My sensei is a pretty small guy too. he's almost my height, so as tall as a 'regular woman'. We had another very good student who was even shorter. He'd beat up guys one head taller than him in the competitions. Now he's got his own dojo. Just do your best and learn to use this to your advantage. You can surely not influence your height, but you can train better and make it so that it doesn't matter anymore
agreed. see, that kind of situation is where the ability to stop your punch a milimeter from the target becomes extremely amusing. even more so if you fail at stopping it.
I'm more of a 'pin someone down and choke them out' girl...then they can't even say it was 'technique'.
hehehe. i just like the deer in the headlights look on people's faces. i remember once in high school back in paraguay, i was idly chatting with a much older guy and he says "you know, i could kill you with one hand". one well-controlled nukite under the jawline later: "me too ". these days if i had to do it again i'd probably go for a hiraken, though.
my sensei has a fun story he likes to tell everyone. Apparently we used to have two students, one big guy who was about 300 or so pounds, and this skinny kid who could barely do one pushup, apparently he'd never done a pushup his entire life. One day it was the big guy and the skinny kid training together, and he was doing a takedown, and this tiny kid dropped this big guy with a... dunno what its called but he got him off balance and then swept his leg with his hand, and I guess this huge guy hit the ground really hard. Pretty damn cool if ya ask me...
Lol, when I did kickboxing, I was pretty good at fighting taller people... Then when I fought short women I got my ass kicked without fail Adapting to any one body type isn't good.
That is a question that I keep making to myself a lot.. Most people here are concerned because their height is below average. I am the opposite. I am 2 meters tall and I am thin, about 80kgs.. My size is also a problem to me because my centre of gravity is too high and that doesn't let me train in Judo or in other grappling systems. I was doing Ninjutsu but lately I am thinking of picking up kickboxing or muay thai, because it seems to me that I am more cut out for striking systems. Anyway, my point is that being that tall also has its limitations..
height in most striking sports is an advantage. I've been led to believe its the same in grappling for leverage. As many have said its not the be all and end all and there are ways around it but it IS an advantage. It's the very reason why boxers and thaiboxers etc. dont just train themselves to be heavy as well - they could and it wouldnt have much effect negatively on speed despite what people think. The bulkier you are, the taller your opponents are, simple rule of thumb. considered to be the best nak muay every produced in recent times, dieselnoi was about 6'2" and fought at 62kg or something like that. He was massively taller than all his opponents and counter to the claim that you "have to get inside a tall fighter" he worked mainly from the clinch where his leverage and huge knees were a massive advantage. Other fighters use big teeps to keep their opponents at the preferred distance then score with long boxing and big body and head kicks. Mainly head kicks since they're so easy to do when you're tall. Now I don't know much about karate but striking is striking and unless there's something weird in the way they score it, people should have a natural advantage when they're tall.
Really? That's good to hear.. The thing is most judoka practitioners would say that breaking the balance of a really tall guy is a piece of cake for them.. Also from my little experience, it seems to me that Japanese martial arts are made for people that have small size and not being able to use basic techniques like seoi nage for example,because of my size, kinda made me feel left out. But maybe If someone trains the proper way he can turn his height to an advantage even in grappling..
Yeah that was odd to hear. The most difficulties I had in grappling were with short, compact people. But as you said, those arts were originally made for small people. If they were devised for tall people we'd probably see quite different techniques.
6'6. But he's HUGE, not just tall. Like over 100 kilograms. So it's not just an issue of tall vs short. I couldn't tell you how hard it would be against a 6'6 guy in a genuine fight because he always goes easy on me.
Height isn't helpful unless you're fast as well. I'm 6'4" and my instructor is always working on speed and coordination with me. I have an explosive side kick and lots of reach, but I get kicked in the groin an awful lot because I'm tall. Even when I use the side kick for defense, which is almost always. My instructor is tall, too, so he has me in constant motion and shooting techniques off the motion. It's like skip fighting. Gotta have lots of endurance for it. Bottom line, short guys can beat me.
hmm, relating to this topic a little, I just realised how strong my sensei is. I remember once where at the end of the lesson, sensei decided to do something where you pair up and grab both sides of the opponents belt. Then you have to push them to the other side of the room (sumo much?) My sensei did a demonstration on a 3rd dan black belt, who I know and works out a lot and does a lot of running...also a head taller. Now my sensei is well built, but is a lot older, i'll say in his 60s maybe. Within 10 seconds, he moved the black belt to the other side of the room (around 7-10 metres ish) seriously, he is strong yuen.
Osu, Which style are you practicing? My guess is there is little contact in your sparring, and you cannot grab or check. Osu!
If I can hit you from 150cm distance and you can only hit me from 130cm distance, sorry, I have advantage. I can see how it could be a disadvantage in judo where the game is all about centres of gravity.
