Johnlogic121

The phenomenon of shared dreams is real, but it is fairly rare. It starts to occur for people who have some degree of psychic ability, like those who already possess something like telepathy. I think some degree of telepathy is a prerequisite. I have occassionally had dreams in which my deceased father has visited me within a dream, but this is a little different than having a shared dream with someone that you could verify the experience with, and skeptics might feel that the experiences are just from my subconscious. I don't know of any way that you can consciously develop this ability but certain Mikko Buddhist texts talk about methods of buildng up lucid dreaming capabilities. The Mikko sect believes that dreams are either the same as or similiar to the Afterlife, so they try earnestly to control their dreams so that they don't get caught in nightmarish dreamscapes. Certain occult orders also have ideas about cultivating control over your dreams, and some consider dreams to be within "astral space," but I would advise people to avoid occult organizations. They frequently promise to share secret knowledge but end up controlling the interested person or destroying them. On a final note, if you can experience shared dreaming, the practical question is, what do you want to do with it? Other than being a novelty, I'm not sure what use you could make out of it. If you call your friend on the phone the next day and verify that you both had the same dream, the world still spins at the same speed and the sun still sets in the West. It would be cool, but it wouldn't change your life greatly. -JL

That's an excellant message post. It was a pleasure to read and very informative on the question that started the thread. The only thing that I could add is that modern Bujinkan Ninjutsu was even banned in certain Asian countries because the officials thought that the art of the Ninja would be teaching people how to do assassinations. That set of skills really isn't a part of the general Budo Taijutsu curriculum, even though some ancient Ninja did use stealth to annihilate single targets and thus avoid mass conflicts. I overheard a high level Bujinkan instructor named Phil LeGare talk about this banning problem, but I never got a chance to ask him about what country or countries were imposing the banning. Ninjutsu is common throughout most of the free world, however. -JL.

My Dad used to tell me that regular western boxing could be very effective against contemporary martial arts. Eastern boxing makes use of both the hands and the feet in various ways but the boxing that has developed in the West is hardly inferior. Gymnasiums that teach boxing skills usually have really good physical training to supplement the fighting skills they teach. Sometimes I think regular western boxing is overlooked in the martial arts world as a viable alternative because it seems so commonplace and it lacks exotic appeal. If boxing had spinning hook kicks to the head, it would look more cool that just blasting the other guy in the face with the hands. The thing is, those spinning kicks are hard to master compared to basic hand fighting skills. -JL.

All professional boxers spend some time learning training techniuqes from their coaches that can be used in variations of the clinch scenario, and most amateur boxers get exposed to similiar training tips. Certain boxers actually specialize in their ability to preform infighting and get the best benefit out of a clinching exchange. They say that the uppercut is the hardest punch in boxing to see, and it often emerges in clinching scenarios. One moment you may be wrestling with the other guy's arms, holding him tight, and in the instant he wrestles one of his arms free it slaps you in the jaw. Uppercuts to the body are difficult to dodge and wear a person down greatly. The primary protection from these attacks is to be so close that the punches are short and deliver less power. I think the majority of martial artists would try to back up or push the opponent away when in a clinch, but certain other martial artists do some of their most effective fighting work from the clinch by applying things like arm locks that can throw the opponent to the ground. Boxing doesn't allow head butts, but if you have a dojo that allows you to practice these with control, you can gain a useful fighting tool. Sometimes the best way to defend against a head butt is to duck so low that you can reverse the situation and use your forehead against the other guy's nose instead of vice versa. Boxers accidentally open up cuts on the other person's eyebrows sometimes with unintentional head butts in the clinching scenario. If you are not wearing boxing gloves, a very powerful attack is to swing your hand up and clap the opponent over the ear. This can not only rupture the ear drum but also cause bleeding from the ear in the process, so you should be careful to only use it with control when training with a partner as it is stronger than most people would expect. Another thing to try in the clinch is to dodge away from an opponent who raises his arm to hook punch you in the head, and while his arm is up, poke him with your fist in the armpit. Armpit shots are painful and very powerful, but you may have trouble doing this if you have bulky boxing gloves on. Martial artists can also use low level kicking attacks in a clinch like stomping on the other guy's foot or driving your knee into the middle front of his thigh muscle. This latter attack is powerfully stunning. Some Tae Kwon Do stylists even recommend using a crescant kick to the head when you are doing infighting, as the leg shooting up from the side usually comes as a big surprise and can knock the other guy in the temple or ear. You just have to be careful he doesn't drive his knee up into your groin when you do this, and balancing takes practice when he might push you at any moment, so you have to be fast. Good luck, -JL.

If you landed more kicks than he did, the judges will see this as favorable for you. His punching may have been impressive, especially in the last fifteen seconds as you said, but judges look at the overall performance for the whole match. If he was rushing to land pucnhes in the last fifteen seconds that this might even appear to be desperation, even if he was successful in hitting you. Making a spinning hook kick to the back of the neck is very impressive, congradulations. I think upper body movements have an advantage in kickboxing, since they usually enforce a rule that says you have to make a certain minimum number of high kicking attacks per round as a kickboxer or be disqualified. This rule preserves the sport from being dominated by boxers who won't ever kick. Many tournament competitiors suspect that something is sometimes a little fishy with the judging, as it is an imprecise opinion that occassionally in nothing more than a subjective value judgment. Even if the other guy landed more combinations, judges in tournaments tend to count single techniques as a full point counting as much as striking the other guy three times in a row. This is just the nature of the way scoring works; usually they separate the fighters after a point may have been scored so that the judges can confer and give their opinions, but sometimes people fight continuously and the judges give an opinion afterwards. When the offense of both fighters is close, a lot of judges will consider the quality of the defense, and kicks are generally more destructive than punches, so it sounds like your performance just impressed the judges the most. I would not say however that the kicker always wins. In self-defense, I would predict that the puncher has an advantage over the kicker. In tournaments, strong kicking skills are typically viewed as a sign of diligent skilled training whereas punching skills are considered more "commonplace" abilities. Good luck in your next fight, -JL.

I read that in older times, the sport of professional boxing was very different than it is today. People not only fought bare handed, but the sport incorporated a grappling and throwing element. The duration between rounds was not timed as it is today, and they called the end of the current round when the boxers got into a clinch where one of the boxers tossed the other guy to the ground. Martial artists who engage in throwing arts will agree that the hardest part of being thrown is standing up again if you have good breakfall skills, because standing up a hundred times an hour makes you really tired. Thus, bare knuckle boxers in the olden days used to toss their oppoents to the ground from out of a clinch to wear the other guy out. However, some of the best fighters were in such great physical condition that the Guiness Book of World Records records one boxing match that lasted over six hours. Many fights in those days lasted over an hour. With the innovation of modern boxing rules and modern gloves, boxing is almost a totally different sport. You aren't allowed to throw the other guy to the ground anymore and the boxing gloves protect the fists so well that you can actually hit harder, even though the force of the blows is distributed over a broader surface area. Thus modern boxing bouts seldom can go longer than twelve rounds, even though old fashioned boxing might have seventy-five rounds with somebody falling down at the end of each round. Would you like to see old fashioned boxing revived? Could this older sport have an influence on modern dramatized Wrestling or the UFC? Would training in old fashioned boxing be good for modern self-defense purposes? Does anyone see a similarity between this type of boxing and Chinese Shai Chaio, a grappling and wrestling art? Would modern audiences get too bored if they watched a fighting spectacle that lasted three hours? Just some thoughts, -JL.

Thanks, that "cotton hand" exercise is precisely the kind of thing I am looking for. I found a reference to another exercise in a book after I made the original post. In the exercise I found, a practitioner would face the rising sun at dawn and make a Dragon Claw hand facing the sun and tighten every part of the hand with dynamic tension training. Dynamic tension training tenses muscles that normally oppose each other at the same time, so it is a little unnatural and takes practice to learn, but everybody who tries it can condition their nervous system to do it successfully. When the muscles that normally oppose each other in the hand and fingers tighten in opposite directions, it forms a kind of isometric exercise. The hand is gradually opened and clsed under dynamic tension several times a minute, slowly, over the course of fifteen minutes until the sun rises. The exercise is repeated at sunset facing the setting sun. The timing of the exercise is supposed to take advantage of certin natural body rythyms in a person's Chi cycles to give the most advantagoues training to the hands, and the mental focus of the power sun's disk is supposed to help train the mental focus that is demanded by a firm Dragon Claw hand. People who do this exercise continue it for years as a daily ritual, and the daily exertion gradually strengthens the hand claw for slapping and raking attacks by working on the internal muscular structure of the hand rather than just conditioning the outside tissues by slapping an object like a clay brick. I just thought that was an intersting one so I thoguht I would take the time to describe it. I would be very curious if people could describe several more of these kinds of exercises. Thanks in advance, - JL.

My Sifu was always very particular about the precise imitation of the shout sounds used in class. If somebody goofed and made the wrong noise, they got the sternest lokks you could imagine. Most of the breathing in Mang Chaun comes from the upper abdomen rather than the lower abdomen, in imitation of the kind of breathing that runners sometimes use, because it is believed to help conserve your supply of air a little better and cultivate higher endurance. Also, people tend to naturally breathe a little higher in their chest when under exertion, and many Kung Fu styles feel that natural instincts should be reinforced rather than modfied under special training. When delivering power moves, the shouts we made came from the lower abdomen, as you wrote about. -JL.

What do you mean by a holistic approach to fighting? I'm curious as to your point of view on the issue. Thanks, -JL.

I think the reason why these specific exercises are utilized for the purposes of building endurance is that they focus on precisely the right muscular groups and when you do the motions at the proper speed they continuously exercise the associated muscles to give them no real rest. If you did most three step combinations over and over again, the moments of rest in between moving certain muscles would make the efficiency of the endurance exercise a little bit less, even though shadowboxing or regular forms performance can be used to test resistance to fatigue. These forms are suited to the kinds of muscle movements required for Mang Chaun Kung Fu and doing these forms for ten minutes can be a challenge for a beginner. As the muscles get tired, the precision of the movements suffers, and you can feel the burn in your body. I think doing alternate exercises might be a little easier and not provide the same kind of intensity to your endurance workout. The first routine with the Puma strikes works the shoulders and back almost as much as swimming, and the second routine really focuses even more on crucial back muscles. -JL.

I don't have a web link about the legality of carrying stones in your pocket for self-defense. I heard about it because I'm a government employee who works with an agency connected to the Defense Department. If you are a field geologist working on a formal scientific expedition, you can carry rock samples in a case with you, but you have to drop those samples off when you get back to the city. It seems that people have tried to use the trick of carrying a small rock many times before to use as a small throwing projectile. A kid with five stones can potentially throw them to harrass policemen, and policing the possession of stones is probably stronger in Iraq than it is in the United States, but kids in America do throw stones at policemen sometimes. Even the cavemen probably used small stones to harrass and harm their adversaries, and the ancient Greeks even had military units called "stone throwers" who would literally carry a bag of stones into battle and launch volleys against opposing troops with ordinary arm strength. Later, people started using slings to throw stones, and a person who is accurate with a sling really can kill somebody. Ancient units of slingers didn't need as much training for accuracy when they would get 60 to 100 men grouped together to aim their slings at an area and attack in a big volley. In modern times, you can purchase sling shots and specially made sling shot pellets that are very accurate and very powerful because the sling shots are made of specialized rubber materials that let you get tremendous force from ordinary arm strength. If you are really curious about the legality of possessing stones for throwing, you might be able to call the non-emergency number for the local sherriff's department and ask someone who might be kind enough to look into the matter for you to find the exact details. Police officers are always happy to serve and protect, and they prefer to serve than to protect because it is often safer. Good luck out there, -JL.

In kickboxing competitions, they sometimes get a competitior who is only mildly trained in kicking and whose primary expertise is at conventional boxing. To preserve the sport of kickboxing as a sport in which the legs are used to kick above the waist, most kickboxing competitions require that each competitior make a minimum of eight attempts to kick his opponent above the waist. Before this was a rule, boxers would dodge around kicks and come to such close range that they would pummel the kickboxer relentlessly with all the force they could muster. Since boxers only work on their hands, they have a natural advantage in close range over kickboxers who split their training time between hands and feet. Boxers are also skilled at getting a good outcome from a clinch, also. So kickboxers tend to have a disadvantage against pure boxers when they cannot keep the other person away with their high kicks. However, if the kickboxers can use low kicks to the legs, they usually tire the boxers out so badly that the boxers can hardly stand, and boxers are typically quite unready to defend their legs from determined low kicking assaults. Boxing is surviving as a sport even with the emergence of the Ultimate fighting Championship contests. Do you think kickboxing will become more popular? Should more kickboxing tournaments allow kicks to the knees and the thighs to give them some edge over people who focus on boxing training methods? Would spectators prefer to see more of the low kicks like we see in the UFC in pure striking contests? How do these events effect the way people tend to train as martial artists? -JL

Teaching kids can be a challenge sometimes. A few kids have behavioral problems, and some children have attention deficit disorder or hyperactivity. In simpler terms, some kids just misbehave and goof off in a karate class. They enter the dojo before bowing in and try to sidekick their classmates and pull the hair of the prettiest girl and punch everybody and so on and so on. How do you deal with misbehaving kids? This is a very open ended question, since the specific behavior can be as simple as not paying attention when giving instructions or as bad as actually fighting with other people inside or outside of class as a bully. Do any instructors have horror stories they can share? Does anybody have a helpful advice for keeping the undisciplined ones under control? How do you tell an earnestly concerned parent that 'little Johnny' is just plain disruptive? Have you every been forced to expel somebody under ten from the dojo? What if repeated words of correction seem to get no response from a kid who just wants attention, even if it is attention from being bad? Thanks, -JL

Wado-ryu karate is not a style that I have taken, but I did meet some people who trained in it several years ago. The prefix "wa" of wado-ryu is a sound that means "harmony," and the "do" suffix implies that it is an "art form of harmony" in some form or another. "Wa" in the martial arts generally is associated with emotional harmony specifically, like the calm that a person feels inside when meditating. Wado-ryu is considered one of the major traditional styles, so its fighting should be very combat applicable. Training of the mind for emotional courage when fighting is a regular element of this style I think. Most Japanese martial arts have ten junior ranks before black belt and the belts have every color of the rainbow with the highest ranks under black (usually brown) using striped belts. Different schools have different levels for each of the colors, so you would have to check with a Wado-ryu student or instructor to learn the order sequence of the colors. Thus, saying you are a "red belt" in the martial arts can be either impressive or dissappointing depending on whether or not a red belt is high in your particular martial art. Most karate schools based on Japanese curriculums require a student to train for five years to become a black belt, but some of the older traditional styles will require a full ten years. It is unusual to reach a black belt in less time than three years unless you 1) train in a Korean art like Tae Kwon Do, where becoming a black belt takes less time, sometimes only two years; or 2) you get private lessons where every move you make can be individually monitored and corrected as you go through everything step by step. In private lessons, you can make very rapid progress, but may still desire time to reinforce those skills afterwards so you build up experience. I hope this helps you. Take care, -JL.

Gichin Funakoshi, the man who is called the Father of Modern Karate, is recorded as saying that that if you don't train continuously to keep your skills "hot" they will quickly turn "cold." In other words, if you take a vacation or are forced to discontinue training for a certain legnth of time, then the quality of you karate performance goes down dramatically. People say you never fully forget how to ride a bicycle, but karate has a hundred skills in its skill set that are equally as challenging as riding a bicycle, and karate ability really does diminish if you leave it alone. Nevertheless, some older people who have given up active training can still fight well if they are called upon to defend themselves. Does anybody know of a standard formula for how rapidly your skills diminish if you stop continuous training? Knowing such a formula would be handy if someone is considering a long vacation or moving to a new area where they might be out of active karate classes for at least six months. Does staying away from class for six months take away as much as a year of your ability, if you have put about five years in? How does staying away from class effect someone's flexibility? Does anybody have experience with being away from class for a long time? How long would you have to train to get back in shape if you have been out for three months? Would the dojo you train in allow you to keep the same rank if you forget key parts to certain kata forms? If so, how would you make up the lost time? Thanks, -JL

I entitled this message "joining jujutsu styles" not because I am aiming at the idea of getting classes at a new dojo, but instead, I am theorizing about the idea of concatenating techniuqes together from existing styles of jujutsu. This is a very valid kind of exercise and can easily lead to the creation of new martial arts. Jujutsu styles typically have two-man partner drills that teach basic responses to basic scnearios, and the degree of improvisation expected in actual fighting is either very limited in some cases or expected to built upon the principles embodied in the specific technique combinations studied. You could easily start a style that took every Kempo technique, every Ninjutsu technique, and every jujutsu techniuqe you could find and taught it all together in one syllabus. To polish the composite effort, you may want to add some new techniuqes that establish links between the common movements so that you exploit new openings and cover up any obvious weak spots in the transitions between one style and the others. However, joining two or more jujutsu styles is probably easier than joining two karate styles, because if you join two karate styles you have to make decisions about the expected frequency of each technique in the new hybrid style. When you train in hundreds of jujutsu techniques, even from differing styles, they just build your set of preplanned reactions to a higher level without diminishing skills learned earlier and the synthesis gives you a good basis for improvising new techniques. Do other people look at prospect of creating new styles this way? Many jujutsu systems are compatible with other jujutsu systems, and even partially compatible with forms like aikijutsu or ninjutsu or kempo. Karate, however, can be as focused on kicks as TKD or as oriented on hands as Gojo-ryu. How do other people in the graplling arts feel about the compatibility of various jujutsu systems? Some people are having a good deal of crossover training from Judo, wrestling, and Brazilian jiujitsu. Does anybody out there have an estimate of how mant thousands of techniques are under the complete "jujutsu" umbrella? Does anybody have a better defintion for jujutsu than what I have presented here? I classify Kempo and Ninjutsu and aikijutsu as sufficiantly similiar to jujutsu to be considered jujutsu, for example. Would anybody disagree? Thanks for your comments, -JL.

I have read that at one time in history the adjective "internal" was used to describe a martial art that orignated inside of China and the adjective "external" was used to describe a martial art that orignated from outside of China, usually Northwestern India. Later, people used the words "internal" and "external" to describe two distinct forms of energy that can be used by the martial artist. Chi was considered internal, and took longer to develop, and sheer muscular power was external, and could be developed faster. Finally, in modern times, a lot of people use the word "internal" to describe the aspect of a martial art which builds up the willpower, the spirit, cultivates character development and courage, and so on and so on. The "external" aspect of a martial art is said in modern times to be the stances, the forms, the basics, the hand positions, the transitions, and all the actual physical movements. Clearly, terminologies change with the times. Has anybody heard of any different uses of the adjectives "internal" and "external" in the martial arts? Sometimes a distinct context can be the environment in which new meanings appear. Are these the only ways in which these words are typically used? Does anybody have any other interpretations of the internal versus external concepts? Thanks in advance for your time, -JL

This might be an interesting thread. There were some comments in the message thread about 'how many strikes are lethal?' that might apply here. I am curious as to the group's consensus about the most damaging single technique that someone could apply. Throws usually are equivalant to about four strikes on an average surface, and more harmful on concrete. An avalanche throw is aJudo variation in which you preform most any of the ordinary Judo throws and then you deliberately or accidentally fall directly onto your opponent or training partner. If it is your partner, you try not to hurt him too badly, but if it is an opponent, you try to land with you hip in his groin and your elbow in his face. He generally lands on concrete or the grass and you literally smush him. Other candidates for the status of 'most damaging single technique' are the horizontal inward karate chop to the neck, but we had a thread about that already and many people doubted it was very effective at causing the neck break. Eye gouges are another alternative answer, because they normally end up being lethal from the amount of fluid and blood gushing out of the eye sockets. What do people have to say about the most damaging single technique? Remember, we want to keep this limited to one technique only, and so combinations are out of consideration momentarily. You can suggest a technique common in your martial art or one that you have heard of in another martial art. I'm open for any comments, as I think this concept will be an interesting one to discuss and debate. You have to consider both probability of reliable success and the amount of damage that is likely to be caused on average. I don't consider this to be an easy question, but I am curious. Thanks, everybody. -JL

If I could restate the main question again slightly, I would ask, how many strikes on average should be enough to kill the average person? The comments so far have been interesting and contributive, but nobody as yet has speculated an informed guess or reported a proven answer. This question is important because you might be enraged enough to beat on someone someday who has just raped your wife, and you would want to know what the practical limit is between putting him in the hospital and putting him in the morgue. I think ten strikes would finish the average person or eight strikes is the strikes are strong. Does anyone feel that the level should be less? Self-defense can usually be accomplished with three successful strikes, but my inquiry is about going all the way to the death. Would anyone here take thirty strikes to finish somebody? -JL

Mang Chaun Kung Fu had nine 'elements' which were sets of material taken from other styles that represented either fire, air, or water. Bujinkan Ninjutsu has strong Chinese influences, and it recognizes the elements of Earth, Water, Fire, Wind, and Void. Chinese medicine has a five fold elemental model that includes "metal" as one of the elements, and the Chinese medicine model asserts that each element is like a kind of energy that builds the other two to a major or minor degree and is lessened or controlled by the other two to a major or minor degree within each of the body's organ groups. Does anybody come from a Chinese art that teaches a theory about Elements? Bujinkan Ninjutsu usually reserved teaching about the elemental model for fifth degree black belts who had passed their fifth dan test. This was possibly because misuse of the elements in teaching could cause a student harm. Does anybody have anything to share about elemental theories? -JL

One of my instructors introduced a techniuqe to us he called the "Pennies from Heaven" Technique. For this technique, you carry about 40 or 50 pennies in your left front pocket and walk down the street with your left hand in your pocket over the coins. If something wierd happens and you get violently assaulted, you can pull the coins out of your pocket and hurl them into the air as a momentary distraction. Anything you throw into the air will usually distract somebody for a little while, and during this time you can turn to run away or lash out with a series of rapid attacks before you turn to run away. In another variation, you carry a roll of coins in your pocket that are in a paper sheathe like the ones you use to turn the coins in at the bank. Carrying coins in such a way is perfectly legal. If someone accosts you and you can't talk your way out of the problem, you can close your fist around the roll of coins and use the roll of coins to strengthen your fist as you punch. The roll of coins punch feels almost like getting hit with brass knuckles, to a lesser degree. Has anybody got any techniques that are like these? Another variation is to carry one small stone in your pocket (legally you can carry one small stone, but only one). You can strengthen the fist you make around the stone or throw it at someone. With practice, you can even target someone's eye with accuracy. Some fans of the Ohio State Football Team carry a buckeye in their pocket and over the years these good luck nuts get nice and shiny - you can use these like a small stone for throwing, but they are a little too small to really strengthen your fist. Does anybody have any similiar tricks? Thanks in advance for your thoughts, as any comments are welcome. -Johnlogic

The article I read on reality sparring didn't indicate what the students do for the thousand hours that lead up to their one-minute sparring confrontation. Some people only get 250 hours of training in per year, if they train one hour a day for five days a week for 50 weeks a year, so you can do a lot in four years to get ready for this sort of thing. In the Bujinkan, they do almost all work with a partner, so you build up good judgement of timing and distance even though the Bujinkan people spar almost never. Doctor Hatsumi had people to spar for one minute during the 1998 Tai Kai in Atlanta but he said the exercise is primarily so that you can feel yourself "freeze" or "flow" with various technique combinations. If you have been training for a while, but you still freeze, not knowing what to do, then you have to work more on flowing with the techniques during the next year or so. In Japan, the high level Bujinkan guys usually spar like this about once a year to just check the feeling they get when defense is called for and they have to either attack or react.

My understanding of the letter forms is that the ones in the first group of thirty that seem inferior to the others are actually superior when compared to certain other forms in the later sets. There are 120 total, and the realtionships between all of them are nonlinear, so you can't just make a list of them in order and have a definitive and clear understanding of what the best ones are. It goes back to the idea that Dragon style can defeat Tiger style, Tiger style can defeat Leopard, and Leopard can defeat Dragon. Three-way relationships between the strength of various forms is one reason why there are apparently thousands of villidges all over China arranged in groups of three, where the family clan in each villidge possesses a style that can defeat the enemy of their enemy but not their enemy directly. Thus, peace is the best long-term option because if you defeat the people you can beat then they are weaker and can't kill off the people who are really good at killing you. That's how my Sifu described it. With the letter forms, you could potentially use any one of the 120 forms against any one of the other 119, and the way the monks carefully designed these forms is that all of them are basically good against about half of the others and weak against the other half. Learning how to fight with the letter forms is a mental exercise that you can learn quickly since you can gain a new letter form in forty-five minutes of a class night because they only have about ten movements each. Like I mentioned above, it could be classified as a form of "Temple boxing" because the assumption is that you will be fighting someone else who is also using the letter forms, but the applications for self-defense purposes are usually pretty good.

One unfortunate thing about using Kung Fu moves in tournaments judged by kickboxing karate people if that the judges will be looking for certain things that resemble what they are used to seeing in their own dojos and the judges will not necesarily be even qualified to judge Kung Fu. For this reason, many Kung Fu tournaments are held by schools that teach Chinese arts seperate from kickboxing tournaments. In those types of tournament environments, the judges are trained to know what to look for. Chinese martial arts use a lot of soft strikes and circular power, so if you apply a palm strike to the chest a kickboxing judge might think you just pushed him, when if fact a judge of Kung Fu might recognize that manuever as a low power version of a a powerful cavity press that could be lethal if applied in real life. Similarly, you circular power hook punches will tend to look like weaker strikes in comparison to linear striaght punches in the eyes of kickboxing judges because they are not used to judging the power of the body in full rotation. I heard of a case where a Kung Fu practitioner was fighting a karate practitioner in a sparring match, and for a long period of time the Kung Fu person blocked every single attack that the karate man made but didn't make any offensive moves of his own during the karate match. Clearly, he had superior defense, but scoring in kickboxing matches tends to award points only for successful hits to the body, and not blocking. Many self-defense experts would value the ability to block everything with zero offense very highly, but I think the karate practitioner was judged the winner of this particular bout because he showed more offense over the course of the fight even though none of the blows landed. Some Kung Fu artists consider the "perfect" fight to be one in which you make no offensive moves for the first fifteen minutes of the fight, just blocking everything that comes at you, and then finally, when you and the opponent are getting tired, you make one offensive move that wipes out the other guy. This demonstrates a pacifistic attitude and a capacity to do damage that is restrained only until necessary. However, in the West, the things that are considered effective fighting are different. I would say that your finest chances of scoring well in a contemporary kickboxing tournament are to embody everything that kickboxing people value. Kung Fu is commonly considered second best by most karate stylists when they see deceptive efforts that don't just go forward and blast the opponent with everything. Kickboxing doesn't have the same degree of sublety. Furthermore, Kung Fu deceptive motions usually confuse Kung Fu practitioners more than they confuse karate people, who don't recognize any of it. If you recognize a third of it, the rest confuses you. If you recognize none of it, you just fight the unknown. Good luck in your efforts. You might find that participating in forms with Kung Fu does very successfully in the kickboxing arena, as most judges and spectators find soft and circular Kung Fu forms to be very interesting compared to the angular and robotic karate movements. -JL

In answer to your first question, I would say that learning the acceptable amount of contact permitted by your Mixed Martial Art dojo is something that may take a little bit of time. I find that using fifty percent power is usually the optmum amount of power to use for most martial arts training, but then, I don't usually encourage full contact sparring. If you are going to truly hit people harder, you need to adjust the distance at which you normally strike in a traditional martial art. Most traditional martial arts will stop a punch a few inches in the air before hitting the surface of the target, but to get a solid punch, you need to be almost six inches closer so that your arm hits the surface with a bent elbow that can still deliver force beyond the surface level of the target. You want to focus your punch to deliver maximum impact about three inches inside the other person's body rather than right at the surface, and if you have practiced thousands of repetitions in which you never touch the other guy, then this will seem awkward for a while. Plenty of practice on hitting a heavy bag will make the contact punching method easier, and after that, you just need to get the mental comfort zone of punching the other person with moderate power. As for being drained of energy after sparring, this is something that does happen, but you want to careful that you don't over exert yourself. People can have cardiac arrest at any age, so don't push yourself too much. Doing circuit training or cardiovascular training all day should really build up your stamina, but sparring has a higher intensity so it depletes energy faster. If your low energy doesn't recover rapidly after class, you may just want to check things out with a medical doctor to make sure everything is OK. Usually people are surprised about how much their bodies can recover after just one minute of rest, especially if they engage in endurance training regularly enough to be reasonably physically fit. You can do more cardiovascular training at higher and higher intensity levels, but the human body does have natural limits, and you don't want to train extremely rigorously unless your goal is something like a triathalon. Even then, building up the body slowly over a long period of time with consistent workouts is better than rushing your training and getting injured. Good luck, -JL