JusticeZero

There's a metric a!!ton of African martial arts, but they are as of yet virtually unheard of in America. Eventually, some of the practitioners of these arts may start trickling in and teaching, but as of yet they are almost nonexistant in the US.

I dread people with anger studying things like Yoga - it turns them into a liability and a danger to everyone around them. Non-combative exercises like that help people bottle up even more repressed anger, while also giving them a persona which denies that they CAN be angry. The result is that they passive-agressively mangle and abuse everyone around them, and can't even acknowledge it. If you are worried about anger, take up something that includes solid aggressive sparring as a regular part of it's routine. Something like boxing, grappling, or other contact sparring teaches you to control and harness your anger, giving it a safe and controlled release that helps you to accept it as a part of you without simply blocking it up and letting it break out wildly to rampage. Good arts for that include things like boxing, wrestling, kyokushin karate, BJJ, escrima/kali, savate, muay thai, most any gungfu that emphasizes heavy sparring (there are many of those, but I don't know enough about CMA to know what ones are good to look for in this), probably judo.

Right, that's another advantage of fighting back hard - it saves you punishment in the long run, since so many schools have a policy of punishing both people equally.

Well, the fact that you "can do cartwheels" might be a slight hindrance, because that means that you have to start by forgetting how to do a cartwheel. Capoeira doesn't use cartwheels. They use au. They look very similar, but are NOT the same. Just try it. Make a commitment to stick it out for at least two months of not skipping class for "fun stuff". To Aodhan: There is debate over precisely what the exact origin is, but there is zero doubt that it is African MA at it's core. It follows the structure and resembles a number of AMA, even if noone has located a specific undeniable root in Africa. If a lot of Chinese MAists were transplanted to Antarctica and devised a martial art, then later it was unclear exactly what lineage it came from, but it contained lots of bow stance, snake creeps down, clearly identifiable jings, eight trigram theory, and forms more than slightly reminiscent of existing chinese MA, I wouldn't hesitate to say that that art has roots in chinese MA.

UGH. Why should getting beaten by a girl be different from losing to some guy with similar skills? She is training to be able to beat you, not to stand around and giggle cutely while waiting for you to knock her out with your club and drag her to a cave to crank out babies. GET OVER IT.

You know that's been tried out before, right? What was the name of that...? Haven't heard of anything of the sort. The street was specifically mentioned, so that rules out artificial sport venues. And plus, while the Gracies may have been winning lots of mattches, I remember reading a statistical analysis that showed that if you were mainly a BJJ practitioner and your last name was not Gracie, you were at a disadvantage in MMA competitions on any given year - non-Gracie BJJ stylists were never able to achieve a 50% win ratio. A few years old, but since that time, the Gracies have been hammered flat in various matches, high kicks and traditional Karate technique have re-emerged in MMA competition, and more.

I've been told that it's of middling age, neither ancient nor exceptionally recent, it seems to have ties with Long Fist gungfu, but it has it's own principles and materials and isn't just same-old-same-old done in molasses. Some of their practice is done pretty fast, it's not just sluggish forms.

Don't know that BJJ combines with Capoeira particularly well, but at least they use different ranges. BJJ is an art of Japanese origin and Capoeira is of African origin and at no point in their construction that I am aware of were they mixed. But on the bright side, BJJ is something you switch to in a scenario where you don't have so much to clash with. Tips for doing kicks? Ummm.. do them? Not sure what you're having trouble with or what art you're doing.

As I recall, "Supreme Ultimate" in this sence can also (and probably should be) translated as "Focused Tips Of The Pole Boxing" as "ultimate" in this case is very possibly being used in it's definition of "the end" rather than as the superlative that English has evolved to make it out to be.

I remember that clip, if it's the one that calls the Drunken stylist a Wing Chun artist.The Drunken guy wasn't actually doing -bad- per se, but the fact that it was sparring wasn't helping them, and they lacked one crucial thing - they had no plan for how to move beyond the threat space of a lead leg snap kick. They would move in, get touched by this little extreme range toe flick from the next county, then break and have to do it again. What else are they supposed to do if not what they are training? The rules favored the karateka. The Drunken stylists had no good strategy for how to deal with a technique that they do not train or use, and then were not able to use the limitations of the problem technique to bring the match into their field.

No, and it wouldn't be 'perfect'. 'The five flavors cloy the palate' and all that. You would cover a vast menu of solutions with such an art, and while chosing which of the myriad ways to fight the attack off (none of which you had spent much time doing), be steamrolled. Your core training should center around a small number of movements that work, then you should add range from there tying into the favorites. That means you will probably build a general response and then add to it with more depth of training that broadens and builds upon the tools you have chosen to base your response on. This might be all grappling, or all soft, or anything else. It will probably not be a "perfect blend of everything". It is up to us to decide what threats we are most likely to face, then carefully chose and hone those tools we need to fight that threat and those like it without becoming distracted and lost roaming the toolshed, or becoming weighted down under a mountain of unpolished tools.

I manage. My body type does NOT look like the stereotype. Of course, I don't know what school you are looking to go into either. Some teachers or arts might not work well with extra weight. An angola school might be easier.

It's what was called "Ninjutsu" in the 80's. In essence it's a form of Jujutsu, pretty decent at keeping the strike/standup grappling ratio nice and mixed, which seems to have at least some roots in a historical group of infamous sorts - of course, where it came from doesn't actualy have much bearing on what it is now. Reasonably effective, though it has gotten some criticism because some of their training methodology is less than realistic for reasonable reasons. Judo was created by removing techniques which could break their training partner too easily like joint techniques and such - budo taijutsu tends to revel in that type of technique, but they pay the price in ability to train those techniques. They have gotten some flak for a couple of things which IMHO ultimately don't matter; for instance, their belt scale goes up to 15th black rather than 10th. It would appear that the reason is that in most arts that use the modern system of belts, 1-5 black has deliverables, and 6-10 are lifetime achievement beyond those five. In BT, they apparently put ten black worth of deliverables, then found they needed more belts for the merit ranks. They have several quirks of the sort, and tend to take fire for all of them. They've also had some freakish stuff go on that looked bad. All in all, they seem to be reasonably competent as a rule, they focus on self-defense and disdain sport competition. A decade or so ago they had this wierd ego-perfection thing going on, but in past years, the BT people I have heard from have stopped talking like they were choking up fortune cookies and seem to be more reasonable.

I've also heard that Eagle Claw Gungfu does a lot of aerials, though I can in no way confirm that. I don't do CMA.

I'd suggest some form of standup grappling art - like Judo, Shuai Chiao, or the more combative forms of Aikido (Yoshinkai or something I think is the one I hear of most as being faster to be effective) because standup grappling arts tend to have the most effective options for control with minimal harm. I would also advise trying to get hold of police officers and finding out what precautions you can take to lessen your danger - an ounce of prevention is actually worth a pound of cure in my opinion in this regard. You want to learn what behaviors criminals watch for and how they go about chosing their targets, so that you won't look like a victim. Cell phones are useful. Something to contact police. If something happens, be friendly, treat it like a business transaction. Do NOT allow yourself to be moved to a second crime scene! Assume that if you are brought to a second crime scene that you will die instantly upon being put in the car/whatever and respond appropriately. Memorize what they look like. If you have to fight back, try to make sure you do VISIBLE, DISTINCTIVE damage that you can describe to the police. It's harder to find a "white male wearing a blue windbreaker that might have been taken off by now" than it is to find a "white male wearing a blue windbreaker, bleeding from the right cheek from a scratch with keys". Don't let yourself look like a victim. Before walking across open spaces, glance around to be sure it's clear. Don't walk through groups of suspicious people. Get your keys out before walking across parking lots.

Well, talk to them afterward. Some fights are reasonable. Some aren't. Hard to tell in a situation like that. If they're already in the fight, best to give them some backup and assume they know what they're doing, in my book, though i'd think de-escalating it while taking his side would be good too. But afterwards i'd want to know what happenned, and if it was lame would probably be a good time to suggest some change. Something like, "Dude, i'm your bro and i've got your back, but that sounded like a pretty weak reason for a fight, and i'd rather not have to bail you out and have it turn out that you started it for some stupid reason.." Anyways, slapping can be really, really effective if you know how to use it. Use hip rotation and step-through and you can potentially break someone's jaw, with much less chance of damaging your hand than you would with a punch given the same low amount of conditioning. Mind, most people don't know how to slap, and the way that Boxing is ingrained into American culture means that when someone does get an inspiration to do an "untrained" attack with something resembling structure and body dynamics, it's a Boxing punch and thus closed fist. When it comes to showing people hand techniques, I really only cover the slaps (and elbows, and wrist strikes) as a rule because hey, we all have desk jobs now. We gotta be able to type.

Which ones are difficult? The ones I know are pretty easy - though you can't really do them well as part of another martial art. Basic principles of how to move make all but a tiny number of extremely esoteric and nonstandard asian MA stylists pulling their hair out with the contrariness and differences.

Could you explain what you mean better? I really don't understand the question here.

Usually the art associated with gymnastic aerial kicks that i've heard is TKD. I think there's a gungfu style that also tends to do a lot of aerial kicking. I'm a bit curious as to why you feel aerial kicking is important, however.

TKD, in my experience, does more fancy, often gymnastic or exotic, aerial kicks before 7 AM than my whole Capoeira class ever did in an entire year. Most TKD people I have talked to say they do them for training purposes, but we never did them at all. Mind you, there are a lot of styles of Capoeira, and your mileage may vary quite a bit.

Honestly, just because they're "bigger" doesn't mean fighting won't be effective. They want NO risk and NO pain, and even if you are outmatched, you can make them know that they're in a fight - that's enough to get most bullies to stand down and leave you alone in future.

10th degree black in "my own art" often - not always, but the majority of the time - signals a highly ego-filled teacher with questionable qualifications who feels that that combination of factors will look better than anything else to the layperson, plus, being in their "own art" with no other ties means that there is no-one to measure against and no possible quality control (which is a major reason why someone might create "their own art" in practice..)

One other thing to remember.. Sparring in your MA club is not fighting, it is training. Don't do it to win, do it to experiment and practice. No-one cares if you can win your sparring matches by doing some velveeta snappy-flick, you are only cheating yourself that way. Go in expecting to lose - don't even pay attention to who won - but keep your head and study how the other person moves, how you react, experiment with new movements and study positioning and footwork.

I get a bit tired with hearing advice to "run and tell a teacher". It doesn't help; iit often comes across as the sort of condescending thing adults might say to make themselves feel virtuous, IMHO, because it doesn't address the core problems. One phrase I have been told is "All calling the police accomplishes is to place you at the scene of the crime". This would seem to be true in the school environment as well; nonsensical "zero tolerance" policies and the like run rampant. Getting authority involved can help in some situations, but may also make the situation worse in others. To the bully, pushing people around is fun, and if they are someone who they can push in safety, more the better! If they react amusingly, bonus! This is why I come off as being a psychopath to people posting about problems with bullies - I had a lot of trouble with bullies growing up, and I discovered that the only thing that worked, and worked WELL, was to remove the impression of safety. The general pattern I experienced was "Start school, get pushed around, picked on - tell the school, get picked on, tell a teacher, get picked on, no change, get harassed because a teacher gave a bully the hairy eyeball but couldn't act, get picked on.. go postal and do my damnedest to put the offending bully out of commission for a few days .... utter peaceful serenity and friendly people surrounding me for the rest of my days at that school... oops, move to a new school, repeat..." all these examples I was not being harassed by ONE bully but several, nonetheless, one incident of violence in public and word gets around where you need it. And yeah, when being pushed, twist with it and pull them in the direction they were pushed or something similar. RELAX and let them spin off you like pushing a beach ball floating in the water.

Japanese Jujutsu is a police-type art family that has a wide range of control techniques from a variety of positions. Because it has more techniques, each technique gets a relatively small amount of time, and some techniques cannot be trained safely with intent because of the risk of seriously damaging training partners. However, the tools are effective and the range of tools gives a lot of tactical options. Brazilian Jiu Jutsu is a "filter" of Jujutsu (actually, of Judo which is itself a filter) - that is, it is created by beginning from a larger library of techniques, and removing all but a smaller number of techniques fitting a philosophy or training goal. In the case of BJJ, it focuses heavily on "groundfighting", that is, using wrestling type movements to get to the position of being tangled with a single opponent on the ground, then place them in a submission position or render them unconscious. The filter from Judo's "no intrinsically damaging movements to allow full power sparring" means that they can practice with full intent on each other (and thus tend to greatly outperform more theoretical practitioners in their field because of their direct experience), but also limits their tools significantly; BJJ stylists may encounter serious, if not insurmountable, difficulties in situations where "ground and pound" tactics are unadvisable such as multiple attackers, hazardous ground, crowds, or armed attacker.