Menjo

haha, meh, i think its just in his case, he shouldve waited until he knew anything about fighting.

Maybe, but I have yet to see a skilled one, or a master enter UFC. In the earlier days there was more variety, now, in MMA there are SOME skilled fighters with a little karate background but mainly have switched over to a different style.

haha yeah, I once had to go the the hospital for cracking my head open while doing back flips. Of course since I was in serious condition, they only made me wait 3 hours...

Ps1, Thanks, my thoughts are that you're the expert on the subject! I took the opportunity to rant on not really at your post but at what arguments I thought would be interesting for debate, since its so rare that Mongolia ever comes up in any discussion. "Warrior Tradition" sounds like a informative show or series, thanks for sharing that. How embarrasing now that I look back... Other than "fight science" I think national geographic has exellent credibility, so possibly they did break from leather. I hope they make more episodes.

At the risk of sounding rude, that is completely inaccurate and wrong. Most points are good here, however they all base off false information. The well known Mongolian tactic used agaisnt the Japanese and every other civilizationat the time was with the Composite bow, not a sword. The Samurai were either picked apart, or won decisively in close combat, which I never heard of any real Samurai victories except the storm. These are the founding facts that researchers have agreed on, a book I recommend to anyone is called "Genghis Khan and the making of the modern world". There are also many other books, one titled, "Kublai Khan" who was a famous successor of Genghis Khans. Firstly, there is hard evidence of the Japanese blade being very well crafted and even in ancient pictures. Also, at this time, the Japanese had earned the term of being a formidable opponent in terms of swordsmanship, even archery. The Mongolians knew this, and had around this time i think it was 100 000?? The largest force under Genghis Khan I've read was around this, even with conscirpts, foriegn forces would not serve much help in the mongolian tactics under Kublai Khans rule. The invasions were well known to be rushed operations, pointing out the possiblitiy of a Chinese sabatoge on the military fleet only surpassed by D-Day, aiding the storm in sinking the Mongolians. With a rushed operation, it is also well known that the Mongolians never ever HAD heavy armour because their suppliers were the Chinese who they had conquerd. The Chinese tactic was masses, masses of peasants with poorly made weapons, cloth for armour, and thier buddies as human shields. Now, no half decent sword is going to break off mongolian armour considering this: They didnt have heavy armour, if at all. Their horses were smaller, they had to travel long distances, and wearing heavy armour was something the Russians(people in that area), had used to fight the mongolians with little success. Had they used armour, oh boy I'm guessing they wouldn've been crushed by Eastren Europe, to say the least. The Mongolian blades were actually curved themselves, also much less quality, this shows that people of that time knew the benifits of a curved blade. If the Mongolians knew this, the Japanese were probably the ones to indirectly pass it on. The Mongolian blades were not meant for blade to blade confrontations, they were made for hacking and slashing at fleeing opponents who broke rank. Back to the point of the smaller horses, the larger horses were mainly a European trait as they managed to create larger horses with breeding and whatever, the large beautiful horses in reality were better suited for ceremonial services, even so, the combat fit horses they had were simply stronger and could take the weight, the mongolian horse could not. The Katana had enough practice of cutting down large forces of Chinese and Koreans to have developed a solid structure, in my guess, enough to counter the Europeans sword. Thats my view on Mongolian warefare history, sorry for getting off topic but these topics do go back to the Japanese having storng enough swords, if they didnt, it wasn't because of the Mongols.

Yeah, you have a great point there.

A block is a strike and a strike is a block. I don't get what you're trying to say here. Me neither.... Hmmmm heres my interpretation!! I think what is being said is that: If one were to look at karate as a block in this scenario, the physical movements and dojo kun are being used as a strike, which is that persons own ideal of karate.

Sure, but a cross is not a reverse punch. You punch with your rear hand, but thats where the similarity ends. So i dont thinks its has simple has "a punch is a punch and a kick is a kick". Not all are equal. Yeah I see what you mean, however I do think of it like that, a little differently, but everyone has their beliefs. Theyre all means to an end, I once sparred with a tough judo instructor before I took any type of grappling lessons... just to prove that to myself. He tried 3 times to use a hip throw, and I caught myself everytime because my body knew how to move. The training and understanding of a punch has no limits in its application. In terms of versatility, when I fight, my thoughts are completely about destorying the opponent, my hard work ahead of time covers the rest. Whats more versatile, a wrongly applied punch and getting grappled to the ground, or a completely unpredictable opponent who makes the best of things. When it becomes a game of chess, your going to get outclassed eventually, no matter who you are, therefore by saying "im a striker" admits that one cannot apply striking to any situation and your weakness will be exploited, training to fight, trains a person for any situation. By understanding my own body, I know exactly what that person is feeling in theirs, put the pieces together naturally in a second, their position and physical ability is the only thing thats going to take me down. I see this as a difference between sport and martial art.

Yeah for the average practitioner, my opinion is that knowing how to fight, ground or not, can take victory over spilt up groups of styles and grappling and striking. Just listening to stats and other people, guess what, just like training, limits one to stats and other people. It can be looked at as a larger picture of "a punch is a punch". I'm saying this all within reasonable boundries of course.

Horrible. I gagged when I watched the "karate" practitioner punch. I did some background research on him and apparently hes a big movie guy, and seems to have been in the fancy and glorified karate competitions, if thats all they have to choose, its not to impressive. At one point I think the producers even admitted in the show to chosing people who were well spoken or had more charm than to those who might have more skill but couldnt translate thier methods verbally. Besides the people chosen themselves, its easy to poke holes in the whole thing. Simply put, not enough factors to get a reasonable data collection. It looked cool, thats about it. ...3 out of 10.

Aww, I'm too late, oh well here i go anyway! From watching the streets Humanity is Content Grasping want, not change.

While I don't take shotokan, I imagine that they expect improved technique to be the requirement for advancement on those belts. Learning new techniques is all well and good, but if you don't have a solid foundation, you're going to have problems. Pretty much. In my opinion, by the time the average person gets to these levels, their training reaches a point where it plateaus, and often the learning curve is too steep to be constantly moving up every little while. Of course with every belt system, one could argue that it is for money reasons and have a good reason to believe so, however once you reach...say your first black belt, there are so many kata alone to practice, not to mention free sparing, new set of basic drills, setting a good example, and the list goes on. There is a difference between each level as with 2nd kyu and 1st kyu seem the exact same, you’re hopefully being evaluated on certain things. For example: 3rd kyu, Expansion and contraction, stance, 2nd kyu, timing, distance, and proper form. 1st, proper application of power and complete techniques with only personal flaws that take forever to overcome (within reason). When these principles are isolated and focused on, the individual can overcome just doing repetition for the sake of trying to avoid feeling awkward and not connected. As for reading material and syllabus, meh, I've managed without much reading material so far, myabe thats a bad road two go though. But you can certainly learn these things by your own training, if you train enough. Anyway, that’s my ideal on the belt system; hope that answers your thoughts.

Hey there, sorry i didnt reply sooner, however I just found this post. So heres my explanation for my message. I apologize for not having a good follow up on what my first post had implyed. Below the qoute is what I actually had meant: Neither did European knights. Here are some articles that I found online that clear up how Medieval European Knights used their weapons defensively: 1. http://www.thearma.org/essays/edgemyth.htm 2. http://www.thearma.org/essays/parry.htm 3. http://www.thearma.org/essays/parrying.htm 4. http://www.thearma.org/essays/parrying2.htm 5. http://www.thearma.org/essays/parrying3.htm These articles are written by practitioners who also research how the Medieval European fighters trained and used their weapons. Their research is based off of information from Medieval fighting manuals combined with hands-on applications of sparring with the intent of hitting the opponent--not the sword. Alright, for one, I want to rid of the possibility that i think the Knights would smash swords together over and over. In fact, my statement had a more sarcastic message and actually stated the quite opposite. Heres the qoute i was responding to: Seeing that this was some time ago, I'm not surprised I rudely insulted someone elses view of a stiuation and mocked a scenario creating one that seemed worse to me at the time. Sorry. My post meant that in his situation, the samurai and the knight would have to clash swords deliberatly, I assumed more than once, and got the idea that for a properly crafted katana to break, it would have to take more than one direct for it to break...if it all. Hopefully thats a better explanation than before...

Agaisnt people who prefer speed over power, I sometimes use: feint, front leg to kick or sweep, arms up and use jab, follwed by hand thrusting techniques. Normally the reaction is for the other person to end up using defenses that leave them standing still, as the speedy person will probably stand for the leg, and end up caught by the hands. Of course for point sparring it may not be entirely useful since driving in like that is bound to give some umimportant openings. Also probably not the best agaisnt opponents with long reach.

Typically, what is normally referred to as "training" takes place in a controlled environment, where most of the parties involved are aware of the goals and objectives of the session. The idea behind training is to use the controlled environment to build muscle memory and combat instinct through repititions. Walking up to a gang to start a fight would constitute more of an "experience" session, I believe, because there is no control over the situation. This is where the training comes in handy, because you have ingrained the movements into the muslce memory, and it will hopefully be recalled when and if needed, in my opinion. Ah, thats a good point, and I have to agree with you.

I think the intensity of a person's killer instinct is determined by early childhood or certain conditions throught life. We just wouldn't be people without that side to us. So since were animals, that pretty much means deep down we follow the same patterns of other animals, eating, growing, reproducing and so on, so take a dog, beat it for 3 years, and see how it grows up. We all know the result, ancient militaries used this effectively for proof. It just takes the right formula. Of course humans would compare differently, but under the right conditions they would reach that point. Everyone can learn it. If someone could show me a "civilized society" I'd be pretty surprised, we can't completely escape our nature, yet. Everything we do is a result from our primitive nature, for example, sex. I think everyone has a violent side, how well they would fare in a fight is different than the fact that they would resort to acting in that way. Being born ultimately dictates that the person will have a killer instinct in my opinion, since it seems that a growing enviroment is one of the main if not the biggest factors in agression. Those are very broad terms and it depends how one would train, one could fight gangs, and call that training and it really is training or some would call that experiance, either way, it still has the end result of the trained or experianced fighter. There are always exceptions of course.

Unfortunately I dont have any experiance in SanShou, however I've actually been looking around my area alot for instruction. Seems like a very interesting martial art.

I agree. Whats worse is that there might be more shows like this, making statements like that without considering options. Yeah, I question his skill, especially after seeing the video. I wonder what style he takes, the way his techniques are used look alot different than what I've ever seen.

Yeah, for sure. Thats an exellent point, I was just throwing an idea out there that I thought about the subject. I wish I could have gotten that point across like that, but I just added that to cover another extreme in blocking misconception.

That’s true. But keep in mind that Jacky Chan for example often used these cartoony fights for satire in Chinese martial arts films around that time. The thing about those cartoony and serious wushu era movies is that a lot of them have messages or jokes which are generally overlooked as buffoonery.

I absolutely agree, however one block doesn't just stop one technique. It can stop an entire fight situation. If a practitioner is skilled in blocking, they can easily find ways to translate a block into an attack, during or right after or right before they complete it. This sometimes may be more effective in close quarters. Or perhaps blocking with one hand and punching with the other, there are endless possibilities, it's often mistaken that blocking jams up or wastes movement, when really it is adapting to a difficult situation to attack. Not only that, but a proper block ( from my experiance) should doesn't leave venerable targets because if it does, then the block was over used or extended...unless there is another goal. It was said earlier that a block has limited effectiveness, and that’s true for the most part, but it defitnaly shouldn't be dismissed as extra training. I think what Jiffy and bushido_man96 said was good advice, as some people tend to fall into exactly what they said.

All the time actually where I live. A friend and myself once fought with a group who wanted money, but alot of the unarmed attackers are probably in groups to compensate.

Killer- I have to agree with you as I'm not sure what to think of the video at all, but I wonder what organization he is with. ... good music though! bushido_man96- Yeah, I see what you mean. I just hope this guy knows he might be giving kids some bad ideas.

I'm not to impressed, not saying that I could do better though! The main reason I'm not a fan of this guy is this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYcFjErOPXo athletically fit but it was a tad excessive, to say the least. He had a lot of unnecessary movement...Plus he seems obsessed with competitions from his website, as the entire thing is about his competitions pretty much. I'd like to see him compete at the Funakoshi Cup. But I understand he’s very skilled and has very fast movements.