ARAKAN in Brisbane, Australia - a MA from Burma.

[passion fingers]

You know, Mate, I lived in Australia for a while (not long enough to learn to like vegemite, but a while) and the vast majority of Aussies I knew were skeptical blokes with heaps of common sense, and a naturally fine-tuned BS detector.

You are either trolling - Bullshido sees this same exact stuff all the time - or hopelessly naive to the point of courting danger.

If A, then **** OFF. If B, then GOOD LUCK.

Yes generally speaking Australian's are skeptical but you know as well as I do that there are morons everywhere - just look how far and wide religion has spread.

[Arakan]

ha ha, ok. the answer is C: I'm right. You maybe "martial artists", but you are bad judges of which are fake. Any REAL MA practitioner knows that websites are for advertising and art cannot be judged merely by video but by actively DOING the art. Do not judge until you have tried. If i wasn't 100% sure of myself, i would NOT have openly asked ANY martial art masters or whatnot to try for themselves.

1- I have only had theory lessons about the martial art. Never about it's history, lineage or anything like that.
2- It is very practical. how do i know this? i have bruises right now from training this week. these hits weren't put on hard and still caused bruises. I know it wasn't put on hard because we did one for one hits for strengthening and technique.
3 - We sometimes "free it up" - A simulation where the instructor throws *random* punches and I have to respond by attacking like i would on the street.
4- On one for one feeding of the above situation, i often find myself covering up because i have no idea where the next hit is comming from or what it is. (when i throw punches and instructor does arakan on me)
5- I have found there is nothing about arakan on google. I am told the cheif instructor and his brother were the ONLY ones in the world to westernise it.
6- ARAKAN is NOT called ARAKAN in burma. I do not know what it is orignally called, this makes finding infomation very difficult. (yes, it's like naming it Quebec.)
7- We learn kicks, strikes, grappling, ground fighting, restraints and weapon fighting.
8- Our stance is front on to avoid any obvious intent.
9- It's not competition based.
10- We don't train in a dojo or gym. No floor padding. Instead, we get concrete, grass. dirt, gravel or sand. exposed to the elements.
11- I actively choose this art because it suited me and what i wanted. I could have chosen anything. there was no hype, no gift vouchers or advertising. Just great reviews via word of mouth.
12- Me personaly have never been in a fight after learning arakan. I hope i never do. but if it happens, then i'll do what i must do to protect myself and the people i care about. I also don't feel the need to prove myself to anyone.


I hope this has answered any questions anyone has asked.

If there is any other questions please ask away.

Thanks guys! Train hard!

[RobT]

How do you spar? Is it only with "feeders"? Do you ever spar properly where both people are trying to strike and/or submit each other?

This "ripping power" or whatever you called it... how do you know it can rupture interal organs? How many times have you seen that happen as a result of a strike?

[Askari]

12- Me personaly have never been in a fight after learning arakan. I hope i never do. but if it happens, then i'll do what i must do to protect myself and the people i care about. I also don't feel the need to prove myself to anyone.

I hope this has answered any questions anyone has asked.

If there is any other questions please ask away.

Thanks guys! Train hard!

I have so many issues with what you wrote. But this one really jumped out at me. The question I have is:

"Then how do you know that it works?"

Besides the feeder problem mentioned above, if you have never used it, then you dont know if it works.

[Cdnronin]

12- Me personaly have never been in a fight after learning arakan. I hope i never do. but if it happens, then i'll do what i must do to protect myself and the people i care about. I also don't feel the need to prove myself to anyone.



If there is any other questions please ask away.

Thanks guys! Train hard!

I appreciate the honesty of admitting you have not been in a fight since starting arakan. Were you in any fights prior to joining?

[Cdnronin]

Wow - thanks for that, mate. I had no idea. This is becoming quite an interesting thread. So, from a combative perspective, how effective is this particular pose? I can see how it would be useful in defusing a potential situation, and if the person using it was able to use some sort of effective attacks from there, all the better. I'd simply never seen or heard of it before.

It is a good stance in that it does not appear to be threatening, or defensive, yet covers up you center and you have a hand held high to potentially protect your head, or to strike from. Backfists, hammerfists, and knife hand strikes are all easy to use from this position. Is it perfect? No. Good for an "interview" prior to things going south? Yes.

Never heard of anyone causing internal organ damage by striking from this stance, but I only have 20 times more experience in MA than the guy defending Arakan, so I still have lots to learn.

[muranternet]

Any REAL MA practitioner knows that websites are for advertising and art cannot be judged merely by video but by actively DOING the art.

If the website is for advertising, does that excuse making unsubstantiated claims about a system's history/origins and applications in dangerous situations?

2- It is very practical. how do i know this? i have bruises right now from training this week. these hits weren't put on hard and still caused bruises. I know it wasn't put on hard because we did one for one hits for strengthening and technique.

So I was training light last night and I wiped some sweat from my face. The plastic tab on my wrap caught on my skin and ripped a shallow gouge down the side of my face from my eye to my jaw. I can now claim that my style is effective in street situations against bladed weapons.

If you play football and get bruised, that doesn't mean that football is a practical MA. The only thing an injury proves is that you were injured.

3 - We sometimes "free it up" - A simulation where the instructor throws *random* punches and I have to respond by attacking like i would on the street.

But none of this is street realistic, as there is no force behind the strikes and so your brain is not working the same way it does when faced with an actual threat, or when actually punched in the face.

5- I have found there is nothing about arakan on google. I am told the cheif instructor and his brother were the ONLY ones in the world to westernise it.

At this point it would be more honest and believable for the system's leader to just say he invented it himself.

9- It's not competition based.

It's also not defense-based if there is no resistive testing. Please try even light sparring with people who practice different systems to validate Arakan's usefulness.

12- Me personaly have never been in a fight after learning arakan. I hope i never do. but if it happens, then i'll do what i must do to protect myself and the people i care about. I also don't feel the need to prove myself to anyone.

It's laudable to avoid fights, since in general fights are stupid things that have a negative net value for all involved (real fights this is), but the reason you train is for the times that they happen and you can't get away from them. You don't really need to prove anything to anyone else, but it's an ethical imperative for you to proveit to yourself, for your own sake and for those you care about as stated.

If there is any other questions please ask away.

Questions that haven't been answered (some of them anyway):

• Please provide some information on the history of Arakan.
• Please provide specific supporting data/research on the early history of Arakan in the times predating the Pyu city-states (back to 2666 BC).
• Please provide the names of the martial arts "masters" who were impressed with a "1-1 with the chief."
• Please provide the names of any Arakan stylists who have competed in any MMA tournament, with the tournament name and date. This means people who were practicing Arakan stylists at the time of the tournament in question, not someone who came in for a free lesson once two years before the competition.

[Lu Tze]

I'd also like proof that your blows can rupture organs, because the implication that after 1 year of training you can punch harder than a seasoned thai boxer can kick is incredulous to me.

[Cdnronin]

That's it exactly. We stand front with our hands raised infront or sometimes on the chin like in the pick so we don't give away our intent to hit. Being fronton enables us easy reach using both horizontal, vertical and diagnal lines.
For example, you can do an entry backfist from the hands being around the chin back into an edge htting the same side of the head followed by a palm strike to the other side of the head foloowed by a straight knuckel to the sternum, eye socket, temple, bridge of the nose ect.

And yet, I didn't see a single example of this in the videos available on the site.

[artard]

"You will be able to confidently deal with: multiple attackers, situations involving weapons, defend yourself on the ground , close quarters fighting, etc."

Unfortunately the instructor looks like he's about to get his own blood all over his white kungfu outfit.

Ugh, I have no greater pet peeve than this bullshit. It is so fucking immoral and irresponsible to tell your students that they can fight off multiple opponents, people with weapons, deal with situations they never train, because 99% of them will believe this stuff without any further proof or convincing needed. I mean just look at this Arakan guy posting in this thread, he's a total beginner in their system but has already accepted their entire party line, complete with talking points to refute bullshido's legitimate concerns. He reminds me of exactly how I was when I was deep into Shaolin-Do at around the brown belt level and I believed EVERYTHING I was told about the art's combat effectiveness and "deadliness" of the techniques, so long as a sufficiently high-ranking instructor told me it was. I am really glad I never found myself being cornered by multiple thugs or a mugger with a knife in an alley because I had no doubt that I could deadly my way out of any dangerous situation unharmed and it would have gotten me killed.

In fact, I remember hearing a story from one of the senior students about a situation just like that where a few years before a black belt's car was being broken into by a guy with a baseball bat. Confident in his skill, the black belt went to stop the guy and was beaten to death with the baseball bat. The scary and truly fucked up thing is, at the time when I heard this story about the dead student from the past, I didn't even think about the symbolism behind it, that people get maimed or killed when they get overconfident, I just thought "he should have drilled [DISARM #1] more times and he would have been fine."