JusticeZero

Presuming Hatsumi etc.'s claims are true - and I have no reason to disbelieve them because it's pointless - the situation is along the lines of "Once upon a time, there were a group of people who did all sorts of romantic terrorist and criminal acts for reasons which were morally ambiguous. Many of them were trained in some particular offshoots of jujutsu. We studied their history, and we know a major jujutsu variant they were using. We'll teach it to you and show you their history. If you want to call us by that last group go ahead, but it's like calling practitioners of a museum about stone age culture who know how to do historical reenactments "cavemen". "

Yeah, equivalent to a quintuple-Ph.D at 25 does seem a bit worrisome.

The background of it is..? Theories are..? Where did it come from before John Mason assembled it? What is it similar to? What about it's structure and movement is unique enough to warrant a new name? I mean, we kind've have to ask these things, since my eyes glaze at lists of moral principles lacking clear references to physical movement, not knowing how that translates into knowing how you move or train.

Do the best you can with what you have. Noone expects you to outmuscle a 6'5" hulk. But you need to be able to show that you can effectively use what you do have - if some guy comes in at your same mass, you shouldn't be getting pushed around by him easily. Main trap is that you cannot allow yourself any special pleading whatsoever. If I have a female student start explaining how they're a girl, hence just doesn't have the strength, I want to give up on them. I volunteer my time, so they aren't even buying me food, just wasting my time and theirs. I didn't ask them to come in able to pick up small automobiles, I asked them to attempt to do a thing scaled to their mass. If you think about it, it's really insulting for someone to claim that because they DON'T HAVE MUCH MASS, they can't lift their OWN BODY MASS and should not be forced to make the attempt, for instance, but girls try to give me that line all the time.

You can't just pick one, really. Nowadays, if someone tried to go in the ring with just grappling, they'd get schooled no matter how great their submission skills were. And if someone wandered in with the greatest striking background, they'd probably get tipped over fast. In any case, it's just a question of what works best in a specific tournament setting in the end. If you want to be a great sport-fighter, watch the rules and adjust to whatever the judges think should be valued, be it submissions, flying side kicks, curling up in the fetal position or turning your back on your opponent. I've seen all of them as the "ultimate scoring technique" at various points.

Right now i'm teaching through community schools. That means I have to use the school system calendar. That means in a couple weeks we're going to have a break - a LONG one. Anyone have suggestions to keep my student in trim over the break? It'll be August to October in Alaska, after awhile it'll get a bit chilled.

That sounds.. what, 20x22? Just have them do the kata at the same time and the same facing. If they don't keep in synch, they'll crash into each other, and thus show they have some problems. That sounds like a bigger room than the one I remember practicing combinations of full speed spinning kicks in with about a dozen other students.

Uhm.. actually all the Western martial arts i've seen are actually technical as all heck. Fencers know obscene amounts about opening gates and such, and that's western. Several striking arts use it as the core. Boxing is pretty darned technical.

From what you said, sounded like you did fine. Most schools i've been in, the instructor steps in to deliver the beating that you dished out, but it's no more gentle than what you did, and you -are- a shodan.

Not a movement I do myself.. there's better ways to stand up that don't involve throwing your face unprotected into an attack. Every time i've seen this movement done, someone popped off a thrust kick into the ballistic path of the kipper's upper body as they came up. It looks nifty though.

This may be so, but once again, the ones I have seen have been pretty absurd and hampered by the unusual legal status of minors. As a rule, zero tolerance means zero intelligence. Zero tolerance for drug use means the school will hand out a suspension or worse for taking an advil to stop a migraine, for instance.There was a case on the news not that long ago where an eight year old basically terrorized a classroom for half an hour - the school didn't have anything they could legally do so they called in the police who ended up coming in with stun guns. (The national networks just sensationalized the last sound bite of the police tasering a little, meek looking kid, but the local networks had the expanded version that showed everyone involved working their way up the threat spectrum.) The school was helpless. They can't do a lot of things they need to to deal with things like that.

At the school level, violence solves a LOT. Sad but true. The reason is because bullies, by definition, only want to harass people who they know won't fight back. One fight and you've demonstrated that you are not that person. Furthermore, a young student has effectively no viable legal recourse, zero societal protection, and virtually no liability. Society in schools is -messed up-.

Honestly, only if the attacker is a reasonably skilled practitioner of a grappling art, which isn't actually all that amazingly likely. Non-grapplers (including untrained fighters such as one encounters "in the wild" in general) typically are unable to take down someone with skills in stand-up, especially ones who spar using committed sweeps and takedowns on each other, which all the Capoeira I have personally experienced does. I still remember watching someone I studied under once casually stand in stance or ginga slowly unconcernedly as a man in his approximate weight class or slightly larger - a "street fighter" as he called himself - pulled, pushed, and swung on him like a jungle gym trying to "take him down" unsuccessfully for a full minute before being told to give it up.

Teach the ones who want to be there and learn. Babysit and harvest dead presidents off the ones who are just there because they have to be. On the bright side, the DBZ kiddies at least want to learn something, so i'd try to teach them things.

Generally I dread working with women because I don't have to bother defending against any attacks - they freeze up and apologize for deigning to move their body anywhere near you. Certainly there are exceptions. Unfortunately, I have only once, ever, had the opportunity to work with one of the committed ones.

Sure, it gives me a three-point solid base. But then, the stuff I study is odd.

N'golo apparently doesn't look that much like Capoeira. But that's okay, because it does follow the structure of AMA which Capoeira and a LOT of other African arts do. African arts vary. They tend to have a lot of kicking or headbutting arts, but beyond that there is the whole gamut of striking/grappling/weapons. Those with competitive aspects - and many do - are often placed in a context of a ritualized contest with musical accompaniment.

not based on what 95% of traditional martial artist in various Mixed martial arts events... Realize that those techniques only get practiced a certain portion of the time, and that they are made to defuse a takedown attempt by Bubba Joe Bailey, not Royce Gracie. We once had a "street fighter" come in and try to take down an old teacher of mine, and ended up swinging on him like a jungle gym while we tried not to laugh.

Reread your post. Sounds like you've already made up your mind on the matter. Take the gungfu, since it's what you wanted.

Well, yeah. SOMETIMES, walking away is best. Sometimes it isn't. I see a lot of people advocating pacifism at any cost, regardless of situation. That viewpoint is clearly in error.

Right. Honestly, BL and his cultists seem to, in many ways, exemplify the worst of American culture - scoop things up that look cool, grab one or two pieces completely out of context and with zero understanding of the purpose of the piece thus grabbed, throw it randomly into a mix of other inconsistant and incoherently patchworked together pieces with no stable foundation, brag about their forward-thinking and practical modern nature.

In arts with agressive outlets, you cannot just 'uncork your rage' and expect to be successful - fighting effectiveness plummets and teachers will tend to rein one in hard if one just starts frothing and going berserk in a full rage. They have to develop focus to channel that aspect of themself, rather than just ignoring it or spilling it.

When I was examining it, the groundfighting content was pretty minimal. While not absent, it was mentioned slightly less often than punches are described in Capoeira. Obviously that was pre-Gracie, but all I recall seeing about groundfighting was that it was a place one wanted to never find themselves in.

Yes, but walking away from hostile situations is also building a child's character - but not in a way that is healthy. At the risk of being considered a geek, there was once a Star Trek episode where the inspiring and capable Picard had a chance to go back in time and change history, chosing to walk away from a fight rather than jump into it as he had before (sustaining an injury he was dying from in the future). He broke up the fight and went back to the future to find that he was now the ineffective, picked upon, hassled, powerless nobody of the ship, at which point he had to go back in time again to get in the fight. If you walk away from a bully today, you will have to walk away from the taunts of the bully tomorrow and for months to come. You will also learn to walk away from any situation in which you have to deal with hardship, like - trying to get the promotion at work, trying to protect your family, etc..

Ninjutsu is now known as Budo Taijutsu, unless they changed the name again. It's basically a Jujutsu branch, they use joint breaking, standup grappling, striking, and weapons primarily.