[OT] Yet another martial arts help thread.....so, please help!!

[Greg K]

I forgot to add.

re: Tae Kwon Do. I have never studied it, but a lot of people are knocking it. Tae Kwon Do like any other style is dependent on the person teaching it (as well the person training). The problem in its effectiveness is not necessarily the style itself, it is the school, instructor, and or organization. I remember reading an article in Black Belt about a guy who studied Tae Kwon Do and moved to Texas. He found a school and was bragging about his black belt. The first person he sparred with caught him with a strike to the groin. The guy was upset and complained that groin kicks were not part of Tae Kwon Do and the person who kicked him said something to the effect of "I don't know where you studied Tae Kwon Do, but it is part of the Tae Kwon Do we teach here in Texas". The point is that there is a tendency for many schools to focus on point/sparring and the sport aspect because that is where the emphasis on Tae Kwon Do has gone, but not all instructors agree with the sport approach nor do they teach it. Some Tae Kwon Do masters were and still are against the move to make Tae Kwon Do a sport and feel that schools teaching it as a sport should be honest about what they teach.
Then again, while maybe most people are not aware of the sport approach being taught, maybe some of those people who stick with Tae Kwon "sport" are looking for an aspect other than combat effectiveness.

 

[Darius101]

Thanks for posting your backround Pazu. Do you like Karate the same or differnetly from Kung Fu?
SF is a real hotbead of Martial Arts. I really want to visit a number of schools there again. Things like the Sword Museum would be fun as well as I have never seen an 800yr old sword before.

hmmm Lannon You stepped into it again...interesting.

I will be posting a somewhat long post on the article in the
"Martial Arts Reader" A book full of articles and writings from various sources.

It is always intersting when someone like a physician is into regular hobbies.

Toj ...good post as well. I have many friends in the miltary also. I know they will make us proud when they fight for our freedom in the big desert.
Everyone else who posted in the last hour or so Cool stuff...
Later,
Darius

 

[Lannon]

Re: Re: Musashi

Forgive me for missing them.

Its no problem.

Forgive me if I sound cheesy. You have said you do not believe in spirituality so perhaps you think all this "make the world a better place" is a load of hooey. Fair enough. Many people do.

That doesnt sound cheesy and believe me "making the world a better place" is not solely the endeavor of spiritual people .

Well im done. See you later folks.

 

[Pazu]

Re: not exactly what I said now is it.

There wasnt an assertion of anything along these lines. I said that raising your level of education makes it more *likely* that you will earn a better wage and less *likely* that you will be involved in a violent encounter. As a physician you should be well versed in probability and statistics. There is a significant difference between saying something *will* happen and that something is *more likely* to happen.

Funny, I could have sworn that on just the previous page you posted:

My suggestion would be to increase your level of education so that you might earn a decent wage and live in a safer community.

Was this not your statement on how to deal with living in a violent area? If you intended to state "...so that you have a higher chance of earning a decent wage...", I would advise you to learn how to write more clearly. I might point out, for instance, that your use of "might" in this particular construction does not generally connote a probabilistic statement (in the same manner in which my use of "might" in this sentence does not).

This aside from the fact that this "suggestion" is still incredibly presumptuous and bone-ignorant of the many possible factors involved in determining the place where someone might find him- or herself living. So, quite frankly, I don't need any condescending remarks on what I "should be well versed in" from someone like you.

-- Pazu

 

[Darius101]

Pazu ....facinating ( I say in my best Spock voice)

Onward and upward.....
I did some checking today when i got home and began to practice some Aikido. After some practice I realized that Aikido is purely defensive. This intrigued me and I looked in the books I have on Aikido and here is what I found:
AIKIDO and the dynamic shpere by A. Westbrook and O. Rati
Dust Jacket inside front:
"....There is no attack in aikido; i.e. it's goal is to merely to neutralize an aggression and render the attacker harmless, without causing him any serious injury if at all possible. To do this requires skill, but even more, it requires an ethical intention..."
Interesting yes?
I then turned to the page on ethics and basicaly it talks about the various levels of ethical fighting and how it is viewed in Japan's culture.
The lowest form of fighting is unprovoked aggresion in the form of attack. There are four levels total with this being level one and the lowest.
The next level is where one man provokes an atack and kills the attacker.
Level 3 is when a person is attacked they defend themselves subjectivly. It is here that many newcomers find themselves. It is also what is generally ment when a person wants to learn self-defense.

Level 4 is what a martial artist strives to achieve and what Greg most recently and Kail from the begining, has posted they aspire to ( I think we all do as human beings on some level): This is where you neither attack nor do you provoke an attack, but, you defend yourself in such a way and with such skill that the attacker is not killed and in most casses is not even seriously harmed. This level shows and ethical intention of the axiom "Do no Harm". By this I mean a person has made a conscious decision to an ethical intention. You cannot do this without practice of some kind be it martial arts or through sports or even through your own means..it is a conscious decision one makes.
Others have stated this in this thread they just didn't articulate it this way. Good work guys.....
It is these ethical qualities you will look for and hopefully be able to pick out of the schools you check out. Physicalities aside, you want to train for a reason. These reasons are varied but include: Enjoyment, Physical reasons, to make friends, to learn about a foreign culture, To learn about your culture, and among other things perhaps your on a voyage of self discovery.

Now about the statements I made on Medicine and Martial Arts:
In a number of books on pressure points they list the actual points and in the older ones they list them by season, and use termonology from Eastern Acupunture/Acupressure. In the last 10yrs some very intelligent practioners have noticed a corolations to these points to various western (American and European0 texts on anotomy.
I sited one book on an earlier post and that is one of the best references around. If you get the Dillman book your learning will be total and complete but it will take a teacher to proerly train you due to the nature of the points and such. George Dillman had a school in Chicago for a while and I am not sure if he still does..but he does do seminars on this stuff and it is amazing indeed.
Another great source of information is the book by Bruce Miller that I posted the URL to in an earlier post.
On the first few pages of this book:
Pg#3 to be exact:
"...for Centuries there have been styles of martial arts which use some of the available pressure points as part of their styles. The use of these pressure points has classically recorded in the forms and Katas which are taught to new students. Neither I nor anyone who knowswhat they are talking about can dispute that these techniques are effective. The problem is that there has been a misunderstanding of why these points work.
Until recently, medicine was not advanced enough to understand what was really happening, especially in some of the more advanced techniques. Fortunately that is no longer true. Modern Western Medicine has an excellent understanding of the principles behind the most advanced pressure point techniques, even some that were thought to be fables...."
I am sure we could get into a discusion of this with Pazu? But do we need to? No it is not important to someone looking for a school to learn self-defense. Read the book if you can get your hands on it. Just for your information there are over 360 points in traditional martial arts teaching. When you look at them closer with the help of western medicine you will find well over 1000 point locations. Page 6 in this book will be of interest to Kail ( i am sure he would enjoy the whole book though).
Let me also say this, Joint locks are the crudest form of pressure points. They are quite effective and that is why the police use them.
There are a total of 7 types of pressure points:
1) Ligament
2) Tendon
3) Nerve ( the most common thing people think of when they talk pressure points)
4) Muscle
5) Organ pressure points (these are just nasty)
6) Bone
7) Reflex points (the ones that are present in everyone and everything that lives)
ALL OF THESE POINTS should be taught along with the healing points so that permanent damage does not occur. This is how they were taught to me and this is how they should be taught for balence and true understanding to occur. Yin and Yang ...heal and harm you cannot have one without the other from an ethical point of view.
Tai Chi and Bagua contain these points and teach both healing and striking these areas. Qigong also is a nice balence for this type of learning.
This is why I made the statement that Tai Chi masters are devastating. I have seen the use of these in action.

I feel like I am lectureing so I will stop for now....I hope this information is useful to you guys.

Enjoy,
Darius

P.S. This is not the article I was talking about earlier today. I got sidetracked.

 

[Drakmar]

The bully does not matter. What matters is your behavior. I would state that this is a strong indication that this encounter could have been overcome without the Martial Arts training . I think there are other methods by which you can learn to control your fear and emotions.

I agree, mostly. There are other methods that you can learn to control your emotions. But, most of those are not linked to an exercise. Yoga would be one example. I don't like Yoga. That's just me.. might be suitable for you though. (I am not saying that you need to take something up, just that Yoga may sit with your moral set better.) And the bully does matter, everybody matters. We really do need to address the cause and not just the symptoms.

Also. As I stated before, I believe that having somebody play/be the Devil's Advocate in a discussion about MA is useful, it does promote thought and discussion. I don't agree with some aspects of Lannon's views nor the delivery of them in some instances, but I do consider his views valid. Now, I don't consider MAs a waste of my time, but this is because I see an intrinsic value in them for me.

As for my sense of inner peace?.. well, I wouldn't necessarily say that I have one. It would be more accurate to say that through Kung Fu, I am able to bring my mind and body into alignment. And because of that I am able to achieve a balance.

Another thing... I think it is rather short-sighted to just "increase your level of education so that you might earn a decent wage and live in a safer community". What that implies to me is that you believe that rather then trying to improve the community we live in and make it safer, we should just turn our backs on the more violent/chaotic communities and move to a more serene one.

I believe that people should be in a constant state of education. Not necessarily an institution like a University. But in life in general. Whether it is via a tertiary education system or via social club that focuses on particular topics, when you are learning things you are opening your mind to new ideas. To me.. that is good.

And Lannon is right. Finding statistics on the conflict ratio of MAs vs Non-MAs would be quite difficult. But it would still be interesting to see the results. As somebody indicated.. in a MA thread a large number of people have come out with examples of a fight they have been in. Me.. I came out with examples of fights I avoided. The majority of the time, when a thread like this comes up, MAs who have not been in a fight, don't post that fact. This is because they don't really have any "Fight" stories.

Drakmar.

 

[Pazu]

Thanks for posting your backround Pazu. Do you like Karate the same or differnetly from Kung Fu?
SF is a real hotbead of Martial Arts. I really want to visit a number of schools there again. Things like the Sword Museum would be fun as well as I have never seen an 800yr old sword before.

Hi Darius!

In response to your question, I think I prefer kung fu overall, as I find the forms more aesthetically pleasing and fun to do. I know that over the years, the forms have become more and more embellished to the point that they probably aren't so combat-functional anymore, but (as was mentioned previously) there's nothing like discovering that you can do a butterfly kick after all.

There are lots of great schools in SF. I study with Master E. Y. Lee out in the Richmond district, and of course I can't say enough good things about him or his school.* I've never seen the Sword Museum, though...where is that?

hmmm Lannon You stepped into it again...interesting.

Well, I think he's gone now, so we should probably get back to poor zdanboy's original question...

It is always intersting when someone like a physician is into regular hobbies.

I wish I had more time for my regular hobbies, though.

-- Pazu (still at work at 6:30 pm and probably has at least another 2 hours of work ahead of him)

*A few more reasons why I study where I do:

1) I meet interesting people who I probably would not have met otherwise. When you work at a medical center, it's almost too easy to let that become the center of your social life as well, and I didn't want that.

2) My teacher is 72 years old and still in amazing shape. I figure that if I'm in half as good condition as he is when I hit 72, I'll have been doing something right.

 

[Darius101]

The Sword Museum is run by Harunaka Hoshino I believe it used to be down by Fisherman's Warf but I am not that familiar with the bay area. He also may have moved to a bigger place.

I know that over the years, the forms have become more and more embellished to the point that they probably aren't so combat-functional anymore,

That was done in many chinese arts to hide techniques. This way when your learning to apply the technique you need the teachers instruction for the interpretation of the move to kata bridge. (I hope that makes some sense).

Thanks,
Darius

 

[takyris]

One kind of neat thing that we do at my school is to take a technique and make it our own. This really makes us think about those "embellishments" and what they really did for the kata. In some cases, I ended up adding additional movements to my self-defense techniques because I proved to my teacher that the technique as it stood had defensive gaps or dangers. The dangers are pretty minor, and for a beginner learning the technique, it's not worth the difficulty required to teach the more advanced form. Now that we've advanced as students, though, we can reclaim the techniques and put our personal emphasis on it.

Example:

Someone in front of you grabs your right wrist with their left hand.

Original technique: Step forward and out at 45-degree angle with right leg, swinging right arm across my body. Then do a chop down along my right arm with my left hand as I pull my right hand back (like drawing a bow). This wipes the arm off. Then we punch the guy a couple times.

I asserted that too much time passed between the time of the first attack and the time I damaged the attacker. Body positioning removed the right hand as a threat, but he could still kick me. Therefore, in my new interpretation of the technique:

Step forward as before, but as soon as I've planted my right leg, I swing my left leg forward and strike their shin, checking any possible kick before it happens. Since I've already got the leg up now, I add a knife-edge (edge of foot on the side) kick to their far leg as I do the wipe-off-the-arm move. The new positioning of my attacker because of these kicks requires me to retarget the punches.

As a result, the technique is at once completely different and completely the same. A new student who knew the original technique might see me as doing it with a flourish, an embellishment. I would certainly only teach them the standard, original version of the technique, of course -- the technique is taught to new students, and that kind of hop is tough for a beginner.

Anyway, that's how we gradually learn and relearn techniques at my school. My teacher is always making me relearn techniques, showing me things that I didn't see before -- or things that he didn't show me because I wasn't ready for it.

-Tacky

 

[Darius101]

That is great Tacky.

When we did grabbing techniques or Waza in ninjutsu class our teacher always told us that just standing there and doing the technique alone could cause the technique to fail. We needed to add a strike of some kind to put the attacker off balence first. It sounds like this is what you saw needed for your technique and that is great. This is one of the first things we used to look for, clear thinking, when getting ready to teach a student a new technique or a variation of a technique.
The question was; Does the student use the technique themselves as is or can they adapt it to the situation?
"Martial Arts is a thinking man's game" is what my wing chun teacher used to tell us all the time.

Darius