ps1

I wish you good fortune. When I was young, my parents always told me, "If you want something bad enough, and are willing to work hard for it, you can accomplish it." I still believe that today.

It's cool. Once you can do it with your hands, start working on doing it without your hands. It requires more whip from the legs. Pretty fun though.

If you want to get into MMA, you need to study just that. A mixture of martial arts. Make sure the system of jiujitsu you study is brazilian, wrestlers often have success in MMA as well. For standing arts I would suggest Muay Thai. Wrestling or Judo will give you an excellent feel for learning throws/takedowns. You will not get by for very long by learning just one art in MMA. A very brief synopsis of systems I study are listed under my name.

You can only control what you do. If other's back off, that only demonstrates they are giving into their fears rather than confronting them. Try to make sure you spar the black belts as often as possible. Ask them not to go too easy on you. Get over it! Learning Karate is about learning new habits. Striking someone (within the given rules) during a sparring session is expected. When you bow to each other you are agreeing to this in advance. Plus, holding back on her will not help her when (God forbid) she actually has to use her skill in a real situation. By holding back you cheat yourself and her. Cheating can never have positive results.

I'd be interested to see how Valdesi's bunkai fits into pace he uses. It is a very different pace from the way I practice. As everyone else said, he's sharp and quick and pretty. Great for competition.

You need to train with good coaches and instructors. Work your way through the ametur fights in your area. Apply for professional status according to your state laws and what ever pro leagues are in your state. Then you need to have a great fight record and keep working your way up. It would need to become a job for you. Working out 2 or three times a day 6 days a week. The pay sucks until you can make it big. Even then, it's not great unless you are a title contender.

Good technique requires less energy to perform. It's not uncommon in an acadamy to see grappling matches last upward of an hour. Neither person is necessarily exhausted afterward. This doesn't mean they weren't trying, just that they performed their movements at the proper time and didn't try to fight against strength or weight. No offense to Karate or any other standing system, but it's impossible to understand how effective grappling systems are until doing it for a while under a qualified isntructor. I trained for 19 years before starting BJJ. I always thought I had good techniqe. I trained under a 7th dan in JJJ. But it just isn't the same.

Stabalizing types of strength help. Certainly two opponents with equal skill, the stronger/ faster/bigger person will likely win. Someone else pointed out that endurance is important, this is also true. All that said, a strong person will not defeat a person who has trained for a while if the strong person is untrained. We have huge guys come in all the time, most quit because they realize their strength isn't going to get them anywhere and they refuse to really relax and just do technique. Someone above made mention of using tons of strength to keep the half guard. Though this is off topic, that isn't going to do anything but stall the match. The proper half guard is played by not locking your legs and moving under the opponent, thus gaining leverage and sweeping your opponent. Additionally, using strength to push your leg free is also not advisable and not effective against skilled grapplers. Weight, used properly and placed such that it can control the hips or head, is an extreme advantage. This is why there are weight divisions in BJJ competition. As far as JJJ, it does tend to use more strength than BJJ. If you do some research, that is why Kano created Judo. But it also does not have the extensive ground skill set that BJJ has.

In what manner are you using the technique. The timing of it, I find, is best as the opponent advances with his front foot. Then you can sweep it with no difficulties.

In they dynamic world of fighting very few things are ever textbook. That's the only text you can depend on. Well done.

No. It's not so much because it was shotokan, but that it was Karate in general. It lays a great foundation on which to build. I've sparred with boxers who comment on how hard I can punch. In MAA classes they are amazed by my ability to utilize elbows, knees and kicks so effectively. The shotokan I studies, while not complete on its own, was instrumental in much of the skill I have attained. It's not the individual techniques, it's the broader concepts of timing, distance, biomechanics, zanshin, and more. You fight as you train. I decided after joining the military that I was no longer training for point sparring. It's that simple.

I think Shotokan is stagnant, and I think the leadership of the major orgs discourage creativity and the higher levels of personal development. I do not think that Shotokan as an instruction set for punching, kicking, etc is "ineffective." It is as effective as the individual doing it is able to make it for the purpose they have for themselves doing it. I feel I have studied a heavy-duty, intensive course on basic techniques and simple yet elegant kata as performance art with a heavy emphasis on point sparring. Where I have made adjustments are to my political entanglements. By ending my desire to obtain more dan ranks from people who would discourage me from expanding my horizons or getting creative, I basically pop the bubble and free myself to explore what I like. The dan ranks are what hold us captive. If you let go of your desire to get one, you can pretty much reach out, as Nakayama wrote in his Best Karate books, to other styles. Look in his Best Karate books on kata. He lists the "free kata" available to experts. He lists Suparinpei, Seipai, Seisan, and other Goju and Shito-Ryu kata that you might possibly be interested in. Nowhere in his writings did he ever limit anyone to a fixed curriculum. He never said that we should only study Shotokan kata. Rather, he said, "This is the new way to teach karate." His book Dynamic Karate was released in Japan as Karate-do Shinkyoutei (A New Way to Teach Karate). I'm just doing exactly what he recommended. I did the 26 Shotokan kata, and now I'm practicing Seipai, Seisan, Shito-Ryu Sochin, Kosokun-Sho, Itosu Bassai-Dai, Matsumura Bassai, and Seienchin, just like he suggested was possible. That's my expression of HA = breaking away. Yours was BJJ etc, and that's cool too. What would be nice is if the Shotokan orgs would understand that at the higher levels, students are not students - they are colleagues. But there is a lot of resistance to that idea both in Japan and here at home. No one wants the likes of me for a colleague. They prefer to think of themselves as masters and me as a permanent student who toes the line appropriately. There are organizations out there that support you exploring other systems and doing interesting things with your Karate. For anyone who might misunderstand, I am not endorsing taking three years of Karate and then finding another martial art, although I am OK with that and support such decisions - everyone should enjoy their very short time on Earth. What I am specifically referring to in this line of thought is someone with 20-30 years of training no longer obeying "the rules" of which kata come first, which kata to teach, and maybe experimenting with creating their own kata. If people can learn medicine well enough in 20 years to become full doctors, then people can learn Karate well enough to become full experts in that same amount of time. Karate is NOT as difficult a topic as medicine. It's good to see you back, posting on the forum. As with most of your posts, you have put it quite well. Great post.

Very well put. But the pressure point fanatics will still argue your points though. On a seperate point, defanging the snake is an extremely important point we study in knife fighting. As you would expect, most of it is based on Phillipino Arnis.

Just like it's important to study atemi (striking), nage waza (throwing/takedows, and ne waza(ground); it's important to study both with and without a gi. It only makes for a more complete and prepared martial artist.

I prefer to try to slip it. Not unlike you would do with a jab.

No. BJJ does not teach or contain any kata. Some JJJ systems have kata, but not in the same sence you would see in a karate class. They require two people.

As long as it's natural, it's not a problem. Now if you were wiping vasoline on yourself, that would be illegal. Besides, if you're starting with Judo, you'll be wearing a gi anyway. Don't worry about it...just have fun.

Usually, to win a lawsuit, the attacker would have to prove that you used excessive force. That is, he tried to punch you and you stabbed him or broke his neck(as an example). It would also need to be proven that you did so malicously. If someone is trying to stab you and you manage to choke him out or break a limb, you will be safe in most every court room. Heck, most chokes aren't fatal and just give the guy a headache when he wakes up. Grappeling is very good in a self defense situation. It's really all about use of force.

Wing chun was the style of gung fu he studied with Yip Man. After that he began dabbeling in many combat systems (Boxing, wrestling, jujitsu and probably others) before creating Jeet Kun Do.

Master Raiden makes good points. It's important to seperate legal issues (which you face on the street) from the private issues (which is what a school's rules are). The two things are perfectly seperate. As Raiden also said, defending yourself from personal harm using an appropriate amount of force is allowed in nearly every state. Schools, however, are charged with a very important and unmatched duty. That is, they are to keep an environment that is safe and appropriate for learning. If only the person who swung first got in trouble, there would be more fights. Here's the usual scenario: Person A says something dirogatory to person B. Person B has a few choices: 1) He can retort with a comment of his own that may cause person A to start a fight. OR 2) He can ignore it and pocket his pride. Let's assume the rules are as you want them to be. Then Person B has no reason to fear encouraging the situation because he won't get in trouble if Person A hits him. As the rules are now, Person B may be more likely to just walk away because he gets in trouble too if a fight occurs. Fights in school are always distracting. By the end of the day everyone knows what happened and usually has picked a side as to who was right and who was wrong. That is not condusive to a good learning environment. I remember that when I was in school I didn't like the rule either. But it really is for the best and keeps violence in school rates lower.

nope...same word

You're talking about the football team. Are you still in school?

Shui Tora, I agree. In the US, anyway, you don't have to be CPR or first aid certified to teach martial arts. I have adopted the practice of making both a requirement for black belt. I agree that doing pushups on the knuckles does not have any real benifits over regular push ups. It is just annoying. But I haven't read any research as far as its serious health risks. I would certianly hypothesize that it isn't good or necessary for children. Do you have any good sources on the subject? Thanks Bill

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2240416169660848843&q=seienchin&hl=en http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=seienchin These should help. I don't know what the differences are for the goju version though.

Definitely!! It's the same edge that anyone who practices their maistay techniques at full go will have. Kyokushikai, boxing ect...