Hobbes

I agree totally with menjo. Just thank the stars that you haven't needed to be in a real fight. For some of us, we haven't been so lucky. I'm just glad they can replace teeth and my scars fade really well.

sometimes circumstances do not permit you to bash the assailant's face in. I've trained several law enforcement personnel and what you find is that you have to do a lot of arm bars, etc... since beating the guy to a pulp is not an option in most cases, but even with that keep it simple and straight forward. For most who have trained in the MAs a long time, most have never needed to use it so they lack the experience of what its really like to restrain a larger, stronger and more agressive opponent. I used to work in mental health where a lot of people on drugs would come in aggetated for a manitory stay. One gets a lot of practice in said situations.

If I understand TheAnimal correctly, which is: Paraphrased of course -> Take care of business and for go the fancy stuff. Short and sweet and be done with it. If that is the case then I agree with him completely.

heh, I know you did Jack.

I see fighting as when I spar with friends, so we go full contact in every aspect. So fighting for me is a tougher sparing, thats how I see it. But yea, I know what your getting at. forgive me for using the word fighting a bit too loosely

I mean, look at what ever you have. Obviously we can't evaluate elbows with 99% of the footage... I would run out of partners really fast.. mostly because they would stay away lol.

I've done a fair amount of sports analysis, especially with some of the new cameras where you can slow it down significantly. To look at energy expenditures and general performance patterns a basic miniDV camera works really well. For high speed analyis I use the Basler A600 monochrome with a firewire enabled laptop. Some basic set up allows you to calculate velocities with markers but mostly just being able to see what's happening is a major step forward. Unfortunately normal cameras don't capture images fast enough to give you really clear pictures of high speed motions. Check out the camera at http://www.baslerweb.com/produkte/produkte_en_1455.php

Hmmm... partly from opinions of trusted others, and looking for patterns in video footage of matches I've been in as well as general class training. Counting the number of times I prefer certain sequences ect.. how often I like to get close to my opponent for a take down, arm lock and so on. I don't have enough footage to make a real assessment, but I have to agree with the results as surprising as some may be. We all do things out of habit so video is a really good tool.

doitashimashite

If you were to describe yourself, what type of fighter are you with regards to preferences, tactics, strategy etc...

I was asked this morning in my class what kind of fighter I was... I would have to say that I'm an opportunist. While I like to try to setup my opponent, I do what ever it takes. I have a prefernece for grappling, but when I think about it, a great deal of my takedowns end with kicks, just prior to a final submission or limb break.

Heh, yeah the place was a little hole in the ground... really out of the way. I had a guide find it for us, like most everything else. I can't say it was fun. Anyways, there was a line up of boxers, but unfortunately, I was bruised up pretty severly and I didn't want to spend my vacation looking like I just came out of a car accident. Frankly, I wasn't confident about the medical care either. His legs were stong but he was very slight in build. While I was in Japan I did the crazy thing of breaking multiple baseball bats with my shins, so his thigh, (just above the knee) was pretty soft in comparison. Perhaps I got really lucky, but after I hit him he couldn't stand on the leg. Massive charlie horse. I don't think what I did was very smart nor was it very fun.

I have some first hand experiences with that sort of thing... and I don't mean myself personally.

The 100% deal is far too Japanese for me. The idea is more tied to culture than reality. I've seen schools (English schools) teach their students in isolation and then release them into the wild with the expectation to perform flawlessly. I've had more than one encounter with a English student (Japanese) who was devastated when they found that they spent all this time learning Engurish then made lots of mistakes. Can only report what I've seen. There are lots of examples in many professions. I dealt with Doctors and Engineers mostly. That's another story. masters didn't get it right 100% of the time.. just more often than the rest of us.

Yes I was referring to a front snap kick exclusively. A thrust kick is a push motion, as apposed to a throw motion.

I will attempt this again... I did state that I thought that the "front kick" resembled a trebuchet, which I thought was a better example. I have consistantly used "lever", "moment arm", "angular momentum" etc... though out this explaination. I think I've given a decent but extremely brief explaination of the kick. Feel free to disagree, its fine by me. I for one will continue to cite research and can do so on demand.

Hip rotation is a pretty complex and it represents "A" power source not "THEE" power source. No one is denying that techniques require co-ordinated efforts to generate a desired outcome. How one accelerates the mass of their limbs or their bodies, and uses rotation , vibration in combination with "locking the frame" to transfer energy from the powerful leg muscles to the trunk is poorly understood by many instructors I know. To be fair, some understand what they are doing, albeit not explicitly, and can "do it", yet have a very difficult time articulating what is happening. This is where a training course for instructors to hone their modeling, skill breakdown, chunking, skill reduction etc.. and overall verbal explanation of skills would be helpful. What shogeri is describing is linear momentum that most of us recognize as "linear", "upwards" and "downwards". Its all linear movement for these three but represented as different vectors. I can honestly see why its so difficult to to discuss karate on a forum like this since most of us seem to be in the same book but rarely on the same page. I like shogeri's explaination, with only a tinsy bit of confusion with regards to the air under the foot. It shows that he understands the need to combine several forces in a co-ordinated way. Kudos to you mate. Thumbs up from me.

While I agree with the statment that the antagonist needs to be relaxed and the agonist involved needs to be maximally and co-ordinatedly contracted to produce speed, I do not, however, agree with the quoted statement above. The underlying principles behind the whip and the leg are undeniable. The point that is getting missed her is that we are NOT making a 1:1 comparison with the whip and the leg, but using it as an example to demonstrate how force is transmitted trough a structure to produce a desired outcome. I believe that all instructors should become certified coaches, fitness leaders, with a pretty advanced knowledge of first aid with a couple basic courses in biomechanics of sport before ever being allowed to get insurance to open a dojo. A fact which I'm pushing actively.

Had the opportunity to free spar with a muay thai when I was in Bangkok. This was a mistake, the worse bruised rips and left thigh I have ever had, hands down. My calves were larger than this guy's upper thighs, heh, well, all I can say is that as soon as I realized that this was full on, (I admit I was stupid not to realize this), I ended the match with the first and only technique I threw. A mid thigh round kick and I honestly thought I had fractured the guys leg. This guy scared me. And Oh... I think I got lucky.

Heh, I do quite a bit of grappling and I've had to repair a jacket a few times, not to mention a pant or two. I prefer to use my judo jacket for my grappling classes just for that reason. We have got to get together to play table tennis some day.

Hitman, I think you are getting it. I will say that the femur does flex with stress as does the tibia, but to what degree I can not say. Angular kinetics is not tooooo difficult for simple systems, but when you bring into play the hips, the other leg, the action of the ankle, knee and hip etc.... there are many things that turn what first appears to be a simple thing into a complex skill.

I have seen many different types of kicks done in a large variety of ways. If we agree on the same outcome with the same set of criteria then the kicks will be more or less the same adjusting for height, flexiblity, speed and strenght regardless of system or style. I think some instructors do not fully appreciate the power they have with their students. The students look to the instructors as models of expert technique and I've seen whole generations of students emmulate an error for this reason. The instructor may simply have had an injury that prevents him/her from performing at 100%. These little mistakes then have explainations attached to them to explain some "hidden" technique, but in reality had absolutely nothing to do with the root cause. kicking is pretty complex when you think about it and we don't have to fully understand the biomechanics to do it well. I remember being told by my a teacher I once had that " no amout of education or university degrees will change tradition ". Hmmm... wonder why I'm not training with him now? heh What I teach is a solid core of skills that can equip the student to branch off stylistically. I had a teacher who did this for me early in my training and I owe him just about everything despite the fact that we don't get along. I loved shotokan, but I didn't like the kibadachi and koduso-dachi in shotokan, yet shito-ryu favors neko-dachi and shiko-dachi respectively.(which I prefer) My knees love me for it. Back to the habits. People tend to do what they find easiest or doing what they think is better. There may not be any "REAL" logic to this choice. Much like the guy who tells you that they don't eat processed food cuz its bad for you while sucking on a cigarette. As an instructor: I don't want to teach something (which is risky to start with) and destroy someone's knees because of an uneccessary or potentially more dangerous than it needs to be. When I see a kick done differently from style to style, teacher to teacher, the first question that pops into my mind is "what is this person trying to accomplish, what is the context which this kick is being performed?".

I've had many Tokaido Gis and love them.. one of the nice things about their Gis is the fact that I can have my name embroidered into it before the lapel is stitched. I have gone for the Kamikaze brand which are much cheaper and fit my body type much better. I don't have to get my Europa tailored like I do with the Tokaido. I have very thick legs so the room in the pant is very important. My Tokaido is 15 years old and my Kamikaze is 9 years old. I just bought a new Kamikaze, but my other two are going strong. I will say that the Tokaido seems to hold up better over the long haul, but the Kamikaze is softer and more comfortable and less expensive. check kamikaze out at http://www.kamikaze.com/ Holy wacko.... is your sweat like acid? I sweat a lot, and I mean "a lot" and yes you have a point.. I've seem some people go through a gi in a year and others in 20. back in the late 80's and early 90's I trained full time for 7 years and we are talking about a lot of training... I one of the things that saves my gi is that I hang dry it. I had one gi that I wore for a year and it just fell off me. My judo top is 22 years old and it is still in excellent condition. I also store my gi folded with rarely an exception with the belt tied around it. I never bleach it ( had a tokaido fall apart not long after I did that) and I inspect the stitching ever couple of months for weaknesses and pull out the needle and thread to mend it.

Killer, you have some interesting training methods. I aplaud you for your creativity. I use a superball and a thick bit of elastic and tie it to the knot of the student belt. then when they whip their hips around, they can feel the ball's impact. Feed back is good, especially the immediate kind.

Context must be considered. Why don't we have only one type of battle tank? There must be a balance between many many factors. Cost, serviceability, appropriateness for the deployment, weapons of the enemy, ease of use, survivability, speed, range, armaments... etc... etc.. The context of a situation may call for a different kick, but there is a trade off. Speed, body position, overall power delivery, physical obstacles, ground surface type, and so on. Context determines tactics and strategy which influences technique, all for the purpose of exploiting an opportunity or a weakness in your opponent(s). Try doing a round kick in a very narrow hallway. When you pull back the towel, you are accelerating the tip of the towel. If you wet the tip of the towel, you are changing the shape of the towel but more importantly increasing its mass giving it more of an impact. Ok... wow, where to start... This isn't actually correct. The relative mass of the individual segments of the thigh, lower leg are different and it behaves much like a whip in the sense that the angular momentum of the thigh is conserved in the lower leg causing it to accelerate. True there isn't a curved section as in the whip ( which can be visualized as thousands of segments.) If I make a chain with each link being of slightly less overall mass, I can accelerate that chain until the forces exceed the strength of one or more of the smaller segments and the steel will literally fracture violently into many small fragments due to the massive forces. If I were to calculate the mass of your upper leg and then the mass of your lower leg and add an ankle weight to equalize the two, how fast do you think you can kick. (front kick that is). The whipping action is not the only thing that is at work here... we have the forceful contraction of the quadriceps muscle group. We thus have the conservation of angular momentum, and the summation of forces working together. Think of it like this: a motor car has X horsepower with X torque (foot pounds) The transmission is geared to have high torque and low speed at lower gears but as the transmission gears up, it can accelerate the car. there is a trade off between pulling power and torque. Similarly we have short powerful muscles with relatively slow endpoint velocities which accelerates the mass of the entire leg, and smaller less powerful muscles which continue to accelerate the mass, this combined with the reduction in mass of the smaller segments result in a high endpoint velocity. In a kick the flexors of the leg are also the primary extensors of the knee albeit not all the hip flexors are involved. The forces generated by this group differs at different points during extension for a number of reasons, mechanical and physiological. We chamber the leg so that the mass is reconfigured to allow us to accelerate the entire mass of the leg to a higher velocity around the hip joint. By shortening the lever (the upper and lower leg) it takes less effort to achieve this initial acceleration. I'm not going to get into the thrusting motion of the hips right here, but suffice it to say we want to have as much mass attached to that fast moving object (foot or shin) as possible to increase penetration.