alsey

i understand well the difference between real fighting and practice fighting. the reason i'm using a ring situation to make a comparison is because that's the only comparison that can be realistically made. real fighting is not one situation, every fight is different and anything can happen. saying 'i can beat this guy in a real fight' makes little sense IMO because 'real fight' can mean lots of different situations. all i can say is i am more skilled than my marine friend, i have trained more for the empty-handed one-on-one situation than he has, and i have been in more real fights (not including long range rifle fighting) than he has. this of course isn't true for all marines, but i bet its true for a lot. i'd also be willing to bet that any decent UFC fighter is more skilled, better trained and has more experience in this situation than the vast majority of soldiers.

You may be correct in the context your putting the statement in. However, his mental picture of a "fight" is different than yours, so its not really a fair comparison. I'm speaking from my particular "mental picture", as I don't know your friend of course. I'm sure your friend and my military training is similar, just as yours and my martiral arts training is probably similar. why isn't it a fair comparison? i'm comparing my one-on-one empty handed fighting ability to his, i don't see how mental pictures have anything to do with it. whatever his mental picture is, it doesn't change the fact that i can beat him. also, it so happens that i've actually seen more real close-in combat than he has. i'm not generalising this to all soldiers or marines, this is just one example. i'm sure there are plenty of soldiers that could beat me in this situation. come on, seriously. if i stepped into the octagon against any UFC fighter i wouldn't stand a chance. in the one-on-one ring situtation, the UFC fighters are the best hands down.

rick, i made my post in rely to this post by cybren: now, seriously, i'd rather fight a marine than a UFC fighter. i can beat at least one marine, but a UFC fighter would flatten me in about 1 second. i'm talking about empty handed one-on-one combat. my friend (who is infantry BTW) is much better than me with a rifle, and much better than me at a lot of things related to combat, but empty-handed he's no match for me whether he wants to kill me or not.

in shotokan our sparring was mostly light contact. punches and kicks to the head and torso. my current karate practice is informal; i'm not at a dojo or anything anymore. i just train with a couple of other black belts and we do things our own way. our sparring generally involves one person using common street techniques (i.e. not technical karate moves), and the other guy defending using any method he wants. the contact is still fairly light but this involves striking, throwing and grappling. in jujitsu i'm not allowed to spar yet. i have to go up another two grades to spar. this is pretty annoying because i've been doing jujitsu for about four years now but due to changing schools and stuff i'm still pretty low down the ranks. anyway, the brown belts and above to judo type sparring. in kendo, we put our armor on and whack eachother full power with sticks. it rocks. you score by cutting to the head, wrist, or abdomen, or thrusting to the throat.

itosu changed karate drastically. he basically changed it from the okinawan combat system to the karate we usually see today. funakoshi then went on to popularise the new karate-do in japan. they were both very influential, but itosu had a greater affect on the art itself.

you can usually tell when physical violence is imminent. why wait for it to start when you can just end it then? i don't feel any moral obligation to not throw the first strike or anything. i feel an obligation to avoid and prevent fighting whenever possible, but when its clear that a fight is going to happen i'm not going to stand around and wait to get hit.

i've heard a lot about san soo. i've never actually seen anyone doing it though. i'll see if i can find anything on youtube.

i won't make a list because there are so many from so many different styles, but nice thread. jigoro kano and anko itosu stand out for me though, they've both really influenced the styles i practice. itosu was much more influential than funakoshi IMO. mustn't forget helio gracie either.

i'd love to learn some knife fighting, it looks absolutely awesome. finding someone who teaches it is a mission though. i was at this kendo/kenjutsu/iaijutsu seminar thing once, and there were these japanese guys doing some tanto (samurai knife) stuff, it was SO FAST. seriously i've never seen anything like it. there's also that scene in under seige where seagal has a knife fight with someone. again, rediculously fast.

i dunno, it took ages to get some of the fatalities down in deadly alliance. probably because i was playing it on a gamecube and the d-pad is so small its easy to press the wrong direction.

some of my favorites: "he who laughs last, laughs best. he who laughs at chuck norris, dies." "chuck norris could shoot someone and still have time to roundhouse them in the face before the bullet hit." "chuck norris makes onions cry." "chuck norris lives in a round house."

excellent post rick. i agree completely with everything you said. preemptive striking is of vital importance IMO; its by far the easiest way to end a confrontation with minimum injury. i also don't learn martial arts to be good at fighting, i was pretty good fighting anyway. not to say i havn't learnt a few tricks from MA though!

i'm not actually a wado ryu practitioner so i'm not 100% on this, but i think: junzuki is a lunge punch: you punch with the arm on the same side as the forward leg. zenshin means 'awareness' vaguely, so i guess zenshin junzuki is a lunging punch with awareness. gyakuzuki is a reverse punch: you punch with the arm on the same side as the rear leg. tobikomizuki is like junzuki, but you jump into it more i think. in japanese arts tobikomi generally means moving in and attacking as soon as an opening appears. mae geri is a front kick.

yeah, MA are pretty cool

i mentioned this in my first post, if it is the same move we're talking about. i would interpret it slightly differently. one of the opponent's arms is gripped at your waist with your hikite, your other hand around his body. as you move in to bring him down, you trip him (i.e. your leg goes around his legs, rather than his abdomen), then the gedan-barai to the head. both applications are essentially the same thing. leg techniques in kata are performed higher today than they originally were, so in a movement where the leg is around the opponent's chest hight, it would have originally been performed around the opponent's knee height, which is why i interpret it as a trip.

yeah, i've never quite understood kung fu. i've fought kung fu guys and well, they were all much easier to defeat than kickboxers, TKD guys or other karateka. like bushido man i don't like to make generalisations, this is just an observation from my experience. my guess is that most kung fu schools don't use effective training methods for the types of sparring used in kickboxing or karate.

talk to your instructor first. i went through a phase like that (at brown 2 actually), i think most people do. i just kept turning up and after a few weeks i got right back into it again. give yourself some short term and long term goals.

i don't have any definite proof, i'm just saying that people at the time could have believed that ninja were tengu due to their 'powers'.

Really?! I've been mislead about the power of a katana, then. Well, that's good... the katana isn't as uber as its often made out to be. especially a real katana made using historical techniques and materials. the katana is designed to cut flesh, and it does that extremely efficiently. it also cuts other soft things such as leather and clothing very well, and won't have much difficulty with bamboo armor. japanese ore is a bit rubbish compared to european ore, and this is partly the reason why samurai were never big on metal armor. so a katana was made to cut soft things, and for this reason it is extremely sharp. now if you strike an extremely sharp edge against something hard, what happens? it blunts. the sharper you make a sword, the easier it is to damage it. if you want to cut metal, you want something hard, not necessarily something that's razor sharp. that's why metalworking tools are often coated with diamond. had i included armor in this hypothetical tournament, i'd probably have chosen a european b*stard sword (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longsword) over a katana, because katana suck against heavy armor. i've only done a bit of practice with two swords, but i found i ended up fighting almost entirely with the long sword, and using the short sword almost instinctively to cover. the problems i found with doing this were that my speed and control were significantly reduced, as was my reach. overall i just found it very clumsy, but i probably just havn't done it enough. two sword styles are very interesting though, and musashi seemed to think that two swords was the way to go.

greater experience or rank doesn't necessarily make one right.

i just found this in wikipedia's ninja page: "Their special abilities are also often exaggerated, such as becoming invisible, multiplying themselves, turning into animals, jumping over buildings, the ability to fly, stick to the walls and foresee the future. These myths were caused by the secretive nature of ninja, and confusion with Tengu and yamabushi." i guess if they were confused with tengu they could have been called tengu by some people.

yeah, the ninja mask is called tengu-gui if i remember right.

you don't need two classes. the adults and children can just be taught separately in one class.

i love seagal's fight scenes. also lawrence fishburne in the matrix; i just love the look on his face when he's doing his kung fu, plus his form is brilliant.

it really depends on the person. i've never called anyone sempai outside the dojo, but my sensei i would always call sensei. i don't think there's any reason why you should have to conform to 'dojo rules' outside the dojo, but do what you feel is right. i would always call my instructor sensei because i really respect him and calling him sensei shows that respect.