JusticeZero

Sure, but isn't that a consequence of some of the point of heavy bag? Hand conditioning? I'd rather have sore hands after training than a broken hand on the street.

If they have the competence, I see no problem with them doing something along the lines of "Jack, go help the yellow belts with the partner drill while I work with the brown belts on the next drill; i'll be over there in a bit." I wouldn't have them teach a class from beginning to end, however.

Entirely things I agree with for the most part. My art ends to constrain how shallow we can go; several important transitions become much more difficult and sluggish if the stance work raises too high, and work best if the distance between the balls of the feet are roughly one leg length apart. I recognize that is a concern specific to my art that not all share. That said, when the stances go lower, the height of the shoulders comes down and effectively shortens the one in the stance. My advice was, in essence, 'If you develop your ability to use your techniques, transitions, and movement in deeper stances, you can use a deepened base to compensate for the height difference.'

The term 'Dynamic' immediately puts me on guard as a 'buzz word' - who would want to claim that the art they do is -not- 'dynamic'? I would be wary if a specific explanation of what specific shift in focus is represented as "dynamic" is not presented; I would remain wary until one can isolate a down side to the dynamic nature entailed.

Not being a Karate stylist (and in fact not even having a basic grounding in it) I went searching for which kick this was. Appears to be a high martelo, that is, a kick striking in line with the knee with at least some of the power of the kick coming from the straightening of the leg, which impacts the target laterally. The dynamics of that kick are in my experience quite a bit different from those of a ponteira, which I am certain is the typical 'front kick'. I am uncertain whether they would be considered the same in a discussion of chambers. A downward drop of the foot while striking in a ponteira would make it more closely related to bencão, a forward heel THRUST kick and yet again a very different kick in function. A sufficiently high ponteira/front kick would make it into an axe kick; we don't train those, and do not have a name for it that I am aware of offhand, but it seems to be a very different kick which uses a different striking surface and power generation. Out of curiosity, what makes that kick "Brazilian"? I would think it would be more Thai than anything, if I were to hazard a guess.

I'm not completely convinced that we won't see the fashion shift to other arts at some point in the future. Boxing and MT have their own limitations. The best sportfighters chose to use that blend because others have been using it, which is rather circular; we could easily see some fighting prodigy start winning with something completely different and quickly see that tune change. As it is, the only real advantage I see of the arts listed is in training methodology; if boxers and MT people trained against air, and certain other arts trained with live full contact and resistance, right now you would be saying that, for instance, 'Everyone knows that Taiji and Aikido is the best fighting combo in the world..' because the best fighters would be going to those because of the way they carried out training. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Sometimes, people just don't want to deal with anyone that day for whatever reason. Having a solo drill available for people to work on as an option is a thought.

As I've always experienced, the lay person is not satisfied with one's ability to do any feat that they themselves cannot do and which is difficult enough that they have a hard time imagining themselves doing unless magic is invoked. I have on multiple occasions had people tell me that my ability to do moderately acrobatic feats of balance CANNOT be "just practice and training" as I claim. They ARGUE with me that I am deluded about my non-mystical explanation of how to do them. They invariably conclude that I am obviously using some mystical, magic, non-scientific, non-physical energy or ability, and that I am either lying to them or are deluded about it being a trained skill.

I can do all those with minimal effort on the spur of the moment in deep stances, and a number of those stances are quite resistant to groin kicks from the most likely angles. I can't imagine being able to effectively cut or retreat in a high floaty stance; they just simply aren't mobile enough. And when they close, they seem to do it by stretching into a deeper stance for a moment.

Okay, I had to think about it awhile. I suspect that the hesitance has two parts - first, 'Doesn't a deep stance root me in place?' and "because I want to be able to get out of it efficiently." First: One can move quite well in deep stances. People think they're slow and ponderous. Do some transitions from one stance to another, sliding a foot in to center then out from center to another deep stance without changing levels of the head, which for you probably will pass briefly through a cat stance or some such thing. This is actually not terribly time consuming.. and you're covering a lot of ground! I find deep stances to be more mobile than the boxing 'float', personally. For practice, find a nice MUP ("bike") path or trail or something, and wander for maybe a half kilometer or so just in transitions between random stances, keeping your head from bobbing up and down. After this, comes the next question of 'what are you needing to get out of them quickly to do?' You can probably tie a lot into those transitions and such, and generally focus more on the deeper position techniques.

How is your hydration? I've felt like that before if I don't get enough fluids.

For whatever reason, and we will not discuss it here because it doesn't matter, you have done something resembling a kick, and it was grabbed and held either beside or in front of the torso. Any suggestions how to turn this to your advantage? So far I have considered scissoring their ankle with the other foot and twisting to throw them, or grabbing them and dropping to kick them over the top; can anyone else think of any others?

Why wouldn't you be able to step out of a deep stance efficiently??? Seriously, it's never been a problem for me. Maybe i'm just too used to transitioning from one stance to another.

Pretty movements may not be effective, but effective movements tend to be pretty, particularly if your art's movement style favors circles. Furthemore, it is poor thinking to invoke the mythical "streetfighter" everywhere, the mystical Everyman Warrior who can routinely achieve feats of movement and combat which cannot be matched by highly trained combat athletes. For instance, I am quite confident doing techniques that cause me to briefly turn my back on people, because under he circumstances where they are called for, it is not physically possible for a human being to alter their momentum and positioning enough for it to matter. People don't just teleport around.

My father never taught me to fight, because he couldn't; i'm inheriting a daughter, and i've started to teach her a thing or two, but I have a long way to go.

No, I don't think it can be self defense at a bar. People always want to tell me about how much they need self defense, and then they justify it by referring to barfights. Don't go to bars where fights break out all the time, don't jump gleefully in on them with some absurd excuse involving saving face, and if you can't do either of those, don't claim you need skills in "self-defense" to deal with it.

Potentially, one. Potentially, you could be working them over for half an hour and they come out of the hospital the next day. As noted, people don't have "hit points". As usual, these hypotheticals tend to be rather bizzarre and contrived onc you unpack them a bit. 'What if you were attacked by three-armed blue space aliens while walking in the Arctic tundra and you only had a rubber chicken to defend yourself with?' Is that a situation that I can ever forsee happening? Really?

Cross-training messed with me for years. In my main art, not having your rear foot pointed straight forward aligned with your hips, generally on the ball of the feet, is a HUGE no-no; all my teachers (and myself) spend more time correcting that form error than others just because it really is that critical. It seems so harmless. But wherever it slips in, about 1-2 movements later the student is sitting on their backside on the ground trying to figure out why everything they were doing suddenly stopped working and flowing together. Their grace evaporates, and it becomes difficult at best to stay stable through the evasive movements we do. Then I would go to Taiji, and they would make me do these L-shaped stances. sigh. Anyways, the point would be thatit's the subtle things that cause the problem. An art should work together as a coherent block of body dynamics, and the dynamics from differing arts can clash.

Could you perhaps also compensate for the height difference by favoring deeper stancework?

Most bullets fired in a gunfight miss, even from absurdly short ranges. Take the 0.03 second to flow into a stable weapon using stance. There is no similarity in lines of force between martial art attacks and a gun; the gun generates it's own power and cannot effectively gain any from anything the user does, making the time spent grounding force lines into a solid base pointless when one could say, be dropping into a Weaver stance and sighting in. About the only reason to use a martial art stance for a pistol rather than a pistol stance is if you intend to use the pistol as a bludgeoning implement rather than a projectile weapon.

All I have to add is that I tell people that "If the story involves you at a bar, it isn't self-defense."

First, a rape attempt is deadly force; communicable diseases can be lethal. Second, it seems foolhardy to relinquish one's contol of the situation in hopes that a person who already has decided to commit a massive assault on oneself will for reasons not explained might decide to be more merciful. I always tell my students that if the criminal ties to get you to go elsewhere with them, regardless of any other circumstances, they should treat it the same as a clear statement of intent to commit murder. The exact same principle applies here. They will try to do what they planned to do, and being agreeable and not fighting will not help bargain a better outcome. Third, it is hoped that one was developing their awareness and such to the degree that one seems like a much less inviting target.

I don't do Monkey, I do another art that uses low positions like you mention; we have very good defenses against kicks, so I doubt that your mental image is quite accurate in that regard. Level changes to floor are not well understood by martial artists who do not practice arts well known for them, but the strategy can be very useful in an art built around the tactic. The main limitation is the significant amount of conditioning to build the mobility at that level, being as alien as it is.

I teach one of the aforementioned arts that does level changes intentionally.. though i'll have to admit to never having taught a flying kick - I was taught one or two, but they were described as 'This is just to show off and work on your conditioning'. The 'low' body positions open up attacks which would not be feasible if we retained the high level. Furthermore, we retain a very high level of mobility at that level. Dropping to a lower level, be it squatting, negativa stance, or stretched out in esquiva, can completely change the dynamics of techniques that are coming toward you. The traditionally demonstrated against generic 'collar grab' can, for instance, be defended by going to cocorinha (squatting) and repulsing the hands. Either the grabber will have to go down with you, or let go; in either case, their centerline should be opened up and some juicy targets revealed. At that point, some techniques that spring to mind include head strikes to the chin, hand strikes to the groin, grabbing of the ankle for a takedown, or simply fleeing, likely incorporating a head kick from a semiprone position as part of the movement. Saying that this makes you 'vulnerable' is little different from claiming that attacking with punches will leave you vulnerable because of leaning forward out of balance; all of the low level positions are guarded in similar ways to standing positions, with the ribs, face, groin, knees, etc. covered by the arms or body positioning. Our squatting and semiprone 'stances' are protected just as carefully as any standing stance; possibly moreso as there is less area to guard. All of these things come from various aspects of the art and movement style and training though, and are not simply things that are easily tacked onto someone else's style without significant adjustment.

Without proper conditioning, in a real fight, you'll lose your technique very quickly. Total: $312 (Less than a yearly gym membership for most people) Oh, no arguments from me. I have zero space to store anything right now, as i'm living in an efficiency with no garage and have no storage space, most people don't have that excuse. Nonetheless, the shopping list and space taken up *looks* intimidating. When I tallied it up it wasn't that bad, but my first thought looking at the list waws that it was a lot of hard to find equipment. A lot of people probably get hung up there and go no further, if it ever occurs to them to consider the question.