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Cool! I'm gonna try that

From what I've seen, no MT guy or drunk human is going to be punching Buakaw in the face while he's round kicking them. I have seen this discussion a few times, about guard during kicks and whether to 360 spin on the round kick follow through. From what I've observed, a good MT practitioner delivering a solid, well-timed round kick can do almost anything with his arms and hands he wants, including swinging them to get more power. You either defend against that kick or get dropped. I would probably agree with that, for guys who have awesome round kicks that can drop a good street fighter with only a few shots or so, and are fast enough to slip that haymaker at the same time, every time, and that's very few people. You can see countless highlight clips of K-1 guys being punched in the face right in the middle of their round kick (albeit by other K-1 guys). I wouldn't be swinging the arms unless I knew for certain that I really was that good. For someone like Buakaw, it's probably fine

In addition to what the others have said about giving 100% in your test, no belt is worth the sort of serious injury you could give yourself if you test when your body is telling you to stop. Don't do it without a doc's ok - preferably a sports physio.

What part of Australia are you going to?

My instructor is very much of the "keep your guard up" school of thought. This is not so important in a kickboxing or Muay Thai match, because when you round kick, your opponent stops what he's doing and leg-checks. However, drunks don't leg-check - they usually don't even notice you're round-kicking them, and they don't stop what they're doing to let you take turns, they just clock you with an overhand right just as your round kick is about to strike. We are trained initially to stay in our "shell" when round-kicking and cover the head as best we can, then when comfortable, extend the arm on the same side as the kicking leg toward the opponent's head to stop any forward motion, and keep the guard up on the opposite side to defend the haymaker. On the other hand, I've seen Muay Thai competitors swing the arms around - Buakaw no less. As for the original topic, I actually asked my instructor this very question and he told me that the best thing to do is to spin 360, and when he demonstrated it, it looked like he moved back out of striking distance at the same time. His opinion is that any round kick that can be pulled back into fighting stance if it misses isn't powerful enough to be worth throwing. He didn't mention 180 spins and back kicks.

Sometimes a movement is easier to understand when likened to one that we are already familiar with; when a metaphor is used. What are some you've heard that stick out in your mind? Some of my favourites are: "Pick your foot up off the hotplate" - how we chamber a front kick "Push start the car" - how our weight should be distributed when delivering a punch, elbow or headbutt "Do the Elvis leg" - how our front leg should bend at the knee and turn inward to help lever the opponent over our back leg when performing a bearhug takedown "Hallelujah" - how we should post with our hands when mounting an opponent, particularly with forward momentum after a takedown. If you've ever seen Pentecostals, you'll know what I mean.

Hi evilgenius, What are you looking to achieve with your martial arts? Shaolin Long Fist may not be the style for you - or it may be. And if it's not available, then you'll have to take something else anyway - it's better that you do your second or third favourite style than none at all, I think. Also, just as important as the style is the quality of instruction and how well the dojo is run. Remember that you are putting your life in the hands of these people, so they'd better know what they're doing. Ask if you can watch a class before signing up. Anyway, good luck and let us know what you choose.

No way! I wouldn't want to see Benny killed! Rickson would rip him into pieces and feed them to his dad for fun. Oh, definitely - just thought it would be a good pretext to settle that whole dispute Feed them to his dad..hmm..now here's a thought: Who could take Helio in the 90+ division? The man still rolls...

Hi Full Tang If I need to know anything about weapons I'll know where to look

Well, I failed. My striking was no problem, but a couple of the grappling drills caused me some confusion. My instructor is allowing me to try again in two weeks and told me later that a couple of his BJJ black belts failed their first gradings too which is reassuring in a way. I would rather be prepared and take longer than grade up and get killed anyway (though I guess that's going to happen anyway until someone newer than me grades up). It's all stuff that I am capable of doing, I just haven't quite assimilated the knowledge properly. It also turns out that I attempted grading about 3 lessons short of the required minimum, so I shouldn't have been doing it tonight anyway I suppose.

Yeah, shootfighting and BJJ. It's mentioned toward the bottom of the "What We Teach" page. The website needs a revamp, I think.

Tomorrow I'll be attempting a dual grading: Shootfighting yellow belt and the first stripe on my BJJ white belt. Wish me luck!

http://www.blackbeltstudios.com.au

It could work as a pre-fight strategy - The "verbal fence" as it's known. However, I probably wouldn't waste energy doing it in a fight, not least because opening my mouth to do it would temporarily weaken my jaw, which a trained fighter would see and exploint, and a drunk will probably exploit out of dumb luck and brute force because he's just keeping on punching. Will your attacker even hear you while they're adrenalized in the fight?

True, bushido_man, but I do think that different martial arts may tend to attract people of different builds - though whether this is because people wish to leverage their natural advantages or reduce their natural disadvantages varies from person to person. In any case, if the intention is to compare styles, it is good science to attempt to eliminate through sample selection or factor out (eg: "pound-for-pound" punching measurements) other variables, until a martial art actually prescribes a particular body type (which would be rather pointless).

Shootfighting: A fairly loosely prescribed style combining stand-up and ground fighting, striking and grappling. Our specific variety uses Muay Thai strikes and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu grappling techniques though grappling is not practiced in the same detail as in BJJ classes. Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu: Submission grappling (ie: joint locks and chokes) style derived from Japanese Jiu-Jitsu but emphasising far more ground fighting and less throws and other standing grappling techniques. It has also been said that Helio Gracie adapted the Japanese Jiu-Jitsu techniques taught to his brother Carlos to use more leverage and therefore require less power, to compensate for Helio's smaller physique, adaptations that remain in the style. Our lineage goes to from my instructor to Rigan Machado, Carlos Gracie Jr, Carlos Gracie Sr, Mitsuo Maeda.

I agree, leave, take another style and don't worry about starting from white again. What do belts really mean, anyway?

Keep your hands up. Keep your left up in defence throwing your right and vice-versa. Use lower body rotation to put more weight into your punches. Hunch your shoulders and tuck your chin into your chest to protect your chin to make it harder to snap your head back and get yourself knocked out.

While I understand why it was outlawed, I think that if competitors were once again allowed to wear gis in high-profile MMA (eg: UFC) it might be taken more seriously by the sorts of people who would allow it into the Olympics, because it drives home the idea that many if not most of these guys are experts in a more traditional style, not just wild bar-room brawlers (although some are both! ). I think they would probably also need to wear more protective gear; remember that Olympic boxing and TKD both require headgear and I wonder how that would interfere with techniques like some of the chokes.

Some people are arrogant and disrespectful but lacking in the physical tools to back it up if they were to display these qualities openly in certain contexts; passive-aggressiveness is one potential sign of that. Teaching martial arts to people like that can be dangerous. Then again, some people are passive-aggressive to compensate for lack of confidence that martial arts would give them. One idea that occurred to me when I started training is that you never really know if anyone out in the general public might be trained or not, which should be a deterrent to anyone thinking that they're going to go out and kill people after 6 months of training; that nerdy looking guy out in the street may actually be capable of breaking you six ways. The only way to really deal with that (I think) is to pay very close attention to new students (well, everyone, but newbies in particular). Do they try to grind smaller guys into the mat? Do they give submissions an extra crank after the tap? Do they continually kick the legs of someone clearly hobbling? When drilling a new technique do they continually prevent others from developing the confidence to invest in the technique? People like that need to be set straight or kicked out. My instructor tells us his preferred method of dealing with bullies identified at this stage is to ask them to hang around for the next class (Advanced BJJ - with a good cross-section of blues through blacks) where their cheap shots will earn them continual tap-outs. Unfortunately, that sometimes results in people who only respect those whose belt indicates that they can beat them up; the only thing you can really do is kick those people out and hope that you can trust the integrity of all the other instructors in the region to do the same if their attitude doesn't change.

With your round kick, try starting it higher than your target, then slice downward through your target. You'll do more damage that way. With your front kick, it looks like you're flicking rather than thrusting. You should be trying to shove the guy through the back wall with the sole of your foot.

I'd seen that a while ago. It was interesting, but should be taken with a grain of salt. For instance, TKD isn't the only style with a spinning back kick, had Karate been represented by someone bigger and stronger who'd chosen to use that kick he might have come out on top. The boxer had the most powerful punch, which is plausible, because as he said, "All we do is work on punching", yet, as they explained the physiology behind the knockout punch, they mentioned that the size of the puncher matters, and the boxer would have been the largest of them all. A pound-for-pound comparison would have been interesting, if the aim was to compare techniques rather than technicians. However, I don't think the test environment for the Muay Thai fighter's knee (which, by the way, was the one compared to a 35 MPH car crash, not the Karateka's side kick) was as contrived as some might think, because typically, the knees are used when fighters are clinched, and so the recipient of the knee is indeed relatively stationary. It's still not quite realistic, but it's more realistic than taking a huge windup to kick or punch a stationary dummy that you aren't controlling in order to make it stationary.

My instructor has a belief that can be summed up with this rhetorical exchange: "'Oh, my round kick sucks!' Well, have you done a million of them?". While I would think he's probably right, I do worry that if I do more reps, but do them incorrectly, I'll actually be hindering rather than helping myself. Or, would it be the case that if they were incorrect, you simply couldn't do that many reps? Or something else I'm missing?

Would there be any chance that you might be taught techniques in TKD that are considered incorrect in your karate system? Perhaps you just need more reps - alone, or with a friend - to improve your kicking?

WOW!!! Benny was freakin' awesome! He was even fighting guys that appeared to be using some Thai rules, and he wasn't, and he still won. I wonder what it would have been like if he could compete in the MMA competitions of today? I might ask my instructor, as he's trained a bit with Benny. More on topic, he (Benny) has a "limited edition classic DVD fight series" that you can order at http://www.bennythejet.com/orderdvd.html