omnifinite

I'm with them. I think you deserve better. I think you should find something taught by someone more knowledgable (15 years of experience at the very least). You'll appreciate what they have to offer you much more and you'll thank yourself for taking the chance. After a while in the new place you'll start thinking things like, "So that's why we do this," and, "My old sensei didn't even know about this," and, "I know now what would have happened to me if I stayed." Even if you can find the kata terminology and histories, you won't know the correct postures, why they're correct, and what the hundred applications of each movement are. I'm already confident your instructor doesn't know these things. So, yeah, plenty of good advice for you in the thread so far .

How old is your instructor? When I hear about instructors scrapping all the old katas and starting from scratch, I don't think of them as being "modern" and "innovative"... I think of them being short-sighted and egotistical and doing something for 5 or 10 years and thinking, "I can do better than this," without really understanding what they've been doing in the first place. In a lot of cases they've missed almost the entire point.

You're not going to like this suggestion , but, I'd say Tai Chi or something similar. You'll practice complete focus on and control of every muscle and every movement those muscles make. If you want a true mind-body connection, Tai Chi or Ba Gua or other internal arts are the first things that come to mind for me. However finding them without religious philosophy might be a little difficult. You'd probably find them boring and tedious and not even see what makes them martial arts at all during the first couple years, but no one said achieving ultimate control over your body was easy. It's something you don't need another person for in practice, but you'd certainly need an instructor for it. *shrug* Probably not quite what you're going for, but I doubt you'll gain anywhere near that kind of bodily control anywhere else.

It's great being the lowest belt at a seminar . My training partner and I were the lowest belts at the last seminar we went to and we got all the focus from the higher-ups .

I've looked through it. I'm going to buy it and read in depth someday. It's kind of neat how most of it is just scattered applicable thoughts on fighting rather than long narratives. That's probably how our brains initially mull around this stuff anyway.

Comprehensive Applications of Shaolin Chin Na (Qin Na: The Practical Defense of Chinese Seizing Arts for All Martial arts Styles) Jwing-Ming Yang The Power of Internal Martial Arts: Combat Secrets of Ba Gua, Tai Chi, and Hsing-I Bruce Kumar Frantzis I looked through these two today and loved them, especially the latter. What's going on with the books page with the broken link? It sounds like it would be a great resource.

I was wandering a book store today and took a long look through "Hapkido: An Introduction to the Art of Self-Defense" by Marc Tedeschi (the guy Kensai mentioned). It looks pretty comprehensive, and everything is presented very nicely. I'd like to take a look through his other book now, "Hapkido: Traditions, Philosophy, Technique". 1100+ pages with 9000+ images. Sounds very... informative. However I've heard the joint locks in that book aren't very advanced, and I didn't notice the locks in the book I flipped through being particularly impressive either. However I did look at another book called "Comprehensive Applications of Shaolin Chin Na" by Jwing-Ming Yang that had a huge number of impressive locks. My favorite book I saw today however was "The Power of Internal Martial Arts" by Bruce Kumar Frantzis. It gives some amazing accounts and discoveries throughout the author's very long journey of personal betterment and reminded me of all of the things I start to lose sight of when I get too focused on the mechanics of what we do. I'm going to be all over Ba Gua someday if the universe will bless me with a mentor. I had to be born a Westerner, didn't I. But this is starting to have nothing to do with Hapkido or JKD .

Just goes to show there are MMA dojos that do just as much brainwashing as the watered-down clueless traditional dojos we're sick of. Someday he'll open his mouth in the wrong place and get enough of a pounding for the wheels in his head to start turning .

This has been a paid advertisement for the National Brazilian Jujitsu Association. To find out more call 1-800-BJJ-IS-GOD or consult your local dojo!

Only thing worse than clueless-about-kata-McDojos are UFC Factories teaching that all must pay homage to the almighty Gods of Gracie. Can't wait 'til it's not the flavor of the month anymore.

S.hito contains a profane word, much to the dismay of the s.hito ryu users of the forum .

Yeah, it's rough. I get the sense that with two really skilled fighters in the martial arts, it's over in 2-4 seconds and whoever happened to mess up loses. You've already got some good advice here. I can't think of anything to add except try nailing him first. People primarily on the defensive tend to be the losers. Don't give him the chance to start using the combos if possible.

You could also look for a seminar somewhere that covers what you're looking for. I don't know how easy it would be to find one, but seminars tend to be focused on select situations/techniques. jiu-jitsu fighter's suggestion will probably work best.

My gi pants shrunk just a tiny bit too much. Anyone know how to unshrink a gi?

I've seen my instructor do a bunch of things to get a guy in the mount off of him... usually using pressure points (sometimes the guy can't get off fast enough ).

I volunteered to get emails from Henry South about his trip and take care of posting them here for him and he agreed. So I'll do my best to make sure we stay in the loop for all our benefit.

Aikidoka aren't the pummeling type .

Oh man... I don't know many big names off-hand, but I really hope people on this board will direct you to arts other than Muay Thai and BJJ. *crosses fingers* I can direct you to a couple of very legitimate 7th-10th dans, but they don't compete anymore.

I like the commercials. *shrug*

Why bother calling it "Karate" if its Asian origins don't matter? Just call it "Hittin' People". This isn't the case in every situation I'm sure, but when I think of American "Karate" that has no origins, I think of some oblivious black belt peddling something they don't really know anything about (possibly because their instructor didn't know anything either). I hope no one here is becoming victim to that sort of thing. There are probably a lot of good American Karate schools out there too, but why toss out the origins when they're so useful? No reason to reinvent the wheel.

I think you should try to post your newsletter here or have a friend do it for you. I think it would be extremely relevant to a lot of people here and a great service to us. If it isn't too much trouble please consider it .

I agree with all these guys. Judo/Sambo are probably great for your body type. If you have a whole lot of hand strength you will be nasty in Jujitsu (people get docile real quick when their fingers are being folded in three directions). Shotokan will turn you into a bulldozer. And Okinawan Karate will take advantage of your leg strength in kicks without doing the kinds of things you'd see in TKD that require a lot of flexibility. Kyokushin Karate might be good too if you don't mind getting really bruised.

It's a bit of an exact science in a lot of ways... but well worth it when you reach proficiency.

Sounds like you don't have to get any more exotic than boxing for those benefits, unless there are things you want that it doesn't have.