DWx

I've seen this before, I think he was a semi-pro boxer or something along those lines.

Well instead of just being all talk and no action, here's me competing yesterday in forms (we call it patterns). Yoo-Sin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYLEBgkUFmg (If you know this one, try to spot the mistake ) Hwa-Rang: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZmWBO7xND8 Please excuse the commentary. In fact it would probably be better just to mute the sound That's what happens when you give kids your camera. FYI: Was an ITF competition and the rules and format are slightly different from your normal martial arts tournament. Instead of going up, performing and then getting a score, competitors go up in 2's. They have to perform an optional pattern and a designated one. The optional can be chosen from any of the ones from your current grade (3 to pick from for each dan grade). So for me, I could choose from Choi-Yong, Sam-Il or Yoo-Sin. I went with the latter. You then do a designated which the umpires pick and it can be anything up to your grade. In this round they picked Hwa Rang which is a red belt (2nd gup) pattern. The umpires then vote for the winner and they progress through to the next round. Also means that sine wave must be done and you get marked down if you don't do it.. so tough if you don't like it I'm by no means a pattern person and rarely place above 3rd, its just a warm up for sparring for me.. however, my observations for improvements are that my kicks still suck and I don't look where I'm kicking. Was also cutting some movements short and my stances could have been better. But my excuse is I have a stinking cold and just wanted to get it over with so I could go cough up a lung! Oh and I could do with slimming down a bit then maybe I wouldn't be so dead by the end of it.

Awesome. Nice find Bob.

Welcome

I watched this (or a similar video) a while back with a guy who was teaching seniors how to use their walking sticks and canes as weapons for self defense: I don't much about Le Canne (nothing!) so I googled it. What's its history do you know? Kinda looked like related to fencing to me but with a looser feel, (maybe Savate?), especially given the French connection:

Well, I easily found the Coflex and gave it a shot last night at a 3 hr practice. I had misgivings about it as soon as I removed it from the package. Showed my instructor before practice and he had the same thoughts; the stuff is going to roll up right away. I figured there was something else called Coflex and I got the wrong stuff. I must say though, I was impressed! One wrap lasted the 3 hrs with no roll up at all...and zero hot spots. It was nice to be able to remove it without taking a bunch of foot hair with it too! The only problem I experienced was that during a front kick about 2.5 hrs in, the wrap flew off the end of my foot towards my opponent. After a brief chuckle, I simply slipped it back on and continued. I have 2 more practices to experiment. I plan to try using regular tape on top of my foot to hold the Coflex in place. I should also mention that it grips the floor. Nice at times and not so nice at other times. I can live with that though during this 3-day intensive. Time permitting, I may try wrapping a strip of regular tape over the Coflex...the ends of the tape tucked under the Coflex so it won't roll up. Thanks again for the tip! The dust the other poster/s mentioned sounds like a great idea too but at this point, don't feel I have time to experiment. It may be difficult to sneak to the side and redust my feet as needed too. Hey nice that it worked for you I love this stuff. Yeah depending on the type of floor it can sometimes stick. You can use the dust trick on it too if you want though. Once you've wrapped your foot in it just dust it with the floor dirt or something like talcum powder. Just be wary that it makes it more difficult to reuse it as it won't stick to itself as well as it did when you reapply. Taping it on top seems like a good idea, or you could try to tuck the ends in. Anyway glad you like it. Don't know why they don't market it at people, all my TKD friends use this stuff now and my physio friend also recommends it as strapping.

Congrats

Welcome mrchucky

Thanks. Interesting idea! I wonder what kind of "dust" would work best...baby powder, baking powder, or...??? There won't be any natural dust near by so would have to bring something. I have clay. Wonder how that might work? Hmm.... I'd wear martial art shoes in a heart beat but I'd get thrown out of the dojo. Barefoot only for me, I'm afraid. Talc works pretty well for that. I use it sometimes when the floor's sticky. Don't know if you've got time now but repeatedly soaking your feet in surgical spirits/rubbing alcohol will harden the skin. Or instead of athletic tape, if you can get your hands on Coflex vet wrap bandages, that stuff is amazing. Actually meant for animals but its brilliant as it sticks to itself and nothing else. I've wrapped my foot in it before and it won't stick to the ground or roll up.

Not to sound harsh (please don't take this the wrong way) but being comfortable with the kicks and being proficient with the kicks are two different things. You can train the more flashy stuff for fun if you want but to use them in a competition fight is much harder than you think. You mentioned Superfoot Wallace earlier, watch his fights ( ) and you'll see nothing overly complicated. As my dad says "keep it simple, stupid". Simple wins the fights, not throwing a 360 and getting lamped mid-rotation. Wallace just uses his front leg and picks his shots. I mean watching your video again, your opponent is fighting with a fairly open guard and everytime he kicks he's dropping his hands leaving himself wide open. A well timed side kick would have scored everytime. I once won a point-stop match by only using a lead jab. Why would I bother throwing the 360 or head kick when a simpler attack would suffice? Just timing it and placing it right will be enough. If that is the case with your sensei, maybe you can convince him then that you will stay with him If he's only objecting due to fear of losing you, surely you can convince him you wont leave? Yeah that's exactly the thing with point stop sparring though. Its basically sudden death scenario. I struggle with it too, much prefer continuous sparring.

Lots of reasons why you might want to break. Its not about breaking the wood itself but more a quantifiable test of power, focus, conditioning, accuracy, technique etc. A bit long winded but here's my thoughts on it: http://www.karateforums.com/the-art-of-breaking-and-conditioning-your-body-vt33089.html

Welcome to KF technophiliac If you want to check out some TKD kicks but your sensei won't let you train, there are plenty of good tutorial videos on YouTube. Kwonkicker is really good at explaining stuff and covers the essential kicks and basic footwork: http://www.youtube.com/user/kwonkicker No offense but don't even bother learning all the "aerials/reverse/high kicks" until you've got solid technique with the basic kicks. Don't run before you can walk. Good basic kicks and good footwork/placement will win you your matches. Besides, once you have a good roundhouse, adding the rotation in for a 360 is a piece of cake but trying to spin when you're still finding your feet with the basic standing kick is going to dump you on your face. My advice is that you don't need to go in all the time, work on your countering and wait for him to come to you. A good drill to get this going is to get a heavy bag and swing it. Practice throwing out strikes to land just as the bag swings toward you. So from a standing position practice picking your front leg up (don't step in or skip in with the back foot) and jabbing out a side kick or throw the front jab straight out. Its about timing and speed. If you make the bag swing back with your kick, you're not striking, you're pushing. You need to get it so just as the bag hits the low point in the swing, you smack it and stop it in its tracks. Once you get to a point where your sending out a good kick or punch 99% of the time, you can move on. The progression to this (or you can just do this if you don't have a heavy bag) is to get a partner with a kick shield or pad. Get them to "spar" you so that they're moving around as the would do in a fight. Work on throwing out that front leg side kick and front jab just as they step forward. It should stop them in their tracks and score you the point. Get the jab and the front leg side kick going and you're halfway there. I mean you're not bad anyway, at 1.12 you do it with the side kick and score and at 2.09 you nearly do it again just the distance is off. You need to be doing it everytime they come in. Just remember to protect your head whilst kicking. Now what to do if you're unlucky and they jam that front leg or punch? Well throw out your arm. TBH they shouldn't really jam your technique if you've practised hard enough with your timing and speed, but let's say that they do. Well they are now in range to get punched in the face. If they jam your leg, your lead arm can hit them in the face, if they jam your front jab, your reverse punch can come in. Next you can take the same approach with some more kicks. Back kick is the same principle. You just have to remember that you need a little more room to throw it. Roundhouses work to (but you have to step off centre slightly), backfist instead of jab etc. Then start working on techniques to go in. If your side kick is good you're part of the way there. Get the roundhouse to the same standard and that's all you need really. If you can do the counter drill I described above where you just pick the front leg up, adding a step in with the back leg will serve you for the time being. You don't need to get much more complicated than that. On moving in and out, I'd agree with Kodakmint and disagree with your sensei. When you decide to go in, commit to it. In point stop sparring there is no in and out because ideally once you're in you're in and you score. The ref should stop it for a point (either your's or your opponent's) before you even have the opportunity to come back out. Continuous sparring is another matter If you really do want to train elsewhere, perhaps you can reassure your sensei that you'll still be training with him on a regular basis. Besides, I know that you want to remain loyal, but in the end it is up to you where you train so if you really want to try TKD or something else, your sensei can't stop you.

Assuming we're talking about wooden boards, it does matter but unless you're stacking several boards together the difference will be minimal. It's to do with the grain. If the grain curves (so the board is taken from slightly off-centre of the tree trunk), its marginally easier to strike from one side. Looking down the edge of the board, if you see a kind of semi-circular grain pattern, strike on the side of the flat side of the semi-circle, not on the curved side. Probably easier to just read this as it has pictures: http://tkdtutor.com/TOPICS/Breaking/Materials/Materials-04.htm

Welcome KarateCroft

Welcome SavageGeek

Hmmm well video taping hasn't really been something I've been able to do very often. There are many times I've wanted to video tape it, but I could not for lack of equipment. As per the people who got first and second, there were a few things I noticed. The first thing I noticed was an exaggerated "breath". I assume they were trying to imitate a so-called "breath kiai" in which rather than shouting, they simply exhale hard very similar to how boxers breathe when they strike. To me it sounded more like they were just blowing air through their teeth though. A second thing I noticed is that they never looked before they turned. What I found strange though is that these people did the exact same kata as most of the people that ranked below me in the comp. and it looked very similar, if not identical to the others I had seen: High stances, no look before turning, that "breath", etc. A classmate of mine had speculated that it could have been that the person who came in first just so happened to be the daughter of the head sensei of the dojo the tournament was hosted at. IDK if I want to get into any accusations though.Even if you just video tape it on a cell phone you can see your rhythm and check things like your stances. You might see something on there that you didn't know you were doing or see something that could be better. The looking before turning thing is something though. There's a group of TKD tournaments I compete in where I know for a fact they like you to look as you do certain techniques whereas in my school its always look before. I always remember to do it their way when competing in their tournaments if I want to place. Its hard to remember stuff like this but if you want to win medals you do have to make these little adjustments. Thing is with any kata tournament that you have to change the kata for the tournament and the judges unless you are at a tournament run by your own school. Kata is subjective and isn't as clear cut as something like kumite.

Welcome Mas Sounds like you found a good club. Best of luck to you & your son in your training. Ps. you lied about Hertfordshire being sunny

I don't have any Karate competition experience but my general advice is to take a look at the people who are getting the 2nd and 1st places. What are they doing that you're not? If there are really noticeable differences in one or two techniques, then it might be worth adjusting what you're doing to match. Its also probably worth videoing your performance and some of the other competitors so you can look at it later too and pick apart your performance. If you don't mind, maybe you could video your kata so some of the guys on here could give you some advice?

Cool topic sensei8 Kinda like semantic satiation... when you hear a word so many times it loses it's meaning. I don't think we see the word that much here on KF, but people using the word "master" irritates me to no end. Or in a similar sense "expert". Nowadays everyone is a Karate master or Karate expert if they've had a bit of training.

Sounds like you had a good time How'd you go about booking stuff like this anyways?

Well that's kinda what I'm asking - taking several steps back. Not just shifting onto the back foot but taking several steps back. Why do you/does your style consider backwards to be such a bad thing? In TKD its perfectly ok to take several steps backwards.

And if that doesn't work, keep shooting, then throw your gun at it. and then scream like a little girl?

Is going backwards a legitimate strategy? So reading bits and pieces and come across these comments (hope you guys don't mind me quoting you): Instead of hijacking the threads, thought this deserved its own place for discussion. Now in my TKD training, going backwards is ok. In fact in some cases its a good thing. Of course running backwards all the time because you're trying to avoid the confrontation is a bad thing. But opening up the distance between you and your opponent is highly favoured. Perhaps this is merely a stylistic thing. In our forms there are plenty of sections which are "retreating", in fact, in one particular one called Juche, you're going backwards by about 9 stances. We also do tons of drills (for both competition and non-competition sparring) based on going backwards to create distance. (Maybe if I've got time and a willing victim I'll upload a video). Now just to clarify, I don't mean going backwards doing nothing and just trying to avoid the onslaught from your opponent. When going backwards, its always to draw the opponent in, create distance, and then when you're in a position to do so firing off something. For example, we work on a lot of kicks from the clinch. You've gone in, done your stuff, maybe the ref's about to tell you to separate, or your attacker's buddies have shown up. You push against them and then back kick moving away or switch roundhousing away etc. and take a couple of steps backwards. Or perhaps you're being chased backwards, going back to get them to commit to following you, then at the last second you change direction and move off resulting in themselves running out the ring or running into an obstacle. Or even, if they're chasing you, go backwards then suddenly stop and throw a punch, they'll run themselves onto it and receive double the impact. Now its definitely not something we do all the time. I suppose its for more advanced students as half the time the problem with beginners is that they do back up all the time. But I do think it has its merit and should be considered. You know, maybe you've been attacked but you know that right behind you is a broom or something else you could use as an improvised weapon and you want to grab it. Or your attacker's just pulled a knife and you want to create some distance. Even when we're talking competition going backwards is good. For example, when you have a shorter and larger person fighting, the tactic for the smaller person is almost always get inside and shut them down. So sometimes a good option for the larger person if this happens is to move backwards and free up some room. But of course, along with going forwards, you have to learn to move effectively and not just run back any old how.

Well in our school we do use 2v1 or more v1 as a drill to improve your 1v1 fighting, but the strategy for us is still to use the stacking method. The drills about movement rather than just fighting a ton of people and is all about you anticipating where your opponents are moving to and what attacks are coming in and to adjust your own positioning accordingly. We even use it when competition training as the person in the middle has to deal with attack after a attack with no let up whilst allowing the attackers to alternate and take a breather before diving in and putting the person under pressure again. So yeah what I'm trying to say is, the stacking method still works as a method of making you fight better as it tests your fitness, endurance etc. as you're getting attacked with no let up.

2v1 or 3v1 is part of our blackbelt testing too. I'd go with the barrier approach. Trying to fight two people at the same time puts you at a big disadvantage. You've only got two hands and feet, fighting 2 people at the same time means you gotta deal with 4 hands and feet and gotta keep an eye on what they're both doing.