G95champ

Welcome

Not yet and I hope never to be.

Because the Kickboxer is wearing gloves I would say the Shotokan guy has a slight advantagae. LOL. These question always end up in no good. LOL

I don't know about the SD comment. I think both would do fine in SD. However your right that Shotokan would give you more escapes, throws, breaks etc. Both are very powerful arts and in the hands of the right person can do well in any event IMO.

Shotokan tends to mix well with most arts because its balance. They only prob. I would have with mixing 2 differant forms of karate is the differance in kata. I don't know that their is one but I have seen a dozen versions of Bassai Dai in differant styles and learning the Shotokan kata alone is hard enough much less getting them mixed up with others.

Yeah speed comes with good techinque being repped over and over. Then Power is a combo of speed + techinque.

1. Ask who he trained under. A good teacher will be able to give you the names of not only his teachers but his teachers teacher. 2. Ask how long? What style/styles has he studied? Why does he think that style is good or bad or both? Most MA will devend their given style till death but you can do the reserach of what he says checks out. (I mean if its a TKD school and he talkd about grappeling for 2 hrs something is wrong) 3. Talk to some of the students of differant ranks and get their take on the class? How long have they been in it etc. 4. Always find out who does most of the teaching. A lot of schools turn the teaching over to brown belts or young black belts in the beginner classes. This is not a bad thing but you want to be taught by the Main teachers some. 5. Other than those questions just you basic how much, what time, what to bring, when can I start, etc....

Agreed with what eveyone said but Ill add this. Kata forces you to train certin reflexes. Once you do something enough it becomes second nature. Thus when attacked your body may go into a combo from a kata without you having to think and say wait a second. The only way to be a good fighter is to fight. However you can become a great fighter by doing other things like kata to add to your training.

It better to pick a good TEACHER than it is to pick "a good style"

Things are not always as the they seem. Many want to look at traditional styles and say they don't have this or that. Esipically ground work. You take the Horse stance as taught in Shotokan. Put the guy on his back and person between his legs. Now you got what? The guard.... When we teach the horse stacne we teach to squeeze the legs and weight to be balanced on the outside edge of the foot. Basically the same way many grapplers teach to squeeze the person in the guard. The corss over step you see people work out of the horse stance in nothing more than the half guard. This is a more modren idea that has gotten a lot of play the last last 10 years. However stance are stance and are used as a teaching tool. They are low to build strength. No one ever wanted you to fight from them. Think of working out of a low stance like learning to ride a bike. When you little you do things slow and your bike is not very high off the ground as you grow (learn to fight) you take the training wheels off get on a taller bike and learn to ride faster. Everything starts from the ground up. Our feet are on the ground so you have to have a good stance before you can do anything in any MA. Your not just in them for the looks.

I think he is about right on. Everything starts with the legs and works its way up. When we throw a punch we push off the back leg and drive it up the leg to the hip and torso before it gets to the arm. Now to say the hips are not important is wrong. The hips make an avg. punch a great punch. I have been arround football and coaching all my life. My little brothers plays D1 football at WVU. I have never heard a strength coach who did not want his players to do Squats, and Cleans. All power comes the hips. However the power gets to the hips from the legs. If our legs are not in a good postion its hard to generate the force needed to throw the hip as needed. All the body works as one but the hips is what connectes the legs to the torso and thus is where all the power is focused. Thats why the power comes from the hip....

All my friends here are bow hunters but it never floated my boat much.

Welcome to KF

Empi is very fun as well Shotokan Fighter but Im not great at the jump so I don't consider it one of my better kata's yet.

The event and the rules will play a big factor in that.

Of the Heian kata I like Yondan. Overall I like Jittie and Hangetsu

Welcome

Yeah some of us are athletes and some of us are not. Those of us who are not we have to be really good techinaclly.

Its called buy a rank. LOL I can see certin cases that they are useful as Im in WV and my teacher is in Calf. and I can send him tapes on my progress. However to test by tape IMO is not right.

The only full contact you will ever do is when you get in a REAL fight. I don't care what the rules say you will pull things and not do stuff to the other guy because of respect.

I use the same belt system my teacher did. However when I was training he changed our second purple to a red belt so we could have a differant color belt. Its really up to your teacher and maybe the group he is tied to. Red is the only belt you will see anywhere from early ransk to pre black and post black. Our ranking system is this in Shotokan but again no 2 schools are the same. White Gold Blue Green Purple Red Brown Brown Brown Black

Its just a method of teaching. To each his own. A nice drill instrcutor type every now and then is a good thing.

Hello and welcome to KF.

Sadly most MA are taught to match force for force. So we are usually playing but rules and the bad guy is not. If we get to violent then MOST courts will rule that we used our knowledge in a wrong way and despite the fact we were attacked we may be paying Dr. Bills.

Depends on the the attack a lot. If your grabbed then you will do better than if you were forced to fight at a distance. However like I have said many times when its on the street its you and not the style you do that is going to win or loose.