Mart

There is an optimum length for the muscle to contract for power i did this in biomechanics in biology when i was at Uni but im damned if i can remember the explaination. Sorry i will see if i can dig out my old course book. I cant give you an answer at the moment.

Icant do anything near the splits i do in tital maybe 10 mins of stretching a week, i can kick head height cos of technique. I should stretch more though and you could do some out of class, stretching alot reduces power so be careful but a little flexibility can increase as its easier to do the technique correctly. Hope this helps

well it doesnt as long as he doesnt lie about it, i thought he was coming on here to try and take us on the majical mystery tour, which is really anoying.

im too scared to. but i would if i could just hide behind the keyboard.

Im not sure he is. I picked him up on it cos i thought it didnt seem like he was due to an answer he gave about thailand, I talked to him on msn messenger though andd i can confirm he is thai. I really had my doubts though.

Ok i seen his pic in his Karate Gi he is thai for certain.

disgusting.

Get a stick about 14 inches long, Drill a hole in it. Put a long peice of thin rope through it and tie some weight to the end. role it up and down using your hands with your arms out straith. This makes yuor forearms strong and helps them withstand blows. Its not just a case of getting used to it.

Humm, arent you meant to be a 2nd Dan to teach. I might be wrong. I guess they are kids and im assuming they are all begginers, maybe this is ok then. Get the kid to do pressups. Or pull him up in front of the class to do something you see him get wrong and show that as an example of how NOT to do it.

In total 13 years now. Have done San shou, JKD, Escrima(separate of JKD), MT.

[Hi, everyone in Thailand when they reach the age of 15 they will get an ID card not sure how but ask my mum. So while am in Thailand I will visit lumpini stadium then go to north east thailand where I was born and strat muay thai to lern few moves like stay fit, don't worry I will practice my kata kumite in time for my belt. WHat area you staying in Bangkok? region 11 means nothing. For someone from thailand you seem to know very little about it. Your english suggests you are foreign and havent been in an english speaking coutry for very long. You sure your from thailand?

lol, i wondered where you got all those cuts and bruises.

That was for me the best post i have read on the entire forum because i can completey connect and identify with it. Full Contact teaches you so much, if you want to learn to really fight and defend yourself you wont stand a chance against someone that does full contact. There are so many things to learn from it i would say you could almost call it an art i itself.

Regarding the punching in boxing not working without the gloves, this is only true if your hands and wrists arent conditioned correctly. If you want proof of this go look up some recent bare knuckle fight videos and see some hard punches going in with no broken hands.

Whats the deal with Mas Oyama owning the Mejiro gym chain yet the one in Holland is MT? Dont get that. Got a training video from them and they use Japanese counting and say Ous. Yet its otherwise normal MT gym and doesnt claim to be KK at all. I guess there isnt really a problem with this but i dont get it. Its the gym Peter Earts fights out of and the K1 fighter Remy Bojesky who was recently beaten by a KK fighter. The history on the Mejiro gym website conflicts with that of the KK websites.

Then its just prectice, no special trick just do it as your Kru tells you and practice at home, in no time you wont be thinking about how to do hooks.

What happens when you tread in a doggy doo doo Dijita?

With all the will in the world if your system doesnt teach this and train like this then you havent got the opportunity to be that good when it comes to the real thing.

Are you trying to say MT isnt a tradintional MA cos if so think again. Goes back further than most systems and has a whole lot more ceremony etc as well.

Yeah the movement can feel unnatural at first. You should be able to do them just fine in a couple of weeks. good luck, stick with it, i can give you hand if you got technical questions.

Ok i will do pros and cons but if you dont mind i would rather not compare to any other system. Muay Thai Cons 1) no ground fighting biggest problem 2) no weapons in most classes, Big problem 3) You need to be quite fit to be effective 4) Not enough defence against takedowns Pros 1) Sparring is very close to a real fight 2) training is very intesive and makes you tough 3) Uses a variety of training methods 4) Is more detailed than other systems(that i have studied) 5) Is very powerful and fast. I would have listed things like gauges but i really think that you only fight what you spar, i have seen many that have done a system for ages but didnt spar much fight as if they never did MA when it came down to it. Things like gouges are worth knowing and we get taught them, most MT clubs dont, i dont see this as a bad thing because i dont think many people would think of it during a fight. Regarding the weapons, Fairtex gym in bangkok is introducing weapons in their camp so they will be doing Krabi Krabong as well. Maybe this will catch on. I hope so, always wanted a Dahb.

youre both quite right, i have never considered myself to be badass, as he puts it either, but nevertheless did think what i was learning was going to make me a good fighter while i neglected the other aspects that are involved too. I will and try and find the authors name

what follows arent my words but that of someone on a nother site, they closely resemble my expereince, i wonder if anyojne else can relate to it. ----------------- Here I was working out five or six days a week doing conditioning, stretching, basics, kata, semi-contact sparring, weapons and learning Japanese culture and terminology. My strikes in the air seemed powerful. I could yell with force and loudness. I could hit and kick the heavy bag with force. I could break boards with my hands, feet, elbows, and head. I could beat up my classmates in sparring and even bring home trophies once in awhile. I was learning some Judo, Jiu Jitsu...rolling and jumping. My body was getting stronger. My hands, shins, and feet were tough...I knew how to use the nunchuku, sai, and bo. I had to know hundreds of one step sparring and self defense techniques to pass my tests. My form was perfect. I knew things the average person didn't know. I knew how to take out somebody's eyes, break joints, crack ribs, smash windpipes, lock joints, and kill. I knew how to control myself. I knew how to stop punches when I wanted to but I also knew when to let loose and break wood or knock someone out. I never knocked anyone out...I was taught to be careful for my opponent. I was heir to deadly secrets that were only to be used with precaution. Boxers did not scare me. That was just a sport. They wore gloves. I'd gouge out their eyes. A wrestler could not come near me, I would snap his knee or gouge his eyes---he would never be able to take me down before I'd strike him. Judo, it was okay but even that was just a sport. Kung fu had a serious mystique but no around here knew that art. If weapons were involved, I would surrender. My friends and family fell for the mystique as well. Watch out, he knows Karate...Hahhh!! Most people didn't bother me becuase of that. Some would talk...but very few would step up. I even got in fights...I won most by flailing away (forgot my form) but that reverse punch to the jaw saved me many times. Too bad it may have ruined my hand. A lot of fights ended up with us rolling on the ground swinging wildly....but it wasn't Karate that failed me. I just did not strike early enough...there was still no need to learn to wrestle. Everything I was doing had me convinced that I was on my way to being invincible. If I just trained hard, kept believing in myself and my Karate, I would be fine. Look at my instructors...look at their instructors from Japan. They were all tough. They knew techniques and forms and could break wood and brick. Tradition. History. Like them...I was forging myself into the ultimate weapon. Now given all this....why would I have wanted to change anything? Eventually I left that Karate world (my family moved numerous times) and later entered the world of Sport Karate or actually a modernized form of Tae Kwon Do. My previous training paid off well at first and now that we were doing more upright stances and less traditional forms...I felt at times some sense of betrayal to the old ways and a sense of freedom in some other ways. I was still a fighter though, a 'natural' my instructor called me. In free (point) sparring, I was almost unstoppable. Tournaments, trophies, hours and hundreds of hours of sparring, aceing belt exams, more board breaking and self defense demonstrations, a certified bad *. My body fat was low, my muscles were ripped, my endurance high, flexibility fantastic,.... I was peaking and combined with my previous knowledge and ability from the old world...I was deadly. There were warning signs all around me though. My close friend got into it at a frat party and threw a front leg round kick at a guy...the kick bounced off his head and he came charging in. My friend got stomped by three people....I got dragged away and thrown out by two. The problem...he didn't kick hard enough of course. Or his knee didn't go through the target..? When I would get into fights..my hands would shake uncontrollably and I would not be able to speak. How come I could dance in the point fighting ring and play... yet on the street...I would lose it, why? Hints, glimpses...of wrestlers taunting me..."you've never fought a wrestler have you"...Judo guys telling us that we need to add throws and trips to our repertoire..."can you shoot a gun"...."ever had a knife pulled on you"..."stories of karate guys getting eaten alive by lowly 'street fighters'...competitors that never did forms but dominated the fighting divisions...and Full Contact Fighters. (But that was just a sport too, right? One of my instructors had had enough. He was a full contact kickboxer who loathed point sparring. I didn't particularly like him that much so he said he wanted to fight me and I could hit as hard as I wanted...He set up a time and we went at it with foam gear and boxing training gloves. We squared off, I in a point sparring side stance, he in a boxing stance...I leaped in with my patented low/high double round kick and popped him right in the head....kiai, Point Blank! As I was celebrating in my head, my instructor proceeded to take my head off with a flurry of jabs, straights, hooks, and more straights. I kept throwing my reverse punch, I think it hit but all I remember after that is standing there with my instructor holding me up...I guess after the lights I saw I went out on my feet... My eyes were stinging red that night...head battered...lip had been busted. My instructor had offered to stop but I wanted to keep going get one more shot in. That one kill that would stop him...it never worked. I felt humiliated. I felt that if I could have eye gouged him or if we weren't wearing gloves I would have done better. I felt like a loser...a fool. Here I was a champion tournament fighter, a black belt, a karate brown and I had just gotten my * beat like child. I had been tired in the ring. I couldn't keep punching...I couldn't lift my legs to kick. I could barely get up each time after getting knocked down again and again. I started to realize that maybe I didn't know how to fight. He didn't do forms. I knew forms, sparring, could break boards, how did I fail? The ring fight certainly felt more like the real fights I had gotten into...I guess I had been lucky all this time. Perhaps he was right...perhaps nothing I had done before in my training had helped at all. Perhaps some of it had... Over time, through fights and hundreds of hours of sparring, I learned that I really did not know how to hit. I did not know what getting hit meant. I had no timing. My point sparring techniques were useless. winning trophies...Breaking boards did not matter. All that punching and kicking in the air didn't matter. All that Japanese and Korean terminology didn't matter. Belts did not matter. Bowing and good kata did not matter. It seemed as if it had nothing to do with real fighting. Getting my head knocked in over and over was the beginning of my transformation. The reality of fighting was revealed to me in the kickboxing ring. Fighting is brutal. It is not choreographed. It hurts. Its unpredictable. "There is nothing in the forms or in the point fighting that will convey that reality to you. Only fighting realistically will." I am thankful I made it through all those years of drinking and clubbing and even scrapping without getting seriously hurt. I'm glad I learned my lesson in the ring and not on the skr33t. I still feel like a beginner but I believe I truly know how to fight now. I even believe that every thing I did learn and train helped get me to where I am now. I think there were always pieces of the truth out there...the fun is putting the puzzle together and learning in the process. And to think at one time...I was invincible. Or so I thought... Not so dramatic actually, but I can still only offer to everyone, whether sport or street is that you should try realistic sparring at some time in your journey. It will open your eyes. It will help you grow. It might save your life. And you will be a much better fighter.

I had heard about the fights in thailand and heard that the thais one every fight in under a minute by KO. The thais also said they beat other Karate masters and Wing Chun team from HK. Then did it all again in the 80's i beleive when they all arranged to come back and do itagain. KK says otherwise so i dont know whos right or wrong. Posted this in the wrong section sorryyyyyyy!

Have fun, Lumpini is amazing to watch stadium isnt up to puch, its made of wood but since they put the fans in the mosquitos arent so bad. Where you staying in bangkok? Dekker was the business agree on that. Rambo was fun to watch i dont know.