Not entirely sure what I think of this [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMUO0UbeK-4&feature=related"]How to Perform Hojutsu-Ryu Kata - YouTube[/ame]
at first glance I thought "modern MOJO-jutsu?" when I saw the vid it seems that I was correct: how to spank a bid bad monkey. YOUR monkey. :evil:
Narrator mentioned Soke-dai several times. I wonder what governing body they are with? I bet it rhymes with puko-pie. thats..."interesting"
That's Jeff Hall. He's considered a distinguished master in the NRA, which means he is a heck of a shot and very consistent. He's a well qualified firearms instructor and is former law enforcement with SWAT experience. Though the packaging may look odd, from everything I've seen of him he's top notch.
A lot of it seems pretty sound though, working on your draw and pivots. Though a bit formalized, some of the strikes are basic defensive tactics taught to law enforcement. I think the kata is more the "art" portion but does stress some basic skills, much like any other kata does. From some of the articles I've read, grading is no joke either especially for the dan grades. Anything under 90% and you fail, shoot outside the ring you fail, and for sandan you have to shoot three Handgun Combat Master tests back to back, with no less than 98% accuracy. HCM tests require a lot of speed in addition to accuracy, you're shooting under some very short time frames. Overall, Soke Jeff Hall is the real deal. The traditional uniform and protocol might not be for everyone, but if you want to learn shooting you definitely won't be disappointed.
I've seen this art popping up a lot lately. Black Belt did an article on it recently and a few Podcasts I listen to have done interviews with Soke Hall. He is a retired Alaska State Trooper and firearms instructor, a long with holding advanced degree black belts in a few traditional arts. Also a weaver shooter myself, although I was taught isosceles as well. Soke Hall seems to be a man with a lot of passion for both traditional martial arts and firearms and has worked out a way of combining the two.
I was taught Isoceles and i was less than average with it - by switching to a modified weaver I increased my ability drsatically It was something to do with having a REALLY dominant eye
I can't really comment on the gun work here, it looks quite solid from the little I know of using firearms, but that's about all I can say. What I can say, however, is that this is a very strange system to have come into being. Despite the apparent quality of the firearm handling, setting it out like a traditional Japanese system seems to serve no other purpose than to give the whole ordeal a certain flavor. It seems quite odd to me to invent a system based very much in the western (if not straight up American) use of firearms, but then use terms like 'kata', 'soke', and adding in some strikes and grabs from what appears to be a karate-style system (though I'm not really sure about that), which honestly don't look that effective in a situation where a gun is involved in the first place. And as a practitioner of classical Japanese arts, the use of the word soke is setting off the biggest alarm for me. It's just not the accurate useage, at all, and a modern systems that uses this title for their leader is almost always the hallmark of a fraudulent system, or at the very least that the people who invented it have no understanding of the terms they are using. Now that's not to say there is no merit to this particular system. Like I said, from my limited understanding of firearms training, it looks fairly well thought out. But the way they've gone about the structure, the terminology and the feeling of it all, just seems wrong to me.
Thanks for the post Sanke. From my own limited knowledge of the Hojutsu system, I think Hall is trying to blend modern firearms training with Japanese Budo, hence a lot of the more formalized etiquette and kata. He actually has written a lot of great articles for various LE sites (e.g. Police One) and I really like his views. As I said before, the packaging might be a bit odd, but what's inside is solid. Most of his unarmed stuff is defensive tactics 101 as taught to police officers too from what little I've seen.
