street clothes

[mindsedgeblade]

lol, That would be comfortable. And as long as it's clean, would suit almost any occassion. Might be nice to have several of different colors, and without patches of course. We should all start wearing gi as a daily thing (again?). I'd be all for it. Beats a lot of the stuff I see people wearing.

[aefibird]

But moreso than training with street clothes is training in a REAL ENVIRONMENT. Sand and grass is a good start. Eventually I'm sure we'll train on gravel and such, but I'm certainly not prepared enough for that.

When I trained in Aikido we used to go and train on the grass field outside the dojo (weather permitting of course!).

Some of the hard-nut yudansha also used to train in a corner of the gravel car park too, but they were just insane.

[Skeptic 2004]

Edit: Uh..I guess I went on a tangent a little... In short, I wear regular clothes when I train too.

There are three fallcies of training in traditional gi. First, techniques start to be geared toward as if your opponent is wearing a gi (lapel grabs, gi chokes, etc.). Last time I checked, Joe Blow on the corner of Shady and Shifty didn't have on a gi. To overcome this fallacy, one could either change up training in gi and "street" clothes as everyone else seems to be indicating so far, or (this might sound weird, but bear with me) train as if the opponent is naked. Chibana trained his grappling applications of kata as if the opponent were naked; as a result, his bunkai is downright gruesome in some places (e.g., ripping the opponent's ear completely off, crushing the opponent's trachea, etc.).

The second fallacy of training in traditional gi is that people start performing techniques incorrectly because their gi sounds cool when they perform a technique a certain way. I used to wear 14 ounce cotton gi, and everytime I kicked or punched it made a cool snapping sound. The next thing I know, I'm falling victim to "executing-techniques-to-get-that-snapping-sound syndrome." Just because your gi snaps doesn't mean you did it right. Only now do I realize how much penetration I would lose in a punch, how much power I lost in a kick when I executed these in order to elicit that *pop* that sounded so cool. This is also the reason why my current instructor abandoned the traditional gi (we wear white t-shirts and gi bottoms, and when I practice on my own, I wear a t-shirt and shorts, sometimes wearing sandals, sometimes wearing sneakers, sometimes bare-foot. I haven't worn a complete gi since July).

The third fallacy is that people tend to feel that when they don their gi they are donning their MA persona. If what you do is supposed to be second nature, then there shouldn't be a difference between your persona in the dojo and your persona out in the real world. The cognitive dissonance that occurs when these personae are not the same will mess you up if you get put in a sticky situation (I speak from experience...).

With all of this said, I would encourage everyone to dispense with their gis every once in a while and train hard to overcome these barriers! Executing sans gi should feel the same as executing dans gi.

[CQC]

That's how we mostly train. We all go from work to the dojo and rarely have time to change, so we train in our work clothes. Jeans, t-shirt, sneakers, everyday clothes. I think it's smart. The Gi is basically what people wore back in the day. It's kind of strange how most dojos wear a Gi and no shoes when they train, but if you ever get into a situation you probably won't have time to put your Gi on.

We training wearing casual everyday clothes as well. We have a club t-shirt, and most people wear track or kung fu styled pants, but everyone wears generally the same thing.

I personally think it's important to train in combat scenarios that are as close to real combat scenarios, this includes clothing as well. In BJJ, many techniques are quite different with a Gi. You just need to learn to adapt or add to your training and make it a bit more practical.

[NinTai]

How many people wear a tie to work or a formal event???

When I was a leo we wore clip on ties so that they would come off

if the bad guy/girl (to be pc) tried to use it against us.

Next time you do your "street clothes" training wear a shirt and tie like

you were going to a nice resturant see what happens.

[CapitalKarate]

What type of clothing do you guys where outside the dojo when you have a choice as to what you wear?

As for me, I usually wear baggy jeans of some kind (very easy to move around in... when on my waist, not my hips), a t-shirt/polo shirt and indoor soccer shoes (adidas samba millenium, great for soccer and quick powerful kicks!).

[CapitalKarate]

No one?

[KarateChick06]

My dojo's never trained/sparred in street clothes. It's a good idea though, I just might bring that up.....

Being a girl, it's hard to always dress so I can do karate. I avoid dresses because kicking in them is near impossible in some of them, like minis and ankle-length dresses. I have a knee-length super-stretchy skirt that I can kick in, but other than that... no dresses! I don't like them anyways. As for pants, I wear fatigues (I just like them, comfier than jeans too), sweatpants, stretch jeans and shorts. I do the splits and try out all my kicks in them before buying.... if I can't do the kicks, I won't buy the pants.

Shirts, I usually just wear t shirts all the time anyways, but I do have one shirt that would be hard to fight in... it's very delicate and would rip if I punched. Luckily I wear it with a spaghetti strap top underneath.

As for shoes, I just wear tennies and flats to church and such, flip flops and klunky sandals in summer.

Hair and etc.... I have bangs that I cut short enough to be out of my face... I don't want to be blinded by hair when I get attacked. I also don't have pierced ears, so I don't have to worry about removing earrings when getting in a cat fight. I wear clip on hoops.

[judoguy]

How about restricting your street clothes to things you can fight or run in: trousers with leg room and sensible shoes.

Because that's not always the case. Imagine your at the beach in a tank top, shorts, and thong sandels. Would you be comfortable fighting in sandels as opposed to shoes? More over would your techniques still apply if your opponent was wearing that same getup?

[KarateChick06]

I don't see what's so bad about that getup. Shorts and tanks are easy to kick/punch in. Kick off the sandals and fight barefoot like in the dojo. What would really be hard is fighting in a tux, or even worse -- a strapless evening gown with heels. Ha. That's why I always wear flats and dresses with straps and full skirts.