree that preconcieved ideas can lead one into a losing strategy, but only if that strategy is implemented without consideration for the body. I.e., if i think to communicate to my body to act, but my muscles state otherwise, there is conflict. This is why mind/body synergy is important. Grabbing discussion i had awhile back, Bruce Lee went through some changes. He initially followed wing chun stringently, then modified it and adopted techniques from other systems and created Jun Fan Do (named after himself, Jun Fan). During this time, he held to the belief that actions could dictate a conflict. Later in life, he created Jeet Kune Do (Way of the intercepting fist), which was based on the idea that one could rely wholey on muscle memory to 'intercept' any attack before it is committed. Jeet kune do was entirely reactionary, where the attack and defense were one and the same. Such a system was very effective in countering, but there were nonetheless some inherent weaknesses, one of which being no closure. Even later in life, Mr. Lee came upon a significant revelation. He described it as "no way, as way" and compared a true master as being "like water." Essentially, he went from techniques, to muscle memory, to adaption. Adaption is that of having both mind and body in perfect harmony, where all that you know becomes all that you do (although, not all that you are), and if someone were to attack you in a way you had never encountered, you would now know that one way... instantly, and adapt it to all that you do, thus countering and then closing. How does this apply to visualization as practiced in san soo? It is merely a tool. Visualization serves to 'present' a portion of tools which help to obtain perfect harmony. It is not the end-all, nor could it possibly stand alone. In fact, harmony of mind/body could be obtained without ever studying visualization techniques. However, as is the case with all tools, it gets the job done just a little quicker, just as long as you remember... they're just tools.

One of the things i've always loved and hated about san soo, is their pristine drills. Essentially, you practice the perfect assembly of techniques. The opponent strikes, or thinks of striking, and the san sooist performs a series of attacks, in succession, to totally overwhelm and immobilize/kill the opponent. I've had people argue that such a session is useless, as a real life confrontation never works out so perfectly. My argument is that san soo allows you to not only 'visualize' the perfect series of attacks (always different series of attacks and always against different threats), but you can 'practice' them. It is a similar practice as that of a diver, who visualizes the perfect dive, and then performs it. By practicing a perfect attack, the san soo practitioner is more likely to be able to perform a perfect attack. However, visualization is not enough. One needs to learn to get dirty, to not flinch when hit and not push a technique when already countered. That's where full-contact drills help. They give the practitioner the skills necessary to 'adapt' and 'overcome,' but without the 'perfect attack' in their mind, it will merely be a series of attacks and counter-attacks. A sparring match. A mix of both creates a person who can visualize perfect attacks, and then provide the opportunities for such to occur, by switching and switching and switching, until sooner or later, the perfect attack completes the conflict.

May i please offer a critical suggestion... I seriously recommend you do not 'fiddle' with meditation and/or self-hypnosis. There is a lot of lousy information available on the net and on print about these, and they can get you into trouble. I also do not recommend meditating or performing self-hypnosis anywhere near anyone else, as they could interfere with your process, and devastating results could ensue, including the possibility of injury to yourself or others. I have personal experiences on this, so i'm not merely pulling your leg. My recommendation is to learn meditation and/or self-hypnosis from an expert. Enter 'formal' studies to understand how this can help you, and also how it can hurt you. In no uncertain terms, you're messing with your mind... so don't tinker.

Ahh, an old post. Kay. Is that guy still visiting this site?

Three more bits of general advice: 1. Open up a business account at a reputable bank. Don't use your personal account to purchase items for your business. Try to start out right, and keep your business expenses/life separate from your personal expenses/life. And... again... incorporate as soon as you can. Incorporating is like a second layer of protection, over and above insurance. 2. You're in the business of martial arts instruction. Don't get sidetracked into thinking you need to handle every part of your business. You don't. You don't need to handle the human resources end, the taxes, the office maintenance, the janitorial services, etc. You don't need to, but you may 'want' to. Make that very critical differentiation, or you'll find the process of running a small business way too overwhelming. 3. Network - Manage and maintain what you want to, delegate other responsibilities to your commissioned associates or students, and outsource the rest. It's not that expensive to do and you may get lucky with some of your students actually working in fields that you need assist from. Don't hesitate to give discounts or full-trade for services (i.e., discounted or free classes for office maintenance, graphic work, marketing assist, tax services, etc etc). Being rich isn't required to be a successful small business owner. Being smart is.