JusticeZero

First, master one art to use as a solid foundation, Then you can look at taking ideas from elsewhere and trying to find ways to express them with the structure in your foundation.

While it may be in another city, I know that the bus system connects them.

I know Seattle proper has lots of Capoeira, but there's generally cost. Sometimes something can be arranged with a teacher, but there is still cost of some kind. Is Seattle too far to go?

Generally i've heard good things. It's not an uncommon style, and nothing too terribly exotic as things go. People more knowledgeable might be able to comment on the teacher or the lineage thereof (I don't know enough about the Karate world to, though.)

I wasn't, it was pretty goofy. Decent story - needed another draft of the script though to clear up the silly stuff - the capoeira was unimpressive to absurd. And why they had people speaking spanish is a mystery to me, kind've like having a movie about a Japanese Aikido school and using actors trained in Cantonese for the scenes in Japan. The capoeira scenes were pretty awful. I didn't see any esquiva, any mea lua de compasso, no negativa, and those are all fundamental to the style in a huge way and completely change how a fight scene looks. I blame choreographers who didn't understand the style at all, but it makes it look so foreign.. I've equated it to filming a movie about challenges to the first Aikido dojo in Japan... The actor playing O'Sensei gives a rousing speech about aiki and flow, then the students stand up to fight the challengers. Lo and behold, the studio trained the actors in Muay Thai and brought in a Thai kickboxer to choreograph it, so after talking about flowing and blending, they all raise their knees and start throwing spinning shin kicks.

Yeah, but when you're being full aggressive, you are also at your most vulnerable. Get angry in the roda and you've lost, period. You'll be picking yourself up and dusting yourself off in seconds, and look like an idiot to boot. Attacks get really predictable, and they're wide open full of weaknesses to exploit.

Well.. yeah, and your back. It's eventually properly done, as I recall, with your hands not touching the floor. The hands are described as a learning tool.

Better to live and be thought a fool than to die with honor.

June 18... then September 14. Serious thread necromancy at work, folks.

Because, as far as we're concerned, they'd just get you hurt in a roda or a real fight as a rule - maybe if you were really, really good at them, but when we see people do jump kicks, it's usually no trouble to move under them and they fall down and hit their head. They don't fit with the way that we have to be able to turn movements into other movements, and they give too much to the target to be street-practical. Thus, absurd. But if they're what you want to practice, go ahead.

We get belts at the end of yearly week-long intensives. They run from $80-250 for the week depending on the situation, facilities, etc.. and I think generally closest to $150. Much of this cost is because it includes covering international airfare and expenses for the master. The rest is devoured by space rental, food, and so on. As I recall, historically we have often lost money on them. There's a big rant there that I will spare you, but will say that it is important under some circumstances to plan for a lot of people to no-show or try to get out of paying. I will note also that it isn't as scary as a $150 belt test would be to an Asian MA because we have less belts. What might be thought of as a 'black belt' is our second or third belt. We have 7 belts, but the lion's share of those are in the realm of various dan rankings.

Furthermore, it's likely only a Regional form that'll use aerials in Capoeira. Angola styles generally don't do them. (I'm teaching Angola, albeit only as a monitor, and I never learned them beyond my teacher telling me that they were absurd.)

Study before the test. Get lots of sleep the night of the test. Drink plenty of water. No caffiene. When you get to the test, just take it. Don't ruminate on what the test means or anything like that. The test measures what you have learned, and by the time you reach for the door, your ability to control that has vanished. So just do what you can and relax, because your grade was essentially decided the moment you stepped in the testing center doors.

If you don't, then your training isn't very much good for fighting, is it? Honestly though, your peripheral vision should be good enough that you can immediately recognize people coming into your school and be able to size them up while you're in the midst of a sparring match and not facing the door, and be able to carry the skill over to whatever.

Don't play his game. There's specific targets and distances that they're trained to use. Don't stand right in the middle of them and try to trade blows. Hit their legs, keep them at range, take them down. Deny them the advantage they have trained for.

Why do you continue to ask about killing techniques? If you are in a military situation, you are issued a gun for a reason. If not, such techniques make you a murderer who is intentionally jumping far beyond reasonable on the threat spectrum, as all the 'killing techniques" generally only happen AFTER the attacker is immobilized and thus legally becomes a victim, not an attacker. Once the robber breaks off his attack and tries to flee, or is tangled up on the ground with no backup, they are no longer a villain in the eyes of the law. If you proceed to take that killing shot, you are guilty of murder. If you have specially prepared for it, you are guilty of murder which you planned out in advance. If you are fighting in a war, the only 'killing technique' you likely really need to know is the one-finger pull; I suppose it might be possible (but highly unlikely) that you might need to know how to use a big fricking knife, but if you are in such a situation, you will have been specially trained and outfitted with such a tool.

Bruce Lee was NOT the "first cross-trainer". It wasn't ever "taboo" to do that, lots of classical stylists would pull down some supplementary elsewhere. However, the extent to which Lee bounced between teachers was unusual. Read the Tao of Bruce Lee, and honestly there's nothing in it that you wouldn't get from a good classical stylist once you finished with the fundamental part of teaching yourself the movement theme of that art as a foundation.. with the 'get these basics down first' part being the kicker that Lee ran into.

Look behind them, don't look at them. Look at them and you lose the picture, get hit with other things.

Don't know that instructor offhand. If tought that way, it can be very effective. Most teachers don't teach for fighting effectiveness, but the paranoia and awareness in lying, cheating, manipulating, and backstabbing are pretty useful, keeps you from being a sucker. Stay loose and remember that life isn't a video game, real fights people pull knives and guns when your back is turned, pull sympathy and leave with your girl before the cops arrive once they've attacked you and lost.

Oh yeah, I agree that chokes are great, but I can't teach them in text, doon't do enough anyways to be considered an expert, and I wouldn't want to unless I knew that people reading knew the first aid to treat the things that can go wrong from a choke, as there are several ways that people can die from an otherwise correct choke if unrecognized and untreated.

Pike your legs up so that your center of balance goes over your shoulders, then unpike hard and shoot your legs under you. Neat trick, hardly the best way to stand up quickly though IMO. I prefer role, queda de quatro, or even macaco, since those don't leave me ballistically committed with an openning the size of my torso and face flying directly into oncoming attack. Every time I see someone do one of those, I have an almost irresistable urge to pick my foot up for them to run face first into about a foot before they hit their balance point. Still, I guess it beats crawling your way to your feet clumsily.

Plenty of grapplers know various chokes, but they don't want to practice them until they can also teach how to rescusitate someone from them if anything goes wrong. As far as neck breaks, I dont know that i've ever seen one i'd expect to be effective. I carry things over a hundred pounds on my head and tilt/turn my head in a relatively easygoing fashion while doing so. Peoples' necks are pretty darned sturdy. In any case, why would you need to do a neck break? I really can't think of any situations offhand where that would be the best course of action.

In stretching, once you're past your mid teens, pain means loss, not gain. Don't push yourself, just keep working on it.

Knife, definately. A pocket folder is good enough for me.

It's as much of a martial art as Kendo is. Technical and usually applicable to self defense with other similar objects.