Scand

I don't have that much faith on internet sites telling you "how to do it". I tend to prefer learning from an actual teacher telling you how to do it... and what went wrong. Anyway, before performing a flip there are some things to remember: balance, safety and confidence. You should get your body in a rotating movement in the air, not on the ground. I usually perform flips with my legs "retracted" but our PE teacher used to keep his legs straight when jumping. Some - if not the most - start the move with their hands over their heads for rotation. One more thing you should remember is to jump with your both legs. If you don't, you will most probably end up in a movement something else than the straight flip. I've always done my flips on a trampoline, so I recommend asking a certified PE teacher or a guy with more information on this matter. If you're in school, check your guides for acrobatics lessons.

If I have to train outside the usual place, I equip my trainers and head outside. When it's warmer (something like 16/20+ celsius degrees) I might as well let the trainers have a nap and just jump out there without socks or shoes. I have pretty much space around here. There's this river some 30-40 metres counting from our backyars and erm, pretty much of plain grass on the way. If I'm feeling extreme, however, I can jump onto my bicycle (or just go jogging) as there is a pretty human-free forest aprox. 2-3 kilometres away from my home. And that forest is pretty large, meaning that you are completely free to train whatever stuff you'd like to with absolutely no one seeing. For urban territories: check for empty parks earlier at mornings or later at evenings. There is a good chance that you'll find a few.

At first I "lived" in Korea for a little while. Now my home is in China, as I got interested in this Kung Fu stuff without any real reason. I have a friend who practised Kung Fu (or however you spell it, I'd normally type kungfu for that matter) and it looked quite effective and interesting. In the end I consider myself as a citizen of the world when it comes to martial arts. I'm now interested in CMA but I've never lost my interest in Korean martial arts. There's also one Finnish system that sounds quite solid and effective. Japanese/Okinawan/karate-ish martial arts aren't for me right now although I most certaintly don't disrespect them nor would I leave them off my personal "potential to-do" list. I'm young and I want to experience some things. It just might be a great search before I've found my home. But home is sweet home so I believe that it will be worth every penny I pay and every step I take. Home sweet home.

Beginning with the Martial Arts has been maybe one of the best things happened to me in my life. One not so glorious moment was when I walked into my purple belt test (hoijeonmoosool). I wasn't taught the technique needed, thanks to the assistant teacher who only did conditioning with us. My real teacher then called me and asked me to come over neverthless. One of the black belts taught me the form I was required in an hour, and I performed it to the grand master. There were a couple of small glinches but he let me pass. It wasn't certaintly flawless performance or my best shot at it but made me real proud, when I got my grasp on the purple belt despite all the difficulties during the past few months. I quit several months later. These days I consider that my second greatest achievement has been that after a few years of pause I finally got a grip of myself and dragged my butt onto the MA zone once more, beginning with a completely different and new system to me: Shaolin Kung Fu.

In my country (non-US) self-defence is described as simultaneous actions taken with the assault, thus an immediate counter would be "legal" but an evasion and a kick afterwards would be interpreted as revenge. Naturally pre-emptive strikes would be considered illegal. If I've understood the law right, you're basically allowed to fight back the assault, not the assaulteer. If there are no witnesses, the guy with least criminal records and MA experience would probably win. Law's hard, and under that fact I'd probably call in an ambulance if I knocked a guy out without any eye-witnesses hanging around and leave the place in quiet and fast. Sounds a bit harsh, unfair and responsibilityless but I believe that MY life shouldn't be messed up because some crack-head decided to attack me. Of course I wouldn't meaningly hurt him, but hey, accidents happen and we're all humans here. I don't exactly believe that the court would pay any attention to me saying: "Honestly I didn't mean to! Besides, he's the bad guy, he's the one with the criminal record and he's the one who tried to knife me!" Thanks to the law, I somehow believe that the more I train to defend myself (and possibly my closest-ones) the less I'm allowed to do so. Yes yes, I've the responsibility as the more experienced and I should have known that certain things are not good for human body, but I also know that certain, quite sharp objects aren't going to do me any good in my guts.

I wouldn't take my chances against a gun-man, but what would I do if I didn't have a choice? Probably some nasty stuff for the guy's thumbs, eyes, throat, knees, pretty much anything I can get my other hand into. I'd lock my another hand onto the gun and try to twist it so, that I wouldn't get a bullet through my head and with a great amount of luck, twist it so that the opponent's finger would break. This is all hypothethical tho. I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't risk it unless I was 110% sure that I'm not going to walk away from it. Same goes against just and about every weapon out there. "Do as I say" sounds way better than a "John Doe" patch stitched onto my toe at the morgue.

It's a style? Tell me more. I'm asking just out of pure curiousy.

I'm sorry if picking up old threads isn't a common tradition here. When I trained hoijeonmoosool, we had 11 belts (including 3 brown belts) and we started with the white belt. We paid for each test but I loved the club/school, so I didn't whine about it. We learnt things and actually did stuff which seemed to be hoijeonmoosool, not aerobics (although we did that too). The tests (up to the 6th gup or purple belt) weren't that challenging for most people, and I don't recall anyone failing their test. But again, I loved the club and I loved the art. Plus it was the only school in my area/city. These days I practise shaolin kung-fu, and so far I've enjoyed it very much. We have no white belts at the start and we have like 6-8 belts in overall. I was told that the tests are pretty challenging, so they keep those on the one-per-year basis, or at least not so often as we kept in hoijeonmoosool, being about 4 times a year. I like the idea of earning the white belt/sash, so I'm not complaining. Some perhaps would, but I've always kind of thought that the white belt shouldn't be handed over at the start. I've never exactly studied what the belt colours symbolise, so this just might be a major reason which has led me into my way of thinking.

I'm not your best source of information as far as jujutsu goes, but basically jujutsu is about striking and grappling. Some schools concentrate on grappling, some concentrate on striking. Some do both in equal measures. Basically I think that jujutsu uses more grappling than your most common arts like karate and kung-fu (being most stereotyphical here). One TKD practitioner's answer to my question about their self-defence tactics was basically this: "Well, it's sorta those jujutsu-like things we practice in self-defence seminars." I can't comment the learning curve as I've never practiced jujutsu. Also bear in mind that all of above is afterall only dictionary information read on web/books. I hope that some jujutsuka has something way better to tell you.

Nice to hear that. This case reminds me of my own injury during my martial training. I've never broke a rib (I've got my collar-bone broken once, but that was well before my MA hobby) but I've fell badly, head first. The impact hit my upper head and caused a light memory-loss. I've heard that there were lots of blood and a guy said that he could actually see my skull/bone in the wound. This caused me to quit hoijeonmoosool as I learnt to fear ukemis and throws and just about any possible impact onto my head. I couldn't do any as I automatically pulled my head into wrong positions to avoid additional injuries and pain. I also sincerely just couldn't get my body to perform this stuff. So no sparring and hitting for me sir! It took a couple of years to forget that what was happened and give MAs a new chance. Nowadays I practice shaolin kung-fu and I like it. This is just an example of what could happen if you let an injury control you.

Snake and monkey look like fun. Especially the latter. I haven't ever had a chance to chat with practitioners of these styles (or whatever they should be called) and as far as I know you could only practice monkey as a system/style/art in my country. Some clubs just might teach snake forms. Snake looks interesting - or sounds, I haven't seen any - mainly because the idea in it is totally different from my past martial arts experience. And quite naturally, snakes are cool. Monkey just looks hilarious, so why shouldn't it interest me? I saw this video once where a guy imitates an ape to the limit; scratching his hair and eating his finger nails. Then when a mr. assistant engages him, this ape-man just runs away four-legged, performs a sudden-turnaround, rushes the assistant and launches a barrage of hits and kicks only to reassume his original place some seconds later. The best of all is that the guy continues imitating a monkey and completely ignores his opponent (the assistant) and just continues the I-am-scratching-my-* operation. Very interesting style. A monkey isn't the image of a fierce fighter that I'm used to have afterall.

I'm sorry. I was being unclear with my pääd inklish (bad english). What I obviously tried to explain was exactly what you said. By reflex I didn't mean my martial training, but I merely used it as an example of such natural self-defence mechanisms. What I truly meant was that I believe that Taku experienced just that, a structural self-defence mechanism. It's like someone throws a punch at you. You raise your hands to defend your face.

I'd love to spar with a karateka, hanmoodo practitioner or hapkido practitioner, with locks and kicks to the head turned "on". Karateka, because I'd like to get familiar with their style. The only karate styles I can think of here would be wado-ryu, koryu uchinadi and shito-ryu. The hapkido style would be kwan nyom, and I'm generally interested into hapkido styles. Hanmoodo guys have some pretty nice kicks and the like and they're used to tournaments, so I might actually learn a trick or two. I myself practice shaolin kung-fu, but I wouldn't spar with anyone as a kung-fu practitioner just yet, as I'm new to the system in general. Currently I'd spar as a hoijeonmoosool practitioner because I could say that I know it, while I don't yet know kung-fu. Trying to be humble and honest here.

Also known as reflexes. You'll get familiar with those. If someone grabs or chokes me from behind there is a good chance that I'd break free "automatically". Or I'd try to anyway. This is a remain from my hoijeonmoosool days as we trained a good amount of techniques against such attacks. It happens sometimes and sometimes it doesn't. It seems that it pretty much depends on a time of the day (and quite naturally my current mood). Because my body acts without me "telling it" I suppose that it's fair enough to call these events simply reflexes of some sort.

We have a traditional chinese kung-fu uniform, made of silk with the club-logo and a "made in Korea" patch attached onto it. The silk used is tough and I've never heard or seen anyone breaking his/her uniform. We do some pretty hard drills, but there are no marks of b-class materials here. I also find this kung-fu uniform much more comfortable than my old hoijeonmoosool uniform, which is cotton and quite surely your traditional budo uniform (karate, taekwondo, hanmoodo anyone?). I know one Wing tsun practitioner who is very happy with their clothing: club-trousers and a t-shirt. As a side-comment; one of my friends has practiced kung-fu and has a white uniform nearly similar to mine. It's quite cool to be honest although white is chinese colour for funerals. But who cares about their culture anyway? "Their" being those bamboo-eating sickly yellowish apes. The system I currently train in is called Shaolin Kung-fu. I'm not been into this stuff/art long enough to tell you our focus. It might be more wushu-like, but from what I've seen it also could be more self-defence/combat related. There are pretty high kicks in, but then again we also practice some quite dirty tricks. In overall I'm quite new to the Chinese martial arts, so please don't hunt me down if I keep telling you utter and full bogus. The point in my answer was merely to comment the issue of "comfortable training uniform". I'm non-US and have always had my stuff and toys from our club.