Thornton Does Iceland

**Aesopian** · Posted On: 4/26/2006 3:14pm

Sit down. Brace yourself. Make sure your socks are securely fastened lest I blow them right the **** off your feet.

While you've been scouring youtube for the wing chun video that you're sure is going to make you the next Bullshido Prom King, I've been making myself useful. Through the underground aliveness black market, I have gotten my mitts on a Matt Thornton clip to top them all. We've all seen the other videos and enjoy tossing around the terms from them willy nilly, like "Bujinkan is FUNCTIONAL when trained FUNCTIONALLY ALIVE against an ALIVE FULLY-RESISTING OPPONENT with ALIVENESS SPARRING ALL RANGES STANDUPCLINCHGROUND." But those videos were mere appetizers for what I offer today.

Imagine dropping Matt Thornton in the middle of the most TMA of TMA karate dojos. Kata is king. MMA is unknown. UFC is just the title of some VHS they walk by at the video rental igloo. Grappling is know as "that stuff the Gracies do."

Now imagine that they are all at once introduced to aliveness, the importance of training all ranges, that katas are useless and that, sorry good buddy, but your karate is pretty much totally useless :o)

Imagine how fun that'd be to watch. It'd be like transporting yourself to The Dojo That Time Forgot and giving them the gift of fire and knowledge that two guys standing next to each other punching the air in unison is agonizingly stupid.

But don't bother imagining too hard since I've got a 71 minute video of it right here:

Yes, that's over an hour of hot and heavy Thornton on karateka action. What does a video of this magnitude contain? Try this on for size:

What aliveness is
Image and ego-based training
Jeet Kune Do
Jackie Chan vs Aquaman
Progressive resistance
One and two-step sparring
Ranks, hierarchies, titles and belts
Healthy vs unhealthy training
Stand-up, clinch and ground
Performance-based training
Point sparring
Insecurity vs confidence
Timing, energy and motion
Stances
"Too deadly"
Solo tennis analogy
I-method
Coaching
Traditional martial arts
Honor, respect and humility
Authenticity
"Good form"
Kata
Evolution in a gym
Mixing alive and dead training
Conditioning
Efficient use of training time
RBSD/Combatives
Knife fighting
Why do you want to do high kicks?
Flexibility and yoga
The Armbar Kata
Karl vs Karl's Clone
Mastering your mind and body through perfecting your technique
Focus, concentration, spirituality and mediation
Removing Asian culture
Zen
Athletics
Translating cultures and race
Peak experiences
Martial "arts"
Mixed martial arts
UFC
Learning to kick hard with aliveness
Falling back to old habits
Downward spiral of dead training
Benefits of aliveness
Delivery systems
TMA in MMA
Injuries
Training as you age
Women training
Why I teach aliveness

As you can see, it's packed to the gills. I offer this list as a sort of preview and index.

Now I warn you that the video quality is horrible, but the audio is good enough and that's what really matters. You might have trouble hearing people ask questions, but you can usually extrapolate it from the answer.

But any shortcomings in the multimedia quality are more than made up for by the special moments it offers. My personal favorite is when one of the innocent karateka gets stuck in an infinite loop of "mastering my mind = perfecting technique = kata = mastering my mind". When the illogic of this is pointed out, you can almost see sparks shoot out of his ears as his brain screeches to a halt in order to avoid a violent collision with reality. Once he reboots he pledges allegiance to real training.

I could go on, but it would still not convey how valuable this video is to anyone who trains in any martial art. Just be sure that before you look down on these hapless karateka that the same faults do not lie within you as well.

[media]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7892384548000318708[/media]

**Lu Tze** · Posted On: 4/26/2006 3:42pm

Wow that's great.

Because I also want to be useful, and not just a **** talking retard like I usually am, I will provide this handy link which you can use to save the vid to your hard drive for prosperity (right click and save target as).

Googlevideo (and youtube etc.) downloader can be found at http://javimoya.com/blog/youtube_en.php

**feedback** · Posted On: 4/26/2006 4:01pm

THANK
YOU

**Phrost** · Posted On: 4/26/2006 4:03pm

Voted 5. Thornton is to MA as James Randi is to the supernatural.

**Method2Madness** · Posted On: 4/26/2006 4:08pm

Good vid Aesopian. im gonna have to watch this again later.

**Gumby** · Posted On: 4/26/2006 4:17pm

Originally Posted by Aesopian

Sit down. Brace yourself. Make sure your socks are securely fastened lest I blow them right the **** off your feet.

While you've been scouring youtube for the wing chun video that you're sure is going to make you the next Bullshido Prom King, I've been making myself useful. Through the underground aliveness black market, I have gotten my mitts on a Matt Thornton clip to top them all. We've all seen the other videos and enjoy tossing around the terms from them willy nilly, like "Bujinkan is FUNCTIONAL when trained FUNCTIONALLY ALIVE against an ALIVE FULLY-RESISTING OPPONENT with ALIVENESS SPARRING ALL RANGES STANDUPCLINCHGROUND." But those videos were mere appetizers for what I offer today.

Imagine dropping Matt Thornton in the middle of the most TMA of TMA karate dojos. Kata is king. MMA is unknown. UFC is just the title of some VHS they walk by at the video rental igloo. Grappling is know as "that stuff the Gracies do."

Now imagine that they are all at once introduced to aliveness, the importance of training all ranges, that katas are useless and that, sorry good buddy, but your karate is pretty much totally useless :o)

Imagine how fun that'd be to watch. It'd be like transporting yourself to The Dojo That Time Forgot and giving them the gift of fire and knowledge that two guys standing next to each other punching the air in unison is agonizingly stupid.

But don't bother imagining too hard since I've got a 71 minute video of it right here:

Alive vs Dead Training - Matt Thornton Does Iceland

Yes, that's over an hour of hot and heavy Thornton on karateka action. What does a video of this magnitude contain? Try this on for size:

What aliveness is
Image and ego-based training
Jeet Kune Do
Jackie Chan vs Aquaman
Progressive resistance
One and two-step sparring
Ranks, hierarchies, titles and belts
Healthy vs unhealthy training
Stand-up, clinch and ground
Performance-based training
Point sparring
Insecurity vs confidence
Timing, energy and motion
Stances
"Too deadly"
Solo tennis analogy
I-method
Coaching
Traditional martial arts
Honor, respect and humility
Authenticity
"Good form"
Kata
Evolution in a gym
Mixing alive and dead training
Conditioning
Efficient use of training time
RBSD/Combatives
Knife fighting
Why do you want to do high kicks?
Flexibility and yoga
The Armbar Kata
Karl vs Karl's Clone
Mastering your mind and body through perfecting your technique
Focus, concentration, spirituality and mediation
Removing Asian culture
Zen
Athletics
Translating cultures and race
Peak experiences
Martial "arts"
Mixed martial arts
UFC
Learning to kick hard with aliveness
Falling back to old habits
Downward spiral of dead training
Benefits of aliveness
Delivery systems
TMA in MMA
Injuries
Training as you age
Women training
Why I teach aliveness

As you can see, it's packed to the gills. I offer this list as a sort of preview and index.

Now I warn you that the video quality is horrible, but the audio is good enough and that's what really matters. You might have trouble hearing people ask questions, but you can usually extrapolate it from the answer.

But any shortcomings in the multimedia quality are more than made up for by the special moments it offers. My personal favorite is when one of the innocent karateka gets stuck in an infinite loop of "mastering my mind = perfecting technique = kata = mastering my mind". When the illogic of this is pointed out, you can almost see sparks shoot out of his ears as his brain screeches to a halt in order to avoid a violent collision with reality. Once he reboots he pledges allegiance to real training.

I could go on, but it would still not convey how valuable this video is to anyone who trains in any martial art. Just be sure that before you look down on these hapless karateka that the same faults do not lie within you as well.

Teach me

**Odacon** · Posted On: 4/26/2006 4:30pm

Aesopian once again delivers. Excellent video.

**Evil Betty** · Posted On: 4/26/2006 5:14pm

Kickass! You deserve that "Best Poster Ever" title.

**feedback** · Posted On: 4/26/2006 5:21pm

Props to Shumagorath for posting this.

**Zendetta** · Posted On: 4/26/2006 5:23pm

Originally Posted by Aesopian

Once he reboots he pledges allegiance to real training.

lol - awesome.

Warning: Gratuitous Nutriding!

Matt is very cool in person. Just so everyone knows, in person his is the strong, silent, 'man of few words' type. Stark contradiction to the diarhea-of-the-keyboard writing style he uses on his blog.

He's also very funny, and as the SBGi videos attest, he has great taste in music. On one of the scond series DVDs he has Johnny Cash's 'Ring of fire' playing over video of two guys boxing. Pretty Kewl!