bushido_man96

I don't know if I would change the belt system so much as I would change the time between testings, i.e., adding more time.

Did your school at that time ever break boards as testing requirements?

Props to you buddy! You are a bigger man than I.

That is something that the sport styles have over the more traditional styles. I know that my conditioning isn't the greatest, but I am working on improving it.

One things for sure, I don't think I could take too many low kicks and last very long. I admire and respect the conditioning of Thai boxers.

I would have to agree with patusai, and say kickboxing. But it depends mainly on your style; how active you are in the ring.

Ok, so I guess the cofusion I had with kenpo/kempo is about equivalent to the cofusion you had for jui-jitsu/ju-jutsu. See, we are not idiots, just not informed!

Oh, yes. Maybe I should find some of those. I do have the ICHF videos, and I like them a lot.

I tried to see if I could find jumps or cuts in the video, but I don't have a well trained eye for that. Not sure.

Really focus your efforts on the basics. If I had to choose I'd say your three best guard submissions are going to be armbar, triangle and kimura. Three best guard sweeps will be scissor, push sweep and elevator. The best submissions from the mount would be armbar and kimura. With the gi on you should also practice the cross chokes. Learn the upa escape and elbow escape from the mount and at least one way to open the guard and get back to your feet. That may sound like alot but it's really not. Some other things may be very difficult to learn without the instruction of someone who knows what they're doing well. Oh yeah!!! OF COURSE THE REAR NAKED CHOKE is extremely valuable. Don't know how I forgot to put that in there. Thank you. Very helpful advise. Need to get my brother around now for a partner.

Anytime, ps1.

Sounds like you had a very constructive learning environment. When I think of two schools getting together and working out, this is the scenario that I think of.

Wow! Unbelievable. That is fast.

I say go for it. You can learn great manipulation tactics from Hapkido, and I think you will enjoy it. What style of Hapkido is it?

Thanks, Sohan. That is info that I did not know about. I do have some of Chu's books, and they are great, too. I don't always know who is credible and who is not.

Thanks for the advise, Sohan. I think I will bookmark those sites. I also have some of the Gracie books. I could peruse them and work something out.

I like breaking boards as well. They demonstrate focus and power. But, my question was, do you practice it in class prior to having students perform them in testing?

My classes are pretty uniform as we practice basic techniques in the form of the Shotokan's Ten-no-kata Omote at the beginning of each and every class for about 10 minutes. After that we will branch in to more varying kihon (basics) for about 20 mins and then Kata (forms) for an hour and kumite (sparring) for a half-hour after that (actual times may vary from class to class). Sounds like you have a long class. That would be nice, though. Ours is only an hour long, but I can go 4 times a week. I think if I ever started a school again, I would have 1.5 hour classes.

Jacob: There are many nice people in the martial arts for you to discover. You are correct, and there are a lot of them here.

As an instructor, I feel that it is my duty to have my students fully prepared for their testings. When I owned my own school, we practiced board breaking in class, requiring a knowledge stripe for it before allowing a student who had to board break for testing to do so. In the current school I am a student at, they do not practice board breaking in class. Aside from the basics we do, we may do some target pad work for the required techniques the week before the test. What are your feelings on this? How would you teach? Personally, I feel that our students success rates would be higher on the board breaking if they had some in-class practice on actual boards. I did notice that at my former school, the success rates were higher.

Check them all out. Then decide. As always, check out the instructor as well.

Hey, Sohan. I also have some books by Tudor O. Bompa. Do you recommend them as well? He is very knowledgable.

Very true. In a knife fight, expect to get cut. Live or die, the average knife wounds sustained in a knife fight are 7. DCMS. Didn't know that. Good stat.

Ah, I understand now. I thought they were two seperate styles.

Yes, and if you go from one Uechi dojo to another they're pretty close. Now the exception being that advanced classes will do different exercises than beginners, but they're all things that we've been through. The basics for our school are uniform throughout the Association that our school is under. It is nice, that way when you visit another school, you can jump right into class and know what is going on, for the most part.