JusticeZero

Not saying that there is no reason to move in. Saying that there is no reason to train specifically to pounce on someone who is not in combat with you. If you are in a sparring match and someone is staying out of range, they are NOT SPARRING. They are not fighting either. If you move toward them and they move away such that you would need a 'closing the distance' move to get in range, they are not fighting, and they are at a range where they are not terribly dangerous. If you then 'close the distance' and hit them, you are the attacker.

That was me. If they aren't in range, they're pretty much harmless. To close the distance, they have to move before they can attack. This requires them to accelerate. That in turn is limited by their stance; they have to apply acceleration force forward no faster than they can fall; there's a nifty engineering formula for this that I don't remember, but the long and short of it is that if they're in an upright stance, they're only going to be able to pull a fraction of a G of acceleration, and in a deep stance they'll have to worry about what they're doing with their legs.. of course, a deep stance is also a clear sign that something is up. They will have to shift and fall and all sorts of other things involved in ambulating, and these are all very telegraphic. So there's a limit to how much distance is going to be closed, and it should be apparent what way it can or will be closed. Nobody is going to just teleport into combat range. Physics don't work that way. When you are moving, there is now this window where you intend to attack. Just because you moved does not mean you get to freely attack, this isn't some Final Fantasy attack animation. The guy you are rushing can attack you while you are moving. This puts you in a bad position, because you are giving them a huge amount of momentum to work with; all they have to do is have a fairly solid base when they attack and you are going to be taking serious damage because of how hard you are throwing yourself at them. Now comes the matter of the guy who won't come in who you are training to chase down. It's like a little poodle on a chain, they pull on it and growl and bark, but with you standing away from them, they're not going to do anything. And they know it. "If it wasn't for this chain, why.. i'd be up in your face like froom!" It's a bit like people sitting in an armchair gulping down brews bragging about how if it wasn't for something or other contrived reason, they would totally be pumping iron and on a diet training for the next Xtreme Testosterone Games. It's all the bravado of being in a fight without having to actually, you know, trade blows. What do you call someone who is not in range to attack, and who isn't moving forward to get into range? You call them "someone who isn't attacking". And what does the law say about rushing in and taking a swing at someone who is not attacking? Something about assault, I believe, and if the other person retaliates, they can most likely claim self defense. So rushing in from out of range isn't a particularly great tactical movement in the first place, and you're doing it on someone who isn't any threat toward you to begin with. Why train that?

In a fight, the mind is going to have a lot more important things to be doing than standing over every technique to make sure it's not done the way it has been practiced. I'd rather have my mind able to go 'Execute attacks X and Y while I try to figure out a way to get out of this corner and get backup' than have to consciously force myself to concentrate on doing the movements in a way that my muscle memory considers wrong because it's not how I practiced.

Sparring is a drill you use to increase your self defense skill. As I have said before, training a skill which is only useful to "win" a training drill is like being on a football team and spending lots of practice time training a tackling technique that only works on a piece of training equipment, not an opposing player. What are you trying to prove with it? If you have to deal with someone who hangs completely out of range whose game plan is to run up to you and hit you, you should definitely drop your guard, since they're totally predictable anyways and you know exactly what they're going to do. Don't be surprised if you put the other guy in the hospital from his own momentum, though, since they're doing a stupid newbie mistake that only other peoples' mercy is permitting to work.

There is always a line between the two people. 'getting off the line' is just arranging things so that the other guy is not moving and oriented along it. And sure there's right or wrong on this. If you face off against someone with a knife, and think you are going to stand still and tank like a battleship, you are wrong, and your wrongness will be shown when your body is recovered later.

Doubt it'll be the next thing anytime soon.. but part of that is understanding why they make Stink foods in the first place. Now, with the people in my nation, it's not small birds, it's things like beaver tail or fish, but they still bury it for a few months. If you live in inland Alaska and you keep with a very locavorous diet, it would start to be appealing; there's some nutrients that are released from the bones that decomposition frees up that are in short supply in the area otherwise. I suppose that you might be able to get them from things like hot dogs (contains a lot of bone meal) or whatnot, but they didn't have the equipment to shave bones like that. Drives the FDA up the wall; they keep trying to get people to substitute sugar and ferment it instead, which would be a completely different process and end up different. People try to substitute in plastic bags for the traditional skin bags, and when you seal it like that it makes the salmonella risk - which was high with that preparation method to begin with - skyrocket. Kids go to school in the big city and get homesick, they get some fish from the store and put it in a glass jar and put it in the sun, decompose it much faster, the salmonella risk goes off the chart. Personally, if I feel homesick, I just order some pilot bread. *shrugs* We were south of the mountains, never really needed the nutritional kick that I know of.

I disagree. The "range" for all attacks in the group "kicks" and for all attacks in the group "hand attacks" (a superset of "punches") has so much overlap that it is only the outliers on either end that make the comparison appear remotely meaningful. Furthermore, I am not a believer in "closing the distance", and feel it has little if any role in combat. It should NOT be taught, nor drilled. If you have to "close the distance" with someone who is not in striking range, they were neither fighting you not a real threat to you to begin with. You are knowingly doing something that puts you at a disadvantage and makes you vulnerable in order to chase them down and initiate combat with them anyways. Let me repeat that for emphasis. You are drilling techniques to start fights with people who are not attacking or physically threatening you. You are purely the aggressor, and you are not doing anything remotely related to "defending yourself". If someone is outside of your range in sparring, just drop your guard and wait for them to close. They are not sparring when out of range so much as wasting time posturing and philosophizing. Go ahead and wander to find a better position for when the match starts, but there's no point in trying to attack from out of range.

I don't recall ever subscribing to the whole 'kicking range, punching range..' idea. One of the things we do to point out range in the classes i've been in is to have people casually shake hands, then demonstrate that that range is more or less the correct range for a variety of attacks. You really shouldn't be obsessing over 'ranges' anyways. You should be looking for holes into which attacks can fit, If the range is wrong, the attack wouldn't fit the hole anyways. I would, however, advise that when teaching this concept that you also point out that there is another range - that is, the range when you are just a bit outside of range for anything and really can't effectively attack. If you're Out Of Range, you can do all sorts of things with little if any risk, and so can you're opponent - why not make it count for something? Someone charging in to attack is putting themself in a bad, telegraphic position. You have to teach people not to do that, how to recognize if someone will try to do that to them, and how to move to optimize their position in the out of range phase.

To my knowledge, the 'real' one is similar to the CLF/stage one, just with the function masterkeys intact. And masterkeys can be rediscovered with work and experimentation.

Well for one thing, Taiji, taught correctly, can be very martial. Taiji, taught incorrectly, is neither martial nor nearly as helpful as it could be. One person on another board I read commented that he started doing Mantis for fighting and Taiji for health, but now does Taiji for fighting and Mantis for health. Second, I tend to prefer the idea of going for one core art, then STICKING TO that core art, and supplementing it as needed. There is an unlearning process required to switch schools. I wouldn't be too dazzled or intimidated by the heavy esoteric concept level in chinese arts. At the end of the day, Confucian legalistic examination and study and European 'let's take it for a spin and see' will... more or less accomplish the same thing. That said... In all honesty, with what you explained, I would think that, if the instruction is okay, you will achieve these best by continuing with the Shotokan and hammering away at it in spite of your abilities or current lack thereof. Remember, anything that is worth doing, is worth doing badly! The things you want are not achieved through doing easy things, but rather by doing hard things.

You can start at 82 and be successful. Just start.

*shrugs* It's not unreasonable to think that people trying to study "psychic/mystical powers" might find enough about combat psychology, awareness, and the like to have useful application without having found anything magical. It wouldn't be the first time, they did that in Japan, China, Europe, etc.

I build models for these things for the purpose of framing situations as something other than a duel. As I have noted elsewhere, it's a lot more clearcut when you aren't thinking "Am I going to kill him?" but instead go "I am working toward an objective, that being escape! If I have to go through them to escape, that is escape, if something happens while I am escaping, I am ESCAPING. If my escape caused them to fall onto the curb and crack their skull open, this is a completely unintended and unplanned side effect of my ESCAPE TO SAFETY."

Doing the katas and kicks as instructional or reference material? Or just to be seen online?

Don't overwork yourself. Yes, practice, but do so -slowly-; spend your time working on form and technique, not strength or cardio. You want your energy available to fight disease. Sleep at least 8 hours every night. Drink a gallon of water every day. Sleep no less than 8 hours every night. Do so until you are recovered. The sleep is very important.

As an aside, I have been told by one training friend that Boxing combines very well with standard Judo training; the clinch in boxing is, at least as he learned them, identical to the clinch that Judo players train to start from. This would give you some extra options once you get to a clinch and a wider variety of force levels, with virtually zero style confusion.

I have a couple of very specific *parts* of my hand that I have some concern about hardening. First, the outer side of the thumb; when slapping, that seems to always get rung quite painfully. I don't know if it is a form issue or a conditioning issue there. Second would be the supporting structure of the hand - that's not an impact conditioning issue though, it's muscular conditioning.

Well then when your fists are at the level of his groin because you are smaller, that too is not your fault. :? If he can't control where his feet are going, he has no control, period. He needs to be told that, firmly.

Yeah, I have to deal with kids like that professionally all the time. There's a lot of horror stories that I have only heard the slightest hints of when I talk to other teachers. A LOT. Don't expect parents to have done a good job. There are people who are broken.. a LOT of them... and there are people who don't get taught things right.. a LOT of them. I work as a substitute teacher in public schools. There's often one or two "problem" kids in a normal class of say, 25 people. Call it 2-3% of the kids I interact with. When I mention them to other teachers, I hear them tell me not to worry because they all have to deal with him and they've made every attempt to deal with it except that _____, where ___ is generally horrific, absurd, or ridiculous. (The most recent one was a 6th grader who I mentioned to their regular teacher, only to be told to not worry about it because they had moved out of the house with the parents' permission, didn't come to class with the parents' permission, etc. and were pretty much only there because they went out of habit, sometimes.) Yes, anyone would feel bad, but if someone is refusing to do directions that has immediate painful feedback to that point, chalk it up as "There's something messed up in that kid's head". Honestly, you kicking the kid in the face may have been one of the high points of their day in comparison.

Okay. Focus on training the things you can do safely. If the class is doing 50 punches and 50 kicks, sensei permitting, do 100 punches.

Probably something like "Sensei, if it's alright with you, once my ankle has healed, I would like to compete for the school. Do you think i'm ready, and if I am, would you help me find a competition and prepare?"

I would not count on it helping ENOUGH.

Please don't do that thing where you keep your desire to do something secret, then get frustrated and angry and treacherous because no-one knows about or has done anything to help you reach the desire you have kept secret from them. If you want something, ask.

The worry is not that you will do something and say "Oh, this is hard, I should stop". The worry is that you will go "I can do that" and do something, and there will be a noise as your ankle fails, and you will collapse on the mat, and you will say "I guess I was wrong", and that you will be out of karate for weeks and weeks MORE because of it.

Okay, so was I. That doesn't change the fact that it took me months before I was ready to be presented to the world as one of their students. It wasn't a skill thing, it was a branding and comportment thing. Go ahead and ask your sensei about competing. If Sensei says "yes", they likely will be able to help set you up. But if Sensei says "no", respect that decision. If you don't, the only thing you will be "proving" to Sensei is that you are a untrustworthy loose cannon.