JusticeZero

I teach shin, just above the ankle, for roundhouses; sole of shoe for crescent and reaping type kicks. The tongue of a shoe isn't enough protection for the small bones and joint assemblage of the instep, in my eyes. Some use the ball of the foot for those kicks; I don't personally feel comfortable with that position, but it is not one I need for my art. Shins are a solid bar of dense bone, instep is an assembly of small bones and joints; I would rather hit with a solid structure.

You did ask my opinion on the matter; my opinion remains as follows: Qi techniques are an extremely valuable tool, possibly indispensable, for achieving the maximum effect from one's abilities. It is very important to develop skill in using these in order to best develop ones' abilities and press beyond the easily accepted limits that the limits of normal body control and mental conditioning may restrict one to. However, I have not personally seen anything to lead me to believe that the tasks thus performed use anything beyond mundane dynamics of muscular contraction, balance, and skill; investigation into such "amazing" feats has always resulted in learning of ways to perform the task with learned skill and applied biomechanics or physics. While qi exercises can communicate how to move more powerfully and relaxedly than simply telling the student to 'push this way' might give, the force thus generated still appears to me to be generated through contraction of muscle fibers, body alignment, and the like. I have experienced entirely too many people who were far too quick to credit supernatural powers for my own entirely mundane accomplishments, and I have learned or learned of entirely too many ways to perform "impossible" feats without the need of any form of extranormal force. As such, I am hesitant to quickly apply quick and ultimately unsatisfying explanations such as "it's Qi" to feats that I do not personally know how to do yet. To me, to say such a thing belittles the practitioner and excuses mediocrity in the observer. As such, I view Qi work as a tool to be used and incorporated into practice, but not in any way anything worthy of profound spiritual examination or elevation; further, I do not see it as anything with any real potential to be "alive", any more than my stretching exercises are "alive".

Right. In five years, you can achieve learning about five years of material; what rank five years of material implies in any given style is of lesser importance, as it is in no way a standard. There are a number of organizations out there whose black belts simply don't garner much respect, because the belt is earned so cheaply. There are other arts where if you walk in saying "I have a brown belt", people cower in terror at your sheer awesomeness. As a rule, it seems that experience and quality of instruction is more important than what color of cloth stripe you have on your waist.

By 'offensive' my meaning was that the one you are going to be tangling with is going to be in a re-active mode responding to your presence, rather than specifically prowling you; I didn't mean to infer that you were going to be attacking suspects.

My main concern is with the distancing and maneuvering in sparring. All the standard sparring I have seen or experienced has involved some sense of having to enter into an opponent who is reluctant to be in combat range, and to tune techniques to adjust for this pursuit; further, the opponent is generally in a rather defensive modality, and using techniques defensively. Hitting the target generally is followed by some sort of retreat or separation by the target. Vital strikes cause breaks and are considered fight stoppers. In the attacks I suffered, these were absolutely not the case; attacks are thrown aggressively by an attacker who continually advanced; the problem was always in creating space, rather than consuming it; strikes to the nose or to the groin, or any other 'painful' point do basically nothing worthwhile. (I've experienced this from both sides, by the way; i've taken a rather solid thrust heel kick to the groin during a jogo, and the only thing I noticed - after picking myself up because it threw me back against a nearby wall - was 'Oh, I feel a minor dull ache between my legs. Nothing significant enough to pay attention to." I completely shrugged it off and returned with a couple of intricate high kicks and such, completely unfazed. My teacher stopped the match at this point because they were concerned about the hit, and I shrugged and went back to sit down, Maybe thirty seconds after I sat down, once I had time to settle a bit, I got up, walked to the bathroom, and puked my guts out while whimpering. That's not the only time i've been hit in the 'family jewels', and that response is completely typical for me.) I see a lot of techniques adjusted to 'close the gap' and the like. That's ridiculous. An attacker in the fight structure i've experienced does not stand back and trade long distance blows, they plow into you and press you with a barrage. I note that you are an LEO. As such, your fights will be more offensive; you are, by your very job, carrying the fight (or potential fight) to the other person. Mine were from the standpoint of being prey, which is a scenario that is often described as a SD scenario; having been in such situations, I found the dynamics of a sparring match to be terribly surreal and absurd. Defending against an armored attacker, or scenario drills, those I can completely support. (Edit - added paragraph breaks for legibility)

What part exactly does not seem to fit together? It's set up to highlight specific tactical awarenesses and dynamism, and does not pretend to be a fight. You don't come out of a roda thinking 'Wow, that was just like fighting!' One does, however, see people posting under the impression that their TKD/Karate/Gungfu sparring was like a real fight; it isn't at all like a real fight though, and if they try to carry many of the lessons they 'learned' from sparring into a self-defense situation, they will be seriously endangered by their unrealistic training regimen. Ours is non-fight-like to the degree that we understand the need to supplement with different exercizes in order to prepare for self defense, but we still get to play with stress testing many of our techniques against uncooperative opponents. We moderate speed because really, circular kicks powered mainly through the core can deliver a heck of a lot of damage targeted at the floating ribs; we'd rather not leave ourself banged up and bruised every day. Increasing skill levels allows the speed to increase; also, the speed moderation and explicit use of rhythmic technique use lets us develop a very keen sense to them. One of the friendly jogoes I remember seeing between two senior students was based almost entirely on that, it looked like someone was hand-cranking the movie of them and changing the speed randomly every second or two as they tried to get various positions in each other's timing.

A roda is a spatially-constrained competitive match with an externally dictated speed constraint. Hand techniques are not used, nor is grappling, only kicks and throws. Target height is limited to above the hips. Defenses are centered on dodges, rather than blocks, and most kicks are launched to the full extent at power rather than stopping, as speed is moderated to allow the kicks to be dodged. Victory is achieved by: A: Defender maneuvers into the path of a chambered head kick - specifically, they have to actually walk into it in a way orchestrated by the attacker. These kicks are not launched. B: Defender steps, retreats, falls, etc. out of bounds. C: Defender's stance integrity collapses enough that they fall on the ground with their weight not on hands, feet, or head. Because the moderating factor is SPEED, not as much targeting, the bad habit of pulling attacks is reduced. Because the match is so unlike a fight, one can drill all the positional elements without the ridiculous and unrealistic sparring adaptations seen in most arts' sparring technique. Standard sparring is to be avoided; it has less relationship to a real fight than two person form practice does, and as such creates, along with a host of bad habits, a false sense of security, and may actually worsen the stress response when opponents fail to behave anything even remotely like a sparring partner. Some say it can be used "properly". This may be the case, if all participants are fully aware of sparring's inherent unreality in specific terms. Typically though, one hears sparring referred to as a "reality check", which is, in fact, one of the things it is very little like.

Noting the Kempo side, which is striking - realize that even though you might end up on the ground, the person you are fighting may not. Practice starting with one person on the floor, fighting someone standing and unhindered. The best course of action for the person standing is not to grapple, but instead to maneuver to strike the one on the floor; if the one on the floor wants to avoid this, they need to move. If you have ice or slippery mud where you live, this is easier to see the value of.

It is impossible for the brain NOT to do that. But it does not mean that qi magic is an independently real thing.

Um, our mind? I can visualize a lot of things. Many of those things can have a real effect, but that doesn't make them any more real.

Keep your eyes peeled; there are schools in much smaller places than you think. The town of about 3000 that I grew up in has about half a dozen martial art schools, none of which are in the yellow pages. Check bulletin boards and any yoga type places around.

Essentially, yes. It is the finger that points at the moon.

While it's deeply fundamental for us, we don't grapple. Also, I don't know what stance you're using on the ground, or how much time you're spending there, or why. Could you elaborate a bit on what exactly mobility on the ground means in this sense?

Nope.

I support the training and methodology as being useful, but do not see it as a "real" thing. Qi cannot be "used" in a one-inch punch, because it has no objective reality; you can't use it to power your arm any more than you can power your fist with the idea of the month of February. Using the -model- of Qi will help you learn how to use your muscles and body structure to do a good one-inch punch though, and it is the most accessible model available to learn that.

It can be a bad thing if it starts to mix up your body mechanics. They have different body frames for specific reasons, and many of the pieces are NOT compatible.

Stretch kicks in the morning. Kick each leg forward/side/back 5-10x through your comfortable range of motion; you will note that your comfortable ROM will get noticably larger for each kick, and near the end you should be somewhere near the highest you'll be able to kick that day. Do not kick to push your stretch, just to move through the range you can do comfortably; in stretching, the core principle is 'no pain, no pain'. This should be in your warmup. Then go find a wall. This should be during cooldown after you've done whatever exercizes you plan to do for your little stretch session, be it pushups, situps, or nothing. Put your tail end against it laying on the floor, and spread your legs out against the wall, using the wall to stop your legs from opening further than the point where your muscles say 'ok, that's as far as I want to go.' Hold 15, see if you can go a bit futher, hold 15, pull away and rest a minute. Next turn to lay on your side with one leg behind you and the other leg stretched out along the floor to the wall, try to lean forward. 15 extend 15. Switch sides. Don't worry if you don't get around to doing any of that before you start.

I get annoyed at people who continually try to put off demonstrations of practiced skill by just saying, essentially, 'That's impossible, and I don't care to entertain the notion that hard work and superior technique might be involved. I'll just claim that magic is responsible.' All too often, that 'explanation' is simply used as an excuse to justify mediocrity and avoid effective training. I do a number of things that require trained skill, practice, relaxation, and the like. I find that many people will argue with me, claiming that I am deluded in thinking that it is a practiced skill; clearly, I am using magic unknowingly. It is offensive, and it lets them excuse being lazy and watching TV; after all, they haven't got the secret magic powers that I have and just denied needing to pike a handstand. Most of the Qi work I have seen has seemed nearer to using the Qi concepts and visualizations to enhance the users' control of their own body and mind, within natural limits, than to the fireball-launching, X-wing-lifting sorcery that some people seem to envision it as.

*blinks* Woah. What'd I do that was out of the ordinary? *boggle* Thanks. =)

Look at the mechanics of the arts you are considering; if the body mechanics and stances are different, it will be vastly harder on you. Boxing and Judo for instance, I am told blend together almost seamlessly and are a breeze to work with as a result. I wasted two years crosstraining a CMA with my Capoeira and couldn't make any of the stances or mechanics tie together. All I accomplished really was two years of having to correct mistakes in my main art I created with the CMA practice.

Our hips are back, so a joelhada will either be a front thrust and thus roll one around it as defense, or it's from the side as a close range martelo and subject to the same responses for any lateral kick. The former seemed awfully hard to avoid telegraphing, given the amount of movement needed from the core.

As described, this ISN'T 'how class is run', it's the teacher carrying his issues that day into the school. I expect people to tell me if i'm being a @#$^& outside of class, why should inside class be any different?

Personally, i'd say that wrestling isn't so useful in fighting - but then, I have a different model of a fight. Weapons or simply not being surrounded by -your- friends makes grappling a really horrible place to be. That said, having a nonstandard body type can be a real asset if you work some of the less common techniques, or if you work the body mechanics to your advantage. How much of your core can you put into techniques?

I walked up to the guy after class and essentially said 'Dude, I know you've got stuff going on in your life that might be upsetting you, but I felt that the way you handled that situation was completely inappropriate. I'd appreciate it if you kept your stress outside the doors, and if you don't feel like you can handle things at the moment, you have some good senior students who can handle things for you while you cool off.'

Nice article. I find that on my end I already take pains to do everything mentioned; however, next I need to find something to help me learn how to best encourage female students of get free of the conditioning and constraints they put on themselves; I am forever frustrated by female students refusing to push themselves as far as they are able, choking their ablities off by the limits of some self-imposed pink-flowery-girlie-weak image rather than extending themselves as a powerful human being..