JusticeZero

Er, neither exists. A block or dodge is often a full on attack. A punch or kick is often a full on defense.

I suggest drinking lots of water before class. Often times exhaustion is actually dehydration, my endurance vanishes if I haven't gotten enough fluids that day. My recommendation is to get a one gallon glass jug (like an apple juice jug), fill it at the start of the day, and make it your goal to drain it before you go to bed. If you drink water/juice/milk from somewhere else drain that amount out, but if it's soda or coffee it doesn't affect how much of the water you need to drink (don't trade water for coffee - coffee makes you tired anyways, best too wean yourself off it anyhow). That's a healthy amount of fluid to drink in a day.

Most brawlers will flail at you and fall down, then get up again to flail more. Saw a page with a large collection of "street fights", in most of them they would start out punching, then one or both of them would fall on the ground, then stand back up again unhindered - there was little if any 'grappling' involved on the ground. With training you should be quite able to enforce your preference of location, since untrained people can't control the fight, and anyone capable enough to force the action into their area of expertise over you you probably have little chance to best in their game anyways. If someone can ward off your throws and keep punching you, they can probably outbox you straight up anyhow and you need to learn how to run. The grappler tends to have the advantage here because they have to train more to change the combat range so they can throw.

By the way, i'd also like to add my commentary here..A bar fight is NOT SELF-DEFENSE. If you didn't want to get in a fight you wouldn't be getting up in people's faces in a bar. People talk about the danger of bar fights all the time and always in glee - face it, people go to bars looking for a fight. That's not self defense, that's just a hazy excuse for a fight club.

As far as fighting in the ring vs fighting in the street - in the ring, everyone is trained in grappling and breakfalls, and they are fighting on a relatively soft surface. In real life, noone who is likely to attack you knows how to breakfall, and you will be throwing them onto rough concrete. I would also think Wing Chun to be a poor complement from the little I know - Judo needs the center open to draw the throwee in, and WC is obsessive about closing that space. Watch a handful of boxing lessons so you can learn how a boxer will move, but you don't need a high level of proficiency in it for what you will be doing. If you can, take the lessons and do not allow them to teach you how to punch or to do any work involving you punching. You will not be trying to trade blows with anyone, and you do NOT want to get in the habit of squaring off and trading punches.

Didn't I reply to this once before? Capoeira is straight out. I spend a lot of time posting a lot of my body weight on my hands for various reasons. Karate would be fine, i'm sure. You'll want an art that uses an asymmetrical stance, and you'll want to work with your teacher to focus on the things you can do without straining your injured hand. Probably this means you'll be focusing on specializing in fighting from specific stances, say uninjured hand forward side stances and becoming a specialist with lead hand strikes and lead foot kicks. Look for a teacher willing to help you work toward this goal.

It's hard to advise how to kick better without knowing what style you do. For instance, in my art, the best advise I can give for how to kick harder is to practice making the leg completely limp while kicking and not use the thighs at all.. Obviously this doesn't work well with advise on kicking slow with weights, for instance.

Will your sensei be able to oversee classes at least? Someone in, for instance, a wheelchair, might not be able to do a solid back kick, but they can still help someone else to find the proper form of the back kick. I am sorry to hear about your teacher's turn of fortune. I hope that something good comes of it for them in the end.

Any decent chinese, filipine or indonesian MA there? Kali, Silat, gung fu? I didn't see anything that wasn't Japanese or MMA-trendy on your list.

Get rid of the baggage on the term "Dim Mak" first. It's not about touching someone in a funny place and having them fall over. If it was people would be dropping dead all the time from being patted on the back. Hit someone hard in the diafraghm and you can make them have trouble breathing for a couple seconds. Hit someone hard on the jaw at the right angle and the shock will knock them out. Is that the sort of thing you're looking for when you talk of "dim mak"?

Hmm. Thinking back over the conversations with presenters at a disability academic conference I helped organize and with the guy i've trained beside who was blind, and an autistic friend of mine in college... No, no need to treat this special. You mentioned that he can act better to other people. Plus, though i'm not an expert in autism, I think the "emotionally a child" thing is bunk. They percieve the world differently and their mind processes things in a different way, but nothing of it is "childlike". Imagine that you cannot think abstractly; your "internal voice" only talks in pictures, not words; you sense things that others don't (which are actually verifiably there - they don't filter sensory input and thus spend most of their time noticing -everything- whether they need to or not, and can be overwhelmed by things that are out of place)

Just tell the doctor flat out that if he simply says to stop training, that he is doing nothing but forcing you to ignore at least some of his advice. Thus, he would be better advised to be more constructive in his recommendations and either help you work through it or find someone else who can. That said, you might end up having to train in a different way or art. In mine, good spinal movement is essential for the large twisting movements, but a number of CMA are big on keeping the shoulders and hips as one unit. I've had people come in with back problems and leave almost immediately upon seeing the basics. Some people, upon injuries making throws dangerous for them, go into striking arts; knee injuries sometime kickers into hand stylists, and so on.

I do NOT enjoy MY outings. Furthermore, this is a trait shared by something like 20%? of all people. It is an innate trait and your posts seem in my eyes to be dripping with the signs of it, which is why I asked if large gatherings of people left you tired. Most people find large gatherings energizing, the rest find it to be fatiguing - the reverse also applies. Another question would be: Picture having the chance to campor stay at a cabin or something of the sort all by yourself with no-one around for a long weekend, with nothing you needed to worry about, no-one talking to you, no radio or anything else of the sort. To me, and several people I know, that sounds like bliss. To others, that sounds like a horrific nightmare. There seems to be little in the way of middle ground. If you thought the solitude sounded good, that is a normal thing, and one which can cause a significant amount of stress and frustration if you don't recognize what that means; most people prefer the company and -cannot imagine anyone being different in that regard-. I'd liken it to having a low-grade food allergy to wheat and living with people who like bread or noodles in every meal and are convinced that they are healthy AND, IN FACT, ARE THE CURE TO THE SYMPTOMS OF YOUR ALLERGY - unless you realize the bread and noodles are a different experience for you than everyone else at the table, you'll spend a lot of time feeling lousy and thinking it must be normal. Once you realize the effects noodles are having, you can start to work out how to arrange to eat meals healthy for -you-.

It's debatable, but the answer is very likely "no". A lot of things are chalked up to "chi" that really aren't especially related, nor inexplicable. If using "chi" as a visualization tool to achieve these things works, great.. but it doesn't seem like it's something to take literally and it's risky to buy into it fully because of the screwy baggage from pop culture and laypeople who will attribute any number of bizzarre magic powers to you if they hear you mention the word... ...The word gets used very sloppily, and laypeople become angry if you DON'T claim to have magical, supernatural abilities in my experience. I've experienced this when I had several people argue loudly with me claiming that I couldn't possibly be doing handstands/macaco/handspins/other inverted tumbling movements after a demo without tapping some sort of chi power, thus I was deluding myself and lying to them when I told them it was practice and balance.

Lil, have you had much luck breaking into the groups that don't disgust you? (that is, the competent and presumably older students, as opposed to the giggle-girls and mumbly boys) Because it's not clear who else there is - all you ever mention in your class are the teens who you don't empathize with at all - is there anyone in your class that doesn't giggle and gossip, or mumble awkwardly? What's your other options here?

The personal reasons were mentioned earlier. Then edited out. To my eyes - and I don't know if i'm interpreting it right - the main one was that the events in question, almost by definition, were not fun. For me at least, the idea of going on a long social gettogether does not fill me with much but irritation. I've gone to them because they were opportunities to train with highly ranked people I didn't normally have a chance to, but I end up spending a fair amount of time sitting semi-alone on a beach or some such place.

Police don't intervene in juvenile affairs as a rule. Neither do school officials.

Dunno, I think i've seen some things that indicated that that movement was anything but optimal for striking, recommending either a vertical or 45 degree angled fist instead. I suppose it does clear your centerline wider to rotate it that far, though, and there may be grappling reasons for the twist.

Very likely it showed up because on stage or in myth those sort of things are easy, and representative of exaggerated ability (Well, Timmy could jump a long way and he only had two years, what if I met someone who'd trained twenty years?) and then people just talked about the special effects and mistook it for reality - sort've like how there are a number of DBZ fans who pester qigong instructors trying to learn how to shoot ki blasts. (I could hunt the link down that one of them posted..) Then some laymen heard some of those looneys talking about their training regimen and it entered the popular culture.

No-one has ever demonstrated those abilities in a way that convinces stage magicians that they aren't doing it all with wires and such. There's a million dollars waiting for someone to demonstrate even the most basic such abilities and has been since I was young. Also, those who claim such abilities usually are pretty creepy characters for whom con artistry wouldn't be out of the question. There may be something to chi gong, but this isn't Dragonball Z.

Does being around people a lot leave you worn out? Do you usually end up slipping off to the side at large gatherings? Because your reaction to the gatherings sounds pretty typical of me and a lot of people I know. And that's indicative of normal introversion. 1, 2, and 3 are really non-concerns. The gathering is seperate from MA. Bonding with students might help you in training and being recognized for your ability, as stupid as that might seem. Figure out who you need to know better and stick near those people.. you've already figured out that your peers are -not- the giggle-girls and such.

We shared space with him.. might be again, I wasn't sure. When I asked, I heard something vaguely positive, but it's been awhile. I suspect Open Gate wouldn't want him in there if he was too awful. I think I heard my teacher speak well of him once too, but again, neither of us do CMA. Not really the circles I run in though, sorry.

TJQ, XYQ, and BGZ are all effective if trained for combat. All internal and esoteric arts are prone to people failing to "keep it real" so you need to be extra careful with them. I did some TJQ for awhile, never got that deep into it but my cousin did. After awhile the teacher taught him a couple things to do with the movements (this was in Yang Taiji) that felt pretty impressive when he would use me as a training partner. He could knock the wind out of me with a pretty casual looking gesture. The sifu we were studying with felt all three were parts of a whole, but other IMA practitioners disagree; I don't know who's correct. TJQ is mostly based on "typical" gung fu movements, it has the usual footwork - to me, the footwork is pretty limited, but honestly, everyone has limited footwork from my point of view. Xingyiquan (XYQ) is a much more "explosive", "hard" style of internal MA. It features hand strikes that hit HARD that are strongly coordinated with body movement, as well as the usual manipulation etc. It's distinctive feature is that it is based on linear forward movement, sort've the 'straight blast' of chinese IMA. Baguazhuang (BGZ) is an art constructed originally as an "extra toolkit" to modify preexisting MA training, but later, the system gained further material to flesh it out. It's often described as a "martial art developed to defeat martial artists and multiple attackers". It is based on manipulation and the like built on a foundation of walking in circular patterns around opponents; the very little i've seen in person left me reasonably satisfied as to the quality of their footwork. All three can be painfully esoteric. It takes awhile to develop competence in them, because the priniples take some developing; make absolutely sure whoever teaches you can demonstrate fighting ability with their techniques because a lot of them can't, which usually means that their form is slop in all other ways as well. You can't just do forms (incorrectly at that) and magically gain the ability to fight with them. There are also a few other less-known chinese IMA, but I don't recall their names offhand. Aikido is also often included in the list of "internal martial arts". It's a Japanese art, descended from a style of jujutsu that had close ties to sword training. The founder cut away much of the attacks from it and refined the principles of entering and blending with attacks, and often there's lots of "ki" training. In any case, MAKE SURE YOU LEARN HOW TO FIGHT. Make sure you learn what it feels like to be in conflict. There is a type of person I *dread* to encounter, and that is the person who studies an internal martial art because it's "non-agressive", "spiritual", and "peaceful", and they delve deeply into the philosophies of pacifism. This type of person typically injures or abuses more people than any other type of martial artist. Don't trust them for an instant. "your karma" will cause you to fall down two flights of stairs when they are standing behind you; "Your negative energy" will "force them" to follow a spur of the moment takedown with a full power groin stomp, they will slash your tires and key your car "to protect the newer students from your energy", but in their own mind, never will they have raised a finger in aggression. They can't hold their evil, because they refuse to acknowledge it.

Is he the guy who teaches in Portland, OR down on East Burnside by the river?

If you want to learn how to protect yourself in a fight, go to the place that trains the police officers. Police generally have a low tolerance for goofy pointless-looking stuff. Plus you get to hang out with police and get some tips on how to better make yourself not have to fight.