Ziyad

Has anyone read the book "becoming a complete martial artist" by Tristan Sutrisno, Marc MacYoung with Dianna Gordon http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/NNSDcompleteMAfull.htm Is it any good?

I never kept my teeth locked or my eyes open in certain rare situations. Practice and practice patience.

Actually, rather than shopping around, I was hoping I could make an informed decision and have someone from this forum show me one. Then I wouldn't have to travel around the Netherlands seeing mcdojo after mcdojo until I find a good one. So if there is someone who is willing to show me one, that would be fantastic. In any case it will be interesting for both, as I have been actively practicing capoeira for almost 6 years, with 3 years under one of the most combat effective capoeira contra-mestres.

My experience is to sell yourself before you sell your art. If you get them interested in you, they will at the same time be interested in what you do. Also figure out what's important for you to do there. Do you want to recruit people for yourself or for your dojo? Do you want to show-off your MA as the most effective or as the most flashy? Do you just want to have fun? Do you want to teach people the basics of your MA or do you just want to teach them the spirit of your MA? If you know what you find important, then you'll figure out how to do it. My most effective one-hour course for about half of these priorities was to give a capoeira lesson where I didn't teach any basics, but just made sure people felt the spirit of capoeira. I had people imitate animals and later had them sing with me. In the end we did a roda (somewhat similar to sparring) and although nobody did specific capoeira techniques, but they did move and interact as they should. In a way that it sometimes takes people more than a year to learn (it's harder to do it with learned techniques that are not yet incorporated into yourself). I was impressed, but I had a very openminded group.

So how does one train the anaerobic system effectively? I've read up a bit on it on wikipedia and other sources but I'm still not quite sure how to do it.

Wow it's fantastic that they offered you this. To pull one not from a legend: Bruce Lee sometimes went to class early and then told the other students that the lesson was cancelled. By the time his teacher arrived, he had private tuition.

Here, it just sounds like he was pushing you. Nothing really wrong with that...maybe he thought that you were really talented, and wanted to see how far he could take you. That's my point, I wanted to show his good side as well. Besides being impossible at times, he could also be a very good trainer at other times and I have not yet met someone else who knew his techniques so perfectly and so precise. "Somersault fighting? I am not familiar with the value of that." I do capoeira. Besides the martial capability, we also train a lot of acrobatics which, if looked upon by a purely practical mind, improves your movement speed and creativity, as well as your landing/falling ability. It's also more easily used commercially. If you look upon acrobatics as I do, it's something fun to train. If you play capoeira there's a fine line between playing and fighting. The line can be crossed at any time. I have been kicked out of the air during a somersault once, but this hasn't stopped me from incorperating it in the roda. There are few things which train your awareness in quite the same capacity.

Just for the record, this was one of his bad days. There was a huge difference between his good days and bad days. At other times he kept pushing me to do somersaults even when I was really tired, afraid that this time surely I wouldn't land. But each time it would go succesful and from that moment on, I could do it on command without warming up. A week later he asked me to perform together with him on an event (the somersaults were a test) and that performance was even more taxing (because we had to do it 10 times a day for 4 days straigth). It was more taxing and harder than any performance I've done since. It didn't help that he took me straigth from the performance to his training two of those days. But in the end, he paid me generously and I learned a lot about persistance and how much my body can do when it's important.

congrats

skating is great! And capoeira could be considered an outdoor sport.

ah. Thanks.

But who will spank you for hurting your child physically and emotionally when they hurt someone physically or emotionally?

hey, whoever ruled out biological attacks in MA?

heh

Linear strikes are quick and to the point. Very effective and harder to block or dodge in general. On the other hand, as I see it, if you do manage to block them, it's easier to block effectively compared to when you block a circular attack (block a round house with your arm, anyone?). A linear style like kickboxing has a more pronounced disadvantage, however, when you're not the faster or longer-reaching striker. Because, unless I'm mistaken, the arsenal of a linear style is limited. A circular style, almost by its nature, is slower with strikes, but has a much wider range of movement. Dodging inside attacks to open a defense. The freedom is much greater in a circular style, but that is sometimes only aesthetics. The power may be greater on average, but the control more limited. And it's easier to get inside of the defense of a circular style. In essence, it seems like purely linear styles went only to the basics and although it's effective training, it's only effective to the degree that you can force your opponent to play the same game (or, of course, have an opponent who's unaware of strategy). A purely circular style, on the other, has incredible surprise and is harder to attack. But it's like only learning the advanced stuff and never grasping the basics. And surprise is only good in so far as that you manage to pull it off and if you haven't when it matters, you're much more defenceless. Of course, it's better to combine the best of both, but I'm trying to find out what is the best of both.