Knuckle Dragger

I have two suggestions for the kids causing a disturbance at the training hall. First the instructor can invite them to spar with him/herself and embarrass them or with a top student. Don't hurt to bad just embarrass them. If this is not an option then see if a Police Officer can come by occassionally to your class. In most cases this will stop almost all disruptive activity.

I understand your pain and experienced many of the same frustrations that you are having. I don't know your age but I assume that you are a juvenile and that is why your father has control over you and remember to always respect your father. Try to find another school that reflects your goals in training as far as the self defence is concerned and show it to your father and perhaps he will let you change schools. If not stay with the class and learn what you can and when you turn 18 you can train in any school you wish. Also I believe that you would enjoy the sporting aspect of the arts because you sound competitive.

I do not believe that people who train bare feet are at a disadvantage when defending themself's when wearing shoes. I have done most of my kicking training without shoes and even at the police academy and in the military they have you remove your shoes to protect the floor. I have only thrown 2 kicks in a self defense situation and both were effective and I was wearing shoes.

At this time I am in the proccess of starting a Boxing/Thai style kickboxing program on the Indian reservation that I work on. I am getting funding from the Diabetic Wellness program. There will be 2 formal classes during the week and an informal class on Saturday. I will be the primary instructor for boxing, Thai style kickboxing, and self defense. With other instructors coming in to teach wrestling and submission. I have just been donated an entire room of wrestling mats and and should be recieving around $7,000.00 worth of equipment in about a month. I have been working on this project for about 2 years and finally found the right people to help me make it happen. This is all free and is open to everyone. This has made a couple of local gyms and trainers mad at me but I think that they will come around when they realize that my goal is not to create champions in the ring but to make champions of life, to improve the overal fitness and health of the community increase peoples confidence and discipline and along the way they learn how to punch and kick people in the head.

I do not consider anything cheap in a real fight, and unless I am in a ring or on a mat it is a real fight.

In all honesty almost all my streetfights have ended in one punch or kick since I started trainging the martial arts, except one. I had just started working on the Indian reservation where I work and I knew no one. I road around with another Officer for 3 days and then was left on my own. I responded to a domestic violence call and was told the male subject involved had a warrant. When I arrived I made contact with a male in his late fifties to early sixties. He told me that the fighting couple had left. I entered the residence and looked around. I asked my dispatch for a discription of the suspect and he gave it to me and it matched this individual. I asked the suspect for identification and he said that he had none. He then ran into the back bedroom. I chased him and found him reaching into a closet in the bedroom. I grabbed his wrist and told him he was under arrest. He yanked away and came up swinging. I blocked his punches grabbed his arm and flipped him onto the bed. I then mounted him, pulled out my cuffs and was trying to get him flipped over to cuff him. He grabbed my cuffs and was trying to get them away from me. I reached for my pepper spray and he used the bouyancy of the bed to flip us both off the bed. I lost my grip on the handcuffs but he didn't he jumped up and struck me high on my forhead with the cuffs while I was regaining my feet. I sprayed him with pepper spray. He charged me swinging the cuffs like brass knuckles. I caught his wrist spun him around and sprayed him at point blank range in the face. Police Officers are trained after they spray someone with OC (pepper spray) to step back and let it cook on the suspect. I did this and he immediatly jumped forward and struck me in the exact same spot with the cuffs again. I then pulled out my collapsable baton (asp) and extended it. At this time I was not certified with the asp I had always worked with a PR 24 (side handle baton) or a straight baton non collapseable. He charged me again and I caught his wrist again and spun him around and struck him across the outer thigh targeting the common peroneal nerve(I probably did not spell that right) and the baton collapsed on me making the strikes ineffective. He then pulled away from me and came at me striking with the cuffs again I reextended the baton and at this point I decided it was him or me so I struck his lead hand later finding out that I broke it and struck him twice to the head. He continued forward. At this point I stepped back out of the bed room into the hallway I dropped the baton and drew my firearm. I was taking the slack out of the trigger as I was bringing it up. As I was leveling the pistol on the suspect's chest he shut the bed room door between us. I walked out to my unit and called for backup and an ambulance. 20 minutes later a Conservation Officer (a game warden) arrived who was the nephew of the suspect. We cleared the house and the suspect had fled out the back window. I was covered in blood (most of it my own) from the cut on my head. I was taken to the hospital and recieved 5 stitches. My chief picked me up at the hospital and informed that the suspect was a marine sniper in Viet Nam and had resisted arrest every time any one had tried to arrest him. My chief told me that the suspect had fled into the woods and he did not know how long it would take to catch him. I looked up and told my chief that the suspect was walking down the road in front of us. We stopped I jumped out and cuffed him. He did not resist. I took him to the hospital and then to jail he was in no condition to go to court the next day. I answered 3 more domestics that night. I still have traffic with that guy sometimes but we treat each other with a lot more respect than we did that night.

What is a mixed martial artist. Here recently I was referred too as a mixed martial arts trainer on a local radio station. I do not know if I qualify as one. I have trained boxers, kickboxers, Thai style kickboxers, karate tournament fighters, Olympic style TKD fighters, no holds barred fighters (mostly on their stand up game and conditioning) Police Officers, Military members, and people seeking self defence training. Over the years I have mixed different techniques from many different arts but my primary arts are boxing and Thai style kickboxing. I am not real good at grappling I train anti takedown techniques, the guard, a few submissions and ground and pound. I am primarily a striker and I train that way. I do not like misleading people. So am I a Mixed martial arts trainer or not what do you think.

I had never heard of WCL before today. I like most combative sports each one offering its strategies and techniques unique to that sport. In many cases their are competitions in these sports that only a purist will enjoy. I do not believe that WCL will have this problem its strength comes in its non stop action. I believe that the average person will enjoy this more than boxing, NHB, kickboxing, or any other combative sport. I would like to know what channels this comes on cause I would like to see it.

I have trained with teachers that I did not like. I can't think of one that I started out not likeing that I like today. However I still learned things from them. I would go with the teacher that had the better school. If it becomes to hard to continue training with him quit but as long as the training you recieved until then is good it was worth the pain.

I don't know if I should even respond to this but this is what I would tell a cop or soldier going into a combat zone who did not know anything. I would suggest taking boxing, kickboxing, or muay thai. One of these arts are usually available in most areas and they teach the following things right away. How to take punishment, how to train your body for fighting, and how to hit someone with bad intentions. You should get a trainer and train like your going to fight in a boxing match in 2 months. if he/she is any kind of trainer and you are in any kind of shape you should be in fighting shape if you go to prison. But the training will be very intense you may prefer what they do to you in prison.

If you are talking about the round house kick to the leg this is the way I do it. Face your opponent in a boxer type stance. You shift your weight to the lead foot standing on the ball of the lead foot. Raise your rear leg I slightly bend mine at the knee but allow it to straighten out as I bring it around. Spin on the ball of the lead foot rotating the hips for speed and power. The best way to learn this technique is to practice without a target. since this is not a snap kick if done properly it should not do any damage to your joints. If you perform the kick right you should spin completely 360 degrees. Practice about 50 of these each side a day and you should see an increase in power. Once you have done this another technique that some fighters use is to reach forward like they are grabbing something and pulling your body into the kick adding to the rotation of the body. However be aware that when using this technique a good puncher will split your gloves with a jab or over hand right.

Also two things to remember about Muay Thai is that (certainly in Thailand) eversince the adaptation of boxing gloves punches have been scored less than other techniques because the old timers of the art thought it was a wimpy thing to do. If you look at the punches used in competition they are all power oriented. The reason being is that you will not get much points for punches but if you knock out you opponent with a punch they cannot argue about it. Another thing to remember is that there is an aggression rule in true Muay Thai. The reason is that the strikeing defence of Muay Thai is extremely effective and highly under used. A well trained Muay Thai fighter could effectively block punches and counter strike off them and win most fights this way. Muay Thai fans do not want to see this so if a fighter is not aggressive enough and attack often enough he will either be disqualified or lose on points. Just some useless information that sticks in my mind. Hope it was interesting

I think it depends. If you are paying your instructor to teach you martial arts then I do not believe that you should have to ask him permission to do anything that does not directly represent his school. However if you believe that it will hurt your instructors pride or that he will believe that it will hurt your training in his art to train in other styles you should ask him his oppinion. If the instructor is volunteering his time you owe him the courtesy of asking him for permission. I believe that at the level of skill you are at there should be no good reason why you cannot cross train.

I do not know if this post is referring to sparring or tournaments or street fights or all the above. But my advice to female police officers is for them to learn their weapons better than their male counterparts. As stated earlier men are generaly stronger than women so women when they fight men have to be smarter than their opponent as a rule. When applying this to a sport setting such as judo, karate tournaments, or kickboxing learn the rules inside and out look for a rule that can give you an edge, also make sure your techniques are crisp and correct performed with strength and power just because someone is stronger than you does not mean that you cannot hurt them or even knock them out with a proper thrown techniques. When referring to the street take weapons and learn to use them properly. Women can carry just about anything in a purse. A collapsable baton, pepper spray, and even firearms. I have worked with many female police officers and while male officers also need to learn the weapons issued by their agencies the female officer needs to learn them better than the men. When in a fight either in the gym or the street use the weapons available to you. It does not matter if is fist, elbows, and knees or knifes, guns and grenades be as well trained in these weapons as possible and don't hesitate to use them. Use the dog philosophy When you see a dog getting ready to bite you you never think its just a female dog I'm not scared because both the female and the male dog have the same weapons big teethe and strong jaws. So when you fight get a good bite. I hope I didn't rattle on too much this is my first post don't want to make anyone to mad at me.