elbows_and_knees

agreed.

You are very wrong.......A guy who goes to gym every day and train hard, may be uber strong.....I saw body builders doing bench press with 500 pounds , isn´t that strong ??? no i am not very wrong some are strong but most have the body of a corvette and then engine of a lawnmower, if you know what i mean....Bodybuilders train for muscle, not strength no, you are indeed wrong. Bodybuilders push heavy poundages to get those muscles. They are very strong. you can always test it out though. Take the strongest, non weight training guy at your school to a gym. Let him lift against the strongest guy there at the time. the result? your guy will lose the contest. Why? he's not as strong. I see the point you are trying to make, but you are making it the wrong way, like you are misinterpreting your teacher or misquoting something you read.

don't rely on those. they often don't work in altercations. I have been kicked in the groin in an altercation and didn't feel it until after the altercation was over - it was too late then. Use them, but don't rely on them.

realistically, in an all out fight, the female will lose. This is why you don't really see men fighting women in boxing and kickboxing. Despited being trained, a female would have to be WAY better than the bigger male in order to beat him. Now, in point sparring, this isn't the case - distancing, speed, timing, etc are key. But if contact is involved, the girl really doesn't have much chance unless she's way ahead of him technique wise, as I stated earlier. Not too long ago, I had a sparring match with a woman I met who had been training for 22 years, the same length of time as me. her technique was awesome, but off balancing and throwing her was easy, simply because I know how to throw my weight around. This is not to say that a woman can't beat a man in a street fight - the element of surprise is a beautiful thing. But if there is no surprise and they are just going toe to toe, the woman doesn't have much of a chance.

capoeira schools are known for training outside. However, to say that all good schools train outside as opposed to inside seems far fetched...

squats aren't plyometric. Now, if you add a jumping motion in there, it would be.

sure you did, but NOTHING always works, which brings me back to what I said. If you can't use it, it's useless. This is where what she says is important - adaptation is everything.

that was the impression I got as well. However, even if It were my own list, leg locks wouldn't be on it.

it's drilled in martial arts all the time. "martial arts are for defense only" several schools have a student creed that involves saying something similar. Heck, even most kata begin with a block. you are taught not to strike first, but to strike hardest. people aren't scared to strike first because of the law. I guarantee you that 90% of people in altercations will not have the presence of mind to be thinking about the law. They are focused on the altercation at hand. the consequences are more of an afterthought.

I haven't seen the video, so I'm not commenting on it, BUT, MA training can actually be a hinderance in a fight, for several reasons.

not really. If he can't land his perfect, powerful technique, it's useless. so from a martial aspect, he still loses. However, he would win from an entertainment perspective, because he would only have to look good.

you are both right. where you are wrong is your definition of style. style does not merely mean something looking pretty. Style, especially pertaining to martial arts, implies a lot of things. most importantly, how a move is executed. Look at the roundhouse as it is done in muay thai. then look at how it's done in TKD. the style dictates how it's done, not how pretty it is. She is actually very correct. How well you adapt to a situation means everything. The best, most powerfully executed technique in the qord means nothing if you can't use it.

you are both right. where you are wrong is your definition of style. style does not merely mean something looking pretty. Style, especially pertaining to martial arts, implies a lot of things. most importantly, how a move is executed. Look at the roundhouse as it is done in muay thai. then look at how it's done in TKD. the style dictates how it's done, not how pretty it is. She is actually very correct. How well you adapt to a situation means everything. The best, most powerfully executed technique in the qord means nothing if you can't use it.

that actually sounds just like my school. our judo and bjj classes are structured just like that. And we have pretty much everything being taught there as well. It's like the facility is shared by different instructors. yoga kenpo bjj judo muay thai aikido kali capoeira self defense classes

definitely. pretty much any type of security enforcement has a no strike policy, unless the situation is severe. Also, I see an issue with the leg lock - not really an issue, but I disagree with it being a necessity, for a few reasons. 1. If I'm trying to restrain a guy - i.e. getting him cuffed - I can't work toward his wrists if I have to keep his leg locked. 2. a lot of people are just hard to leg lock. I am one of those people. You just will NOT leg lock me. A heel hook would work, but... 3. heel hooks are too dangerous. You often don't feel the pain at all until something has already been snapped. Not good.

Well, I'm not talking about WHY people want to learn but rather what learning should teach you. It's like this, you want to eat nice food so along the process, you learn to cook. You want to get healthy and go to a MA class, part of the process would end up that you know how to fight, ignoring questions of tai chi's effectiveness. That is what I meant. This is also why so many Tai Chi classes annoy me because in my opinion, if you cant fight with it afterwards, you are not learning it properly so why go to a tai chi class in the first place? If you aren't learning it properly, how much benefit are you really getting out it? DON'T talk about tae-bo... And thank you for the response. I've been reading the discussions here and your responses are things that stand out as being worth more than some others. And I guess that's part of it too - you can't teach someone what they don't want to learn. Using myself as an example, by day I am a web developer. In college, I had to take a cobol class. Now, as I'm sure you know, cobol has absolutely zero to do with the web. Consequently, I didn't wanna learn it. And to this day, I can't program a lick of cobol, even though I passed the class. mentally, I knew that wasn't what I wanted, so I just did enough to get by. I didn't internalize it. I didn't try to learn it. fighting is no different. I can try and teach a person all day, but until they internalize it and decide that they want to do what it takes to really learn it, then they will just go through the motions - which will not teach them how to fight. Thanks for the kind words. Since you've joined the forum, your posts are among those that I look forward to reading as well.

the thing I don't like about practicing it that way is that it gets people in the habit of doing a 360 spin, which is bad. And unnecessary. There's already a discussion about that here somewhere, but you can get full power from the kick without a 360 spin (if you miss) which can expose you unnecessrily.

I know that feeling... I'll be at work saturday night too!

Man, I wrote a LONG reply to this from my smartphone while I was at work last night, and the blasted phone wouldn't post it. I was TICKED. I agree - drilling is great. However, having seen drilling fail several times over, I also know that it's not necessarily the best thing to use for altering that response pattern, especially the way its drilled in some schools. fully cooperative, non adrenaline producing drills simply are not good for that. naturally, the more realistic the drill, the better, but short of randomly attacking a student, you can't really induce such an adrenaline response. that goes for sparring as well, however sparring can simulate it better, I would imagine. that's actually the point - do what comes natural. It's like boot camp. The purpose is purely to instill that survival instinct - you do what you have to to try and survive. After you have developed this, you are refined and learn to control the instinct. IME, this method is actually easier than trying to first teach someone, refine them, THEN instill "killer instinct". Because now, what comes natural to them isn't that wild rage or raw strength - they are trying to use the techniques they spent so much time refining, which 1. aren't always natural 2. aren't yet second nature it's confusing. I am in total agreement with that. eh, it's not a big deal to me anymore. It frustrated me at first, but such is life. I am fully aware there is a method to the madness, but I sometimes question the origin of the method. many tcma styles were used on the battlefield. Something like shuai chiao I can understand, as it has a quick learning curve and is brutal. However, xingyi was used by imperial guards from what I understand...it seems completely irrational to think that it and other styles always took so long to learn, considering how and when they were used. you can't take an untrained man and toss him on the battlefield if his only training was spending several months learning a proper stance. you can't create a soldier that way. Nah. But he did stick with tcma. He had already been training tai tzu, which he still trains.

what do you mean by fighting stages? as far as ranking goes, it's pretty much uniform in all judo clubs. Like bushido was saying, you may not focus on ground work too much - that tends to vary from club to club though, as everyone has their preferences. At one club I train at, coach loves ground work and its about a 50 / 50 split between that and standup. At the other club, it's 100% standup, as all of those guys also train bjj anyway, so they get plenty of groundwork.

thanks!

yeah, it does. It REALLY does, regardless of what anyone tells you. 1. one of the main factors in success is intimidation. When you have that advantage, you can end a lot of confrontations before they begin. I have had guys tell me that they would whoop me if I wasn't so big. 2. leverage is a beautiful thing, but realistically, the bigger you are, the harder time a little guy will have with you. If you are small, guys bigger than you will tend not to respect you. they will try you because they are bigger than you and feel they can push you around. 3. I'm not sure how it is in wales, but in the US, people like to sue. For that reason, we are not allowed to strike unless the situation is dire - like multiple attackers or involvement of weapons. This means that most of your altercations will involve grappling. Size will be of great benefit here, especially if your skill is lacking in the grappling department. realistically though, as a woman, you shouldn't be approaching men. When we did have a female (we may hire another soon) she only handled females, unless a guy started something with her. She was more of our watchdog - she would spot people smoking weed, possible altercations, etc and let us know. If there were females involved, she would handle them. trained or not, the average small woman will get mauled by even an untrained man.

I both agree and disagree with eye contact. it can intimidate some, but to others, "mean mugging" them and making eye contact is disrespect and cause for a confrontation.

I'll be 29 sunday.

we know what you mean, but you can't do that, short of picking a fight, can you? hard contact competition is the next closest thing.