Official Martial Arts Thread

[daryn]

</font><blockquote><font class="small">In risposta di:</font><hr />
If you say so. I think some people take it up for those reasons, and some to learn how to fight. I do it for fun. But in the standard "which martial art is best", I think people generally mean which one teaches you how to fight best.

[/ QUOTE ]

i'm just saying i think that's the general idea behind a martial art. fighting is just about the dumbest thing you can do these days. fighting is basically foi high school and earlier only. in the days of lawsuits, you break a guy's nose and you end up having to put his kid through college. also you start the wrong fight and you get stabbed/shot.

[nicky g]

Very good points but most of the fighters would say they do it in case anyone starts on them, not to pick fights, although some are probably not telling the truth.

[daryn]

i guess i just use an "avoid fighting at all costs" strategy. luckily i have never even been in a situation where a punch has been thrown. i am not a small guy anyway so i was never really picked on.

in general though i think people don't think enough about the situation and they just want to jump into a fight, and that's just stupid. even if another guy starts with you, fighting is probably a bad idea. there are some very tough guys and also some very insane guys with weapons that will just go out and TRY to start fights with guys, just to F them up. these days everyone wants to jump into a fight if someone steps on their shoes.

fights = dumb

[MMMMMM]

Not at present, but I have done wrestling, judo, jiu-jitsu, and a little boxing. Won a 3rd place in New England in sport judo in my teens. Sport Judo is way more fun than the others in my opinion.

I also think freestyle competition is generally more important and beneficial than are most drills (except for falling drills which are absolutely critical. You MUST be able to take a fall, recover quickly and continue fighting, even if you land on the asphalt). I feel that a 2 1/2-hour practice session should consist of about 50% of the time spent in freestyle competition, with the rest of the time spent on warm-up, falling practice, learning new techniques, and drills.

[Blarg]

Jiu-jitsu was my first style I got serious about, and I'm totally with you on the falling thing. I think they should teach falling in P.E. classes in every school, mandatory. Learning how to fall down safely is one of the mandatory skills in life, almost like learning to walk and use a toilet.

People get hurt in falls all their lives, and are always in danger of it. Just falling down winds up indirectly killing old people all the time, as their bones break easily and all their wounds are very slow to heal. They wind up dying of infections when injured, because their immune systems are so weak. And the hospitals they have to go visit are so full of infections in the first place.

Falling down when you're old often means your life is over. It's such a pointless tragedy and so avoidable. I think it's nuts that we aren't taught from the time we're children how to avoid getting hurt too much when falling.

[Topflight]

Blarg, I love your posts.

Can you tell us what styles you have studied and what belts you have earned.

[Blarg]

Thanks Topflight.

I did a little karate when I was a really young kid, but first got serious when I took up Okazaki Kodenkan Jiu-Jitsu. This is the style Henry Okazaki was teaching in Hawaii, which Wally Jay later modified and started describing as "small-circle jiu-jitsu." I've never seen Jay's style personally or any of his students. I got a third degree black belt in that style, and was an assistant instructor.

I studied Wing Chun concurrently for less than a year while doing that, and then found out about Wing Chun Do, which I also took concurrently with Jiu-Jitsu for a while, until I eventually stopped taking Jiu-Jitsu.

My assistant instructor in classicial Wing Chun found out I was doing Wing Chun Do at the same time, and being a traditionalist, insisted I choose either Wing Chun or Wing Chun Do. I chose the latter. Very silly, because Robert Yeung, my Wing Chun teacher, was actually fine with Kimo Wong, my Wing Chun Do teacher. It was just the assistant instructor throwing around his weight and being a jerk creating drama. Then again what could I know? Yeung maintained a forbidding distance from his students. I moved up a level or two with Yeung, if I recall. Minor levels, nothing big.

Anyway, in Wing Chun Do, I got to second level, but never got around to taking my third level tests, though my teacher encouraged me to. If I recall, second level was somewhere around the equivalent of a first degree blackbelt in a Japanese style, but Chinese styles are different, and this was a modified Chinese style, so the ranking was different still. There were only a handful of levels in the whole system. I was never one for ranks. I was an assistant instructor in both the childrens and adults classes.

My first serious teacher, or rather the first teacher of an art I was willing to really give my all to, was George Sherman of Okazaki Kodenkan jiu-jitsu, a really strong, muscular guy who had trained in numerous arts himself. I think he was a 7th dan when I knew him. He found himself in the bewildering position of practically having to stuff belts down my throat to get me to pay attention to them. I just wanted to learn the arts inside out, and always felt it was weird that I could get any belt at all, or care, really. They felt corny and ceremonial to me, like they had nothing to do with fighting or my competence. I figured if I ever got to master anything, it would be apparent all by itself, and that's all I cared about. But I found out that it was actually a great insult to appear indifferent about belts when a traditional teacher broaches the subject of promoting you. It's kind of like questioning their judgment, which you're not really in a position to do because of your own limited understanding and judgment of where you stand, not to mention it's kind of insulting to question or be indifferent to a teacher's judgment. I made him really mad the first two black belts I got. When he asked me if I was ready for them, the first one I said something like, "I don't know," and the second one, something like, "I guess so." I should have know better by then, but I didn't know he was serious when he asked. The third one I accepted with a little more graciousness for tradition and for all the hard work he had put into teaching me.

It was kind of funny in retrospect. No one in my family ever knew when I got promoted. My jiu-jitsu instructor had dinner at my house many times and eventually became a friend of the family, and was always surprised that I never told anybody about any ranks I attained. I think that probably impressed him on certain levels, though, as he actually trained me free, for years, and taught me things that were actually a bit beyond the levels of my training, based just on his strong faith in my character and understanding of who I was as a person. During the summers, he trained me often 5 times a week and even more, for hours at a clip. He was very traditional, and didn't care to take on many students, and kicked out people quickly who didn't live up to his standards. Most just quit, because he was so crazy strict and worked us so hard. He had no regular school, and didn't believe in charging money to teach, so if people stayled or left, it was all fine by him. Anyway, we eventually parted ways, as happens in life, but he was a good and extremely selfless teacher for the years we knew each other.

It's been years since I've actually practised now. The old me would kick the crap out of the present me with one hand tied behind his back.

[ChicagoTroy]

Depends, depends, depends. One the trainee, on the level of instruction. Most kung fu instructors are crap, but a real xing-i or bauguazang expert can cripple somebody with one blow. Martial arts S&amp;C coaching is a hobby of mine and you see all kinds of types. The general rule is the harder the style &amp; training the more likely the people who can't fight will be weeded out. Not a lot of pussies in inner city boxing gyms compared to suburban aikido schools

brazillian jiujitsu is great, but if you are a sport competitor and take somebody to the ground in a bar, you better hope he doesn't have friends.

I started on karate at 10 and think it's terrific, but know plenty of black belt puss's who can't defend themselves.

Anything sport oriented is usually not terribly applicable in a real fight. Anybody who says Olympic TKD is for self defense is a fool.

[Blarg]

I've seen just a little bagua demonstrated but it seemed extremely interesting. Bagua walking looks like great exercise and is very hard to try to do right. It's amazing to see how differntly you can generate force and channel energy; bagua doing it horizontally instead of vertically or in a spiral, like other arts, seems unique outside of a limited few throws in some styles. But as a concept for an entire system, it's amazing, and I'd love to pursue it someday.

[nicky g]

I've heard good things about ba gua. There's a class really near my house, I should check it out.