bushido_man96

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.

It does work out nicely, because of the way the basics are taught. Once the orientation is complete, and the students are doing basics in the class, they start learning their form. What is nice about the basics is that the techniques are perfromed in the same stance that they usually are done in the form with. For example, we do double knifehand blocks in basics in a back stance. Most of the time in the forms, the double knife hand block is done in a back stance. So, in this way, it re-enforces the learning. Instead of thinking of technique and stance seperatly, they come together.

You should stretch every day, after a good warm-up. Work Chinese splits, American splits to both sides, stretch the groin with a butterfly stretch, sit with your legs spread wide and stretch to the front, and then to each side as well. Stretch each leg single as well. Another idea is to use the pulley system I described in another post. You tie a rope to your ankle, and you can pull the rope and hold it to stretch your leg into a side kick/round kick or front kick postition. 30 minutes of stretching a day will yield results.

Sohan: It's absolutely imperative a fighter be comfortable in all quarters. Anything can go wrong and you can't always dictate where/how a battle will be fought. It really makes me laugh when some of my karate contemporaries insist that they don't need to learn grappling because they are skillful enough to stay off the ground. I agree with you here that ground training is very important in all MA training, and learning to fight in all quarters. Unfortunately for me, I have no way of practicing ground combat unless it is impromptu. And in this case, it may not be a very constructive learning experience. So, I just try to keep my wits about me and try to think of what I would do if I did get taken down.