street clothes

[aefibird]

Does anyone else do this in their dojo?

 

Occasionally, my sensei will ask us to 'leave our gi's at home' and come and train in ordinary clothes and shoes. Then we do a session of street application of shotokan. I always find it interesting and I was wondering if anyone else trains like this.

 

We did a 'street clothes' session last week and my sensei was demonstrating a counter-technique on a brown belt guy. Rob was wearing a pair of really baggy 'skater' jeans at the time and my sensei grabbed hold of his jeans when Rob came in with a kick. Well, you've probably guessed what happened next... Cue hysterical laughter from the rest of the class and a very embarassed Rob trying to pull his jeans back up as quickly as possible!!

[Sasori_Te]

Yes. I had my students do this about once a month. I think you need to know what your techniques are going to feel like wearing street clothes. actually I asked them to put aside some old clothing they didn't really care for anymore since street clothes are so much less durable than gi's. IT also teaches situational awareness. I always asked the ladies to wear high heels at least once so that they could decide how they wanted to handle a possible encounter. We would also go out into the parking lot to simulate a from behind assault as your were trying to get into your car. Anyway, you get the idea. Anything that promotes training as realistic as you can safely make it.

[sano]

we did that only two times.

[nastia]

We have never done anything like that. But it sounds like a really interesting idea.

 

Another thing I am wondering about street fight/uexpected attack: I am so used to having a proper warm-up and stretch before doing karate classes that I think it would be really difficult to apply karate techniqes unprepared. After a warm-up, I can kick a person in a head, but before - I can barely kick higher than my belt!

[aes]

I have never seen this done at my dojo. They are actually very strict on Gi being worn at all times, but I do see the merit in seeing the difference wearing jeans vs gi pants.

[Sasori_Te]

nastia that's the point. You need to know what you can and can't do cold. If you can't do it cold you should probably leave it out of your self defense tool box. I would never kick much higher than waist level at any rate, but that's just me. Also, most folks, especially jiu jitsu practitioners should get the feel for having to do techniques against opponents that aren't wearing a gi.

[TJS]

We do it every single class at my school, but it's Krav Maga not karate.

[nastia]

Good thing I don't have to warm up for good old kick in the groin and elbow strikes!

[Guitar_lover]

Yeah i allways go home, and train with my friend in normal clouthes. He knows abit of karate and tai chi and mucks around, so he very random to fight. Good laugh.

[blue26]

We’ve never done that; in fact we have to do push-ups if we forget our belt or any part of our uniform or sparring gear. But before advanced group classes we used to have to run a mile around the studio (in our gi’s of course) and then go back and do intense training, that way we would know what it felt like to have to work out fatigued, like if we got attacked while on a run or not totally up to par.