some more bujinkan videos

**Oni9** · Posted On: 9/26/2006 4:27am

The lunge punch isn't a good training tool anymore than sitting cross legged and spinning on your butt is a good armbar tool. You don't start with silly punches and then work up to "real" ones. You start real from day one, and then refine it through practice. On what grounds do you assert that your club doesn't suck? How is it different from the standard?

Of course it's a great training tool...... for beginners. One of the things it teaches you is to get distance. If you get stuck on it there is a problem. Usually lame ass uke's can't even punch on target. I am sure you see that in any dojo. Why is many dojos lame? - because students join voluntarily and fear of lawsuits. (Especially in the US)

Everybody is staring against their eyelids. It doesn't matter what the attack is, if the attacker have no spirit behind his attack it will suck. Many attackers in the BJK loose focus what the lunge punch should be or for that matter many other attacks.

If you mainly use the famous lunge punch in your dojo especially this year then ask your instructor to teach you Shinden Fudo ryu punching - if he know how. After all the theme for this year is Shinden Fudo ryu.
If you think the Shinden Fudo ryu method of punching is weak then you definitely need to find a new qualified instructor who can correct you.

Bottom line - doesn't matter what system - weak spirit, weak everything.
This is most probably what everybody refer to as "alive training".

In my dojo you will get whacked very hard if you are not "alive". No pulling punches, no falling like a corpse for the Tori.

Maybe thats the reason why there is only a handfull of students? What a relevation!!!!

Unfortunately not everybody is born with a warrior spirit.

**Virus** · Posted On: 9/26/2006 5:47am

I don't think you are using the term "alive" in it's correct definition. Alive means timing, motion and resistance. If a drill doesn't include all of those it is a dead drill, choreography. Typical bujinkan training contains none of these elements which is what the primary critisms of not just bujinkan, but 99% of traditional martial art dojos out there.

Please watch this video clip as it is the best explanation and demonstration of aliveness there is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWfK6aqWiNU

Have you watched it? Good, watch it again. Then read on.

I knew a lot of bujinkan guys who thought their training was better than the mass because they punched with "intensity", but they still used a lunge punch and left thier arm out for the other guy to lock up and bar out at his conveniance. We thought we were being realistic because the uke would sometimes hit the tori if he left something open during the technique. But none of this is aliveness. You can do a hard lunge punch, with as angry a face as you want and you can hit him as hard as you want in the ribs when he does his omote gyake wristlock but that's still a dead drill. Correct me if I'm way off, but I saw a lot of people think thier training was above par when it didn't even approach aliveness.

Here's something for your club to try. Get some grappling gloves and have your partner wear them. Tell him to move about, keep his hands up and punch whenever he feels like it. Make it a real punch to the head and tell him to retract his arm as a good striker will do, don't leave it hanging. It doesn't have to be a knockout 100% power punch, around 60% power should do for starters. Now do your wristlock or armlock. Tell him not to let you get that hand or arm at any cost, he can pull in in and move anywhere he wants to get it back. What happens to those nice armbars and figure four locks that you have been practicing on the lunger? That's alive training. And you really are on your own if you want to learn how do handle yourself in that situation becuase the hombu teaches 100% compliant, lunge, and noodle arm techniques. That's what trickles down to the shihan, that's what trickles down to the students. Want to do kihon with aliveness? Don't stand there face to face and have your partner gingerly grab your lapel and extend his arm and leave it out. Is that how you would grab someone and punch if you wanted to smash thier face in? Tell your partner, who should be wearing his glove, to grab you by the lapel and push and pull you around then punch whenver he feels like it. Tell him not to let you release his grip. Tell him to keep throwing those punches to the face and yanking you about while you both defend the strikes and work on your wristlock, armlock or whatever one you are working on. What happend to that "grab-my-wrist, grab-my-lapel" technqiue you spent years doing? That's alive taijutsu, and I'll be frank if I say that I don't think much of what you learnt is going to work. Aliveness is the arbitrator, you can have all the "leading up t3h r3al" and "learning t3h distance" rationalisations you want, if your technqiues can't hang under those conditions it isn't worth doing and will not work in a real fight.

I'm not dissing on any of you bujinkan guys here, I think you mean well and you believe in your art just as I and many others here used to (we actually have quite a club of ex-ninjers here). I think this is what you need to really evaluate your training. You know I spent six years at bujinkan and walked into that judo club a total beginner? I was schooled. Same thing when I trained with MMA guys who had a fraction of my training time. Once a man who knew told me to "trust in my art", but that dude did tai-chi so don't worry about him, and don't trust in your art. Test it. Know that it works.

**Virus** · Posted On: 9/26/2006 7:25am

Also see my comments regarding specificity. Current sports science strongly suggests that performing a set of movements will program motor skills for that specific movement set ie; joint angles, velcoity, planes of motion. (this also applies to trainign physical attributes like speed, power, strength, flexibility ect.) The further you move away from that specific set, the less training effect. While no studies have been performed comparing subjects who lunge punch between those that don't, current theory would not suggest that such a method would exibit significant results. What combat sports do (and indeed all sports) is take skills that come into play during a fight, say boxing, and drill that skill in isolation with a progressive ramping of pressure, resistance, speed, power ect. They do not use funny punches then ask athletes to throw that away and do real ones. If you want to train distancing, you train it using the attacks that you will actually use.

The t3h l33t masters of yore did not posess this type of knowlege, in fact such theory is quite a recent advancement. This is why people should not be looking to the past for training methods and theory.

And if it is a beginner's tool why do you see Hatsumi and the top guys still doing them? I'll let you in on the bujinkan's dirty little secret. They use it becuase that's how they get thier own techniques to work.

**Matsufubu** · Posted On: 9/26/2006 12:47pm

Originally Posted by Oni9

Why not? If he is so **** why not name him.

You will have to try harder to convince me BJK is worthless.

Yeah and the local judo instructor is also an idiot. I signed up for his class. He wanted to demonstrate a grab attack with a knife stab. Ok he go for a throw but disregard the knife. I simply lifted my hand and the knife was on his carotid artery. That is the sort of dumb ass instructors that should be booted. He has 22 years judo.

I maintain that it does not matter what you study be realistic in your training. If your instructor suck go somewhere else.

My ex-instructor is a violent man who had no qualms about beating up women and children in his private life, and since he knows where my parents live I'd rather not invite trouble.

I never said the Bujinkan is worthless, but it is one of the weaker arts. Virus has pretty much broken it down for you in the past couple of pages.

I've no idea what a judo instructor was doing teaching knife defences, but that does sound pretty stupid. Nobody said the Bujinkan had a monopoly on silliness, only that it has a disproportionately high number of LARPers and silly arses who think that their dead patterns repeated ad infinitum will help them learn to fight. I'm sure that there are some good Bujinkan dojos out there with open minded instructors who are more interested in teaching self-defence than LARPing, but I have yet to see evidence of it.

Perhaps I have missed where you've said it, but have you crosstrained much?

**Black 6** · Posted On: 9/26/2006 2:48pm

Originally Posted by Virus

On what grounds do you assert that your club doesn't suck? How is it different from the standard?

Hence why I asked if anyone wanted to go and check it out. It's an open invitation for an outside opinion. Wasn't a Throwdown done at the Fight House sometime within the past 2 years?

**Virus** · Posted On: 9/26/2006 3:19pm

Hence why I asked if anyone wanted to go and check it out. It's an open invitation for an outside opinion. Wasn't a Throwdown done at the Fight House sometime within the past 2 years?

Fair enough I didn't mean to ask in a conforntational manner, just maybe if your dojo does use something different like sparring or resistant-based drills then you could let us know so we can get a ballpark idea of where you are coming from.

**Black 6** · Posted On: 9/26/2006 3:46pm

Originally Posted by Virus

The lunge punch isn't a good training tool anymore than sitting cross legged and spinning on your butt is a good armbar tool. You don't start with silly punches and then work up to "real" ones. You start real from day one, and then refine it through practice.

The thing is, certain arts attract certain people. Also, most people know what they are getting into when they choose an art like BJJ or Boxing. You watch it on TV. It's rather violent. You understand what you are getting into. Peopel who are afraid to touch someone will probably never walk into a BJJ dojo, just like peopel who hate guns will probably never go to a shooting range.

You get an interesting mix when an art is called ninjutsu, or has some basis therein. You (unfortunately) get the people who read Ashida Kim, a few who stumble into the dojo looking for "something", and you get some who have training in other arts. Somewhere in those first two groups, you normally get a number of people who are not used to throwing a punch at someone. In fact, you may be hard pressed to talk a couple of them into buying into the idea of balling up their fist and swinging at someone.

You posted the video from Ron Athletics. It makes some very good points. A lot of good points. However, would you have someone walk into a place on day one, and try to use footwork like the guys there are using? I'm very sure that when you start learning something, it starts out pretty dead. The problem in the BJK is that some don't move away from this. Some do. I found that my training helped me greatly when went to the military academy and had to take boxing during my freshman year. I already had pretty good footwork and balance, I was vey good with judging the distancing and abilities of my opponents, and I had fast hands, because I DID work the jab, cross, hook and uppercut almost everyday. I honestly tried to take something out of the training, and I saught those who could give me some insight. I found my training still useful in my combatives classes, and combatives level 1 instructor certification.

Aside from my Shidoshi, I think the most influencial was a guy named Alon. He was a 1st Dan from Israel, who was in the states for around a year when I was a 9th Kyu. Since I always liked to come to the dojo very early, I think I became his favorite uke. I can't attest for how they train in Israel, but if he's any measure, they like to hit each other. I learned a couple of interesting things, the one I remember most was how to deliver knee strikes o a downed opponent both when they are down but you are standing and have control, and to the rib cage from a side mount position.

I found his chess example a little off. Granted, yes, what he showed would not help you learn to play chess, however, I can't believe anyone would try to learn in that manner. When I was younger, I had a very thick book about chess. I originally got into the game thanks to my uncle, and I would regularly lose. Granted, I was very young, but the fact that he kicked my ass every time didn't help me too much beyond the fact that I knew where how the pieces moved. The book, however, had a number of scenarios, ususlly mid-game, where it would want you to get checkmate in 2 moves or three moves. It demonstrated how to control your opponent, as well as yourself. So, in chesh, first I learned how to control my pieces, then I learned how to control my opponents pieces. Through something that you would call dead, I learned to think differently, see the board better, anticipate my opponents moves, and think my moves ahead.

Let's take the chess example and try and bring it back to one of my training ideas. A lot of people talk about "multiple opponents" or "2 on 1". Problem is that a lot of people already start that way. They have the opponent in front of them, and the opponent that is them. It's hard to get someone to be a competent fighter, if they can't control their own movements. A BJJ example of this is someone who has to look at what they are doing. I'm sure that most guys that have been in BJJ for a while can close their eyes and grapple pretty well and move fairly quickly. What about the beginners? They probably look right at the arm that they are going to try and lock up, or they move slowly as they go for it. THe movement isn't second nature to them.

Transfer this to us. You have to take someone who doesnt fight, and has no real idea of how to control themself, and give them the ability to control their movements. I'm not going to take a noob and try to get him to do what they were doing in the video at the 1:20 mark. You know exactly what it would look like. You've seen people fail limbs around. It is not pretty, and not useful. The lunge punch is a tool. It has its merits as a training tool. There are things to be gained from it, aside from sending a fist at someone. Balance, movement, timing, and alignment gains can be pulled from it, as long as you're not throwing crap like the "faller" in the video. There's not much you can do against a jab. We're not one of the arts that teaches you to grab a jab and do some technique (at least my dojo didn't, but I'm sure that somewhere you may find one that does) because the jab is way to fast. At the most, we have a slight parry. In boxing, I had the catch and counter-jab (performed simultaneously).

It the lunge punch t3h d34dly? No. It is useful in the context of training? Yes. Is it useful in a fight? Extremely rarely. I mean, I've probably stepped through on a punch once or twice to close some distance or extend my distance and catch my opponent off guard, and/or to use it as a transition since I can also fight southpaw, but it is not as large and slow as what you see in the videos. It's somewhat more like a cross with a step through.

**rw4th** · Posted On: 9/26/2006 4:36pm

Black 6
RE: The Lunge Punch

It’s asinine to try and defend it as a training tool. When you teach people a new skill, you teach it correctly from the beginning. I understand what you mean by softening things up for people that have no experience with confrontation, but you don’t do that by teaching an incorrect and borderline unusable punching technique. You can limit contact and let them work at their own pace with people they are comfortable with, but you still need to instil good form and good habits.

If you trained in boxing style jabs, hooks and crosses, then that wasn’t Bujinkan Taijutsu you were practicing. You either cross trained, or your instructor cross trained you by including them in the curriculum he teaches (probably because he recognized the failings).

**Black 6** · Posted On: 9/26/2006 5:18pm

Originally Posted by rw4th

Black 6
RE: The Lunge Punch

It’s asinine to try and defend it as a training tool. When you teach people a new skill, you teach it correctly from the beginning. I understand what you mean by softening things up for people that have no experience with confrontation, but you don’t do that by teaching an incorrect and borderline unusable punching technique. You can limit contact and let them work at their own pace with people they are comfortable with, but you still need to instil good form and good habits.

If you trained in boxing style jabs, hooks and crosses, then that wasn’t Bujinkan Taijutsu you were practicing. You either cross trained, or your instructor cross trained you by including them in the curriculum he teaches (probably because he recognized the failings).

So the jab doesn't exist in the Bujinkan? Boxing style jab? It's a jab!! Children throw this punch. Boxing doesn't hold a patent on this punch, or the other punches. Yes, before entering the BJK, my instructor was in Shotokan. However, can you show me an art that is not ALL grappling that does not have, at the minimum, the jab and the cross (aka the reverse punch)? Capoera doesn't count.

Here's what I read in the second half of that post: Your dojo taught you something that existed everywhere else, therefore it is not taijutsu. Your dojo didn't completely suck, therefore it obviously cannot have been in the Bujinkan.

You now seem to have a problem with the idea that there is at least one BJK dojo out there that teaches good stuff, AND still has the lunge punch in its curriculum.

Even considering the fact that to be a good uke, you had to deliver a good attack, and therefore would need to be able to throw an uppercut. Because I definitely remember a kata for my 1st kyu test that was against an uppercut.

Small thing on the lunge punch. It's an attack piece. Imagine it like this. Going back to the idea of chess, imagine that the lunge punch is a chess opponent program that is not there to crush you. It's purpose is to give you moderate attacks/resistance/threats while you learn to move your pieces. The uke utilizes the lunge punch. All the uke cares about that point is making sure that a fist would land in the tori's face should he not move, and that he had good alignment and balance. The tori's job, ESPECIALLY at the white belt level, is to excercise certain principles, the most important of which is get out of teh way/offline from the attack in such a manner that you are not off balance but are in a good/better position to continue the fight and/or defend yourself.

I mean, I'm standing here saying that I trained in a BJK dojo that taught multiple types of punches, that I recognize merits in the lunge punch, but that it is a bit overused in the BJK. I've stated that I've used a lunge punch type movement in boxing, and that the taijutsu that I had practiced for 3+ years (when I entered the academy in 1999) was useful to me and transitioned well into other arts/training. And yet, you still say that my dojo wasn't a BJK dojo, that it wasn't taijutsu, that the jab is not within the taijutsu curriculum (granted, you may be able to say that it may not be on a scroll somewhere, but neither is breathing, and walking). It's almost as though you're staring bigfoot in the eye and telling him that he doesn't exist.

**Oni9** · Posted On: 9/26/2006 5:20pm

Everybody had some very good points and suggestions. I am not going to comment on all the posts.

It can never be a bad idea to gain knowledge of other arts.

What I really appreciate is the fact that a squabble turned into a decent conversation.