Progressive Martial Art Thinkers/Just The Facts... merged

[It is Fake]

Ah, so he isn't the no contact ,I'm scared type, of coach. Train hard.

[DerAuslander]

I love this thread.

[jdinca]

Ah, so he isn't the no contact ,I'm scared type, of coach. Train hard.

I also liked the comments regarding forms. We do quite a few of them and they can be great training tools but they're just one of many tools in the box.

[It is Fake]

See, I have no problem with forms. Never have in the correct context. You'll find posts here where I say as much.

[It is Fake]

I love this thread.

Yeah it started as a lark because of Jack.


I stumble across thins as I search out old threads. I know you have some good ones on the site. I'm just looking for that right one. I'm also going to adds simo's recent post on Aikido.

[It is Fake]

Our Resident name changer

I have to be totally honest and say that trying to make aikido methodology work is like re-inventing the wheel (only in this case the wheel wasn't round to start with)

You know I've been around the aikido community for 20 years and I think it is absolutely honest to say I haven't met anyone who I genuinely thought would stand their ground [using just aikido] in the face of a good kicking... and I include myself in that.

You know I've spent seven years working in high security prison facilities and I've tried my fucking best to get 'good old fashioned' aikido to work one on one but frankly it really isn't suited. Yes I have pulled off some aspects and with the assistance of other Officers brought people under control - and a few of those had shanks (and I have some scars to illustrate my point)

I admire people who want to research what they're doing and in Chris's case his work in the videos is far more forward thinking than almost all aikido full stop, but, aikido is what it is and if its changed from the bottom up so to speak then it no longer *is* aikido so my thoughts on that would be why do it in the first place when theres other systems already far more advanced in the areas attempting to be developed.

You only have to listen / train with 99% of Japanese teachers to quickly realise that they do not consider aikido to be a self defence system. I think that in its self speaks volumes.

--Dave:

Now, this is in here because again it can apply to modern wush vs. any classical system.

[It is Fake]

Long but worth it.

I highlighted what I enjoyed:


http://www.24fightingchickens.com/20...d-kumite/?cp=4

Conventional wisdom handed down to us by highly respected karate instructors since the advent of sport karate says that if a Karate expert wishes to be skilled at sparring, he must first master the kata. Usually there is a short declaration that without proper kata training, sparring will lack technical precision. Those who shun kata are warned: You will not succeed at mastering karate sparring alone. You must train in the kata successfully first, and only then will you achieve the level of sparring expertise you will need to win and win well.

Many karate experts speculate as to just what sort of connection may exist between the two. They assume that the wise old men who authored all of those professionally bound Karate book must know something they do not, and so they repeat their kata over and over again searching for what it is exactly about kata that may improve sparring skills.

News flash, folks: There is no relationship between kata and sparring. Stop looking.

Kata and sparring are two entirely different activities. They draw upon different talents, skills , movements, and knowledge. They have different goals. Those who are highly successful in one area are almost never successful in the other.

Both activities are considered to be karate activities. Each requires a knowledge of Karate stances. One must be able to punch and kick, make basic stances, and move about quickly and naturally as if without effort in order to be considered highly skilled. Leave behind basic techniques, however, and the linkage between the two ends.

Perform a kata, and you will notice that you step in deep, formal, almost robotic fashion. Each technique is either chained to the next in quick succession or performed with a short pause after it. Your breathing is patterned and regular. Your movements are formal, and you follow a prescribed performance line like the steps of a choreographed dance routine.

Now take a look at sparring skills. Techniques are launched from an en guard posture. The body is kept high, not in a deep stance, to allow for mobility and maneuverability. Techniques are performed in quick succession without any formal pause or frozen moment at the end of them. Deep stances never truly materialize as anything other than fluid motions during which the body’s weight is caught on one leg which bend deeply before being stretched back to change direction or propel the body even more in the same direction.

Even without considering the opponent, the basic performance of techniques between kata and sparring is very different even when practiced alone as shadow boxing. Kata requires the rear heel be kept in contact with the floor for no other reason than to obey some arbitrary rule of appearance and aesthetics. Sparring encourages rolling the foot over to increase reach, depth of turning in the hips, and more mobility and recoverability. That’s just one example. Others include how far the shoulders are turned into a punch, whether or not blocks or simple slapping motions are used for defense, the greater variety of kicks, and the lower variety of hand techniques.

Take the opponent into consideration, and sparring becomes an entirely different ballgame. Kata utterly lacks interaction with another person. There is no need to outwit another person or change and adapt to their strategy. There is no need to modify tactics to exploit weaknesses, nor is there a need to wait to be attacked before launching an assault. Indeed, kata begin with defensive motions almost entirely, and sparring champions regularly win by charging in and attacking the other person with a flurry of punches.

Claiming that kata and kumite are related does not make it so. To date, no systematic approach or model as ever been presented which would justify a belief that the two skills are interrelated or dependent upon one another. No evidence from tournament results suggests that mastering kata produces sparring champions. In fact, the opposite seems to be true: sparring champions grown too old to complete effectively turn to kata and leverage political standing to achieve victory. Kata champions in youth don’t seem to ever become sparring champions. All we have that leads us to the conclusion that mastering kata aids in sparring skills are the unsupported claims of people who run athletic associations and therefore have a vested interest in every potential competitor becoming trained in both disciplines.

Rather than presenting karate organized into three areas of study which are complimentary and mutually interdependent, I believe we should offer up the truth: a Y-shaped fork. You learn the basics, and with them you can either do more basics, do kata, or you can do kumite. The basics are obviously linked to everything.

But kata and sparring are not related - not even a little. In fact, they are not related at all. They are different skills, they require different experience, different talent, and different practice. To practice one is at the expense, not the benefit of the other.

I think that most karate experts know this, but they don’t like to say it out loud for fear that their own interest in kata will be called into question. “Why do you make me learn kata instead of just teaching me the basics then sparring? I don’t have any interest in kata.” We must also consider that we are highly resistant to any change in thinking which will lead us to the conclusion that our investment to date was an act of foolishness. We would rather stay in denial.

It is this sort of inflexibility in the typical Shotokan instructor that makes karate practice less like an athletic program where you specialize in your interest and more like a mandatory historical preservation society. Because of our desire to maintain the status quo and ensure the survival of an unpopular practice of dubious benefit, we force our students to undertake kata and kumite, and we feed them a line about how one helps the other.

Instead of drawing a triangle to represent the three mutually helpful areas of Karate, what if we just let the student study kata or sparring depending upon his interest and offer separate classes in one or the other without trying to force feed something to them.

I truly enjoy practicing kata. I also enjoy a good sparring match against a skilled opponent. But I don’t see anything about the two disciplines that is related after decades of training. In fact, the longer I train, the more convinced I am that the claims of kata mastery and sparring ability being connected are little more than the empty platitudes of people with an agenda, be it the spread of tournaments or the continued preservation of some historical practice.

When I practice kata skills, I don’t do any of the things I do when I practice my sparring skills. It is as if I am doing two different sports entirely at the same time.

There is a tiny bit I disagree with but, 99.9% I enjoyed.

[XXIV]

This is a beautiful thread. Thank you.

[Eddie Hardon]

IIF

Thanks for both extracts from Rock Ape and 24Fighting Chicas....again, thankfully a colleague put me onto Rob Redmond and even though I don't do Karate, it's a thoroughly good read.

Minor point, I was reading a comment about the practical relevance of Kata to Real Life (or even Surreal Life) and apparently, it was alleged that the (fearsome) Terry O'Neill alluded to this somewhat obliquely by starting to point out that kata and street application were wholly dissimilar. At this point the narrator of the article drew the curtain...so I assume there's little.

A work colleague who did WC (and was quite, er, hands-on) told me that he'd been sparring one night (or doing their paired hand exercises, no, I dunno) when he'd dumped his training partner on the floor but had no clear recollection of how he'd done it. I suggested that once he'd learned the basic form, I thought you just forgot about it and "performed in the moment".

Ta

[It is Fake]

Omega:

He has to many stories so on and so forth so, read this thread.
Kung-fu in MMA....This is how I got here. - No BS Martial Arts

My sifu used to say "Animal fighting is simply to understand the nature of the beast. We are human beings we do not have claws, not very sharp teath, we can not fly, and we are not magic."

*edit: In other words you may want to fight like a boxer but you see the world as a kickboxer but your body is better suited to be a wrestler.

One of my senior Sihung translated this one time for me many years later "The idea is to understand mind, body, and spirit and then get them to cooperate with each other. Your heart may say you are a Dragon, your mind might say you are a tiger but you have the body of a crane"

Our sets (forms) were there just to get your body to understand movement, that was it, the more you would understand movement the easier it was for you to teach your body to fight correctly. Like I said we had all types of martial artist training with us. Each brought a different idea with them although they rarely shared it. Classes weren't everybody line up and start working out to a cadence, classes were more like a boxing gym where you met up with guys and our sifu would come along and correct what you were doing. You were always expected to start and finish on your own. A lot of people would get kicked out for awhile for not coming to train with the proper mind set (myself included). I was there for 3 years before being introduced to sparring. My sifu never really sparred in the traditional sense. He would just come over and smack you up side the head and such. I learned to spar by all my other brothers not by my sifu. I learned how to train by my sifu. Big differance.

Since we are discussing forms and animals always come up.