JusticeZero

For clarification, would you consider a half moon kick to be a "spinning hook", since at no point is the heel tucked in to strike, as the leg is to be left limp for the full arc of the kick for best form? As well as the obvious matter of having a significant portion of the weight on the palms of the hands.. Twist, put the hands down between the legs, put hands between arms, look at target, shift weight forward, and axe kick down into the target's head turning the hip over at the top.

Presumably the same principle. Jell-o is much cheaper.

Ah. just remembered one thing that I find helps. Jell-o. Lots of Jell-o. I personally feel it's a good plan to eat plenty of the building blocks of whatever it is that's going to need rebuilding and upgrading. I put some strain on my joints with all the low stances and such, and I want them to be in the best possible condition. I just feel better a couple days out after anything intense if I had gelatin around the time of the intense work; no creakiness.

If you hurt more in the morning, repeat the first two. Sleep helps heal faster, heat loosens muscles and increases circulation so that they can heal without dealing with a lot of strain, and dehydration can muck up the works in anything.

Generally, because when an organization sets standards like that, they often end up going the path of the "false" school you mentioned themselves, and demanding that it's good instructors dumb down and wreck their good teaching to fit the curriculum.

A mix, really. More Eastern names than Western by a nose.

For me? A long, hot, hot bath/shower, a lot of fluids, and a 10 hour block of time set aside for extra sleep.

Fairly accurate representation of how much drivers generally pay attention to the road, too.

there are more ways to make them "living ways" or whatever, too. I mean, my art integrates into life. It does so in a very different way, though, with moral teachings which most would consider less than noble, and a structure well suiting its checkered origins. Hmm, let's see if I can put together a sort've "ancient time" portrayal of MY very traditional art.. There wasn't any TV, and if there was, you couldn't afford one because you were probably either an unemployable ne'er-do-well or a bottom-class laborer; now and then you run into some guys from the 'hood who you only know by their nicknames, so you can't rat them out. One of the guys everyone thinks is one sly, slippery dude they call Slick busts out some music on whatever they have around and you have a bit of a spar with your buds, trading notes on the neat move that Dog-Face pulled to put a couple of cops in the hospital last week. Meanwhile, Slick keeps an eye on everything so things don't get out of control, plays tunes to give you all advise and snarky commentary, and watches for the cops in case they come try to bust you all up to see how many outstanding arrest warrants they can match with you all, even if they have to make a couple up on the spot. One day Slick says, "You seem like you've got a good pair of eyes on you, you play a pretty tight game, you don't even trust your own mom, and you can con your way out of trouble real nice; lemme show you some tricks of the trade and i'll let people know that you're cool to start running some of our little sessions." Would you say that that's "superior" to the upbringing of an MMA fighter, then? Since it's in no way clear what you consider 'superior' to look like exactly. I mean, is it 'superior' because your teacher gives you lots of philosophy and ethics? We have that in spades. Are we actually certain that MMA does not give positive life lessons? All the other euro arts seem to stress hard work and fairness to varying degrees. One book I read (Meditations on Violence, I think) attributed to an Asian style's teacher the quote "The dead guy doesn't get to go to church." when asked about life lessons and the like in the art. The whole "We must teach wisdom and philosophy with our kicks and punches" thing hardly seems like a constant, nor a defining factor in eastern, or any, martial arts. Honestly it seems more cultic than effective. I did not train to make anyone a better person, just a safer, dangerous, and more effective one. Why should they look at me for moral guidance? Am I inherently more moral and honorable than their religious leaders because I know how to kick people in the face? I'm a teacher, not a preacher.

Well, in a lot of arts you've seen your instructor put on -something- and 'duke it out'. In Judo for instance you see them grab people who don't want to be moved and toss them around the room. Some Karate sparring sets are brutal. And so on, so forth. It's completely reasonable to think that your Boxing instructor would 'put up his dukes' only to have punches go through his ungloved guard like it wasn't there, and low attacks go unresisted. Boxing and MT don't get a free pass to respectability.

It's natural to FEEL angry. It is not good, though, to BE angry.

Mostly today was stance and form. Nothing terribly special or exotic.. Get into stance and body check them from various angles. They were using their basic stance transitions to deflect me to the side or over the top and roll me off like water off a duck. Usually bringing an elbow around as part of the motion. That's stuff that they do huge amounts of as part of doing other techniques; it blew the older student's mind as he'd been imagining those positions as a platform to do techniques from, rather than as defensive techniques in their own right. I also had the kid tumbling all over the place, after pointing out that that skill could have helped avoid the skinned knee she had walked in the room with after tripping over a curb. Half of the time, we were actually outdoors in the parking lot; a lot of techniques feel different on concrete through shoes; in my opinion it is safer, easier, and generally better to train on pavement than on mats, at least if I'm not throwing people around the room like I had been earlier. It's a more familiar surface, and its friction and energy return properties are more forgiving than carpet or puzzle mat, at least for our purposes when not dropping people on their back. It also makes practice easier to integrate into your life, I feel, rather than being something that you do in a special frame of exotic activity alien to the rest of your experience. When outside I was concentrating on tumbling and the action of the hips and spine for a basic kick; some of those kicks were causing performance trouble related to sticking the toes on the puzzle mat surface.

And what if it IS your boxing teacher getting flattened? Entirely plausible; Boxing is as much of a traditional MA as any of the other ones you listed, when you come down to it, and it makes just as many assumptions as the rest..

And what appears to be said school's website: http://ciescodefvskaktenerife.spaces.live.com/

Encountered on BBC news website today, as a featured article. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8008795.stm Page last updated at 11:41 GMT, Friday, 8 May 2009 12:41 UK Venezuelans aim to kick crime out By Will Grant BBC News, Caracas Enjoy!

Sure.. I was actually thinking something more along the lines of "I had the shotgun out and in hand when I was attacked, because of threats the suspect had made; instead, he jumped out from off of a pile of boxes making some stupid bruce lee noise and tried to punch me with a really awful jumping punch; I stepped across and used the side of the barrel to block his arm and push him into a restraint position so I could cuff him." I would not expect that example to be ruled as use of a deadly weapon in that case; the weapon was not being used as a projectile weapon, and its use in the situation was purely due to it being in hand at the time for other reasons. Somewhat similar to having a weapon available in a limb, and consciously avoiding using the weapon aspects. In any case, as seems to happen rather often, I am in agreement on you in this matter, even if our perspectives differ.

I would presume it would be similar to, for instance, doing techniques with the stock of a shotgun. The shotgun itself is lethal, but if you turn it around and use the stock of the shotgun for a restraint or push, the intent to use the weapon lethally simply is not present; I don't know that a claim that a lethal weapon was being employed would gain much traction in court in that case. The fact that one is carrying around the weapon in a readied manner while getting into fights is a major issue in and of itself; you might be confusing the two issues. One major benefit was that jogo practice with the mock blades stepped up my game noticably; I could no longer absorb anything, kicks changed their shape a bit, and I had to build up skill in using my toes to hold, manipulate, and pick up weapons; some of that helped the quality of my footwork. At least one of the other (rather more odd) techniques I had explained to me lacked that positive application, even if it gained style points. Maculele - paired stick dance - we do as a timing drill, but enough of it is lost to time or unknown to me that I can't even claim that it has any combat value at all. It makes a good rhythm drill, though.

That seems to be a different concern; are you then annoyed with people practicing only hitting air, then? Because I don't believe even the local Taijiquan studio advocates that, and it's not clear that they are exceptionally martial in their focus.

True; Western arts in general are much more taken with the concept of specialization. Common Western martial arts tend to be built on the principle of "Let's take one single weapon wielded out of one single structure, and figure out every conceivable way of knocking someone into next Thursday with it.. then we'll train comboes of a few of our favorites from that already rather short list."

Well, if you are preparing and using bladed weapons, then you are at a 'deadly force' level by default. One does not pull out a knife or gun expecting the scenario to remain at the submission level of the spectrum. Nonetheless, if one does have blades in one's feet, one can still strike with the heel or side of the sole/ankle bone without necessarily bringing the blade into play. Certainly one of the more frustrating things I had to study. Most people don't practice using their toes much, and that requires a moderately high level of podiatric dexterity. I don't walk barefoot much; walking barefoot builds muscle and such in the feet, and the structure of the foot tends to widen as a result; I already wear size 12 EEEEEE shoes with extra roomy toe boxes, and if my foot widens much more, I won't be able to buy shoes at all. Thus, i'm no exception to the rule, and my toes are nowhere near as nimble as they might otherwise be. I would therefore think it counts as a "hard weapon to train". I wouldn't consider it to be self-defense anymore, unless the world goes all Mad Max on me; it was a historical and skillbuilding exercise. At one point in history, long ago, it was rather a more reasonable thing to do, but that time and situation has long since sailed. The same can be said, really, of most martial arts weapons, though; one is not so terribly likely anymore to, for instance, have a job with potential for being attacked at which involves using agricultural hand sickles, for instance. People train with kama all the time anyways. Presumably it's possible that such a situation might one day arise again; until then, it's just kind've cool.

Some training just won't help the one practising it directly. That doesn't mean it's useless to learn it. Furthermore, it is silly to directly equate conditioning with training, as well as it is to assert that more conditioning is a pure good. I don't condition my fists and I don't ask my students to; they all have or aspire to desk jobs. They don't need their hands to be huge, calloused, and turned into bludgeoning implements. Sure, we have a nice lead for a back fist, but I just have no cause to harden that tool. My palm is tough enough from walking and jumping on it, i'm happy to limit myself to it and my wrist; furthermore, I do not spend any extra time conditioning my palms than I receive from striking practice and footwork practice. I just don't have need for it. That doesn't mean I am being less "pure" in my training, though arguably i'm following the self defence philosophies better by doing so by avoiding telltale calluses, it just means that i'd rather be a whole person than just a walking weapon. If someday the world falls apart and becomes some Mad Max-ian dystopia, then I have learned how I can condition my hands thusly, and I have explained it to my students (along with my comments that it is in this modern age pointless).

It's a pain! But there's easier ways to do it. Some used sharpened taps on the toes - very short blade, but when one is doing crescent kicks at carotid artery height, it doesn't have to be long. The razors in toes was a popular trick for awhile though, and it does wonders for defense practice when you're sparring someone with a mock blade in their toes and can't just expect to absorb the blows anymore.

Well actually, there was the less outlandish one that I actually did train a little bit with - razors gripped between the toes.. a bit of a pain learning how to grip the darned things, let alone do acrobatics with them!

I was about to relate something I'd been told... then I realized that it sounded pretty exceptionally wierd, even by my standards.

I didn't say that you can rely ONLY on exercizing to less than failure though, I said that if the exercizes you did that day did not reach failure, that there's no need to rest for a day afterward. Really, imo you should do a mix. Train sub-failure without stop sometimes, mixed with ripping your muscles to shreds other times. But that's more an opinion than anything, really.