JusticeZero

Find a teacher. Even if they haven't trained much. You'll learn more from two hours with a teacher than from two years practicing alone.

I've seen that one, it's really not that hard to take apart. The gungfu stylists simply weren't used to dealing with a kicker. They had no effective entrance strategy and would be hit fading in, then they'd give up the close range and fade out and be kicked on their way out. If you only watch the punches, the gungfu stylists were more successful than the karateka, they connected more with those and were better able to trap and defend in their range. But short punches aren't as dramatic at an axe or spinning kick, so generally you just see the big sweep of the big white-panted leg headhunting them from angles they weren't accustomed to.

Maybe you need to quit expecting people to stand there and give you nice targets. Go on the offensive and create some. Instinctively retreating is a beginner mistake, I rail on it twice as hard as I do about keeping a guard up. Don't do it.

OK, I realized something from an SCA class I went to that was said that explains this. In a fight, people often think that they can do one thing and only one thing at a time. These include any one of: Attack, Defend, or Move. If they are moving, they aren't attacking or defending. If they are defending, they aren't attacking or moving. And so on. In the "straight blast", all you're doing is to attack, thus triggering their response to "defend", but refusing to "end your action" and let them decide to do something other than defend. They're basically waiting for the attacker to stop attacking so they can fight back, and that never happens. In your first statement there, you basically said "I can't get a chance to attack". and in your second, "I don't get a chance to move before I have to defend". These are false. You can move while defending, you can attack while defending, you can attack on the run. Anything you do other than sit there and turtle is going to dismantle that tactic. I watched a couple videos of NHB fights with a friend once where one fighter was this monstrous huge guy with no technique who just walked in throwing a continuous string of punches. His opponents would just turtle, and be destroyed by attrition alone. I noted the fact, and the next video I saw of him was against a fighter who used some mobility and refused to turtle, chosing instead to attack right back through the attacks, using a bit of angling to soften the blows. The fight was short, and decisive, and within seconds, the huge guy was curled up on trhe floor, literally crying as the ref counted him out.

Um, go off the line. It really is that simple. Sure, he can turn 100 degrees to face you, and when he does, he no longer has any momentum and he's lost the initiative, and you're already attacking his legs and side.

Push hands is a type of drill. Listing it seperately is like offering heavy bag work as a seperate art. I'd try the chen.

It's gonna vary based on what sort of footwork and the like a given art does. For instance, in my art, even a beginner knows to be underneath the knee of a mid level or high roundhouse kick, with more advanced students being able to set up a better counter from there and having a wider range of places to move to after that.

I agree. The reflexes you're trying to ingrain into you from one class will get you destroyed, or at least strongly rebuked, in the other. It's not like learning Shakespearian literature and reading Poe at the same time. You're trying to teach your body how to move. Those two are almost diametrically opposed in how they work. The closest I can think is the time when I was working with a NA group and visiting some friends from another part of the US at the same time. At work, interrupting in the slightest bit was ultra rude and would get me dressed down at length by my boss.. you had to sort've let there be two or three secods of silence after each sentence just to make sure. At my friends, if you don't interrupt, you don't get to talk, and the only way to get the whole thought out is to talk over them when they try to interrupt -you-. So while visiting my friends', I was completely helpless unless I got into the habit of automatically doing something that would get me in trouble the other half of the day.

Dude.. it's a strip of colored cloth. GET OVER IT. The color of your belt doesn't affect your skills. It doesn't change who you are. I trained for six years without getting a belt of any kind, and when I got one, for various political and geographical reasons, it was the "We're pretty sure you aren't going to hurt yourself if we stop looking at you for a moment" rank. I know several people in Karate styles who don't test. The only way they'll accept a change in rank is if the instructor just hands them the new belt. They think testing for rank is a bad tendency in the arts that detracts from the practice.

The two are too close in application, and so you'll have a lot of confusion. Also, their structure is different. I'd recommend instead of Boxing+another striking art that you look at Boxing+Judo. Apparently the stances and entrances are very similar, so you can switch them without changing anything structural, plus they excel at different situations. Also, Judo's "full on" mindset matches with Boxing.

Honestly, if you don't give it your all as called for by the exercize, in this case sparring, you're being insulting to the other guy and holding back their training. You're not hitting them because you want to hurt them. You're hitting them so they can learn better how not to get hit by someone who DOES want to hurt them.

Depends. If you're stopping the kicks before you run out of ROM it shouldn't be an issue - though I prefer a bag when I can for those. I don't snap linears in air.

Well.. they're all effective, but in different ways. And most of them can be fun. You didn't care for TKD. Why not?

Don't be angry. Pity them. They suck. They're so insignificant that they need to try to pick on innocents so that they can prop their ego up with the knowledge that no matter how pathetic they feel inside, there's someone they can pwn. Of course, if they decide to beat on you then they're taking the first step, and it's reasonable to use a bit of attitude adjustment on them. You might get in trouble, because schools are ridiculous, but you were in trouble the moment they took a swing at you. Just don't hit them a single time more than you absolutely need, and don't lose your cool.

Never done it. I'm familiar with it. I don't do it, and didn't learn it in capoeira. I use role instead, because it works better and is much better defended, though not as flashy. I do variations on this, but not the two hands together/two feet together thing you're likely imagining. Though I could if I wanted, it violates several principles of corpo fechado - basically, it's too vulnerable so we don't do it. I've never done one and see no reason to. It doesn't seem to gain any tactical positioning that I see, and it's a ballistic, jumping movement, which we avoid like the plague.

That's why head-butts are not supposed to be used against the SKULL. The face, jaw, etc sure. Lower targets are fine. The crown is just going to rattle you both to no end. But the face is usually a very easy target. Lots of loose things and soft structure to hit.

You don't know much about bullies, do you? As long as you don't resist and MAKE them stop in some way, you are empowering the bully. You don't have to stop them with violence necessarily.. but it seems to work pretty well. Anyways, all the bully has to do is take a swing, undefended, and you'll get in trouble for fighting anyways. Telling people in these situations to just be pacifistic is endangering them just to make you feel noble and look 'enlightened'.

*shrugs* I do enough Capoeira that I teach classes, and I have never done ANY of those things. Well, maybe except for the front hand thing, though i'm not quite sure what that is. Could you be a bit less hasty about the flipping=capoeira association? Because the only people I know who bother with that sort of thing are TKDers who want to do forms competition.

If someone is about to bash a little kid's head in with a baseball bat, there is also the chance to 'just walk away'. More than half of the stories i've heard of people using their martial art skills was to protect someone else. Of the other half, most of them were in cases where the minimum violence total was probably created by decisively applying violence - walking away wasn't a very -good- option due to the likelyhood of suffering harm in spite of leaving and the probability of the perpetrators continuing to be a danger to other people.

Yes, but it seemed as though quite a bit more of the techniques were of that mindset than other arts would use.

I don't think anyone ever said that video courses were "a scam" - merely worthless in the absence of a live teacher to critique and correct form issues which are not easily apparent.

I've seen the question come up plenty of times. The answer seems to be, an after-school kids' class. EVERYONE I have heard of who was able to make money or knew someone who made money in martial arts made the bulk of their money through the afterschool kids' class.

What I mean by "hyper-committed" is NOT that you "leave your arm out" but rather that if they kick, they generally finish the kick standing where the target point was, rather than where they started from; the attacks go forward, and the body rejoins where the attack ends rather than the attack being retracted to the start point.

Essentially, "Ninjutsu" is a form of Jujutsu which was adapted by the people now known as "ninja". It branched out and evolved, then withered, and presently there is only one person claiming grand-master status, and anyone else, before dying or whatever, pretty much handed the titles over, as i've heard. Jujutsu, I might add, is a very general term, like "kung fu", in that there's a few gazillion variants, which range from different to unrecognizably radically different, all tied together by some common historical root elements. Bujinkan taijutsu seems to be mainly stand-up fighting, with an emphasis on hyper-committed step through strikes (stomping kicks and punches) and joint manipulation. When I tried it, they were teaching weapons at certain levels, though more as a 'principle' thing, since their philosophy tends to consider the idea of owning such weapons (which they only refer to as 'tools' and think of in a similar fashion as a carpenter considers a claw hammer and power saw) to be a bit absurd. They don't spar and their training method and technique choice makes them problematic to spar with. Furthermore, they seem to have more than their fair share of 'loonies' who may not have even actually TRAINED in the art, then proceed to do incompetent and stupid things in front of people who proceed to tell me stories about 'this goofy ninja guy who came to our sparring class once..'. As a result, they have received more than a little bit of criticism for having "unrealistic training methods". I cannot speak to the validity of that concern in either direction.

Oh, I don't use head butts against the head, for the same basic reason it's not wise to punch to the face barehanded. It's too well protected relative to the striking tool. Use it against the abdomen, under the jaw, nose, stuff like that. Crown to crown you're both taking the same hit.