JusticeZero

Any school that does XMA, Capoeira Regional (Angola isn't particularly acrobatic, even though the positions may seem rather exotic), Wushu, or just go to a gymnastics class. What are you looking for acrobatics specifically for?

You do? I disagree... I don't have to have anyone give me their wrist(s). Actually the point of it was "Disrupt them a little bit, actively give your wrist to them to grab on to, then do one of your wrist grab escapes to attack them with".

Rode my unicycle out to a shopping mall on the other side of town, 10.8 miles round trip. Don't feel like doing anything else today. =)

The way i've heard it is "You learn all these ways to destroy someone if they grab your wrist.. who would grab your wrist? You have to give the wrist TO them first!"

While "MMA" on the whole is not a style, MMA as it is taught is certainly very far along the road to becoming a single style, and many would argue that it has long since passed the event horizon of such. If you enter an MMA competition, you can theoretically train in whatever. In a Boxing tournament, you can theoretically train in Kung Fu and use entirely Kung Fu fist techniques. If you go to learn how to fight in an MMA bout, you will hear lip service paid to open-ness and matches being an open forum, then you will be taught a very specific collection of techniques and stances with a specific methodology and direction and very specific theories about how combat works. That, to me, screams 'a style'.

We have a guest for a week or two; I brought them to class. People were enlightened by seeing how much better they were than someone who was trying to do stuff for the first time. Showed an application of "defense against being grabbed with both hands on the collar". I did note that it was very doubtful that anyone ever attacked people like that; it was shown to demonstrate an application of crossing the arms in front while dropping, as is done in a basic movement. Had people do various drills while keeping their eyes locked on their partners; this isn't the preferred eye positioning, but it keeps the line of sight from wandering. Then they did a lot of au, kicks, stepping and the like, synchronized together. Lots of incidents of people injuring their toes on the *^%@# puzzle mats on the floor of the studio; if I decide to go to a different location, the main reason will probably be those !!!! puzzle mats! Had the students who've been around a bit teaching the two people who had NOT been in the class (my guest, and the wife of the other student) basics. Not because I couldn't or didn't want to, but because that makes them express and break down the skills they have. As usual, ended the class by asking everyone to give three things they had learned.

Gods only knows, but most likely, all or almost all of the component arts were variant lineages of classical jujutsu.

Most of the "chi" exercises I see done that have real measurable effects, "chi" is actually used as a visualization and directing/organizing principle. The concept of "chi" is in these exercizes used to produce natural physiological and structural dynamics - not "mystical energy" but muscle, bone, and leverage effects - in ways which are very difficult to verbally explain. If I use a "chi" visualization, I can skip over a large amount of frustrated attempts to explain rather involved issues of physiology, leverage, anatomy, etc. and get straight to the student doing the movement correctly. Furthermore, I have noted that people are unwilling to accept that skills that they cannot personally do are done with practice and skill, and instead demand a magical and supernatural force to attribute the differences on. odd I know, but ymmv.

Well, I know that the kicking dynamics themself are distinctly Asian, Korean. Capoeira uses a very different structure; in the end they both work, but they go in radically different directions. The body mechanics feed into that. The fact that they step isn't that unusual. It isn't THAT much of a peculiarity for an art to prohibit static standing in one dead position and to offer as an alternative a loop of transitions - I believe drunken kung fu does this as well. The footwork is not at all similar to Capoeira, nor are their goals and focus. As noted earlier in a different post, I had been dragged into a controversy regarding two different and competing styles of Tae Kyon, and as such had had to look at various youtube clips and the like; all the above applies to both, and they do look significantly different from each other in structure. If I had to theorize, i'd say that they were coming from different regional variants. In the end, you can carve a martial art down to quite a small amount of curriculum and have it survive; the seed to an art is actually quite small, and once people fully grasp the seed, they can rebuild most of the rest of it by conforming with the dynamics. It sounded as though there were about two such seeds in play that were being reconstructed.

The past two days of classes, we've done about six hundred reps of one kick. In the air. This isn't the simplest kick, it isn't the most combat-ready kick; I realize that when the Bruce Lee quoting rebels revolt, I will be the first against the wall. It's just the best kick for piecing apart; if you don't have ginga and you don't have moleza, then your queixada will suckaka. It worked though; close to the end of yesterday's class, the older student realized that I wasn't "stepping" so much as projecting my legs with my hips, with every movement. And proceeded to go through most of the movements we'd covered that he couldn't do well, and do them well. It's the subtle things that are important; some things just can't be explained, they must be experienced. Other drills: Nothing particularly interesting; line drills with basic floor movement. Two lines of queda de rins that the current students hate but are starting to grasp. One hundred of those hundreds of drills, they had to call out the name of the kick every time they did it.

Played music, pretty loudly. Had the students moving, specifically on the beat, through a couple of basic kicks. Important because: locking people into a timeframe also makes certain mistakes jump out; for instance, you cannot step sideways out of the end of a kick and stay on time while also taking an undesired retreating step. Stopped the older one who was explaining the breakdown between: Stances, Kicks, Punches, Throws, Blocks; we don't have "stances" per se, just "movements", and I tend to lump hand and foot techniques together, because the ranges overlap quite a bit. This helped with mobility, as there was a common mental block where one gets stuck in the same place rather than realizing that they are supposed to be able to move around and that it's no different than staying in place. Threw people around a bit as a review, after having had a takedown attempted on me that violated principles and was unlikely to work as a result. (The principle involved being: 'Disequilibrantes work by restraining the other person's ability to step in a given direction, then moving their center of weight in the direction thus restricted.)

Well, the ER gave me a C-collar for my neck to use for a day or so, some muscle relaxants (that took some of the edge off, but didn't really cure much) and some ibuprofen; they said to move it a bit and use heat. I've been doing all of those. Yesterday, my dad noted that he felt that his side of the family had a genetic susceptibility to nightshades; he told me to remove tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant, and all kinds of peppers (green, hot, etc) from my diet, as those apparently can cause joint inflammation in some people.

I would suggest that wits are more important, myself. The ability to not fixate one's titanic willpower on smashing through all but insurmountable obstacles for long enough to look over and see the door nearby.

So Sunday night I went to bed feeling fine, and not having done anything with my art that day and nothing more strenuous than a routine few miles of biking and light tidying. Monday, I woke up sore and stiff in my right shoulder and neck; I decided to go easy and let it recover. Monday evening I was pretty much incapacitated until I took a very hot shower, which still left me stiff. 4:00 AM Tuesday morning, the wife rolled over and my left shoulder dropped to the bed, and the resulting twist woke me up in a sparkling new world of pain; shortly after I crawled out of bed somehow and called someone to drive me to the ER. All of Tuesday and parts of Wednesday I spent sitting wearing a C-collar and trying to get tiny snippets of nap in here and there. By Thursday I could move quite a bit, but still with major limits and directions that just hurt a lot. Today is Friday. Same as Thursday. Is there anything I should be doing to recover from this faster? Notwithstanding the strangeness of the injury - I could see mangling my shoulder by botching floor movement, but 'sleeping wrong' (especially when I don't recall waking up in any particularly odd positions) doesn't seem like something that would land one in the emergency room.

I was trying to solve for putting the kick into the target, and asking that eyes stay toward the target in general. While we always watch the direction of the target, we also try to keep our gaze soft and keep the whole target in peripheral. Alas, this student would reverse in midmotion and kick behind her, not looking where she was kicking OR at the target.

Another bleah day. Started by adjusting and teaching the little to ride a bicycle so that she would be more able to GET TO class. Lots of object lessons in 'just do, do not try'. Also in 'where your eyes go, you do also'. Unfortunately it didn't stick, and she was unable to kick a stationary target as a result - kept looking away, then kicking backwards. Not sure how to fix that. Did some drilling on the importance of having defenses smoothly transition into attacks. Again, not enough people to have people pair up.

Ones about arts or approaches to/applications of the arts which I am not familiar with. Most books are frustrating because they claim to be generic, then aren't.

Not sure; it seems possible, but the point is exceedingly academic as it won't really be noticeable from there on. If you can imagine a form of Boxing in which, with very few exceptions, every time you punch or move, you switch from 'regular' to 'southpaw' stance or back again, and wherein the boxer's 'bounce' likewise flips back and forth, you can see that a "dominant side" just isn't going to be a concept that's worthy of consideration. If surprised with a sucker punch, they might slip to the right more often than the left, but from there on, all bets are pretty much off.

True, we all do. But.. if you have to fight out in the real world to defend yourself or a loved one, and if you are lucky enough to have a chance take a stance - your favorite side will come out quickly and there would be nothing you could do to change that. It's hard wired from your survival training in the dojo. Your body knows. One - No, not all of us practice symmetrical arts. These include Capoeira, Kali, and probably some others; Boxing, Karate, Gungfu, TKD are not at all symmetrical no matter how much people talk about 'training both sides'. Two, because I do practice a symmetrical art, if I do default to a side under stress, it will only be for a second; I cannot -not- switch sides and such. My 'on guard SD ready stance' is a 50/50 straight on position with my weight lightly shifting back and forth.

I posted a couple places, while she was posting to HER online peeps. Is all good.

The ceremony was at close to 7 PM AKST, which is two hours earlier than MST, we both got a ride home together, then opened gifts and burbled happily and then she went to glee at her online friends who couldn't be there for a little bit but who had sent gifts and cards and things, and I posted then.

I just got home from my wedding! Yay!

We use them as auxiliary feet. We spend most of our time in a deep stance transition with bent ball of the foot. We don't just stand around in bananeira all day; it's not a particularly great position to attack and defend from, just one we pass through moderately often.

Comes from a different angle, one which is hopefully not defended at the time when the angle of the side kick is closed.

So putting a load on the foot hurts, but what you do with it to cause the load is immaterial? Personally i'd ask if there was any way to train in shoes, even if they are special mat shoes. I can't wear any footwear more specialized than "a shoe" for different reasons, and my art trains in street shoes in any case, but there are specialized martial arts shoes out there; they would probably hold your foot together. Otherwise, many arts do train while wearing shoes. The last few kung fu classes I remember visiting did. We do. I don't know what other arts do or do not.