Johnlogic121

In many old fashioned Karate systems, the punches would rotate from a knuckles down position to a knuckles up position when the fist started from the hip. Even when a higher hand guarding position is used, the bottom of the first starts in a position facing the opponent and the hand generally rotates ninety degrees so that the punch lands with the knuckles facing up like before. In styles like Isshinryu, the fist is always kept in a position where the knuckles are vertical, whether you punch from the waist or from a high hand guard. The blows even land with vertical knuckles. This form of punching keeps the elbow in a more natural position throughout the punch for the delivery of maximum power. However, rotating the fist makes it more challenging for a jujutsu stylist or an Aikidoist to catch your spinning wrist and apply a wrist lock on your arm. Also, punching calisthenics that involve forearm rotation tend to encourage the growth of really strong forearm muscles that can help in techniques where you have to grab and twist the opponent in your hands during a throw. Personally, I tend to use a vertical fist, but many boxers are comfortable with wrist rotation and find it to be equally satisfactory. Does your style use wrist rotation when punching? Does the other method feel unnatural to you? Does anybody find that the speed of your forearm rotation slows the maximum speed at which you can launch a focused punch? Does repeated punching ever make your forearms fatigued? Just some questions, --JL

Some Karate stylists make their blocks using the bone structures of the forearm. Thus, the upper area block that rises above the head would use the ulna bone on the bottom of the forearm and the middle area block that swings the vertical forearm sideways would use the radial bone on the top of the arm. A collision between the bone in your arm and the attacker's wrist or inside forearm can hurt the attacker if the block is made with force. However, certain styles of Karate, such as Isshinryu, block with the muscles of the forearm between the radial and ulna bones. The creator of Isshinryu argued that you can practice blocking in training until you can overcome the sense of stun you get from blocking with the muscle, and further, he felt that distributing the force of the block through the muscle over both bones of the forearm made stronger blocks possible with reduced chances of breaking an arm. You would rarely see a block against a kick break an arm, but a baton swing might make a fracture break in a bone or break off a chip of the bone if you are not careful. Usually, a Karate student trains his reflexes to use one form of blocking or the other because training for both forms of blocks develops two competing reflexes that basically accomplish the same thing. Does your style use the bones or the muscles? Has anybody tried both methods, and thus have some advice about which they prefer? Does anybody have a broken bone experience from blocking something that they could share? Would standardization of the typical blocks be a sign of progress for Karate students everywhere, as one form should logically be preferrable, whichever one it is? Which form do you think is best? -JL

At the beginning of the twentieth century, it is said that Eagle Claw stylists had methods of conditioning the hands and wrists and forearms for incredible crushing power. The stories say that an expert in Eagle Claw could crush a bottle in his hand with his powerful grip. Clearly, this made grips around a puncher's bicep very painful and crippling. Clawing the throat with such fingers was deadly. Nowadays, unfortunately, these methods are either vanished or exceedingly rare, if indeed the stories are true in the first place. There are a variety of hand claw positions in Kung Fu and each is slightly distinct and suited towards a different purpose. Dragon Claws slap and drag with raking fingers, Tiger Claws twist and tear cheek bones and gouge eyes, and Eagle Claws crush captured arms. Does anybody have any really good hand conditioning techniques? Old fashioned Karate has some finger conditioning methods involving buckets of hot sand into which you thrust your spear hand and star hand, and after years of this exercise, you use a bucket of pebbles and lastly rough gravel. This seems to be especially hard conditioning that would effect the surface tissues to make them hard and not necessarily build up the muscles to make them stronger. Can anybody summarize an effective Kung Fu method that might provide "soft" conditioning to the ligaments, tendons, and muscle tissues and nerves? How do you develop a really effective hand claw? -JL

The essential theme of Monkey style is to use your upper body to attack the opponent's lower body. There are so many ways of doing this that there are at least five major branches of Monkey style, depending on what aspect of the method you are emphasizing, and hundreds of mixed hybrid styles incorporate some of these Monkey variations. A classic Monkey move is to duck at high speed as the opponent punches and then use your swinging arms to sweep out his leg so that he falls awkwardly. Many hybrid Chinese boxing styles will incorporate Monkey movements as a surprise mechanism, because that seems to be the optimal way to apply Monkey style in ordinary fighting. If the opponent knows you are using Monkey style, he will "repulse the Monkey," which essentially means he will kick you relentlessly as you hop around in low squating positions and never give you the chance to sweep out his legs from under him. Of all the styles of Kung Fu, Monkey requires high physical fitness, and the leg conditioning required for skillful performance is even higher than the leg conditioning required for Crane style kicking. The style of Kung Fu I studied incorporated nine Elements of which Monkey was one. However, I have heard a rumor that pure Monkey style stylists work really hard for their body conditioning but only win about 1% of their combats against other styles of Kung Fu and various Karate styles. Has anyone else heard about this? I have heard that the "repulse the Monkey" technique is very strong against a Monkey fighter, but if surprise is a factor, then the occassional Monkey technique can be applied very well in my opinion. Does anybody have some experience with Monkey style fighting, and if so, about how many of your sparring contests do you win? Would you agree that Monkey is most effective with a degree of surprise, and less effective without it? Do you have any tips about how to fight well with this animal style? If it only wins 1% of the time, wouldn't it be dying out? Is there a secret or set of secrets that make Monkey style boxing more effective? I have tried to describe a little bit about this style in this post so that people without exposure to it could make some replies. How well do each of you think your primary style would fight against a skilled Monkey stylist? -JL

Wrestling and grappling are very old forms of combat. The ancient Greeks not only recognized a form of boxing, but they also had a style called "Pankration," meaning "all-powerful," and the majority of pankration fighting methods were fought on the ground in various prone positions. It included hair-pulling, biting, stomach punching, gonad grabs, eye gouging, and wrestling holds. The idea in pankration was to essentially wrestle using all kinds of "dirty tricks" that illegal in most fighting contests today. Archeologists have also found some Egyptian pyramids that had wall paintings depicting hundreds of manuevers from some kinds of ancient wrestling system that may have been used by Egyptian warriors. Down through the ages and up to modern times, armies used to grapple when they came into close quarters combat. At the time of the Civil War, hand to hand combat injuries from bayonets and sabers and other melee means accounted for only 1% of the total casualties. Wars have relied on hand to hand combat even less and less ever since, but urban fighting environments have many opportunities for soldiers to ambush and surprise each other in close proximity and thus fight with knives or bare hands. Many people have heard of the Russian fighting system called Sambo, which is primarily a grappling system similiar to Judo. Additionally, grappling fighting is a significant part of the UFC fighting contests, which are considered by many to be some of the most realistic fighting ever filmed. This raises an interesting question about one of the world's famous fighting legends: Bruce Lee. Why didn't Bruce Lee grapple more? His book on Jeet Kune Do does offer a few simple holds, but many other books are much more elaborate about this area. Could Lee have been a better martial artist if his orginal style had not been Wing Chun but something more similiar to Judo? How would this orginal style difference effected the origins of Jeet Kune Do? According to what I have read, Bruce's reacton to his Wing Chun teacher is what motivated him to leave Wing Chun after learning 70% of the system and seek "what is useful" from other arts. However, one could argue that he never found another teacher he liked as much as his original Wing Chun teacher because he continuously moved around until he studied about thirty different styles. Should modern Jeet Kune Do practioners get more into grappling? Would this be a significant improvement to JKD as we know it? How would Bruce Lee feel about modern grappling artists today? -JL

I often wonder about the truth behind stories regarding Chi. My own experience indicates that this force can be developed and it is genuinely real, but when I read articles that claim "levitation" I get really skeptical that all claims about this force are real. Chinese medicine is supposed to be based on theories of Chi circulation in the human body, and I have heard that Eastern medical methods are even better at curing chronic conditions than Western medicine. However, the medical models disagree so strongly that Eastern doctors don't even agree with Western doctors about the number of organ systems in the human body, or even about what constitutes an "organ." Aside from curing disease and promoting health, Chi is supposed to be able to protect your body from kinetic impact damage and also allow you to damage the energy field of your opponent. Most martial artists are familiar with the concept of Chi, or the related concept of Ki, which is the Japanese word for focusing the power of the mind to come into total harmony with the dynamic force of the universe, and thus compel more power into your attacking technique. Some claims about Chi are undoubtedly exaggerated, but Chinese experts insist that the force can be developed by the average practitioner in an average of forty-five years. My question for the forum is this: what percentage of the claims about Chi are true? Are 50%, or half, of the claims about Chi true? Does anyone believe that 100% of the claims about Chi are true, including the stories about levitation? Or is it all baloney? -JL

I have done some training in the system of American Kempo Karate that was started and popularized by Ed Parker. His original system had about four hundred techniques and was well adapted to instruction in commercial dojo environments. Usually, a single week consisted of practicing a new technique on Monday, reviewing it on Tuesday, getting a new technique on Wednesday, reviewing it on Thursday, and then reviewing the whole week on Friday. This would continue for three weeks out of the month and the the fourth week of the month would be set aside for reviewing everything done that month. This would continue for five months, over which time the student would learn about thirty techniques. The sixth month would be used for review of the previous five months and used for belt testing. Every six months would continue on a similiar cycle. Ed Parker had created a total of 36 techniques for every belt level up to black belt and every dojo had about 30 of those 36 techniques. People who were teachers could receive new techniques via a fax machine (the optimum technology in those days), and read the specially coded instructions to learn how to do the new techniques they received. This was fine for a while, but later, Ed Parker revised his system and went from a basis of 360 techniques plus basics and forms to a set of 240 techniques at the core of the system. According to one website I read, Ed Parker was shocked to discover that the revised set of 240 techniques didn't succeed as well as the original set of 360 techniques, but I'm not sure how well I trust what I read on that website. Some websites report that Kempo actually went through a total of four incarnations rather than just the major two systems I spoke of. In any case, Ed Parker never appointed a successor to his legacy even though many of his students rushed to publish videos about his system after his death to preserve knowledge about the techniques and how they were done. Some of these video tape series have exceptional quality and can be used for training today, but the modern Kempo world is somewhat splintered with no clear leader and a lot of political infighting between groups that are competing with each other for students and desperately researching key ideas in Ed Parker's legacy that have ambiguous conceptual content. Ed Parker always stressed concepts, and his principles were emphasized as the foundation of all the techniques, regardless of the sequences used. According to one Internet source, Ed Parker never left a successor because he was dissappojnted that nobody could apply his fighting principles just right, even though thousands of students were highly skilled in his techniques and eager to succeed him. I'm not sure that may be the reason why he never appointed a successor. Logically, selecting a new Grandmaster for Kempo Karate would be the best way to ensure that the right individual could hold the whole organization together and keep the art going. I am confused that nobody could be found to really fill that role. Also, I read that Ed Parker was considering a forty volume VHS tape series before he died, but somehow he never completed the project. People were asking him about this for years because it would have been an ideal way of recording how the Grandmaster really moved doing the techniques when he was alive, but allegedly he resisted video taping himself because the speed of performance would have to be slowed down so much to explain what was going on. This explanation sounds fishy to me, since normal instruction usually shows the techniuqe at normal speed and then slows it down for instructional purposes. Why did Ed Parker leave no successor? Would the Kempo world be better off today if he did? Was it really best to let the art survive with no real leader? Could anybody think of a great Kempo master who could unify the hundreds of schools around today? Just some questions, -JL.

Sometimes comparing two styles of martial arts is easy. You can stage a series of tournament combats between people of skill in each style, with rules suitable for safety according to the types of manuevers involved, and see what style scores an advantage as shown through a percentage of "wins" in the sparring contests. The technical precision of the testing can be elaborated greatly by adjustments for the age of the competitors, matching their levels of physical fitness, giving them multiple tries to face the other style, and other things. People have been running contests like these down through the centuries. In China, the Shaolin had some tests that were so rigorous that they would have two fifteen year old boys meet once and then train in separate monastaries for thirty-five years in distinct animal forms, usually training for seven years each in five long forms that build upon each other in terms of how they cultivate organ development. At age fifty, the students would be masters, and would fight a battle that could be to the death. From the outcomes of tests like these, the Shaolin made decisions about the strength of the various animal forms. Strangely, however, the results as reported to me by my Kung Fu sifu were not as simple as a basic linear progression, or else everybody in the modern Kung Fu world would be training in whatever style proved best in ancient times. Instead, what they found was that Dragon can beat Tiger, and Tiger can beat Leopard, but Leopard can beat Dragon. In other words, there are complex nonlinear relationships between what styles are stronger and what styles are weaker. If the opponent uses a certain style, you can generally choose to fight the style that opposes it the best, if you know that style well enough to use it. However, the opponent can then trick you by shifting to another style entirely. This is how Chinese martial arts are compared to a chess game. At the moment when blows are really being landed, you want to be using a form that is stronger against the form that your opponent is using at that instant. Otherwise, when people are separated by a distance, they are shifting postures and judging the opponent's reactions to guide their fighting strategy. It is a completely different mental game than standard American freestyle kickboxing. In the UFC, people generally get skilled at everything and shift what they use to gain the maximum advantage that they can have against their opponent. Sometimes counter punching is the preferred strategy and sometimes a UFC fighter will go for a ground submission, for example, and may even change his strategy during a fight if an opportunity becomes availible. Some Chinese learn a dozen styles or more so that they have an arsenal of variations that they can use and they study the advantages and disadvantages of each. If the ancients could have discovered a single supreme style, then everybody would be using it today. Hence, style comparisons can sometimes be a bit risky, since comparing two styles may show one style as favorable when it might not be so favorable if you compared those two styles against a set of a hundred styles. Testing a hundred styles against each other would be 9900 combats that would have to be repeated about a hundred times each by a large number of combatants, so it would be a massive undertaking indeed. What do other people think about the success of style comparisons, if nonlinear relationships exist between certain styles? -JL

Everyone who does Chinese Kung Fu gets introduced to the concept of deceptive fighting in some manner or another. For a majority of Kung Fu styles, deceiving the opponent can be the key to landing a successful strike or even the key to a successful victory. I have read that some styles consider deceptive fighting to be as much as 45% of their total fighting strategy. A common example is shifting through a series of stances that suggest you are intending to launch an attack from a certain animal form, when you actually shift at the last moment to something totally unexpected, such as going from Tiger to Crane or Snake to Monkey. When the opponent is expecting the hand he gets the foot in the first example and when he is following the hands in the second example he gets the leg sweep. In Mang Chaun Kung Fu, they have the concept of "deceptive conversations." This is a manner of conduct on the part of the student and teacher and everybody else in the whole Kung Fu school and the larger Kung Fu clan. The general idea is to conceal facts that could potentially be used against you by an enemy streetfighter who hears about you and to invent ideas that will send other martial artists down false pathways that use up their training time while you are concentrating on really getting to be a better fighter. I can think of several examples of things that were said amongst my friends and the larger social group, but I don't want to go into the intricate details. My high school had a lot of gang activity, and in a violent environment with many fights, some of this deceptive conversation work seemed to be a valuable defensive tool. When my good friends began lying to me, however, it seemed like a terrible idea. Overall, the most interesting thing about the exercise is that it challenges you to carefully judge whom you trust and to thoroughly evaluate what you believe. Sometimes our sifu would even throw things at us in class that were indentifably silly, like martial arts moves that resembled moves in video games. He kept challenging us to unravel the mysteries of martial arts for ourselves with personal research outside of class. In some parts of China, the stories that circulate in the larger social arena can determine whether or not you get involved in fights as well as establish or ruin your reputation. For example, rumors about whom you are dating and how well you fight can attract or repel rivals. What does the forum think about the deceptive conversations concept? I am given to understand that the Shaolin developed that art of deceptive conversation to a very high degree as they disseminated martial art tips to people down through the centuries. If a consulting warrior represented a dishonorable society, he got bad information that sounded really great, and thus, evil powers never got the powerful secrets that the Shaolin temple could otherwise have provided. I don't know how widespread the misinformation campaigns really were, but history may never know. Do any other Kung Fu styles practice deceptive conversation principles, such as never revealing your true training injuries outside of your own group? Are such tactics appropriate for modern times, in which things are generally more peaceful? I'm curious about any feedback. -JL

There has been an interesting discussion going on in this thread, but the original post was asking whether it would be more common to encounter someone who was holding the blade in a 'sword grip' or an 'icepick grip.' The anlges at which someone can attack with the sword grip are more numerous and favorble for causing damage, so that grip offers the most to a trained martial artist. For that reason, most martial artists will grip a blade like it is a short sword. This universal cross palm grip allows you to thrust straight or cut the neck sideways. The downward grip might be more handy when you pull a knife from a sheath, but it is also very dangerous. Some people practice the ability to shift from one grip to another while the blade is in one hand without using the other hand, and I have met one martial artist who could do this so well he could slash the body, turn the blade, and then attack the neck in one stroke when sparring with wooden knives. I would recommend that you practice defense to at least a dozen different knife attacks rather than just two of the most common and be aware that you will probably get cut and overwhlemed by a knife wielding attacker. I would bet on the knife fighter with 10 to 1 odds over an unarmed martial artist, but some self defense techniques are possible to try that do work occassionally.

Tatsuo Shimabuku developed Isshinryu back in the 1950s. He was a master of both Shorin-ryu and Gojo-ryu. Before Bruce Lee talked about abosrbing what was useful and discarding that which was worthless, Shimabuku-san striped out most of the material from his two styles of karate and created a dynamic synthesis from what was left. Isshinryu contains about 20% of the material from Shorin-ryu and Gojo-ryu. Gojo-ryu has 15 to 18 katas depending on where it is taught and Shorin-ryu has 22 to 24 katas depending on where it is taught. However, Isshinryu has only 8 katas that teach unarmed combat along with a set of basics that comprise almost as much material as a single sixty movement kata. Thus, you can progress to becoming a black belt in Isshinryu is about one half to one third of the time it takes to become a black belt in one of its parent styles. In private lessons, you can learn Isshinryu in 32 one-hour sessions. Isshinryu fights well, too. Does anybody else here have experience with Isshinryu, Gojoryu, or Shorinryu? Can anybody else add anything about Isshinryu I left out? Could some people describe their karate styles as I have done here? Just curious, thanks!

When swordsmen fought historically, a common outcome was a "double kill," in which one died immediately and the other was mortally wounded. This outcome can even happen in unarmed combat, although it is more rare. When a swordsman parries a slashing cut, he often finds himself in a postion where his only recourse is to slay the opponent at once before the second stroke of the attacker mortally wounds him. In unarmed combat, you could be forced by the vigor of your opponent's attack to have to use lethal techniques, since normal self-defense moves wouldn't be strong enough to respond to his aggression. Fortunately, most encounters do not call for this type of response. My question is simple, however. How many encounters out of 100 escalate to the point where you have to rely on lethal counterattacks for your defense? One would suspect that the better you get at self-defense, the more rarely would you have to rely on the most potent of techniques, as your regular techniques would be strong enough for the job. Is it 10%? Or is it more like 30%?

In certain forms and katas, a certain application or bunkai can be referred to as a 'hidden' move. There are two techniques however that I have heard of in karate that are explicitly referred to as the hidden punch and hidden kick respectively since they took a long time to be taught outside of Japan. The hidden punch goes like this. When someone punches towards your head with the right, you dodge left and use your righ arm to punch into his body and ribs with your fist. The angle of your right arm is such that his arm obscures his sight of your punching arm and your punching arm tends to arrive just when he is retracting his right arm anyway, so he cannot block. The hidden kick goes like this. You advance to close range in a side stance and then rise on your forward leg so that you can kick forwards into the nearest knee with the rear heel. Sometimes the inner sole of the foot is used against the nearest knee. The back leg is seldom seen and seldom expected of being the kicking leg at close range. Does anybody else know of any other hidden techniques they can share, even if they come from katas? Thanks, johnlogic121.

When I was practicing Kung Fu many years ago with a Mang Chaun Kung Fu clan, they had an unusual practice of tending to deliberately lie about certain aspects of their martial arts training. They would lie about what injuries they had received, what training they most commonly worked on, how hard and how often they would train, and many other factors. This policy was encouraged by the instructor. The rationale is that you might find it necessary to conceal some or all of these things even from your closest friends for effective real-world protection. For example, your friend might let something slip in a conversation that gives a bully the knowledge he needs to defeat you. Most of the time, honesty was the preferred policy of the school, but if there was some way that a fact could be used again you, it was often fabricated with 10% to 50% fiction or more. Our high school did have a lot of gang fights, so conversations about training did have some light impact on how people did in those kinds of engagements. However, I didn't really feel comfortable with lying about these kinds of things. What do other people think of this trick? I can see how it can rarely help, but not always, and probably not as often as just maintaining a pacifistic attitude.

"Randori" is a Japanese exercise that is a prelude to sparring. Randori really helps the sparring endeavor, but it is not as common in the United States as it perhaps should be. In Randori exercises, one person makes a certain number of attacks to begin against a partner who preforms any applicable defense, usually blocking but dodging is also acceptable. Then the second person immediately attacks the first with the predetermined number of strikes and the first person defends. This goes back and forth in a controlled manner for the duration of the exercise. Generally, you have 1-step randori to start, in which one attack is made, and then you go to two-step and three-step randori. Advanced students take it to four-step and five-step randori, but going beyond this is rare. In Judo, randori is done by throwing the opponent, usually in the 1-step format. To make randori even easier for beginners, you can have the attacker make his controlled attack with the understanding that it will touch and then make his attack again with the understanding that the other person will block or dodge. Thus, that way, you know what is coming clearly. How many people here do randori? It really helps sparring. How many people think they are going to give it a try for the first time? Just curious!

I read about the art of "Chu Fen Do" in a Black Belt magazine years ago. This art reacts to the common tendency for martial artists to cultivate supreme calm when doing their martial arts routines. Instead, the idea is to go with your adrenaline response and enter what they call a "controlled state of panic." The idea is that a person who panics without training in facing the situation can be bitterly useless in a fight, but when you have experience at going into a panicked state, you can still fight effectively where other epople would be emptying their bowels. Has anybody heard of this style or trained in it? I have an impression it was emerging back in the 1980s as a reaction to the tendency for people to cultivate calm in the midst of conflict, so it could also be seen as a kind of modern forerunner to certain "reality based self-defense" programs but taking a radical view of how fighting psychology can be achieved by radical training. I haven't heard much about this, even though the ideas can stimulate much debate. Is it best to remain calm in a fight, even when remaining calm generally seems impossible? Is a mental attitude of "controlled panic" really the better way? What does the forum think?

I have a question about Jeet Kune Do, and it seemed natural to ask it here rather than start a new thread. Suppose you are training in the "Core" elements of a Jeet Kune Do curriculum for a while and start branching out to explore the methodologies of other martial arts. How long do you train in another martial art before you decide that you have absorbed all that is useful from it? I expect that to study fifteen or more styles over the course of your martial arts years, then you can only afford to give a year or so, give or take a few months, to each other style you study. Some styles don't reveal their top secrets until you have been in that style for five or more years, and sometimes people who have done one style for twenty years say they are still learning new things about their chosen style. So even if you have someone who is willing to share the benefit of their knowledge freely, how can the Jeet Kune Do practitioner be sure he or she is getting the best look at all that is useful? I don't ask this to knock JKD, I'm just curious, as it seems like a practical obstacle to me without having had exposure to JKD experimental research methods. Thanks for your replies, guys.

I read that China did some martial arts experiments during World War Two in which they essentially utilized their high population in controlled and semi-controlled fights to verify certain martial arts concepts for the military. One of the discoveries they made was that if you break a bone or shatter a joint, your body tends to go into shock, and when that happens, you can't fight effectively and so you tend to lose. Some of the easiest bone breaks are "Wrist Locks" like the ones that appear in Ninjutsu. Basically, you turn the wrist inwards and then rotate clockwise or counterclockwise until you snap the wrist. Sometimes the opponent will try to escape the motion by going into a throw or roll against the rgound to protect the captured wrist. However, wrist locks are not the sole province of Ninjutsu by any means, and appear in many styles, but not everywhere you might think. Brazilian Jujutsu lacks wrist locks, for example. Does your style contain them? Wrist locks can even be applied defensively against an incoming punch, as they do in Aikido. What do people think of this area of fighting?

I read that Jigoro Kano, the founder of Judo, used to travel around with what was essentially a "gang" of jiujutsu artists. He would say goodbye to his mother and father every evening before going out because he wasn't sure if he would get in a street fight that he could come back from. In his group, you weren't considered a black belt until you could drop an opponent in a fight with one blow from the edge of the hand against his neck. These guys were so rough they didn't care whether you just stunned the other guy and defeated him or actually broke his neck! I think every karate enthusiast has felt a controlled chop to his neck to feel the stunning power of the move. How hard does the forum think it is to actually break the neck with a karate chop? Does anybody have access to the real research about how many pounds of force are required on average? I have heard some force estiamtes for breaking the collar bone (14 pounds), and breaking the side of the knee (6 pounds), but I don't know how much force it takes to break the neck. I have heard that a preliminary hammerfist to the crown of the head helps break the neck because it compresses the vertebrae. Is this really harder than it would seem, or is it relatively easy by anyone with enough physical power?

I thought it might be an interesting thread to ask people who their martial art heroes are and why. Here are a few of mine. BRUCE LEE - He definately shows that a small guy can train for enormous power. His dedication to training was so intense Chuck Norris described him as 'potentially obsessed with martial arts.' CHUCK NORRIS - He was a five-year global champion in fighting and yet never lost his down-to-earth attitude. His autobiography is an excellant resource for anybody looking for inspiration. DOCTOR MASAAKI HATSUMI - He could inspire anybody to a true love for the martial arts with examples that are practical, simple, and easy enough for a whole crowd of five hundred people to execute at once. CYNTHIA ROTHROCK - A superior female martial artist. I heard she has some good martial arts movies out, too. I don't want to name everybody I possibly could, or else there would be no people left for anybody else to name! Thanks, everybody.

The textbook "Chi Kung and Health" by Dr. Yang Zwing-Ming introduces an interesting chart that shows coorespondences between certain martial art strikes and certain zones on the human body that are vulnerable to those types of strikes over the course of a day and over the course of a year. The whole theory has allegedly been developed through centuries of pragmatic research into striking the body where the Chi is circulating at a weak state. For every two hour interval, the Chi is strongest somewhere in the body and weaker elsewhere. This has unusual but beneficial effects. For example, working out in martial arts between 3:00 AM and 5:00 AM is supposed to be easiest when you are doing things involving the hands. Another span of hours is good for legs. Does anybody have training in this type of deadly striking? Does anybody know any good books that might explain the theory further? Does anybody know of any kind of 'antidote' for a strike that disrupts the Chi flow in a way that isn't immediately letha, but potentially devastating for health? I agree that disclosing the details openly might be like giving away a deadly weapon openly, so I am mainly curous if people has heard of this sort of thing and have training in it. Please treat my inquiry like an informal survey. Thank you! Good luck in training!

In the situation in which you are unarmed against an opponent with two knives, I would recommend eye gouges as the primary hand strike and frontal groin smash kicks as the primary kick. I would suggest grabbing the left arm with your right and grabbing the right arm with your left so that you can take the temporary gain in initiative to smash the groin with a knee attack. Parrying one or both of his thrusting arms before attacking with a good knifehand attack to break the neck is also a good idea. A final suggestion is a palm heel strike against the nose that can transition into a throw by tilting the head backwards; you will want to cause the head to crack against the sidewalk. I infer from the number on your post that your query is looking for what could be judged to be the best intelligent defense against this attack (in summary). I'm the Grandmaster of Montgomery Style Karate and I'm currently writing a knife fighting document for the military, and without further thought, these are my best suggestions. Even with these suggestions, you'll probably take some serious slashes, so hope the other guy isn't too good. Take care of yourself and good luck! '

With young kids, drills can't be too complex for execution or too complicated in terms of the number of steps. I would recommend the kinds of drills where you combine "three initial things" with "three other things" in all nine combinations, and after you are confident that your kids can do this, you can get them started on these patterns and let them run throuhg ten repetitions of each combination on their own. Thus, you could let them start with an "upper area block," "middle area block," or "lower area block" and go to one of these three: "solar plexus punch," "uppercut," or "frontal groin kick." You can also challenge them to do all 24 combinations of four things done in every possible seqeunce of those four things. For this latter drill, it might be best to prompt them for each variation as you run them through it. This can be a great way to use time in class, because you expose the kids to offensive and defensive combinations and they can all work on them somewhat easily. Good luck!

In the martial arts of Ninjutsu, there is a certain degree to which success at a certain techniuqe will help you with related variations. The themes of Ninjutsu appear like regular motifs that weave throughout the art, leading people back to familiar ground over the course of thousands of technique variations. Usually, people work on a common variation about eight times before discarding it to explore other variations, and the most essential variations are practiced thousands of times in various forms. The first thousand repetitions of something are supposed to be associated with improvement of the form, then the next thousand reptitions help bild a reflex, and the next thousand repetitions of a major movement teach 'freedom' from the basic reflex that you have cultivated so that you know how to vary it into other things (generalize it). How do other martial artists here on the forum view repetition in the martial arts? In particular, how do karate enthusiasts approach the number of repeittions needed for successful training?

There are two primary tactics in martial arts that are usually mutually contradictory. I would like to get the forums' opinion about which is generally the stronger, or if you have no opinion on that, then I would like to know what tends to be favored most by your style background. A) Use the technique or techniques that you are best at offensively; B) Use the technique or techniques that your opponent is worst at defensively. Both of these tactics have some merit but indicate differing modes of practice. The first tactic suggests specialization, while the second tactic suggests versatility. The great general Sun Tzu said that you should know yourself and know your opponent with an emphasis on knowing your opponent as important for success. Tactic A might be easier to apply, but tactic B seems pretty reasonable if you can find out what your opponent's weakness is. What does the forum think is the stronger method, A or B?