Noob who practices "Nippon kempo"

[MisterMR]

Hallo!

I'm a noob!

I practice "Nippon kempo"!

I see in the FAQs that people who practice uncommon MA are welcome to post about their styles. Should I post a description of Nippon kempo (rules etc.) ?
If so, should I post it here or in the Japanese MA forum?

Anyway a short description here:
Nippon kempo is basically a mix of karate + judo. Competition and (often) sparring use heavy protection gear (bogu kumite). It was founded in 1932 so compared to other karate styles is relatively old (although I'm not sure if it is a karate style or an althogether different MA, here in Italy is considered a different MA usually).

You can find a lot of NK videos on youtube, I can't post a link here as I'm a noob but there is a link in my profile.

[plasma]

Hallo!

I'm a noob!

I practice "Nippon kempo"!

I see in the FAQs that people who practice uncommon MA are welcome to post about their styles. Should I post a description of Nippon kempo (rules etc.) ?
If so, should I post it here or in the Japanese MA forum?

Anyway a short description here:
Nippon kempo is basically a mix of karate + judo. Competition and (often) sparring use heavy protection gear (bogu kumite). It was founded in 1932 so compared to other karate styles is relatively old (although I'm not sure if it is a karate style or an althogether different MA, here in Italy is considered a different MA usually).

You can find a lot of NK videos on youtube, I can't post a link here as I'm a noob but there is a link in my profile.

New Poster should post there first thread on Newbietown, so this is the correct place.

Welcome to Bullshido. What is the Nippon Kempo ruleset?

[W. Rabbit]

Welcome to Bullshido.

Nippon Kempo is a refreshing bit of kick ass.

[MisterMR]

Nippom Kempo ruleset

Thanks W.Rabbit! Thanks Plasma!

The rules for competition in NK are IMHO derived from Kendo:

The two competitors wear protective gear composed by head protector (MEN, with protective grid for the face), body protector (DO), groin protector, gloves and optionally shin protectors and/or shoes (similar to TKD shoes).

Each competitor tries to score an "ippon". When an ippon is scored, the fight is stopped, the competitors return to their initial positions, and then the fight starts again. The first competitor who scores the 2nd ippon wins. If the time runs out (it usually is very short, 2min.) the one with more points win (there are various ways to break the ties, depending on the turneament). There are no intermediate points, it's ippon or nothing.

An ippon is scored by:
- A punch or kick or knee to the MEN or the DO, but only if the hit is clear, strong, performed with "correct technique", and "kiai" is mandatory. There are 3 referees that judge wether an hit is an ippon or not, like in Kendo. The referees are usually quite stingy so most hits are not ippon (in fact somewhere on the net i read that NK has continuous bouts, but this isn't true, it's just that most hits don't score so that the bout looks somehow continuous).

- a continuous serie of hits, even if each hit is not perfect (this is known as "rangeki").

- a throw when the "victim"'s belt surpasses the attacker's shoulders (that is, not all throws are ippon, only the most large ones, like supplexes).

- if a competitor is on the ground, and the other competitor is standing and hits from above with a punch or a kick, it is ippon. Also if one competitor is pinning the other and hits with a knee to the MEN or the DO it is ippon. This means that often one tries to throw the other on the ground and to reach an advantageous position to either knee or stand and punch (kicks from the above are more rare). Again, kiai is mandatory.

- a disarticulation (like an armbar in groundfighting) is ippon. The kiai is mandatory also for disarticulations (lol).

- a somewhat rare (but funny) kind of ippon is when a competitor grabs the leg of the other (like in grabbing a kick) and repeatedly simulates a kick to the groin (again with lots of kiais).

NOTE: as is implicit from the fact that valid targets are only the MEN and the DO, low kicks are not allowed.
NOTE 2: this isn't obvious from the rules, but as the referees are very stingy for ippons from striking, throwing the opponent to the ground and then taking control and hitting the opponent from above or from a pin is a strategy favoured by many competitors (me included).

I hope this is interesting!

[slamdunc]

Welcome to Bullshido.

[Permalost]

Welcome to Bullshido. What are your thoughts on bogu kumite vs the less armored forms, like kyokushin karate kumite?

[MisterMR]

Hello Slamdunc, hello Permalost.

Welcome to Bullshido. What are your thoughts on bogu kumite vs the less armored forms, like kyokushin karate kumite?

I think that bogu kumite is a reasonable compromise between "true" ful contact (like in MMA) and less intense forms of combat.
The biggest disadvantage is that one never learn to take the hits.
The second biggest disadvantage is that, while one feels wether the hit is strong or not, the pratictioner will never know for sure how effective his strikes really are.
Both these disadvantages can be reduced by sparring without bogu, but obviously if someone is praticng NK usually he/she doesn't really want to go true full contact, so this kind of sparring is more or less controlled (dependng of the tastes of the ones who are sparring).
The two big advantages are:
1) the sense of distance is quite real: it seems to me that one of the big problems of point sparring is that the sense of distance is slightly distorted; NK on the other hand has realistic distance and commitment on all the distances of combat;
2) and obviously, people who would not train at true full contact can still train in a reasonably realistic way (and maybe compete) at NK, and this is clearly a plus, at least for me.

On the other hand, if we speak specifically of Kyokushin, I must say that I know Kyokushin only through videos on youtube (I never saw a Kyokushin dojo in Italy). In some sense it is the reverse of NK because it seems to me that the distance of combat is quite weird and unrealistic in Kyokushin, perhaps because punches to the body are shorter than punches to the head, but on the other hand one clearly knows if and how much the hits hurt.

On the whole I prefer NK because the distance thing seems very important to me, more than really feeling the hits (but of course I'm biased).