DWx

Each to their own I suppose. I can't get my forms to flow as well I as I like doing them non-sine wave way, but maybe that will come with practice.

Maybe its the way I do the kicks as even if it was front leg I still don't think it would work for me. The only kicks I would use a similar 9but not identical) chamber on are a hook kick/side kick, or axe kick/front kick but even then the chamber is a transitional position that I don't tend to distinguish from the rest of the kick.

In chambering for a roundhouse, say you're turning your body and raising your kicking leg so that your knee points towards the target/opponent; then your arcing kick swings out. In chambering for a side kick, say you're raising your kicking leg into what is like a front kick chamber, only you've turned your body, so that the kick will snap out against the target/opponent. That side kick can also be referred to as a side snap kick. Now think of your opponent watching you, and whenever you chamber for a side kick, you don't use the front kick-appearing chamber. You raise your leg just like a roundhouse, go past the pointing knee position, and from that tight chamber thrust out (not "snap" out) a side kick. Your opponent doesn't know when you raise your leg along the roundhouse path whether or not you're going to stop, point the knee, and swing out a roundhouse, or go past that roundhouse knee point and thrust out a side kick. If you picture or try these out, then I guess you can see how it's done with a hook kick, too. (I don't do the hook kick myself--because I'm awkward!) IMO I don't think the example you used would work too well. I've always been of the mind that you can't separate the kick from the chamber, as soon as the leg begins to move you have to follow through completely to make it an effective kick because otherwise you are only utilising part of the acceleration. I tried to do what you said above and start off with a roundhouse but then change it to side kick, I found that it actually took a lot of effort to stop a full power roundhouse once in motion and then change the direction to do a side kick. The force that I generated from the beginning of the roundhouse was wasted and the side kick lacked any power that is generated before reaching the "chamber point". I may have misunderstood what you meant though...

I like it but then again I've been taught it since I started so its just natural to me. At the moment I train at the uni club where I don't do sine wave but stilll do the odd session back home where I do use sine wave. It is just really weird and much less powerful for me to do it without. A lot of the videos you see on Youtube are either tournaments where people overkill the sine wave to make it more pronounced, or sometimes you get videos of people who don't use a "proper" sine wave. (Am now going to hunt for videos of a good sine wave ) Think this is a decent example, sine wave isn't bouncing around, its just a case of relaxing the stance and trying to use more mass.

My instructor holds 4 classes on a Saturday, from 10 until 2. 3 different coloured belt classes broken up into beginner, intermediate and advanced, and a blackbelt class. Whenever I go, I double up on the classes and do the advanced coloured belt and the blackbelt class. I don't really know how many in each but I'm guessing around the 25ish mark... its quite popular with people who can't get there during the week due to work/other commitments.

Depends who I'm sparring. Beginners, unless they've had prior experience in MA, I take it light. Everything is little more than a tap so that they get used to moving and doing their techniques without being worried about getting hit. If its someone around my level or above, we go a lot harder.

I know a lot of styles don't do breaking and that it is mainly the Eastern MA styles that place a focus on it but I think it can be quite a useful training tool sometimes. What sort of breaking and conditioning do you do? Is it a requirement? Reason I ask is because at my home school we're expect to do some sort of breaking from green belt upwards (5th gup). The kids have the easier "kiddie" boards and adults break however many of the normal boards is appropriate or bricks or whatever. We have to do it for gradings but my instructor will never make anyone break if he sees a problem with technique. Anyway at the uni club I'm training at some of the guys were doing breaks yesterday in preparation for a grading and they were trying to do front punches on one board. If I was the instructor I would have stopped them as they've clearly never done any conditioning on their hands (think baby soft skin), they couldn't make a tight enough fist for it as the fingers were more prominent than the knuckles and they were bending their wrists. Yet they were allowed to attempt it. I think only one person broke first time and all of them came away with bloody hands. Is this typical and am I just being way too over cautious with it?

Do you have mixed grade classes? Sometimes if you always have lower grades in the class you end up where all you're doing is lower grade stuff. Its not a bad thing on occasion but IMO higher grades ought to be doing higher "basics", more grade specific stuff otherwise the higher grades have a tendency to stagnant...

Po Eun is ok. Out of the three we learn for 1st dan I'd say it was my least favourite but its still a good form. Quite difficult to do in tournaments (and gradings etc.) because its forward facing all the time. The slightest mistake gets easily picked up.

Semi-contact is a very loose term... We fight "semi-contact" but it still involves being hit (quite hard in most cases): But you can get other styles that use a "tap" for contact. I think it all depends on what you're wanting from the sport side of it.. Personally it doesn't bother me all that much, to me "semi-contact" just means somewhere between full contact and no contact.

I think there's benefit to both methods. Partner work definitely has its benefits.. after all we are training to use these techniques against a real live person, not just air. There has to be some multi person drills otherwise its near impossible to translate the techniques learnt in class to an actual situation. However I think there are plenty of benefits from working solo. Solo lets you concentrate on each movement without having to worrry about someone else. Solo work is also something you can easily take away and practice at home which IMO is especially important for lower grades. One big problem I've seen is where beginners are just put into that partnered situation straight off and suddenly everything they've learnt goes out of the window. You need some sort of basics foundation of drilling the movements until they are natural and then you try to put them against someone. Of course it all depends on how the moves are being taught paired, sometimes this can be more effective. Personally I like training time to be at least weighted 50:50, solo:paired, but maybe more like 40:60.

Taekwon-Do (ITF style), 8 years, 2nd dan Also did Tai Chi Chuan for 2 years but haven't had the opportunity to keep that up. Hopefully I'll get back into it one day.

We have: White White with yellow stripe Yellow Yellow with green stripe Green Green with blue stripe Blue Blue with red stripe Red Red with black stripe Black

Actually, in some instances raising the kick chamber higher then bringing the kick down can increase power from my own observations. Take gedan mawashi geri for example. By raising it more towards chudan level, with a twist of the hips it can come crashing down on the outer thigh at a 45 degree angle, significantly more punishing than just a straight in gedan mawashi geri. The super flexible can do the same for even jodan mawashi geris (the infamous "Brazilian kick"). My Japanese isn't so good but is mawashi geri a roundhouse? In that case I would say a higher chamber can be advantageous. What I said above was what I was told for front kicks only.

Congrats!

I do agree with you that there is variety in MMA but again this is limited to the same sort of styles over and over again. I know this a rather blunt way to put it but MMA is only really striking and grappling. Its all Karate and Kickboxing, wrestling and BJJ etc. There are lots of different styles employed but again it is limited within that striking and grappling field. It is very unlikely that anyone will be experimenting to see if they can get elements of "single-whip" or "brush knee" (from Taiji) into their MMA repetoire because it would be pointless given the objective of the fights. Its very unlikely that fighters will be working on redirecting an attack, or as tallgeese said, working on tranisitions to small joint manipulations. I'm not saying that experimentation with other styles out of an MMA context is not happening, its just that it appears to happen a lot less or at least you don't get anywhere near the same pace of idea exchange. Because MMA is out there and public, people can see how someone has made the transition from roundhouse to takedown to armbar. If its a good idea they can copy it or think "hey it would work a little better this way" or "maybe if I did this I could counter that attack". MMA also provides the motivation to work at experimenting because if you've got an upcoming fight against someone who has beaten you before, you're going to work on things to make yourself and your own personal style better, this may include taking elements from another martial art and making them your own. Anyway what I'm getting at is that a lot of these styles that don't work so well for things like MMA may get stuck in tradition because there are far fewer people experimenting with them. Weapons styles are probably a good example of this because obviously they can't be employed in MMA and rarely will they get tested in a live situation (outside of SD). IMO there is a huge scope for MA development, its just we're not seeing it yet because they only thing that really is being experimented with on a large scale is combat for MMA style events.

Ok I guess so if we are talking sport, you'd only really be kicking chest level with the odd high kick and those two chambers are fairly close.

Absolutely even though you will see alot of experienced point fighters keeping their guard down . This will show you who trains for tourneys and who actually trains for a real fight. " Keep em up! Good luck have fun and let us know how you do. Even good point fighters need their hands up.. like my coach yells at everyone "nobody is good enough to fight like that.. hands up!". A good point fighter still needs to utilise a guard and blocks. Greenfire54, its probably a bit late now to be doing this but make sure you work on "ring control". Learning to move your opponent and move around the ring is as crucial as learning to kick and punch in point sparring. You'll get penalized for stepping out of the ring so make sure you can side-step and move round instead of just going back all the time. Also be observant about how your opponent is responding to your attacks, are they going a certain way everytime you roundhouse off the left leg? If you can pick up on these things you can use it to control where you fight in the ring and maybe even get them to step out. If you have the time there are some good drills to practice aspects of this. We train on a gym floor so there are lines all over the place. You can do stuff like find a bit of the floor where the markings cross and pretend its the corner of the mat. Start with one foot there and then try to fight your way out without crossing the lines. Or try fighting only in the centre circle of a basketball court. If your lucky enough to have a proper dojo you can still try these things but you'll have to somehow mark out the areas. Good luck anyway. If you stick to everyone's advice I'm sure you'll do well.

If I can just jump in on this, JusticeZero (perhaps unintentionally) brings up an interesting point. At the moment the only real arena where fighters are tested is MMA. So you only get experimentation with striking/grappling styles that will fair well under those rules. No Taiji practitioner or Aikido practitioner is going to do particular well in that environment as the styles aren't based around pain compliance and striking. So anyway, my point is because you're not getting that experimentation for competition purposes and apart from a few ambitious individuals, nobody is really trying to mix these styles up and cross-train them with other styles. Does this mean that styles like Taiji and Aikido are a lot more "traditional" because nobody has tried to develop them in a way that would work for a neo-MMAist? I think it would be quite an interesting experiment to take something like Taiji and try to work it into a fighting style.

The same chamber is useful to confuse your opponent. However I was told by our master specifically not to use the same chamber. His reasoning being that you won't get the most effective kick that way. He talked about the position of the knee in relation to the target. If the the chamber is too low (knee in line or below the level of the target) you are kicking upwards rather than forward, you also don't engage the top of the leg so much and kick only with the lower half. This can't be avoided when doing kicks to the head (you probably want to come under the chin anyway) but for mid/low section it is less effective. Chambers which are too high force you to move down onto the target which screws up the kick because you're trying to move the opposite way to how the leg is going. Try chambering mid-section and then kicking someones shin, just doesn't work well. Also a waste of time and energy raising the leg up when you want to do a low kick. At the sort of speeds you can get with a lower front kick, I don't think confusing your opponent with a chamber is really that cruicial.

Watching the videos.. wow he plays fast. I think I'll just stick to beginner level

That was pretty impressive. Wonder how long it took them to drink all that.

From your parents point of view it may not just be the cost of the fees. Do they drive you there? That's a journey's worth of fuel they have to use. What do they do whilst you train? I know for my parents, its not worth going home so they usually end up going shopping or just sitting in the car. That gets very tedious if you have to do it several hours a week. Its time where they could be doing something else. Maybe this is not the case for you but you kinda have to consider what they are putting in besides money for lessons. I do agree that more practice time would be beneficial so maybe you really need to show how much it would mean and that it would be worth it and maybe they'll make an exception.

For us, coloured belt tests are held every 3 months. You have to be asked by the instructor to attend though so there is no guarentee that you will test every time. At the later belts most people wait a bit longer. Blackbelt exams are held every 6 months by the org and again you have to be invited to go. Minimum time between belts is 1.5 year to 2nd dan, 2 year to 3rd, 3 year to 4th, etc. all the way up until 6th where you have to be invited to test for 7th (master) and above that is only decided by the orgs commitee. You can cut blackbelt times down if you want by attending an international seminar (usually 3 days and held by one of the masters), but that'll only take off a few months and in any case most people take a lot longer than the minimum time to be physically proficient enough (and a lot want to compete at this level).

Why do you think I started this thread? Not because I actually wanted to congratulate Brian, but because I thought of it and said, hey, I can get a post ahead of him in a way that no one will ever suspect me!!!!! Brian will catch me soon enough. That'll be a happy day. Patrick Haha if that's your strategy you need to start a thread every time Brian gets another 100 posts... And then reply to every single message!