DokterVet

Like I said, yes I can feel pain in the joint, but it's not severe pain and serves only as an indicator to the impending damage. I have had an elbow capsule popped form a slowly applied arm lock and it honestly didn't hurt much at all until the damage was caused. I was just stubborn because I thought I could beat the guy (obviously the wrong attitude and I have since corrected it). Walk into a grappling club and ask how many people have had injuries from being too stubborn to tap. Probably everyone will have had one. This I agree with, and was my original point in this thread. These techniques are designed to cause joint damage (or unconsciousness for chokes). They aren't designed as pain compliance techniques. Although to nitpick, armbars generally damage the elbow joint rather than breaking the arm.

I still disagree with this based on the fact that most grapplers at some point in training have been too stuborn to tap and have ended up with popped elbow capsules or other injuries (happened to me once, I'll never let it happen again). Honestly, none of these moves hurt that much before causing damage. You can feel the pain, which is a good indicator to tap, but it is not even close to being unbearable. And the addrenaline of a real confrontation probably makes it not hurt at all before damage occurs.

Yep, there are many techniques. For any position you are being held in, there are several different escapes. There's no band-aid solution to being pinned. There are many extremely in-depth martial arts devoted to answering this question, and escaping from underneith a skilled opponent takes lots of training. Amateur wrestling, judo, BJJ, sambo, catch wrestling, shootwrestling, or submission wrestling would all offer solutions to your problem.

Hmm, that's an interesting point. I think it might work with some holds, but I wouldn't count on it for a couple reasons. Most people don't understand grappling and won't know the techniques you are using on them. They won't know that if they don't comply they will be injured. Kimuras and keylocks/hammerlocks have a bit more of a pain threshhold than armbars and kneebars, but all those techniques will cause injury before the pain really becomes unbearable. (anyone who has been too stubborn to tap at some point in training can attest to this.) With something like a triangle choke, if you only apply it halfway and try to rely on pain/discomfort, they would have a better chance of escaping (the loose the triangle, the easier it is to escape). They might not even understand that they are vulnerable to a choke in that position so they might be unwilling to cooperate. I think gaining a dominant position, using a few strikes, then saying "had enough?" is a better bet. They will understand a punch to the face more than they will an omoplata.

I disagree with you here. When being held in an armbar, you can apply pressure to the point where there is pain, but not breakage. It still hurts, and that is how they know when to tap out; it hurts, and sends a signal that the next level is breakage. I'm not sure you understand my point. A pain compliance technique is a technique that causes the opponent to tap or to react a certain way based solely on the desire to reduce the pain you are inflicting. Arm bars, kimuras, chokes, straight ankle locks, heel hooks, kneebars, etc. are not reliant on pain compliance. In training and competition, people tap to them because they cause bodily harm/unconsciousness, not because they hurt. Therefore these techniques will transfer very well to a self-defence situation where the person may not feel pain due to addrenaline, but will be incapacitated by major joint damage or unconsciousness.

Very few submissions in MMA are dependant on pain compliance. The opponent doesn't tap out because it "hurts too much," he taps out to avoid serious injury or unconsciousness. So yes, they would be very effective on the street.

I'll look into both of your suggestions, GKRDan and bushido_man96. I'm curious about kata-based sparring. Another problem I have with kata is that I always found them to be extremely stylized and difficult to apply to real situations. They were supposedly full of intricacies and hidden techniques, but whenever I was shown one, or tried to figure one out, my thoughts were always, "yeah, I guess that kinda works..a little. Although ____ would probably work better." I thought the Ashihara system was a better idea than learning traditional katas that had been stylized over the years. Are you familiar with Ashihara Karate? The system threw out the old katas and created all new ones without any 'hidden' techniques or obscure stances. All of the techniques have specific, known applications.

The conditioning video with the breaking was very impressive (although I don't buy that "one hit kill" stuff for a second. We simply would have seen deaths in some form of competition by now if that were true). Still, impressive stuff. I actually agree with you here. Hopefully I can better explain my position: I agree with you that if one were to land, for example, a properly executed eye gauge from a conditioned hand, it would do a substantial amount of damage, and potentially end the fight. However, and this brings us back to the topic of the thread, I don't believe that training these techniques in kata is going to help one to be able to land the technique in live combat. Therefore, I would rather train less deadly techniques in 'live,' resistant training than train comparably deadlier techniques in a predetermined pattern. I hope that makes my point clear. I think this might be kind of getting at what I'm trying to say: Ideally, you would have a training partner who allows you to practice these dangerous techniques on him full-contact in sparring (with movement, reaction, intent, aliveness). However, such a partner does not exist, therefore one can only train dangerous techniques in other ways (like kata). Many people, even for self-defence purposes, address this problem by focusing only on techniques that can be practiced with full resistance. The idea is that the skill attained through training with a moving, reacting, competing opponent is so much greater (and more applicable to live combat) than that achieved through other methods (like kata), that the "less deadly" techniques effectively become more deadly because they will be more likely to be successfully applied than the "deadly techniques" trained only in kata. I'm sure there are other solutions (ie practicing against a person wearing protective body armour). I just don't believe kata is a good solution to the problem, because it ignores the movement and aliveness of a real encounter. I also agree with you that kata is not 100% useless. I would call it "unneccessary" but not useless. It is excersize and contains some techniques which the practitioner might be able to apply if he supplements his kata training with working with a live, resisting partner. It is especially good for older people whose bodies can't handle being hit or tossed around very much. Recently I had a training partner have to stop training because he has naturally weak joints and grappling was too hard on his body. Kata might be a good alternative for someone like him. However, in general I believe there are many more useful ways to spend your training time than kata. I trained in Wado Kai Karate for 8 years and earned the rank Shodan. Now I wish I had spent the time I invested doing kata on grappling or sparring. I just don't feel that the kata increased my martial ability at all, deadly techniques or not. Your experience might be different. Like you, I'm not interested in a "style vs. style" debate, but I think a "training method vs. training method technique" is helpful regardless of the "style" of the techniques. I'm glad to read you have some experience in grappling. In addition to being useful, it's really fun, (but tiring).

Early MMA was done without gloves, and the throat and groin were legal targets. Pressure points were generally not a factor. Kata techniques were not demonstrated to be effective, and fighters whose training methods focused on kata were generally less successful than those who favoured 'alive' training methods such as hard contact sparring/rolling. As for the eyes, in Vale Tudo Japan 1995, Gerard Gordeau resorted to eye gouging Yuki Nakai into blindness. Nakai went on to win the fight, as well as his next fight that night. Why aren't eye strikes allowed? Yuki Nakai is blind now unneccessarily. The restrictions are to prevent unneccessary injuries to the fighters. The knowledge we gained from early, fairly barbaric, MMA taught us that they were not fight deciding techniques anyway. Practicing pressure points, or anything else, exclusively on the air cannot compare to techniques you can practice against a fully resisting partner.

Pressure points are legal in most MMA. People don't do them in MMA because they haven't proven to be effective. Throat and groin strikes are limited now, but in the early days of vale tudo and no holds barred fighting, these 'deadly' techniques did not work against grapplers, shootfighters, etc. The 'too deadly for the ring' argument really doesn't hold any water.

For the original poster, here's a fight with some nice fast striking. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThODgQVlS_o&mode=related&search=

Cool interview, Sohan. Although I find it depressing that he was benching 315 when he was 15 years old and 160 lbs.

In about 8 years of karate, I never understood the importance of kata. I didn't see any useable footwork or techniques anywhere in any of the kata. In my opinion, the only purposes kata has are demonstration and preservation of tradition. As one of my teachers told me, "if we stop doing it, it ceases to exist." I agree with other posters that without kata, you aren't doing karate. A martial art is defined by its techniques, training methods, and strategy/philosophy. If you take out a major training method and many techniques, it is no longer the same art.

It took me a little over seven years to get my BB in Wado Kai Karate. That seemed to be a bit longer than average for the organization I was in.

I actually definitely see the gyakutzuki in the Franklin fight. I think Jiffy has a good point, that there is a huge crossover between styles because we are all using the human body. As a former practitioner of karate, I've picked up on things in MMA that exist in karate, but were performed by non-karateka. For example, I noticed in one Vitor Belfort fight that he used shiko-dachi extensively while holding his opponent to the fence and throwing punches. He didn't use it the way you normally see it in karate (he was using it to keep his bodyweight pressing on his opponent, and throwing powerful circular punches), but I was interested to see that the same way of positioning the human body was picked up by both Belfort (a primarily boxing and BJJ fighter) and by the founders of karate for use in combat. That said, I personally like the punching techniques of boxing more than I like those of karate, despite having trained karate punches for much longer.

I've thought about this before as well. You don't see too many famous people or world class competitors on internet forums in general. I think that maybe they are spending their time training instead of surfing the web. A lot of people here are super dedicated to MAs and consider posting to be a part of that, but think about how much dedication it takes to be so good at martial arts that you are famous worldwide. I doubt people like that have much time for extraneous stuff. Makes me think I should be training right now. There are exceptions though. Bas Rutten posts on his message board, and there are some pro fighters on sherdog and another site that is censored here. Jason Delucia, for another example, posts on internet forums.

I have that book, and I agree it is quite a useful reference book. But having had that book before I started going to a grappling school, I have to say that it is really not comparable to having an instructor. I use it to familiarize myself with BJJ terminology and basically give me ideas for what I can do in different positions, but without actual instruction and drilling, I have no hope of actually using the techiques.

I reccomend the Muay Thai and/or Brazillian Jiu-jitsu out of those choices. Muay Thai will train you in devestating strikes and clinch work in a live, full-resistance enviroment. In competition is has proven to have the best methods for throwing kicks, punches, elbows and knees. BJJ will allow you to escape bad positions (in case you get tackled, for example), as well as attack using grappling techniques, control an attacker and to stay on your feet if neccessary. Your BJJ training will be live and full-resistance.

I don't think any of the old legends would do well at high levels, but they might do okay at the lower levels of competition. Bruce would have to bulk up to even be a lightweight. Oyama might do fairly well due to his extensive judo experience and obviously high level striking, but it might not be enough for him to stop the wrestlers from taking him down. He might have had more success in K1.

Nintendo Wii (coming out in the fall) - Innovative motion sensing controller, ability to play all gamecube games, ability to download and play classic nintendo games, designed to be simple for non-gamers. Will be cheaper than PS3 or XBOX 360. Graphics will be better than XBOX but worse than XBOX 360 PS3 (coming out in the fall) - Will be extremely expensive, not sure if it would be worth it over XBOX 360 (time will tell). Probably slightly better graphics than XBOX 360, will play Blu Ray movies. XBOX 360 - Best graphics right now, good for sports, action, western RPG (ie Oblivion), racing. New and fairly expensive. XBOX - Very good graphics, big library, probably the best for action, sports, western RPG, some fun fighters Gamecube - graphics not quite up to XBOX level, but better than PS2's graphics. Good for Nintendo first party stuff with lots of critically acclaimed games, some Japanese RPGs, very good for party games and family friendly games (Monkey Ball, Smash Brothers, Mario Party, etc) Very cheap. PS2 - Least impressive graphics of the bunch. (and oldest system still on sale) Best for japanese RPGs and tournament fighters. Lots of people like it for sports as well. Biggest library of games, so there are tons of bad games and tons of good games, just have to pick the right ones. Lots of quirky games like Katamari Damacy. Probably the best for platformers. Worst for shooters due to weak graphics and controller. Quite cheap as well.

This routine is supposed to be very good for cutting. http://ruggedmag.com/index.php?type=Article&i=3&a=8

I think wristlocks are allowed. They just aren't high percentage techniques. I think "small joint manipulation" refers to fingers and toes. Attacking the ankle is definitly allowed, and I think the wrist is comparable. The only wrist lock I've seen in MMA was Royce Gracie vs. Akebono in K1. Royce finished Akebono with a wrist lock after abandoning an omoplata set up. We practice wrist locks on the ground at shootwrestling. They can be effective holds if you catch your opponent's arm out of position, but they don't get taps nearly as often as holds attacking the elbow, or shoulder or chokes. EDIT: Also, even if the UFC does not allow wrist locks, K1 MMA matches definitely do. There doesn't seem to be more aikidoka or traditional MAists fighting in K1 MMA matches over UFC, so I don't it is true that we would see more of those types of MAists in the UFC if wrist locks were allowed.

I like to set up armbars from north-south.

4 grams per pound? I have no idea how someone could eat that much protein. The most that I have seen that was proven to maximize hypertrophy in a scientific experiment was 0.82 grams per pound of bodyweight. There might have been subsequent experiments published which advocate taking higher amounts than that, however.

I never liked Jion personally. I learned Wansu at the same belt level, and always prefered wansu. (I learned in Wado-Kai, but the katas were more like the Shito-Ryu versions)