alsey

today i'm moving house again (i do that a lot), and the new house won't have an internet connection for a while. plus i'm starting a new degree and a new job so i'm going to be pretty busy for while. so yeah, i probably won't be around here for a few weeks. i'll be back though, this forum has been great. see you all soon

we've done the no blocking drill several times, its really good. if you can get to do this at your dojo its great for developing offensiveness.

in my opinion, the whole concept of spiritual mediums is absurd. if they tell you what's going to happen in your future and it does happen, they've either investigated it somehow and found out, or its coincidence.

now, if this guy has got in touch with some burglars to rob your house then he's pretty stupid because you can report him to the police. if it was me, i would report him to the police right now just to be on the safe side.

on the other hand if you honestly believe this guy can see the future, there's still not any point in worrying about it. if you prevent it from happening, then he was wrong. if he was right, then there's nothing you can do about it.

You and I have very different definitions of combat, or combative training.

yes, apparently so. my dictionary defines combat as 'fighting' and it doesn't mention anything about intent to kill. i hate semantical arguments, so would it be better if we call it fighting instead of combat?

all motobu said in that quote is that kata was not developed for fighting other trained fighters, but that it is effective against those who don't know the methods being used against them. whether you intend to kill the opponent or not is besides the point.

try being more offensive and make your opponent do the blocking. try to create openings instead of just waiting for them; throw some jabs or a kick to try to get the opponent to react, then counter as he does. its easier said than done, but you just have to attack. move towards him with the feeling that you can't be stopped, and attack. even if your strikes don't land, they force the opponent to move or block and hopefully he will open something in doing that.

yeah, the character changes have been great, though i want locke to go back to old school locke and start throwing knives at stuff again. i just felt sorry for him for most of season 2.

On your first point, doesn't that conflict with the quote though? If he made the statement that kata was for combat application?

i don't see any conflict. combat is combat, it doesn't necessarily involve trained fighters.

Today's generation of soldier (I'm a Marine, not a soldier, but combat trained just the same) practice what I would consider to be kata, its just not called that. We do plenty actually. Before you fire your rifle you snap in, where you practice aiming in on a target and squeezing the trigger, while using breath control. We do bayonet training, where we practice butt strikes, slashs, stabs, etc., we can't practice this on a live opponent for obvious reasons. In my service we have MCMAP (Marine Corps Martial Arts Program), and we do plenty of drills without a live opponent. Now all these don't sound like kata in the traditional sense, but they are very similar.

i agree. imagine if for some reason (hypothetically) you did those rifle drills, but without actually holding the rifle: you made the same movements with your hands and did all the breathing, but without the rifle. and then you pass on the 'kata' to some people who don't know much about rifles; they won't have a clue what you're doing. the squeezing the trigger action might be familiar, but everything else will be obscure and meaningless. this is analagous to what has happened with karate kata.

On the other point I quoted, your correct, I seriously doubt anyone's going to take a swing at you with a katana, however does it swing a lot different from a baseball bat? Sure a baseball bat's significantly clumsier, however, some of the same techinque's may apply.

there's a huge difference: katanas are sharp. to hurt someone with a bat you have to make a relatively big swing which the opponent can move inside of. a katana only needs a small swing to cut, or a thrust can be made. back to the original point though; i'd be much better off training to defend against a bat attack than a katana attack, because that's what i'm more likely to encounter.

Your also correct in thinking that some drunk in a bar is probably not going to throw a nasty rear leg round kick to your head, however, how different is the actual physics of a high round kick from a haymaker?

the kata movements just don't fit with someone throwing a high kick at you, in my opinion. the initial deflection might be similar, but the follow up wouldn't make much sense. but again, i want to train to defend myself from common attacks so i concentrate on punches.

All I'm saying is that much of the bunkai we learn may not apply in its traditional sense, but much of it apply's to many present day attacks. Also, if bunkai is practiced verse's a skilled opponant, how well is it going to work on a skill less moron?

its not necessarily a matter of skill, its more one of actual techniques. a bar brawler with no formal training can still be skilled and dangerous, but he's not going to throw karate techniques at me. what i actually do in bunkai practice is train against a skilled opponent, but that opponent uses common street attacks rather than formal karate techniques.

i do it without noticing it really, i think i've always done it. i guess it adds confidence.

Boxing and wrestling don't teach moral and ethical values as part of their core curriculum. However, we still consider them martial arts. Are they now not martial arts, because we realize this?

exactly. what about the UFC guys? tito oritz; i think his attitude is terrible but i'd never hesitate to call him a martial artist. royce gracie was arrogant going into that hughes fight, but in my opinion he's one of the greatest martial artists on the planet.

Which one of the founders of Karate said that kata was designed for defense against an unskilled attacker?

choki motobu:

"the techniques of kata were never developed to be used against a professional fighter in an arena or on a battlefield. they were, however, most effective against someone who has no idea of the strategy being used to counter their aggressive behaviour."

now fair enough, motobu wasn't exactly a founder of karate but he knew a load more about kata than anyone today does. in his time, kata was still the basis of genuine combative training.

My history must be a bit foggy, because I was under the impression that Okinawan Karate was a hybrid of Chinese martial arts, and was used by the Okinawan's after the Japanese banned weapons in Okinawa to wage guerrilla war against the Japanese Samurai.

karate began before that. there were the minamoto samurai who fled from japan in the 11th century, and it was their bujutsu combined with chinese kempo that formed karate. it was the okinawan king sho shin who first imposed the ban on civilians carrying weapons, in the 15th century. there weren't many samurai running around, and the street fights a karateka was likely to encounter were much like those a citizen today is likely to encounter. they had cobble streets instead of tarmac ones, and nunchucks instead of baseball bats, but the enemy was the mugger, the drunkard, the burglar; the same threats we face today.

it wasn't until the 17th century that the satsuma came to invade okinawa, and enforced a weapons ban in their own way. the okinawans and the samurai no doubt had a few fights, and who do you reckon won most of the time? the farmer who's fought a few thugs in the street with his bare hands, or the veteran soldier armed with a sword?

I must also be mistaken in the believe that Karate is based upon kata that was brought back from China.

no, you're right about that.

I don't mean to sound disrespectful to anyone, I just don't understand who's teaching bunkai out there. When I was to the point where I started learning bunkai (I firmly believe novice students shouldn't be learning bunkai right away in their training, as its going to be too much to understand until the basic movements are in their head), we have always been taught based upon skilled attacks, not some garbage haymaker, or unbalanced nonsense swipe in the air. Of course the bunkai will also work on those unskilled attacks, but why would anyone under estimate their potential attacker like this?

no one's underestimating anyone. that's just what kata techniques work best against (i believe). why learn to protect yourself against oi tsuki or yoko geri if the chance of someone genuinely attacking you like that is rediculously small. i mean, maybe there's some guy out there who's going to attack me with a sword, but i don't spend my time learning how to defend myself from a sword attack. likewise, maybe there's some guy who's going to attack me with a roundhouse to the head, but i don't spend my time learning to defend against it because its highly unlikely to happen. what's likely to happen is that some guy will throw a punch or two, grab my lapel, push me, or tackle me. that's what i want to be 100% sure that i can defend myself against, and kata is pretty much perfect for dealing with those sorts of attacks. it so happens i've done plenty of kumite as well, so if someone does throw a roundhouse to my head, i'm not helpless, but that's not the focus of my training.

I have a better idea , instead of mastering your kata first (which will consume a lot of time ) and then breakin' it into training drills with partner (which will also take additional time since kata/forms are different than real application ) , why not cuttin' it short and start learning those blocks/strikes/grapples directly with a partner and in a practical way !!!!

without the kata, you don't have the techniques. they're not taught in karate these days (in most schools). practicing kata helps you to understand what the movements are for, as well as giving a means of practice when you don't have a partner. there are some moves where me and the people i train with would develop an application, practice it, then later through doing the kata we'd find another application, sometimes a better one.

I mean , lets face it , have you ever seen somebody using the horse stance in a tournament or a street fight to apply a strike or a grapple ??

yes. not as perfect as it looks in kata, but yes.

A Jian(also called a gim or taichi sword or straightsword) has a long thin blade(about 28-30 inches long) and is razor sharp for the first third, moderately sharp for the second third and blunt for the final third. As it is a very thin blade, you can't block with it.

wow, that's interesting. so does it flex like a rapier blade?

its not been explained, but in the episode before the finale, one of the others asks michael if walt had ever appeared where he's not supposed to be, before the crash. he's definately got some powers of some sort, but we don't know anything about them really.

i honestly think season 3 is going to answer quite a lot of questions, at least partially. they say something mind blowing is going to happen in the first 6 episodes, then i think after that the clues are going to start fitting together.

lol. its silly things like that that made star wars great.

My favorite: "You do karate?"

"yeah"

"cool, show me some" Usually at work mind you. So, I say are you ready for lesson one? They say yes, and I walk away.

i love that.

asking for demonstrations is what i usually get when people find out, usually in the most unsuitable places.

I happen to agree that a flying kick as a first move isn't such a bad idea if you are confident they are not confident to block it, it can really put them off right from the get go.

i agree, it depends on how ready they are for it. there are certain moves we have in kendo that actually put you in a very disadvantageous position momentarily, but they work because they surprise the opponent. i think the flying kick is a bit like this.

This is true, but the societies were using the weapons/grappling systems before the forms systems came into place. Even the ancient Greeks, with boxing, wrestling, and pankration, would practice to fight against skilled opponents, and not just the untrained attacker. They may not have used weapons disarming either.

However, with the advent of the firearm and the reduction of close quarter weapons combat, everything began changing so as to preserve the fighting arts.

true, though i think the greek systems were sport oriented somewhat like modern MMA. it just seems to me that a lot of kata using arts were designed for non-sporting, non-battlefield situations. there are exceptions of course.

Those are all really good points. I think you just have to look at each art individually to really understand it properly. Its too hard to generalize.

true, the generalisation doesn't really work. its just a thought that came to me at the time.

whose a geri?

hiza geri

HAHAHAH

(weird mood)

lol?

at our dojo we weren't allowed to use knees in kumite, but there are a few in the kata. but its only a few, shotokan isn't big on knees.

some people really need to get rid of some ego and open up. to turn away any student is refusing an opportunity to learn more, and no one is good enough to do that IMO. i've never encountered an instructor like that myself, must be annoying when it happens. good luck finding another school

sounds interesting, i'll try and find it.

so you were trying to do the most punches in a given time for a world record? i agree, i think using a pressure plate to measure the punch would be a good idea in this case, but you'd still have to decide on how powerful a real punch is.

talking of motorbike charges, a few months ago i saw one of those bounty hunter programs and they were trying to catch this guy on a motorbike. basically, the guy on the bike charged and one of the bounty hunters clotheslined him off WWF style

thanks, last time i checked on that video it was only half done. i'm still not sure about the whole valenzetti thing; to me the idea of having an equation that predicts the end of the human race is rather illogical. it reminds me of mckenna's timewave zero theory ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timewave_zero ), which is really quite meaningless. i'm probably looking too far into it, its a sci-fi show after all (i think). it will be intersting to see how the lost experience thing works into the show. three weeks till season three...