The BB of C

I never treat the women any different than the men when sparring. An opponent should be treated as one regardless of gender, race, size or rank.

Lunge into a 540 triple board break and land in left stance

Some styles, yes. Grandmaster Bong Soo Han of Hapkido was quite the kicker. What I like about the Combat Hapkido system is that it doesn't emphasize the high kicks or the extreme levels of diving and rolling. It is focused on more efficient modes of defense and breakfalling. Does Kuk Sul Won focus on high kicking very much, or is it more basic kicking? Bruce Lee once said "I'm not afraid of the person who practices 10000 techniques once. I am afraid of the man who practices one technique 10000 times." The Kuk Sool Won school I attended practiced 10,000 techniques once. There was a bit of everything and I took from it what I needed which was the high kicks, wrist techniques, dives and breakfalls. That's all I could say about it though. It's very similar to Hapkido.

If I remember correctly, Hapkido is a lot more likely to throw a high kick as well as all the wrist locks and throws.

I prefer hard to full contact. In the Isshin-ryu class they spar with about medium contact.

That couch gag was a little on the too much side

Naturally different styles have a different range of "basics." What I considered as basics is the raw base of every different type of technique excluding kyoshujutsu.

For me it depends. Sometimes I'll have dreams during the night that will happen during the day. Or it will be a dream about what happened the during the day prior. Sometimes I have dreams that are so realistic that I have to double-check myself. In an instant or private message I could tell some pretty hilarious stories about that. Sometimes I have dreams that are the result of thought processes. Like a few nights ago I had a dream about one of my lady friends who is kind of a flirt but doesn't really like anyone. And in my dream she was flirting with me and I tried to get her to stop by flirting back and then (in the dream) she stopped but got angry at me. Sometimes I have dreams that are the product of imagination. These are my most frequent dreams. They're often reenactments of scenes from books I'm writing, me flying and/or fighting with video game characters (I'm a dork).

Could you give an example of what these things would be, in your eyes? My list of that is a mile long. Check it out. I've had teachers tell me to move faster and not tell me how. I've had teachers tell me that I have a bad strategy while I was beating them with it. I've had teachers tell me to stretch and warm up on the same level as the rest of the class when I was easily twice as flexible as all of them. I've had teachers tell me not to use certain kicks when those kicks were in the curriculum. I've had teachers tell me that tag and step-sparring is a good way to develop self defense instinct. I've had teachers tell me that their style is "too deadly" and that's why they don't spar in class. I've had teachers tell me that simply because I was a lower belt I was physically incapable of doing things like breakfalls, handsprings, flips, splits, certain kicks, certain throws - in some cases of that I was already better than the teacher at it. I've seen teachers make students warm up way past their level and expect them to keep up (I'm all for making people work ultra hard but there's that and there's excessive). There's more but I can't remember them off the top of my head. It's when I see and/or hear things like this that martial artists and instructors lose a lot of points with me.

Anyone can do them if they're trained in them. Low stances keep the center of gravity low and makes the user less venerable to being tripped or losing balance. At lower levels it can be hard to do kicks from them. But a low center of gravity is imperative for most throws.

Jab, straight punch, uppercut, hook, palm, underhand, downward chop, cross chop, diagonal chop, spinning back fist, leg kick, side kick, high kick, thrust kick, front kick, back kick, knee strike, spinning back kick, uppercut kick, roundhouse, axe kick, spin kick, flying spin kick, flying high kick, flying thrust kick, double front kick, double hammer kick, wrist throws, wrist locks, hip throws, neck throws, escapes, blocks and submissions - These all qualify as basics. You learn all the basics first and then build on them while learning more complicated techniques. Some styles develop the basics and learn new techniques at the same time. For example in Kuk Sool Won, there is a set of wrist throws we learn at white belt. At red belt (just under brown) we learn another set of wrist throws that are slightly more complicated but in essence the same techniques we learned as white belts. The point is that there's a lot more to the basics list than some people think. The objective is to learn all of them and practice them continually while learning more complex or advanced techniques so that while you're learning new things, the basics become second nature and you can apply them harder, faster and at the right times.

It's all about timing. Jabs and flying kicks both have their place in a fight. As well as spins, joint locks, pressure points, sidesteps, haymakers, straight punches, thrust kicks, low kicks, high kicks, throws, everything. What makes them effective as well as efficient is how they're taught along side the quality of training and the person's ability to absorb the technique. Just today I almost got taken out by a spin kick from a fellow Korean Martial Artist. Even more so, I was going for a jab-cross-uppercut combo when I got slammed. I started the jab and my opponent disappeared and the next thing I know I'm eating carpet. It was timed so well, was so fast, and so hard that I had to ask him what he just hit me with. Everything is just as effective and efficient as the other thing. One just needs to learn and apply it properly. Timing plays a huge roll in this.

I have respect for most martial arts teachers. There are some that I have no respect for because they teach things that are contradictory to what martial arts are supposed to be. But I have even more respect for people who are not only ultra powerful and ultra skilled, but can teach it and leave a real good impression on their students as well.

At my Isshin-ryu school we cover three bo forms, three sai forms, one nunchuck form, and one tonfa form. There's also kumite drills. Bo-Bo, Bo-Sai, and Sai-Sai.

People tend to not like deep stances because they require leg strength and a lot of practice to get in.

Have you tried closing your hands?

Techniques like these were developed for the really high ranks of karate or ninjutsu and other things like that. There's a lot of Chinese and Korean styles with similar concepts. They were developed to be used in war if the user found himself weaponless. They're developed to kill and since the early 1900s (also note this was before any kind of good motion photography) when different styles really started to grow by leaps and bounds - there hasn't been much need. Obviously nobody is going to use these at a friendly tournament. So since then they have been passed down through the higher ranks from master to student for a while. Weather the techniques have been lost or not really can't be known for sure. The only sure-fire way to know that is to actually do it - like you said. Which is understandable. But here's the thing, is it really worth someone's life? Truth is when you strike the chest hard enough, reguardless of the muscles, the kinetic energy can travel through. Like brick breakers going through 20 cinderblocks at a time. If there's enough kinetic energy travelling through the body it can disrupt the heartbeat which we all know can cause some painful side effects. Or even if there's enough, it can stop the heart entirely. I'm sure the scientists took that into consideration when they conducted the experiment. "Fight Science" had a lot of flaws in their experimentation. But I didn't see any that were that oblivious. There's a lot of different types of dim mak techniques. Part of me thinks that Ninjutsu expert chose that one to demonstrate because it demonstrated brute force (which the instruments could measure) and not anything that involved nerves which cannot be measured too easily. The main flaw with that particular dim mak technique is that there are techniques that can bring the body to absorb the blow. There's also ways to condition the chest to be able to take that blow. But there are other dim mak techniques that focus around nerves. I always call it the dark side of acupuncture.

You'll litterally never catch me alive. I'll have it written on my tombstone - "90 years? So what! Bring it! I'm still kickin'!" Darn, Traymond. That's intense.

Take a shinai - have them hold out their arms in a horse stance, and tap the forearms, ribs, shoulder blades, solar plexus and thighs gradually harder. Do it consistently. And introduce brick breaking.

True. These science shows tend to undermine the human body's addaptive capabilities to the minimum. Like fight quest telling me a spinning back kick can break ribs...maybe if it's done with the deliberate concentration that people use to break rows of cinderblocks or if they're kicking a three-year-old. Otherwise - definately not. Or one science show that told me the human skull was about as consistent as a watermellon. Yet I have yet to see a watermellon break a thirteen cinderblocks in one blow.

Darn it you! I will never surrender!

It's not just about all that. Mike Tyson punches very differently and wore protective gloves when he fights. To deliver the force to stop the heart with that technique, it needs to be done a very specific way. Same thing with the kicks.

I don't trust drugs.

That's crazy. My father and I love "Married...With Children." I wonder what he'll say when I tell him this.

What I said is that a well-executed hook punch might look flashy to a spectator or bystander. I understand what the two of your are saying but at the same time I think you're not giving enough credit to these things. I used a variety of different examples for this reason. Example one and two were examples of spontaneous movement against a charging opponent. I felt like the Kyokushin fighters in example video 4 showed how to get these moves off the ground and on target from close range, high contact and high intensity. I also felt (the first time I watched it) that they were flashy kicks. I realized later that they were just well executed (back to my original theory). And the last example was showing how you can use your opponent's grounding aginst him.