danbong

Are you sure you want to complete the "sportification" of karate and btw have it under the thumb of the national governing bodies?

In the book "Hapkido: Traditions, Philosophy, Technique" by Marc Tedeschi, the term for stance is given as cha-se on page 1124. For another reference, http://www.martialartsresource.com/korean/TKD.list.htm#Stances contains the entries: sohgi : stance jah seh : posture (or stance) [used instead of "sohgi" in some styles]

Jahse is the korean term for stance, much as dachi is the japanese term for stance. I'm going to take a wild guess, but perhaps shinson hapkido is descended from sin mu hapkido. Sin (which according to some accounts should have been spelled shin) means mind. If I recall correctly, sin mu hapkido has a large following in europe.

The world can be a much more dangerous place than you realize. And there are probably fewer "good reasons" to fight than you might think. An unfortunate example of these two combined together: the son of a teacher of mine, a high school student at a private school, got into a fight with another student of that private high school. The fight was over a girl both students liked. Hey, just a good old fashioned high school dust up right? Maybe it was, right up until the point where the other student pulled out a knife and stabbed my teacher's son to death.

At the shotokan school I trained at it definitely was not a technique that drilled on. On the other hand, it did appear in more than just heian godan for we pre-shodan katas. The crescent kick is in bassai dai which is usually a brown belt kata. It is also in hangetsu which is studied at the brown belt level in the association we belonged to, but I don't think other associations make it compulsory for shodan grading.

The thing you might like about training with Eddie Bravo is he has heavily modified BJJ to make it work better in no-gi situations.

Has anybody tried Eddie Bravo's system?

I'm with you 110% bushido_man! I think at blue belt what they need to "transcend " is ignorance and rough/poor execution of technique.

In terms of obligations, it depends on if you wish to continue to train with this instructor. If you do not like the way he teaches, including his grading policies, you are free to chose another instructor to train with, and should not feel bad for doing so. On the other hand, if you wish to continue to train with him, you should tell him that you are also training with another instructor. And just as you have no obligation to train with him, he has no obligation to teach you either. So if he prefers to not to continue to teach you if you are studying with another instructor, you should not harbor ill feelings to him.

Montana speaks the truth. If you are ever confused as to how to do a technique properly, ask your sensei. Personally, I don't think that in shotokan, a blue belt is really qualified to "teach".

If you want to compete in MMA, then the best place to train is somewhere that does much of their training using MMA rules and format and that does a lot of (successful) competeing in MMA events, almost regardless of style. So just sticking to FMA, training with the Dog Brothers will be far more useful to you doing well in MMA competition than a world class guro who teaches classes that only does light contact pure standing stick vs. stick or a school that only did pre-arranged drills and no live sparring at all.

What's the name of this school? This sounds very familiar to this ad from the phone book "kenpo, tae kwon do, kobudo, jiu jitsu (brazilian), tai chi, arnis, streed defense, weapons, boxing, aikido, kick boxing"

I think that you know in your heart what you should do. You just need to hear others tell that it's ok. Here's what I think: I have never regretted doing what I truely felt in my heart to be right. I have read enough of your posts in the past to know that you are a level headed guy with both feet on the ground. Good luck!

A few years back here in Sacramento, somebody tried to rape a female PE teacher in a deserted locker room during a basketball game at night. The teacher trained in bjj. She started to choke him and then he fought her off so *he* could run away for his life. Maybe bjj doesn't work all the time for rape defense, but it certainly gives you a good starting point IMHO.

So he had you grab his wrist and then he defended with a joint lock? You shouldn't have to cause lots of pain to teach joint locks. In the beginning you have very compliant partners so you understand the motions and the mechanics of the locks. As you progress, your partner can use more resistance, but by this time you should be good enough that you create a bit of pain, but not too much. An instructor should definitely be able to perform the technique without hurting you. So possibly he was demonstrating that his techniques work and can cause pain if needed, or he is not as skilled as he purports to be, or he just likes causing pain. Now of course if somebody says "I don't think that technique works" and resists full force, it might take creating *lots* of pain to complete the technique. And it's not a big deal if that's how you feel. What you do need to do though is to determine why you are taking martial arts. If health, fitness, stress relief...are the most important things, with "perhaps improve ability to defend myself" low on the list you should be fine. But if self defense is an important criteria, understand that you need lots of contact and "that sort of thing" no matter what art or style you study.

Welcome to KF! It's good to see that you have concrete goals. Best of luck in achieving them.

Is this an olympic style tournament, you should only need red and blue for the hogu. You usually don't wear the vinyl dipped foam hand and foot pads.

Alpacinator1 originally asked about it's use as a strike. But as bushido_man96 points out, the same hand formation can be used in a grab. And example is found in bassai dai rigt before the side kick to the knee. In hapkido we tended to keep the thumb closed up with the palm during the beginning of the parry and didn't spread it out until after contact was made with the opponents wrist.

If it is too dificult to do "normal" pushups, do them on your knees instead of your toes. Also, do several sets of pushups. So even if you can only do say 5 pushups, if you did 3 sets, you would have done 15 ppushups in one day. Also remember to do back and abdominal exercises too.

Is it the strike shown here http://home.planet.nl/~karatedo/Kyokushin/pagina/basic/basic34.htm? I learned it in hapkido as a strike to the throat using the web of the hand. Another hitting surface might be the knuckle to the first joint of the index finger. Typically a strike using either of these two surfaces is done very hard and fast and used when lethal force is called for. You can also use this as a gentler pushing motion using the tip of the thumb against the throat below the voice box as a non-lethal pressure point technique.

I sure hope it was Azmyth that made you use upper case - I'd sure hate to have a 6' 6" guy from Montana upset with me I used a poor choice of words. What I meant to convey is "less body motion during each step," so the details are more apparent.

If you can't perform your white belt kata/form with black belt skill and quality then you shouldn't be a black belt. Now having said that, let me note that typically white belt forms are the hardest to do "perfectly" becuase the moves are so simple that it is very easy to see the smallest flaws in your technique.

Hello ironsifu and welcome to KF! I live in Lincoln and will be teaching classes in Olivehurst starting this October. And late this year the head of the association I belong to plans to let me be a partner in a school planned for the Lincoln/Rocklin area.

Actually, even though aikido uses lots of joint locks, they deliberately do it in a way where the intent is to not cause injury. Childrens classes are very common in aikido. I would say that it's mostly the class. When you first learn these rolls or falls, you need careful instruction to make sure you are not putting undue stress on your neck or back. And if you are doining it mostly ok, but not perfectly *and* you are doing a whole bunch of them for the first time, that's a great way to get a sore neck or back. They might not have been as careful of that since it was a university club where the majority of members are typically very fit and get over aches and pains quickly.

If it makes you gag, then it is not fitted properly.