Sensei Kochergin, a crazy russian karate coach

[Nefron]

Just saw this posted on Sherdog.This Kochergin guy is some nut job that teaches krotty in Russia.His training is equivalent of repeatedly headbutting a concrete wall:

YouTube - Карате Русских Улиц часть 1
YouTube - Карате Русских Улиц часть 2

He cuts himself in the first video.

Another pointless beatdown from one of his seminars:

YouTube - KOI Психологическая подготовка и НДК-17 часть8

[Soulrebel]

From the 1st video, which was the only one I have time to watch right now:

The voice-over starts by commenting that when Karate came to Russia, the Russians didn't know that it actually was just a stylistic art, not a fighting system. The story then follows Kochergin from childhood to now, and comments on his rough training methods, and that his seminars feature full contact no holds barred fighting. He comments that he hasn't been sued and that nobody has died, but that there is no better way of learning to fight than to actually understand that if you snooze or fuck around, you're going to get your face beaten up.

Kochergin says: "I don't know any other way to make a person fight for their life. I don't know how to force him to understand that things are serious."

Also, he comments on their knife training that "you have to understand that you can't disarm a knife attacker. you just can't. You have to understand that even a stupid fucking 14 year old teenager who's sniffed some glue will cut you up, with maybe an 80% probability"

All in all, yes, it's tough. Would I personally be able to train with them? Probably not. Would I want to? Probably not. Does it teach Teh R33l? I would say yes, it does...

My take on this would be that yes, it's maybe not a soft and too healthy environment, but this is aliveness+1, whether you guys like it or not.

Also, Kochergin, according to the video, is a sub-general (podpolkovnik) and has been in active duty.

He also comments that hard training makes people kind and balanced, and that they don't go around starting shit because "all of the answers, we get in the gym".

[Nefron]

Thanks for the clarification, my Russian is very weak.

[Soulrebel]

Couldn't stay away from watching.

The second video deals with different Russian karate masters. The vid itself is a documentary style thing, so they are discussing different prominent Russian karateka, and how the Soviet Union as a whole welcomed Karate as something magical and forbidden, both western temptation and eastern mysticism.

At the same time, all of the karate masters (and the videos here are more in line with the usual unresisting opponent karate stuff that make up the dead horse we all love to beat), all of the ones featured in the videos come from sambo or greco roman backgrounds and "mix it up" in their teaching.

I would really like to see the whole documentary..

[Soulrebel]

Sorry, last chain post on this...

In the last vid, where there are fisticuffs a'plenty - they each go for 20 seconds, and what he is instructing them to do is to keep the eyes on the opponent.

After each fight, he says "great, now kiss and fuck off"... Hahaha

[Tonuzaba]

I'm watching the videos without sound now (Soulrebel, thanks for the translation/info), but this is stupid.

Typical Russian disrespect for human integrity - when you have enough Kanonenfutter, you don't worry about the individual.

Call me a pussy, but IMO to knowlingly use bleeding injuries as training method is shortsighted and psychotic.

I mean who cuts and sews himself up just like that?

Speeks volumes about both the instructor and the students.

[Nefron]

I would really like to see the whole documentary..

If you haven't noticed, there are 3 more parts of this on youtube.

[sempaiman]

Do they do the kata....

[Vieux Normand]

Kochergin doesn't do anything that is out of line from what I found in a number of Karate dojos in Japan in the years I lived there. KK and even some Shotokan places trained a lot like this, and what seems like abuse here is seen as physical and mental conditioning there. Maybe Russia has similarities to Japan when it comes to this. What Kochergin does is in some ways reminiscent of Oyama's attitude: that Karate is a fighting art, and to win a fight, a Karate practitioner must be able to withstand the kind of effects that would actually occur in a fight, and still prevail. The physical knocks one sees are, for the most part, not too different from what one sees in many Judo dojos--and nobody complains that Judoka are "throwing each other around in ways that can hurt". It's just part of fighting.

Russia I don't know very well, but Japan is decidedly NOT an "oh-I-got-cut-I'll-sue" society. Some Judo teachers will hang onto a lock AFTER they know the recipient has tapped, just to increase their students' ability to withstand pain without whining about it. As for Karate, supposedly "non-contact" jiyu-kumite does NOT mean what it seems to mean in North America: in Japan, any strike (no matter if you can hear the impact from across the gym) that does not cause immediate unconsciousness seems to fall under "no contact".

And soji (cleaning the dojo) after jiyu-kumite often entails scrubbing a fair bit of blood off the floor (and it's damnably hard to get off if it's been there a while).

Blood and thumps? Just part of the game...

[Ronin.74]

EDIT: Damn it Vieux beat me to the Oyama reference!

While I agree that some of his methods are extreme and ultimately detrimental to the student it looks to me that he is getting results when it comes to developing bad motherfuckers.

I think if the guy could find a happy medium between using alive training to get the best results and safe training to keep everyone in relatively good health the Mad Russian could be onto something. He's almost like a pschycotic version of Mas Oyama.

This is "Th3 R34L D34dly Systema" for the win.

[Demon Eyes]

Can't knock on the guy. While the training is very harsh, it's also probably very effective.
I'd love to see these guys fight with the systema guys. I think it'd be extremely one sided.

[crappler]

I think it is excessively cruel and short-sighted, but it is pretty traditional. The Japanese, as Viex pointed out, did do things like that. I would say taking a good shot is invaluable. Twenty to the head? Probably overkill to get the point across. That third video is disturbing. The Russians and Japanese are notoriously meat-headed when it comes to admitting that the human body, while designed to withstand punishment and capable, with training of withstanding a lot, still can be easily damaged, and permanently so with this level of carelessness. It's kind of stupid and admirable all at once.

[crappler]

Kochergin doesn't do anything that is out of line from what I found in a number of Karate dojos in Japan in the years I lived there. KK and even some Shotokan places trained a lot like this, and what seems like abuse here is seen as physical and mental conditioning there. Maybe Russia has similarities to Japan when it comes to this. What Kochergin does is in some ways reminiscent of Oyama's attitude: that Karate is a fighting art, and to win a fight, a Karate practitioner must be able to withstand the kind of effects that would actually occur in a fight, and still prevail. The physical knocks one sees are, for the most part, not too different from what one sees in many Judo dojos--and nobody complains that Judoka are "throwing each other around in ways that can hurt". It's just part of fighting.

Russia I don't know very well, but Japan is decidedly NOT an "oh-I-got-cut-I'll-sue" society. Some Judo teachers will hang onto a lock AFTER they know the recipient has tapped, just to increase their students' ability to withstand pain without whining about it. As for Karate, supposedly "non-contact" jiyu-kumite does NOT mean what it seems to mean in North America: in Japan, any strike (no matter if you can hear the impact from across the gym) that does not cause immediate unconsciousness seems to fall under "no contact".

And soji (cleaning the dojo) after jiyu-kumite often entails scrubbing a fair bit of blood off the floor (and it's damnably hard to get off if it's been there a while).

Blood and thumps? Just part of the game...

I don't think the Japanese reticence to sue is totally based in their desire to "take one for the team" and not blame others. Japan was an authoritarian society for many years, like Russia, and still is in many ways. There are VERY few Japanese lawyers. The Japanese bar exam is the most difficult in the world have some pass rate hovering around one percent. So what we often mistake for an attitude of responsibility is often in fact the result of a society, unlike ours, where people simply don't have the option of suing or vindicating their rights, particularly those not in the upper classes.

Thread effectively derailed? Sorry Vieux.

[Vieux Normand]

I don't think the Japanese reticence to sue is totally based in their desire to "take one for the team" and not blame others. Japan was an authoritarian society for many years, like Russia, and still is in many ways. There are VERY few Japanese lawyers. The Japanese bar exam is the most difficult in the world have some pass rate hovering around one percent. So what we often mistake for an attitude of responsibility is often in fact the result of a society, unlike ours, where people simply don't have the option of suing or vindicating their rights, particularly those not in the upper classes.

Thread effectively derailed? Sorry Vieux.

Hey, no problem here--not my thread.

Having lived in Japan for a number of years, I am quite aware of its low number of bengoshi (lawyers). However, blaming this on an "authoritarian" past is a bit facile as an explanation. I am old enough to remember when Western societies also valued "don't-whine-just-suck-it-up-and-keep-going" as opposed to suing for every spilt coffee and hangnail as is the case now.

It's been quite some time since authoritarianism was widespread in Western politics, and Japanese politics have been democratic for decades. The fact is, being a whiner runs contrary, not to Japanese politics, but to their spirit of "gaman" (personal perseverance in the face of challenge--no matter how much it hurts, no matter how hard and/or damaging something is, one just doesn't stop until the task is done).

Contrary to what lawsuit-happy individuals may think, Japan is far from a nation of cripples as a result of this attitude: they are, on the whole, extremely fit, very much the cut-ups (as opposed to the common outsiders' view that they are sheepishly-obedient)...and have among the longest lifespans in the world, not just in number of years lived, but also in terms of the number of those years lived in good physical and mental health.

Like any other nation, Japan has its problems; however, lack of physical and mental fitness of its citizens isn't one of them.

[crappler]

We regard them as conformist and they regard us as individualistic. Another way of saying that is we think of our rights, and they think of their obligations to others. But there society is still a far cry from ours. There is not a fourth amendment. The conviction rate in Japan for crimes is about 99.8%. They do not allow plea bargains, they have no juries. Of course, that may be because they only bring cases they are certain to win.

You observe that America was at one time a nation where people did not sue for hangnails, but the US at one time also had very few attorneys and most people could not afford them. My point here is that the recourse to legal channels becomes more viable for any culture once the option is presented. Without that option, one can ascribe it to an innate sense of self-reliance, but I'm not sure that is the case.