Shorinryu Sensei

That link took us to a wing chun link that, as far as I could tell anyway, had nothing to say about a bear attack. But then again, I'm on my 2nd glass of wine and a bag of microwave popcorn, so I could be wrong. Anway, living in the middle of the Rockies, and loving to camp, I have had several bear encounbters, but nothing serious. Well, no more serious enough than to get my heart to pounding about 200 beats/minute I guess! Twice with black/brown bears, and once with a grizzly, I've been bluff charged. that's where a bear will act like it's charging, advance quickly a few feet/yards, then stop. The black bears were around 200lbs I suppose, and the grizz was maybe 5-600 lbs..and if you've never experienced one of those, they are very intense situations. Black bears wil lseldom actually attack, but grizz...you just never know about those critters. I've also had some run-ins with several dogs. One was when I was walking down to the local park to teach a karate class years ago and had many of my weapons (sai, tonfa, nunchauku, kama) in a backpack on my back. I wasn't carrying a bo or anything else in my hand. As I walked by houses, this one door opened and a big black mutt dog came runing out with the owner hot on it's heels yelling for it to come back. I turned, saw it and reached over my shoulder to my backpack where the hilt of my sai were protruding out the top of the pack. I grabbed one and just threw it at the dog as hard as I could. It landed about a foot in front of the dog and stuck up to the tines, and the dog came to a grinding halt, turned around and went back to its owner. Scared the hell out of me for a sec. The owner had the balls to bitch me out about trying to stab his dog with my big "knife"! lol You're damn lucky I missed buddy! I wasn't trying to! Preobably the most dangerous encounter I've had with an animal was coming back from a short road trip on my cycle. I was cruising about 75mph just past the continental divide and came around a corner and here was a full growm female moose (no antlers) standing in the middle of the road! ARGH! I came to a screeching halt...flashed my lights and honked my horn at it, and it just stood there and looked at me like ..."Well..???" I was prepared to spin the bike and do a 180 and head back the way I came, as moose are very unpredictable and can be down right ornery sometimes. I revved my motor a bunch, and it wandered at it's own pace off the road. For those of you that haven't' seen a moose in the wild...they are about as big as a clydsdale horse, but skinnier legs, and bigger torso. And brother, they can have an attitude if they want to! 4 years ago, I hit a deer at night causing $3600 worth of damage to the front of my 4x4. When I stopped to check the damaged and grabbed my flashlight to check on the deer, it was lying in the middle of the lane I had been in, so I went to drag it off the road so nobody would hit the carcass and cause another accident, and the dang thing started kicking. Trust me people, a deer, if it connects with those hooves, can cause some pretty serious damage to you. I dragged if off the raod (took about 3 trys total), then got my .357 our of the truck and put it out of its misery. It's rear end was obviously broken up. Do you want to hear about the birds that chased me? OK, I'll skip that one. Ah...the life of living in the mountains. Lots of wildlife around here.

Trust me. If you used a head kick successfully in a real fight. you were: 1. Really lucky it worked. 2. fighting an inexpperienced fighter, regardless of if he looked like a boxer or not. Also, the groin block you are mentioning is very limited as to what protection it will give you. There are basically only two ways to block the groin with your hand. A fist with knuckles pointing downward, or the flat of the hand pointing downward. Both will only stop a upward direction roundhouse type of kick, but will not prevernt a, upward kick with the ball of the foot. The roundhouse groin kick will hurt, the ball of the foot method will smash. BIG differance.

Yes, Sensei Kuda is surly missed by thosethat knew and trained with him. His first visit to the USA was at the invitation of my instructor, Sensei Dennis Miller in Havre, Montana in 1978. We had a very intensive 3 week training seseeion (6 days/week), and at the conclusion of it, my Sensei was promoted to Sandan, and I was promoted to Shodan. I also had the oppoortunity to work with him again in Seattle for a week in 1990 where I was promoted to my Sandan. That was the last time I saw Sensei Kuda. Sensei Kuda was a soft spoken, gentle man, and I was saddened when I learned of his passing.

You need to listen to ALL of your instructors, but this guy is the one to believe! High kicks look great, but are a good way to get neutered if you're fighting an opponent, such as myself, that loves an exposed groin in a fight. Plus think about your balance while your foot is way up there in the air. How is it? Pretty bad of course, so you may just end up on the floor. How's your ground fighting capability? All instructors in the same dojo/dojang need to be consistent with each other. One shouldn't teach that "this is right", and another teach the opposite. It doesn't instill confidence in them, and can cause arguments and conflict in the class..which is what is hppening with you right now.

Agreed! (sorry, I couldn't resist)

I'll agree also with the above posts from the others. In a fight, you don't have the time to establish anything other than that he is trying to take you out, and to react. Yes, you can see openings and weakness's right away if you're experienced enough, but that needs to become nearly immediate if you truly want to survive a fight. The primary focus of learning to defend yourself is to teach your body to react to stimuli (is that spelled right?) immediately. While you're dancing around watching your opponent and thinking "Well, if I do this...he'll do this...", you're going to get nailed. You can figure out what went wrong when you wake up I suppose...assuming of course, that you're able to wake up.

Yes, thanks for those links. I emailed them to everybody on my email list too! lol Nice thing about them (I have dialup) is that htey load pretty quicly...which I appreciate!

Dang! There goes another one of our secrets! This is correct. I'll admit that my knowledge of the kobudo ancestry is very sketcy at best, but I believe this is correct also. Yes. My origional sensei was Dennis Miller, who was a student of Sensei Kuda Yuichi on Okinawa for a few years. If you'd like to check out our meager associations website, it's: http://www.geocities.com/rohai.geo/page.html I'm #7 on the list of dojo memberships, and yes, that really is my last name! Most of the way down the page you'll see some pictures of Sensei Kuda taken WAY back in June of 1978. I'm the tall, skinny guy with him in a couple of them.

uhhhhh...we don't always hold the bo in a 2'-2'-2' hold..just most of the time we do. The bo can be extended also like a jab while holding onto the last foot of it, and retracting it quickly. Therre are other techniques, but I don't want to turn this into a bo lesson. And yes, normally the bo is a distance weapon, but there are certainly a multitude of inside, close quarter terchniques including traps, sweeps, pressure points, blocks, etc. that are used also. I didn't mean to imply the bo was exclusively an outside/distance weapon. IMHO, it's the most versatile of all the weapons, and the easiest by far to find a substitute for on the street in case you forgot to pack yours along with you on a night on the town with your lady.

It's a question that really has no correct answer to it. There are so many factors involved. 1. The sai can be thrown, the bo can't. 2. The bo is "generally" (not always) considered to be a distance weapon, whereas the sai are a close quarters weapon. a. You have to be close to strike with a sai, but not a bo. 3. The location of the fight, is it cluttered (trees, tables, walls, etc) or open (field, gym)? A sai has an advantage in a cluttered environment. As you say, assuming both combatants have the same skills..who is having a better day that day (luckier)? Given an open field of "play", equal skils..I'd say the bo has the advantage generally against any other martial arts weapon.

I didn't find anything on Google about the guy and martial arts.

I was thinking more of rollerskates myself First of all, you can't "throw" somebody with a punch. You can knock the back, and I suppose that if the guy staggers back far enough, he could stagger back for a long ways. But lifting a person off their feet and back that far with a punch? Not possible bud. Somebody's feeding you a pile of you-know-what. Unless you nailed a guy with an uppercut, I doubt if they'd leave their feet, and in the case of an uppercut he would be lifted upwards, not backwards, a few inches at most. But then again, Mike Tyson could probably uppercut a stationary target a foot or more if they were real light. Kicks...yeah, you cn take a guy off his feet that way, and back a few FEET (farther if he's backpeddl;ing with his legs as he goes backwards)...but not the distance you're talking about.

In all honesty, I've never heard the kobudo part of my training referred to as anything other than kobudo. I know Sensei Kuda trained under Hohan Soken, but had also trained under several other people in kobudo...as is common on Okinawa. I believe I heard somewhere that Sensei Kuda's family had their own version of kobudo, but don't quote me on that. I'll contact my Sensei and see if he can enlighten me on that some more. He trained on Okinawa with Sensei Kuda for quite some time, so may be much more familiar with this than I am.

I think you'll have to ask someone that actually studies those sword arts. I don't, so I really can't tell you. I hgave one that I play with a bit, but I have no formal training in it...and before anybody asks...no, I don't teach it to my students.

Nope WW...getting them coffee is the absolute last resort. Hamburgers are somewhere closer to #8 I think.

True, I'm not training for war through practice of my chosen art, but that doesn't mean that I'm still not practicing a warring art form. You never know when a Ninja will jump ouit of my closet trying to steal my prized Montana State sweater ya know! I wish, when I was in the Army, that I had the training and knowledge that I have now. I wasn't in combat, but could have easily been sent to "Nam at any time ('72-74). The hand to hand training I recieved while in the Army was a joke, and basically emphasised pure aggression over any sort of effective technique.

Well, I think so.

I suppose you could use them that way, but if you're using a Japanese katana, it's a two handed weapon and not really designed for one handed use.

We're getting WAY off topic here, but I'd say the topic has been pretty well hashed to death at this point anyway. One thing you need to keep in mind here is that I live in the wilds of Northwestern Montana (middle of the Rocky Mountains actually), far from the big cities, and also far from exposure to all of the systems you mention there. Therefore, I can't really comment on the differances much..perhaps Shorin Ryuu can? One thing I know is that some of the more "progressive" of the Shorinryu branches are doing head kicks, board breaking, flying kicks and getting away from the "old" techniques in leau of more "modern" (aka new and improved) techniques. We don't. I practice Shorinryu Matsumura Seito (also called Orthodox), which was renamed...or our particular branch of it anyway..by the late Sensei Yuichi Kuda (died in '99) We are now called Shorinryu Matsumura Kenpo. The systme itself remained unchanged, so all we were hoping to accomplish was to get away from the politics of many of the other organizations. So far, we've succeeded! Our linage is basically like this. Soken Matsumura to Hohan Soken (his nephew), to Yuichi Kuda (whom I've been under for nearly 30 years), to my origional Sensei, Dennis Miller (and various others since). The organization is currently headed by Sensei Kenneth Penland (9th Dan) of California, and the association head is Sensei Larry Mason (6th Dan) of Maryland. When Sensei Kuda passed away in '99, his son (forgot his name right now) took over his teachings, but as I understand it, he has switched the emphasis to sport fighting as opposed to the old ways. I don't like that and am not interested in belonging to that organiztion for that reason. A bit about this system. Very upright stances, no (or few anyway) jumping kicks, low kicks (no higher than the belly button), a very fast moving system, and lots of lateral movments that are highly stressed from the beginning of training (or I do anyway). Belt promotions aren't a big deal, as emphasis on learning far overshadows getting the next belt. We do nothing flashy at all, and it is a very effective for personal self-defense that I, personally, have used a number of times over the years. We are rather infomal in class compared to many other systems and again, emphasis on training, retention of knowledge, and being a good person is stressed and smiled upon in class. I don't know anybody in our particular branch of this art that is trying to make money at it, but rather a dedicated few that are trying to preserve and pass on the "old way" of doing authentic Okinawan karate-do. Do I like it? OH YEAH! I would imagine that if you searched Google (I LOVE GOOGLE!) you'd find lots of information about those other systems. I have to run and do some work "stuff", so forgive the hastily typed words and typos. I'll come back later and clean it up if I can...probably tomorrow.

I took no offense...did my reply seem as if I was offended? Sorry if it did...it was not intended that way. Hell, I'm proud to have reached 51! lol My sandy colored hair is 50% gray now (but still thick and curly! lol), my "six-pack" stomach has added a few extra cans in the last 5 years (working on a 12-pack), I still have all of my own teeth (this is important as you get older), still have my wisdom teeth (waiting for the wisdom to kick in any day now), still have my appendix and tonsils too! Everything else is still working normally...or last time I checked anyway, and I still can bounch my students around pretty darn good when I need to! That always makes me happy! Well, I don't know exactly how far in the whole scheme of things I've gone yet on this path, or how much farther there is to go...but I do know that no matter how hard I train, or how much I learn...it's never enough to say that "I'm finished" and know it all. Another member of this forum, Shorin Ryuu, is very knowledgable and I've already learned a number of things about my chosen "system" that I wasn't aware of prior to his posts. Thanks Shorin Ryuu...glad to have you on this forum! My way of thinking is this. The day I know it all is the day they can drop me in the "hole" and pour dirt over me...I'm done. So, I hope to have a very long life, because it isn't ever going to happen!

As I understand it, "martial" = "warring", or pertaining to war-like. So, we have "warring arts", or arts that refer to war/combat training or activities. Technically, boxing, fencing, wrestling, equestrian events (horse jumping/racing) and track and field (javelin, discus, running, pole vault, etc) are also "martial/warring" arts, as they came from skills that were needed to make war, or to make combat against others back in "the good 'ol days". Not necessarily Army vs Army, but also on an individual, one on one, basis.

No problem...I'm 51 (52 in November) and been involved in Shorinryu since Januaryu of 1975. 30 years this coming January and still have tons to learn. I'm a very easy going guy. I'll answer just about any question directed at me (and many that aren't! ). And system or style..you have to label them something, right? As long as we all know what we're referring to..which isn't alwasy the case on a forum such as this. Thanks. I'm rather opinionated sometimes, which isn't always to people's liking. But I speak what I feel, and say what I feel is correct from my point of view. Some like it, some don't...makes little differance to me. That was a good story. I can tell several of my own along the same lines and have in the past on other threads, but I know exactly what you're saying. These people "think" they know what they're doing because they can make the weapon move fast, and they get lots of positive feedback from friends and fellow martial artists that also don't know what they're doing. The ego is well fed, so why learn to do it the right way, when the right way isn't as much fun? It's as close to perpetual motion as it gets I think. They learn crap, and in turn pass that crap to their students, who pass it on to theirs, who pass....well, you get the idea. We're probably on the 3rd or 4th generation of "flash-masters" in the world right now since the martial arts have been introduced to the West. When will it stop? Never, I'm sad to say. All I can do personally is pass on what I have learned and what I practice, to my students, who will hopefully do the same to theirs when the time comes.

Correct. The biggest mistake I see with the sai are in the manipulation of them going from the closed position to the open position. If you're not actually blocking something while you do this, you can do it with a fast "flip" because there will be no resistance to the movment (such as an incoming weapon you are trying to deflect). However, many people also use that same quick flip to try to defect a weaon, and it will cause the sai, if used in a real application, to get knocked out of your hand. The weapon needs to be withdrawn back towards the opposite shoulder and the outward "flip" comes as the weapon is being advanced towards the incoming weapon. It's easier to demonstrate than to explain. I hope that's clear? Watching black belts (or any belt for that matter) in a tournament doing a kata for me as a judge, I see these simple flicks all the time where they are supposed to be blocking an incoming weapon. Realistically, which kata's are supposed to be representing, that won't work. Also, I've seen many times where the competitor, or the instructor in a dojo, will be wrapping his/her fingers inside the tongs of the weapon and doing a high block against an imaginary weapon coming at them. The would crush/break or lose their fingers that way, and it's not easy holding a sai with no fingers to hold it with! Also (getting long winded here today...sorry), I've seen blocks done that are supposed to be deflecting a weapon, such as a sword/katana, and they don't have the blade positioned along their arm where it would actually come into contact with the incoming sword/katana. Basically, they just got their arm cut off if they did that for real, so what use was the sai to them?

Sure. The bo, sai, tonfa and kama can only really be held certain ways, which are "normally" correct. Not all of the time of course, but that is the norm. For example, if you wrap your fingers through the "tongs" of the sai so that they are touching the blade, they will get hurt while you block a weapon. I've seen it done. The bo can be held with your hands to close together which allows for faster, flashier technique, but it is easily "untaught" and corrected. TRhe correct way to hold a bo is with the hands positioned so that 1/3 of the weapon is outside of each hand, and 1/3 is between your hands. Yes, there are techniques where the hands might be closer, but not as a general rule. The tonfa can really only be held one way normally, although there are actually more than one way to hold. They are most often held by the handle, and the most common mistakes people make with them are not running the "blade" of the tonfa (same issue with the sai actually) along the outside bone of the arm. The sameboen you would use to block with "normally. Again, there are exceptions to this depending on the technique you are using, or the attack you are blocking. On the other hand, the nunchaku is most often, as mentioned previously, misused/mistaught and is held close to the rope/chain...just like the creater of this thread is doing in his videos. This is poor technique used by people that have been taught improperly, are "self-taught", or by people more interested in "flash" than effectiveness. I hope that helps explain it a bit. I get pretty "surly" sometimes while watching people, especially qualified black belts, that use lousy techniques while in class or at tournaments. If someone wants to just pick them up and start waving them around, that's fine...as long as they don't start trying to pass themselves off as being competent..or God forbid...EXPERTS of the weapon, and teach others their bad techniques. That really burns my butt when they do that!

Just a comment here. No other weapon is as severely abused and misused as the nunchauku is. Tonfa, kama, sai, bo, etc are much easier to use, and more difficult to "misuse" than the nunchauku are. Yes, you can do bad technique with all of the other weapons as well, but it's not nearly as drastic (and more easily correctable) as the misuse of the nunchauku.