Chloe Bruce

[obiwansbane]

oh for sure i wish i could do that, it just in my eyes, does not fit at all in a martial arts tournament... maybe gymnastics? (shed be really good at those freestyle things they do on the big open floor)

[Elky]

It may be useless for self-defense, but if it is something that someone likes to do, and enjoys expressing themselves by doing it, then why does it become a bad thing?

It's not a bad thing by any means! It just makes a bit of a mockery of the term "martial arts" if she isn't displaying martial spirit or martial techniques. If she called herself a gymnast, we'd all be applauding her - she is, after all, very physically impressive.

If I enjoyed ballroom dancing, I'm sure everyone would be very happy for me, but if I posted a video of it saying "Look at me doing karate" then you'd all be quite within your rights to give me a panning!

[ARADOX]

It may be useless for self-defense, but if it is something that someone likes to do, and enjoys expressing themselves by doing it, then why does it become a bad thing?

It isn't a bad thing for her, it's a bad thing for the martial arts, if people want to dance they should not learn to fight, in fact the two are almost completely opposit, I might go as far as to say she has completely misunderstood the martial arts and their meaning, The footwork learned in martial arts goes a long way to understanding and ultimately performing danceing techniques (I've recently started to learn ballroom dancing) but such flashyness and inefficiency as no place within a martial artists head.

[bushido_man96]

It isn't a bad thing for her, it's a bad thing for the martial arts, if people want to dance they should not learn to fight, in fact the two are almost completely opposit, I might go as far as to say she has completely misunderstood the martial arts and their meaning, The footwork learned in martial arts goes a long way to understanding and ultimately performing danceing techniques (I've recently started to learn ballroom dancing) but such flashyness and inefficiency as no place within a martial artists head.

This is just one of many ways that she could express herself. She probably does just as well with traditional forms, and I am sure that she spends time in traditional classes doing the more traditional training, including tradtional forms, sparring, and self-defense training.

[DWx]

I'm a lil' sceptical.

At first I was impressed by her flexibility and ability to hold her legbut when I tried to find her doing any "traditional" kata or sparring there's none to be seen. I can't even find any action shots from tournaments that aren't her posing for the camera! Even on her website, under tournaments, she only shows pictures of her freestyle and doesn't speak much about her TSD training.

She calls herself a "weapons expert"?!? But she only got to 2nd dan in TSD and has been training a relatively short time to be "expert" or am I just being picky?

Also she doesn't seem to remember when she was selected for her national squad. On one of the video clips of her on some tv programme, she says she got on to the national team aged 9, in her bio on her website, she states she didn't start competing in local tournaments until the age of 10?!?!

There's loads more I could moan about, to me she looks like a gymnast, a very talented one, but still only a gymnast. Oh and she invented the "scorpian kick"? To me it looks exactly like one of the advanced stretches my friend used to do when she did gymnastics. The only difference is she's not holding her leg.

But without meeting her or at least seeing her, I can't really make a judgement...

[username8517]

I say kudos to her for training her body to be able to do what she can do.

But as it's been pointed out by other posters, there really isn't anything displaying her traditional training or sparring. And because of that, I really don't put much faith into this kind of training--nothing against the girl--I just don't care for all that flash and flare.

[bushido_man96]

She calls herself a "weapons expert"?!? But she only got to 2nd dan in TSD and has been training a relatively short time to be "expert" or am I just being picky?

If her weapons forms resemble her empty-hand forms, then I would not buy the "weapons expert" bit at all. I think that many of the people who practice weapons forms, be it traditional or non-traditional, claim "expertise" in the weapon that they do the forms with.

In actuality, all they do is forms work, be it traditional or not. If they have never applied weapon-on-weapon, or weapon-on-empty hand, or the other way around, then they are not weapons experts.

The kali guys, the Western Martial Artists that fight with weapons, they are weapons experts. They know the applications, and use them in their training. Otherwise, they are just swinging at the wind.