ckdstudent

You know I ate one of those healthy biological yoghurts once and spent two days throwing up.

Personally I'm quite happy to stick with what I know works (at least for me) on the street. I've never really gained much enjoyment from watching fights, and putting myself in the way of danger is not one of my favourite pastimes.

Actually that comment: was more a response to lister14's: than anything else. Besides, I never said it was simple to throw techniques, or that they'd all hit, and who said I was talking about only throwing kicks? I know the debate is about kickers, but most of them actually have arms as well as legs. Power and stamina have nothing to do with whether or not the grappler can capitalise on the techniques, that's purely down to speed and accuracy. You try catching a kic that's just hammered into your knee. I quote my first post in this thread: I hate to say it, but I don't quite sound to myself like I'm scoffing at the decisions of your masters when they decide to solidify their training, or perhaps you didn't read this. I have to say that I don't compete or really watch competitions so on that particular thing I can't really comment. I do know that in sparring we wear padded gloves, and have never had serious injuries or knockouts, whereas without the gloves with the same techniques its been a whole other story. Padded gloves absorb impact as the padding compresses, they also help to spread the impact more evenly over a larger area. Maybe we're talking about different types of gloves, our padding might be softer than yours. At least I admit that grappling has a use, and is useful to learn. Like I said I don't watch competition so I can't comment. I've seen my fair share of fights though, and participated in a few more than I'd like.

Watch Jet Li's Kiss of the Dragon. He fights with acupuncture needles.

I've experienced and yet it didn't work for me, maybe its because I'm a skeptic and a lot relies on the power of the mind to believe.

Actually I take grappling now and then to learn a little so I've got a backup, but I get irritated by the attitude which I'm always hearing that grapplers can *always* take down a striker and will always win a fight. Yes, I have fought in anger, not in a ring but on the street. I've only had two experienced people try to grapple me and they were very short fights. Padded gloves do soften blows though, whether they're meant to or not. If they didn't then you'd still break bones and cause cuts with them on, and in many competitions they have rules against 'excessive contact'. I wonder why I'm arrogant for saying nothing more than that grapplers won't always win, and yet they're just realistic when they say that they will. Incidentally I mean no offense to most of the people on this board who don't claim that grapplers will always win, I've just heard that they will too many times.

That depends. A lot of people for some reason are taught to block with both hands, which does leave you open. We're always taught to keep our other hand up in guard, ready to respond to any other attacks coming. Also when you do block someone you usually open up targets on them as much as yourself. An outwards block for example moves their arm out from their body and exposes their head and chest, perfect setup for a counter.

You see most kickers put their legs down after they've kicked, so that they have both feet on the floor. Kicking above the waist is well-known as a bad idea in self-defense, except in special circumstances. Why should it be closed just because they see a use in it? What makes them the grand authority on martial arts? Remember as well if you grab someone around the hips you've just exposed your shoulderblades and spine to their hands.

Wait, a quick death is now both cruel and unusual, but leaving someone to languish in prison for the rest of their life is, I suppose, humane and normal? I dread to think what these people's moral values must be like.

As with so many other things its purely down to repetition. A while ago someone swung a punch at me and without thinking about it I just blocked. I was so impressed that I hadn't had to think that I was almost nailed by his second punch, but managed to dodge away at the last second.

Reasonable force involves no more force than they have used, or the bare minimum required to restrain them. You'd probably have got away with just the one blow as a response, but following it up with a knee would be considered vindictive (whether the assumption is justified or not) as it suggests that he was already on his way down. I'd imagine that the charge over here would have been IABH (Intended Actual Bodily Harm) rather than IGBH. The thing is juries are supposed to take into account that reasonable force is hard to judge in these situations, but they often seem to believe that martial arts training should stop you feeling the effects of adrenaline.

So the insanity plea isn't enough, now they're going to have a stupidity plea as well? Does that mean that if you've got an IQ over 120 you get two death penalties because you're supposed to be smarter than average?

If you don't want to learn the stance and perform the stance in class then you may as well just find a martial art which uses a stance you find more suitable.

Leg hooks seem to work quite well too, simply slip inside punching range, slide your foot behind theirs and yank.

Actually nitrous oxide was used, and still is in some cases (I think) as a general anaesthetic, used a lot in dentistry up until around twenty years ago. Yes, and to predict the future you can read Nostradamus, all you need to do is read between the lines, between the words, between the letters. You can fit almost any text to almost anything you want to if you read between the lines. While there may be something in the form (although why you'd want to try something where if you do it wrong you cough up blood I don't know) the texts don't really have much to do with modern science, any more than Nostradamus has to do with predicting the future. They fit because people want them to fit.

I don't deny that the mind can exert incredible control over the body, or that adrenaline is what might once have been described as Chi. What I do find a little strange is using a word which means 'air' to describe concepts we now have words for.

Well, us Brits only see it as a single edged sword. We know exactly who we're laughing at.

It doesn't really matter, you don't get to choose your weight category, its chosen for you based on your weight.

Ever thrown a shuriken? I've seen people put them through (admittedly quite thin and plaster) walls before. That's gonna hurt anyone.

A punch to the knee would be interesting, you'd need to bend in order to perform it and set yourself up for a fairly nice counter. Downwards punches to the stomach, groin, and even thighs can be quite useful though.

80% of your brain going at once? I hate to say it, but that sounds like propoganda to me. Do you have any links to studies on this? As for the energy discharge from magnetic fields around nerve clusters, that's a theory of a tiny number of scientists. Many more have managed to find no evidence that its even a phenomena, unfortunately saying 'Nope, we've not found anything that can prove it' doesn't make good news and so doesn't get reported. Chi is anything but hard science. Finally isn't yoga just a form of meditative stretching, I've tried classes before and Chi was never mentioned.

The type of plasma which fire would refer to is probably quite different from that inside your body. The plasma in your body is essentially a watery liquid made up of broken cells and similar things. The type of plasma that is similar to fire is a superheated substance in which nuclear fusion rather than fission is occuring and which requires massive amounts of heat. The sun for example consists mainly of plasma. Without a good engine nitrous oxide makes you laugh, or knocks you out if you have too much of it. Hmm, quite a good analogy.

All of our bone on bone blocks are taught with the flat of the arm, so that the impact is spread across both bones rather than one. Makes it less painful when you're trying to block kicks. Parries are deflections or redirections of the force of punches. Technically blocks are physically stopping the punch but all of ours are parries anyway, the distinction blurs most of the time between the two.

But when I press any button on my photocopier it fizzes, and then squirts out screwed up paper. So does that mean that 2 = 6 = paper jam?

Hand them all samurai swords and give the money to the one who walks out alive.