bushido_man96

Well, I am not in kendo, but I do some medieval sword work with an SCA group. We keep a fairly natural stance, with the knees bent. The movements are much like walking with the strikes, and there are sidesteps and voidings involved as well. I would keep your knees bent and legs relaxed, as that will help to keep you mobile. You can't really bounce on your toes, though, as it is not very efficient. Keep it up, and keep us posted!

You make a good point about hitting with the shield. A lot of people don't realize that the shield was just as much a weapon as the sword in the other hand.

Yeah, good stuff!

E&K stated that a combination of the two would work well, for standing and working on the ground.

Yeah, I see what you are saying. Me and my brother toyed with those concepts a little bit, trying to feint each other if you will, and to work the balance off to throw. He was a little better at it than I, but he had some wrestling experience as well.

When I was teaching, I outranked my mom, but I never expected her to call me Mr. Walker. Moral of the story, motherhood trumps rank, no matter what!!

Yudansha is black belt rank. In 1967 the KTA created and introduced forms for black belt grade holders: Koryo, Ship Jin, Tae Baek, Baek Jae, Jee Tae,etc. There are more, but I forget their names. R. McLain Ok, thanks for the info.

Very good advise. I would not have thought of that.

Bummer, sorry to hear this. There is always the faithful backup, solo training!!!

Man, these are some crazy stories. When I lived back home, we had a new pastor come to our church. He was a tall guy, and pot bellied, but older, over 40 I'd guess. When meeting everyone, and finding out about us, I told him I was into martial arts. He said he was in karate, and had broken off to form his own style, and was a 10th dan!! He said he moved through the ranks rather quick, because of his fighting skill, and he tried to model his fighting moves after those of Joe Lewis. He wanted to come down and work out together, so I said ok. Another friend of mine was there, and he was a 4th grade at the time. Well, this PastorMaster, as I will nickname him, was trying to show me all of these takedowns, joint locks, and things like this, trying to put me on the floor, but I fought it, and would not go down. He kept trying to kind of show off his stuff, but I was not impressed. Neither was my friend, with all of his 4 grades worth of experience. I am not saying he was a total phony, he may have been a black belt at some level.....but starting his own organization, and being a 10th dan, I was somewhat leary. And this guy was my pastor, for crying out loud!!

Cool, you guys speak Greek!! lol

Oh, bother!!! Trent Green will not be ready to play for at least another 2 weeks. If we go 0-4, I just don't know what I'll do. That punching bag will get a lot of work!

I have read these articles, and they do not completely renounce forms training. Rather, these articles talk about what the forms were, what they are now, and how they need to be trained in order to get it closer to what they were meant to be.

That is absolutely right. That is the purpose of drilling. Now, let's think about a similar scenario. Instead of drilling a kata solo and going over bunkai solo, consider the person who drills the techniques repeatedly with a partner, getting live feedback, then works those same techniques in contact sparring. Who will be more apt - the guy doing partner drills, or the guy focusing on kata? Good point. This was one of the advantages that Kano's judo had over the jujitsu practitioners.

Um, moving slowly I suspect. j/k My mother did Tai Chi for many years and even taught a few classes, she enjoyed it very much. Keep it up, it really helps you learn balance. Oh, that's bad!! Come on, now!!

Good point, Steve_K. Another factor would be the opponent's postition in regards to where you are standing at the time as well.

One thing is for sure, he gasses out early. Cro Cop didn't look like he was too concerned with his size, but he did keep away from him quite a bit. Nice punch, too!

That is kind of cool. You normally don't think of Tai Chi as a fighting art. I worked out with a guy a few times who seemed to have kind of a Thai background, but he said his dad taught "Combat Tai Chi." Maybe so, huh?

Huh, I have not heard of this style. Heck, I didn't know there were multiple styles of Tai Chi! Oh well, learn something new everyday, huh? I hope you enjoy the clinics. Let us know what you find out.

Officially, Bruce Lee died of a reaction to a prescription pain-killer that caused brain edema (swelling). However, he had collapsed a couple months prior to his death, nearly passing on then, and it has been long speculated that overwork may have been a contributor to that. Guess we'll never know for sure, though I know an extremely fit guy who died of mysterious causes this past summer at a Masters swim practice. Not an ounce of fat on him. He trained 6-8 hours a day as a professional triathlete, and was supposed to be the fittest guy you'd ever seen, but some say he pushed himself way too hard at times, to the point where he was urinating blood. That can't be good for you. With respect, Sohan Yikes! Not good. It's scary to think that doing something good for you can end up being bad. I guess it comes down to knowing the body's limit. The body is built to work, but it does need recovery time.

Yeah, this, IMO is an issue. In our classes - bjj, judo, muay thai and capoeira - you will spend 30 min - 1hr sparring each session. this is great conditioning also. every round, switch partners, so you get to spar everyone in class. the general format for classes is warmup - skill training - sparring. That is nice; I like the idea of skill training. I don't know that I would call our basics skill training, but it is a good warm-up. However, I do want to spar more. It isn't kickboxing, but we kick a lot, and when we put on the chest protectors (blah), we get a little bit of contact going.

I have a question for you, Sohan. Do you think that there is a way that the typical karate/taekwondo MAs could augment their training to make it more like what the boxers receive, as far as conditioning goes, but still maintain the more "traditional" aspects of their styles? My big beef at my school is that we don't spar enough, in my opinion. However, when we start class, the basics just kill me. Then forms kill me. By the time we get to sparring, in the last 10 minutes of class (only an hour), I am so tired that my sparring suffers. Sparring, in my opinion, would be a great way to condition ourselves. I also feel that we lose out on self-defense training, because we always focus on the curiculum aspects for testing. My problem at tournaments when I spar is one that you point out: tiring out soon. There is no boxing gym near where I live, so it is not an option available to me. I would love to do some of it, but there are people in my school that would not. If you have any suggestions, let me know. I think things can always get better, and I try to keep an open mind. I think that karatekas and other 'traditionalists' can be good fighters, but it is the training that needs to steer us that way.

That's good follow-through, there!

I just target the side of the head with my backfist. I don't worry about the small target areas.

Great. What was the training like? What did it consist of?