bushido_man96

Justice is right on. Its not about tearing you down. In fact, everyone is being fairly polite in the questions being posed. They are legitimate questions as to why. Like I said earlier, I won't tell you not to start up your own style, because Martial Arts are about evolution, and evolution can't happen without new ideas and approaches. I think what is important to look at is if you are doing something that really requires a whole new "style," or if its something that can be accomplished in a current style, and is more of a modification of in a teaching method and classroom focus. But who knows, maybe in time it will come into something that becomes more of its own style. I wish you luck.

UFC 1 was a single elimination tournament done in a single day. Not safe. That's why I think they should build up to it, using several fights over a few months time to finally build to the final match, to produce the first UFC women's champion. You'd think he could market that.

That sounds awesome! Keep us posted!

JusticeZero really gave lots of good advice, so I won't add much more. In regards to whether Aikido will be useful for you or not is going to depend more on how well you apply yourself to it and practice it. Of the Aikidokas I have trained with, their striking skills have been very subpar. But, they don't focus on that; they focus on responses to strikes. What would behoove you as a striking stylist would be to continue to do good striking, especially when practicing Aikido as an uke, so they can see what good striking looks like. They should have some kick defenses, but may not. In that case, just fall back on your other training for kick defense. The fun part I've found in Aikido is seeing where in the techniques I can insert kicks or strikes in order to "enhance" the techniques. The school I've been involved in does some meditation early in class, but they have other class offerings more devoted to that kind of thing, for those interested. You can really take the spiritual aspect of the style as far as you want. During meditation, I just kind of sit around and wait for the good stuff to start.

I do like what I see there. When it comes to the round kick, I just don't have as much trouble achieving that chamber position as I do the side kick, because I don't have to try to line up the heel with the target. But, I will play with different variations of the round kick, for sure. I could even do a "Round Kick Class" article with just what we have there; table top, Brazilian kick method, 45 degree angle kicks, and all that is before even adding in stepping actions! Isn't it a funny twist how we've gone from discussing side kicks to now discussing round kicks?....but that's why I love it here!

Why do they make her champion automatically? They should get some fighters together and do an elimination tournament over the next few months to have a title fight to crown the inaugural women's champ.

That Brazilian kick is interesting. I remember seeing that video a while back. I'm not sure I have the flexibility to it that way. But I did subscribe to that guys channel, so I'll have more ideas for kicking workouts.

Are the same strikes practiced in a live manner with protective equipment at about half power? And resistance. What I see here are really glorified one-steps. Once the attacker has thrown his initial strike, and it gets blocked, there is nothing else from him but cooperation. I'm not saying there is no value in learning this way, but I think its a step that starts self-defense training, and is good for learning techniques and such, but eventually you have to move on to some type of resistance from he attacker to foul up the plans.k Now, that said, I've only seen three clips of the style, so if there is something more like this, then that's great. I'd love to hear more about the style.

I think most of the stances we see in the Martial Arts, front stance, back stance, horse stance, etc, should be achievable by just about anyone who can walk normally. Some performers get really deep into front stances or back stances; those guys are doing that for show for the most part, and I don't think that is what is practical. But I think with your standard variety of MA stances, anyone should be ok moving in them, with the right amount of practice.

I think the hardest thing to keep up with would be timing, but that's just a guess. You can practice striking alone well enough, but a partner really helps with rhythm and timing.

I used to pick up the Journal from time to time. It was a fun publication to read. A nice change from reading Black Belt Magazine all the time.

Ok. Is this really documented somewhere? I've been twisting in my techniques for quite some time, especially on the side kicks. Is this something that is seen in Shito-Ryu or Goju Ryu that isn't seen in Shotokan? I could be missing it entirely, but I don't really see what you are saying here.

How, and from what position do you deliver the strikes to the eyes or the groin? I also wonder about what kind of sparring you use to create a realistic scenario in which to deliver these strikes. The groin isn't as easy to hit as many are led to believe, and the eyes are a very small target, as well.

Yeah, its a crap shoot. Medieval Weapons stylists have been using a combination of text and picture interpretation couple with sparring and applications work like this to study what was actually being taught all those years ago.

11/8/2012 Having one of those days...locked myself out of the house on the way out to go to the gym. Forgot to grab my keys, pulled the door shut behind me, and it was too late. Luckily, my daughter only had a half day of school today, so I didn't have to wait outside for too long. I always take a book to read, so I had that and my phone with me. But, I did try to practice some forms, too... Kwang Gae x5 Jung Yul x1 Jung Yul is the ATA 2nd degree form, and I really was butchering it. Its got some techniques that require some degree of balance, which I had none of, especially in the yard, on bumpy grass, with shoes on. I must have looked like and idiot, leaning and stumbling around. And also lucky for me, I had a neighbor step out and see me, and when I looked around and saw him, he gave the whole mock arms circles Karate hi-ya crap. What a fun day. Whining aside, I'm going to really have to take some time and break down Jung Yul and get it looking somewhat decent. Along with all other forms...

We don't get charged for the re-test. But a third re-test, I don't know for sure....

Thanks for this information, John.

That's not necessarily the case. Anyone can kick to the groin. It doesn't require a lot of special training. Just different target. Aside from that, the groin is the end all, be all target it is assumed to be. Our body has a natural flinch response to protect our eyes. If I can jab to your face, I can open my hand and gouge your eye. If you go for an eye gouge like that on an MMA fighter who has trained to defend a jab, then it probably won't be highly likely to hit home, anyways. I'm just saying that just because someone fights on a rule set, doesn't make them that susceptible to losing a street fight.

I say if you have the chance, give it a go. It sounds like a good opportunity to cross train.

With consecutive kicking, since my leg is already up, yes, I usually end up going more with the table top method, but the first kick is usually going to be that front kick chamber with lots of power of the hip twist, and then the second from the table top.Now my round kick chambers all come pretty much from the table top chamber.

This is said a lot. If you train for MMA, then you can use it in the street.As far as the popularity in the CMA's goes, I think it tends to be a style that flourishes in more heavily populated areas. I live in rural Kansas, and have the only time I've ever seen a CMA school is in phone books when I travel to larger areas. The CMA's just haven't seemed to have matriculated as much as other styles.

This is going to kind of hard to dig up, seeing as all those fellows are dead and gone. I didn't realize there were restraints on what they Okinawans wanted to teach the Japanese. Funakoshi learned from Okinawa, and I although he changed some things, I don't think he held too much back from what he learned. I'm interested in what kind of information you have here. So, your kind of taking a bunkai-esque approach to digging things out of these techniques, then?

Because most schools will charge for it. I've always had to pay for testings.

11/7/2012 Cardio Treadmill: 10 min jog, covered .76 miles. No walking, except for a brief warmup. Rowing machine: 6 minutes. Love that thing! Stretch Forms Choong Moo x5 Shim Jun x5 Stretch Forms sucked today. Higher ranking forms, with a little more complexity, and the ATA black belt forms are notoriously long. Choong Moo is the TTA's high brown belt/recommended black belt form. Its a fun form to do, but requires some athleticism in spots that is starting to slip away from me as I add poundage, which I hope to fix. Lots of open hand techniques, a flying side kick (that I need to focus on again, as I have to do a board break with it), and a jumping spin that goes from being in a back stance to landing in a back stance and performing a double knife hand block. This form also has a few kicking combinations in it; a back leg round kick followed by a reverse side kick, and a back leg side kick/back leg side kick combo. Shim Jun is the ATA 1st dan form. This form has 81 moves in it, and follows a shape that is similar to an infinity symbol. There are introductions of different "black belt" techniques used in the ATA curriculum, where there are hand techniques done without a retracting arm, so you have to use the hip motion minus the pull-back of the other arm. There are also compound double blocks where one hand will be open and the other closed, along with circular blocking methods and crossed-arm blocking methods. This form also has two front leg jump hook kicks, two jump front kicks, two step-spin hook kicks, a triple consecutive kick with a low side kick followed by repeat round kicks going up the scale. At the end of the form, there is a one step then jumping side kick that I pretty much butchered each time because my legs were so fatigued by the time I was done with the form. 5 times of that, sucked.

No one mentioned an MMA gym for a beating. Guess that brutality doesn't come to mind as often as we thought....