MizuRyu

Great site! Thanks a million! Our club does about 60/40 ground/standup, which was what I was looking for.

After a few months in my Ryu-Te dojo, I became very disenchanted with it's little charms. I learned that most of the stuff in there was gimmicky, too complex or too 'pretty' to really do anything if someone was trying to take my head off. So, I parted ways, and started looking for a new dojo. I was leafing through the phonebook when I saw something I've never noticed before: a kodokan judo dojo. Stopped in, watched a 3 hour class, fell in complete love. Lots of resistance, lots of sweat, lots of hard work and realistic technique. I joined up and had my 2nd class this afternoon, and it's absolutely awesome. What should I expect later on? And who here knows a bit about kodokan judo, I can't find a whole lot of information as to exactly what it's structure (fighting stages and whatnot) is. Also, I'd like to hear some good Judo stories or experiences with it, see if I'm daft or not lol.

Hold the pushup position with your arms slightly bent. Once that gets easy, do them very slowly. Just keep building onto that. The only real way to excel at something is to repeat the action you're trying to excel at. It takes a lot of time for your body to get used to such things; patience is the primary ingredient in bodybuilding. When I started Tang Soo Do, I couldn't do 10 pushups myself. That was 2 1/2 years ago, and now I can pull 4 sets of 40. It just takes time and effort, like all other goals in life.

To my knowledge, the etymology of kung fu is: "a skill aquired through hard work". It's truely a creed to practice by.

I think the most powerful intimidation is full frontal eye contact and calmness. Nothing cuts into someone quite like being diffused by one's eyes, especially if the expression is soft. Maybe not as much intimidation, but more of a diffuser. Of course, this will make them less likely to attack at full force in my opinion, as it does betray some sort of knowledge (thus planting a sort of seed of doubt). I'm typically not too frightened of guys who puff up and yell, but for some reason the calm quiet ones really get under my skin.

Actually runs in my family, my mom is double jointed along with my sisters and my brother. Not sure what would cause it... A dancing flashing color changing monkey of course!

I'm tellin' ya, we need to get this "ask Sohan" section up and running!!! I have the pushup problem myself. Both of my elbows pop about midway through the action a few times, then when my muscles are warmed up it stops. I think it's just that I'm insanely flexible by nature, and my muscles/tendons slide over tough surfaces and snap/pop. No pain, just noise. I think I have some kind of genetic thing, because I can pull almost ANY joint (except my knees and hips) out of socket, and do splits between chairs, the thing is I don't stretch that much and never really have. I don't know if it's bad, but it isn't hurting much. Sometimes I when wrestle things get hairy, but strength training has helped with that a great deal. Heck, I think training safely decreases these things, because the more I do pushups the less my elbows pop, and the more I jump rope the less easy it is to pull my foot out of socket...

Llamas? Sweet! I have 3 cats (snoopy, dusty, africa), a dog (Sal), a 120 gal tank of freshwater fish (mostly sevrums), and a ball python (Chum Kiu) I looove animals.

Aggression is a harsh mistress. Pure aggression will get you nowhere, it's all about aggression PLUS knowledge/skill of what to do with it. I've seen guys run into matches guns-a-blazin and make total fools of themselves. I've also seen a 9 year old girl beat the tar out of my uncle Dave lol. Rick_72 has awesome points indeed, I can relate to what he's saying because football was my sport of choice in school. Football has a lot to do with fighting, it's a war game, use tactics, speed, and aggression in a trifecta to overcome the other team's attributes. To practice aggression, basically you have to practice the winning mindset. You have to overcome them with your strongest points in the fastest fashion. I had problems with it too starting out, but growin up in a 'racially tense' neighborhood fixed it quick. Fighting people who are bigger than you really drives home the point that aggression is the only way you can overcome that strength, be it tactical or physical. When I first started taking karate I had no faith in myself and got beat up all the time, and after getting beat up by a group of kids my eyes opened a bit. I was confronted by a kid twice my size in the hallway, he ripped my necklace off, and I just dove on him. Despite his skill and size, it took 3 of the faculty to pull me off of him. The greatest thing about aggression (in my reckoning) is the element of surprise. Most attackers don't expect to be met with force and confidence. One night I was up around 3am, and heard a rustling in the basement, and heard our sliding door open. I grabbed my tanbo, turned on the basement stairs lights and sprinted down them screaming at the top of my lungs, heard the slider slam and saw a shadow sprinting through my backyard. It works! So, you may want to expose yourself to situations where aggression is the key to winning. As Rick said, spar people larger than you, more confident than you, or better than you, and remember this "hesitation leads to hospitalization"

There are a few things I'd do in that situation: Ask the local martial arts community about the school. A lot of the schools I checked out after I was forcibly seperated from my beloved Ving Tsun I heard about through word of mouth. You could also check the phonebook, or punch 'martial arts' into yahoo! followed by your city and state, and it'll give you a directory. Teachers have proven to be a great source of knowledge for me. Ask local MA teachers about various schools in the area, or if they know of any students with backgrounds in other MAs. You might get lucky. Good luck and godspeed!

I agree with the general idea here... that ki balls are just a figment of the imagination in a sense. Sure, I believe in ki, more as the energy that your body can produce and use, but not the whole energy beam thing. The way I see it, your body produces a great deal of energy. Electrical, mechanical, kenetic, etc., and all ki manipulation is is learning to transfer that collective stored energy in your body to certain areas at certain times. Kenetic linkage would be the term.

As they say "a martial art isn't a hobby, it's a lifestyle." Thank you for the kind words : )

So, you're from China then? Neato. In America there are a lot of styles of kung fu that are available, though I wouldn't say any of them are really 'popular'. Here in my town, we have: Tai Chi, Ving Tsun, Hung Ga and San Shou. I know of Nothern Mantis, White Crane, Shaolin 5 Animal, and Southern Mantis schools in this state too, though most are far from where I live. Usually, to find the schools, you just ask around, look in phone books, or search the internet. I found my Ving Tsun instructor by knowing someone who went to his class. Many other schools can be found just driving around and passing by.

Milk is my platform of choice. If it tastes bad, I put some milk, a scoop of chocolate ice cream, peanuts, and the mix in a blender and puree the living heck out of it. Enough for a few servings throughout the day and I keep it in the frige. Great stuff. My supplements of choice now I actually get from Wal-mart and GNC. Wal-mart carries an EXCELLENT whey protein from 6 Star Body Fuel. One scoop: 26 grams of powder, 20 grams of protein. Spoon mixable, tastes awesome (the chocolate, haven't tried the vanilla), and it's only $12 for 2 pounds. I also use Body Fortress amino acid pills. Every BCAA in the book plus many other L aminos (roughly 30), 300 pills (3 per serving) for $8. Also from Wal-mart. The 3rd and final is vanilla casein concentrate from GNC. Whatever's on sale lol. That place is expensive. I take 5 scoops blended with a banana and some milk before bed.

I find that a small pot of protein noodles with a bit of prego over top is all the energy you need before an event. Never been a fan of energy drinks...

Well, it's hard to tell if someone's born with 'fighting spirit'... I would tend to say it's determined (like most other psychological traits) by events in your childhood. I grew up in a racially tense neighborhood, and by extension learned a lot about fighting at an early age with greatly assisted my training later in life. That being said, I believe it swings both ways.

That's really the worst part about fights: you're not going to know. It's a good thing he only gave us what he did to go off of, because that's all you WOULD know (aside from the training thing), and you have to act with that in mind. Observation is indeed your greatest weapon. I would run. 3 against one, unless you're a large, VERY well trained person with a lot of street experience, is a bad situation for anyone under any cirumstance. With street attacks, you have no idea if they're armed, coked up, ready to kill you.. whatever. I enjoy supplementing my MA training with lots of sprinting and plyo leg training lol. BUT, in case of the "cornered, can't run" situation, personally I would go for maximum damage minimum time. Stomp kicks, biu tze (darting fingers to eyes/bottom of throat), hair pulling, hip throws... whatever. It's not like in training where they take their turns, they're all going to go for you at once, best thing you can do is ride on your adrenaline and get brutal, full power strikes to wherever it hurts most. You're going to get hit, a LOT, you just have to ignore it as best you can, guard your most vulnerable parts (knees, crotch, face, neck) and be smart. Adrenaline is your best friend if you're used to it, I've seen guys take baseball bats to the face and not be phased because of insane adrenaline levels. That's why you have to rely on body mechanics, not pain tolerance, when you're fighting someone in an uncontrolled situation. Stuff they CAN'T ignore. A missing eye, stomped knee, collapsed throat, broken fingers, being put on the ground... that's stuff that can't be drowned out by adrenaline. When I'm walking through the rough parts (south Lansing or visiting friends in Detroit), I always have a Gerber Guardian on me. Extremely nasty little knife, full tang, rubber handle, double edged and very thin. Made just for self defense. If I had it on me, they'd all be on the ground trying to keep their intestines from going astray. As for the other guy, IF I happened to deal with the 3, that humanistic part of me would drive me to jump in. If he's on the ground, they're off guard (as long as they weren't paying too much attention to the last situation), and I'd use that to my advantage. Sprinting stomp kick, neck shots (not to be confused with throat)... whatever. If I had run from the before scenario, I would find a phone and call the cops ASAP.

Stretching, meditation and breathing. I try and forget about EVERYTHING, just let my training do what it's supposed to do when it's supposed to do it. Works quite well in my experience.

I fully agree with the blocking thing. I've never, in my whole history of fighting, seen more than 2 blocks be effective. I HAVE however, seen a block immediatly followed with aggressive counter-attack be effective. I think that's one of the biggest mistakes of modern stylists: blocking until something 'magical' happens. Personally, if I see a hook coming I'm going to stop hit them in the shoulder and step in, and go ape, not inside block it and wait for my second chance to block another. Blocks are a way of building coordination, strengthening forearms for slip ups, and understanding forces in an attack. Parries are what'll save your face, not blocks. All of my martial arts career I've dealt with ridiculous blocking drills and schemes, and only until my real venture have I seen what the true purpose of these things are. In Ryu-Te, we're constantly moving, evading, and parrying with 'snake' type motions. The snake motions are nothing more than soft, distal blocks with open hands. We have all sorts of people from all sorts of backgrounds in this school and it's proved itself amongst them to be FAR more effective than blocking, at any skill level. Of course, I can't speak for every fighter, just myself and those I've fought/seen fight.

I know a few students through my current school that say he's no good. He's one of those 'milk-em for all they're worth' MMA instructors, capitalizing on the current surge in MMA interest. It's pretty sad.

I could really use some help here, I went to a BJJ gym yesterday (after much anticipation) and found the instructor was a BLUE BELT . I took BJJ for a little while when I lived cross-state but now that I live here in the Lansing area I can't seem to find a good instructor ANYWHERE. I'm currently searching like mad but I figure maybe someone in an organization or somewhere on the inside could give me a slight edge . Any help is greatly appreciated!

For me it was needing to defend myself in the environment in which I lived. I had a real 'bully' problem and was tired of getting beat up, so I started mowing lawns, shoveling snow, watching pets... whatever I could to make enough money to go to karate class. I rode my bike 3 miles just to go 4 days a week for 6 years. More than learning how to fight it taught me how to control myself and talk my way out of things. Plus, all that bike riding helped my sprinting lol. Now I just do it for the art and the love of doing it. It's really a whole different sort of hobby.

We take a lot of hits and sit in horse stance while doing drills. Some of the students who have been there long get climbed up by sensei Peterson and he stands on their legs to test their leg strength. He encourages us to work out at home on our own saying that we don't have enough time in class to waste on spurring people to take care of themselves. We don't do Sanchin training or anything like that, but we do all leave the dojo sore, one way or another.

In our style we don't even have belts. None. Everyone in the dojo wears a white belt with a white gi or a black belt with a black gi. The color of the gi is just what was in Sensei's closet when they signed up. The newer uniforms are white, but the older ones were thicker and black without the embroidery. It really is a different feel having no belts or ranks, you never know the skill of who you're sparring and it basically eliminates that corrosive level of pride that comes with that stupid strip of dyed fabric. When I spoke to him about this system he said: (paraphrasing to an extent) "You're never truely 'finished' with a martial art. People think that a black belt means that they're done with the art, but in reality they've only just begun to understand their art. Our style adapts to every fight, every situation, it's always changing and different for everyone; in your lifetime you will never see an end to your training, one way or another." It really opened my eyes a bit to how shallow many people's view of 'the belt' is. In my opinion, it does far more harm than good.

1- Not yet 2- Yes, and it heavily relies on not chambering your punches. When you do a low block/punch/cover at the same time, when you flip it to switch sides you can NOT pull your striking arm back, it must generate it's force on the upward motion. It makes the punches insanely fast and VERY hard to block or even see, since they start low. Lots of 'flowing' motions, so blocking/striking at the same time is essential. ALL of our techniques can be used 'straight out of the pockets', meaning your hands are in your pockets or at your sides when you're attacked. That's a core concept of the art. No fancy stances, fighting from natural position. 3- Not exactly. A vital point can be struck if the opportunity is PRESENTED, but you shouldn't seek it on it's own. As Oyata says: "It's not where you hit, it's how". We open up spots, but the only one I've done is punching towards their face towards one side (ie.jab to the left side of the face) and expect them to slip it (if they don't, still good lol) and when they do backfist/shuto them in the side of the neck. Their head will move to the side and open up/tighten their neck. A few locks are set up so if you have good position, you can apply pressure on a point itself along with the leverage, which are the most painful locks.