the eye gouge

Fair enough, I can't and don't want to argue with a single point that you've made, particularly the one about better use of the time. If this thread does live on, it will have to be without me.

Take it that I'm agreeing with whatever Homer is saying, as he's consistently been maintaining the same very reasonable standpoint all the way through the thread.

 

I think your judgement may have been clouded by some poor schools you've attended. I've trained at, learnt at and visited many TMA schools in my time in the UK, and not one of them didn't involve conditioning to punches or sparring.

Talking of the advantage that MMA-ers have being trained to take punches...just look at the Herring fight recently...and how easy it is to get knocked out when your defences are down and you are not expecting the shot!!!
Unfortunately, in my experience this is the normal situation in "th3 str33t". Unpredicatable assaults, unprovoked attacks, unexpected punches. MMA or TMA sparring or competition does NOT prepare you for this.

Only situational awareness of the surroundings and the normal precursors to an attack or fight is what is going to be of any help and I have NEVER seen this dealt with in an MMA school.

Agree with you there totally.

p.s no I didn't add you to my ignore list

 

I have to say that there certainly seems to be a different paradigm in the UK than in the US. What's the dominant style out there? Seriously?

I'm thinking that we probably have too many Korean schools floating around designed to cater to the lowest common denominatorrts schools; we have at least 5 or 6 Korean arts schools in Lancaster, and we're not exactly a bustling metropolis.

Yes, I said it. I think that the way TKD, and to a lesser degree, TSD, are marketed here in the states has definietly impacted the quality of MA. After all if you're going to be marketing your school as "social hour in white pyjamas" and hand out black belts after 2 to 3 years to everyone who walks through the door (trust me when I say I have witnessed some horrid tests and unbeliveably bad Cho Dan Bos), it's bound to produce lousy instructors who will continue the lusy training. Perhaps that would be why the Gospel According to Saint Thornton has made such a big splash in the states...

Now I'm really prepared to be flamed.

 

I would say Karate over here, or possibly TKD, but perhaps because of the size of the country and the fact that I think us Brits are probably less susceptible to clever marketing ploys and generally less guillible (no offence meant to any of our Atlantic cousins, as I'm talking VERY generally here) and possibly there are less opportunities for the unscrupulous "mcdojo" instructor.

There are bad schools, and plenty that give their students a dangerous false sense of security, but a lot of the "RBSD" (reality based self defence) schools are higher profile than the mcdojos and many of them are actively involved in MMA over here at amateur and pro level.

It's harder to be anonymous over here. You make claims, you get heard. You get found out.

You talk too loud anywhere about how good you are or that you have a blackbelt and you are likely to find someone somewhere (plus all his mates) that wants to prove you wrong. It soon weeds out the bad from the good.

Conversely, I think over here, the one thing we do have is that there are a lot of "McDojo" MMA clubs. In fact every club these days seems to be claiming they train this or have learnt that or they've competed in this event or that one. Generally the events have never existed, or their extent of BJJ training was that they went to one seminar or watched a UFC tape.

All you have to do in UK is invite them to come along or spar or go to their club. The genuine ones spar and everyone makes some good friends. The others don't.

 

Sounds like you guys are experiencing the opposite of what we're experiencing in the states. Interesting. At this point most people (and it's a generalization, yes, but I think there is merit to it) are leaving the TMA clubs in favor of the MMA clubs. Good TMA schools seem to be a rarity in the states, that's the conclusion I'm quickly coming to. I think it's becoming clearer that, as a general rule, the smaller the association, the better the quality of the school. There is this cultural "something" which makes Americans prone to dealing with good businessmen who market their systems to the lowest common denominator. I think it's the whole mysteries of the East thing, perhaps? Too many Bruce Lee movies would be my next guess. Maybe he wasn't the innovator he claimed to be... except for creating the concept of "McDojoism".

As for inviting people around here to come and spar? Yeah, right. That'll happen. I don't think you'll find too many instructors here in the states who will respond well to challenges.

EDIT:

I don't think there is something Americans have done, as oposed to something Americans have fallen for. I think we were getting so-so instruction form the beginning, and it just snowballed. The Koreans are proud of the fact that millions of Americans practice Korean styles, and I think that what we were taught is just being passed down among a group who just doesn't know any better. It was marketed a specific way, and that's become part of the tradition. Which of course, Americans hate to disrupt because it takes some of the mystery away.

 

Actually, I'm leaving the MMA/sport scene to return to the more "traditional" scene. MMA is cool and everything, but it just doesn't have the same appeal to me as an old school karate or kung fu school.

 

Garibaldi: Odd but my expereince is the exact opposite, I've trained at a lot of places in the last 3-4 years and the only really really good place I've found is an MMA place, 3 TKD clubs, 2 Aikido and 3 Hapkido (run by same guy though) all had absoloutley no clue about sparring outside of the WTF TKD rules and no concept of pressure testing. All of them subscribed to the two deadly to learn SD by sparring nonsense.

Attended a Ju jitsu/TKD club that was a lot better in this regard and mixed in some realistic sparring with takedowns someimtes and found anothe Ju jitsu club here at the Uni that has grappling sparrign and some other forms of pressure testing though again striking sparring is never done which is a shame.

I've only been to 1 MMA place but it was all i really needed to go to, my first lesson there discussed prssure testing, realistic technique and use of the fence to diffuse the situation so I was pretty much hooked there.

Anyway, bit of a ramble but looking at it for me MMA is at 100% good and TMA's are way behind with only 20% being any good in my experience. On top of that I've actually trained with a lot of Masters in my TKD so I've been trained by about 15 people in total that run their own clubs due to seminars and the like so when you look at it that way the numbers get even worse!

 

Its all fun and games until someone gets poked in the eye.

 

god there has been so many personal attacks in this thread ive lost count ive seen threads get closed for less that this ... its all a matter of time until the padlock gets ya , youve gone all bullshido on us

 

But Garibaldi, are these "MMA" clubs actually training people for competition fights? If not, I wouldn't say they're MMA, just cash-ins.

 

and then it becomes.... t3H d34D733!!!!!!!!!!

 

If they claim to be teaching Mixed Martial Arts then surely they're MMA? As long as they don't claim to be "sporting martial arts" or "competitive martial arts" then they're not claiming to prepare people for competition fights.

 

McGyms?

 

MMA isn't just an art, it's an established combat sport, so if it's Mixed Martial Arts with capital letters, that means training people for competition. If they're not teaching for that environment they're not teaching MMA.

 

So if people aren't training for MMA competitions, would you just say they're cross-training?

 

No it doesn't.

This is where it all becomes a semantics game.

There are plenty of Muay Thai gyms that teach Muay Thai but the majority of their students don't compete. If it was the case that only competitors could train Muay Thai... then there'd be a lot of gyms out of business. Even at top gyms that train up world class Muay Thai fighters they have any number of people training that don't fight on professional or even an amatuer level.

That doesn't make them any less of a Muay Thai gym per se. Most gyms have to take on non-competing students as a simple matter of dollars and cents. Gyms that only train up fighters are generally not very financially successful.

When we spar MMA with grappling, takedowns and submission involved we do it with the mindset of a competitive envrionment.... we generally tend to follow the same rule set and the same round timing. But as there is little to no developed MMA fight industry in Hong Kong we obviously are not training for competition. That doesn't make it any less MMA oriented. No matter how you capitalize the acronym.

Example:

Your style is listed as MMA... but do you train for competition? If so what comps do you compete in and what is the ratio of training to actual sanctioned competition?

In light of what you've said above... would you still consider yourself to be studying MMA?

 

I agree wholeheartedly with everything Guizzy said in his long post before BUT the one thing I don't agree with and irks me quite alot is when people say something along the lines of "time spent debating is time you could have spent training". So here is a little rant about why people shouldn't make such an argument:

I can't speak for everyone else but it seems to me if you abandon going to training to continue having a discussion about how you train then you are in dire need of assistance... as you have become a total wally. Posting on MAP is never an alternative to training its an alternative to watching TV or making a cup of tea. Reading a book, going to a bar or watching Thai Boxing fights take up time that could be spent training but my time isn't divided in such a way as I see everything as either training or a distraction in the way of training. Hence the suggestion that this particular debate is circular, going nowhere and every point has already been made 100 times is valid but the suggestion that if people had avoided this debate they could have been training longer is not. And if anyone did train less because of this thread then you sir (or madam) are a wally!

Sorry about that interlude but that particular argument just gets on my nerves. BTW Guizzy that wasnt meant to be directed particularly at you as I do wholeheartedly agree with the rest of your post and I do realise you probably just made that comment in passing Im just huffing and puffing for no particular reason. You know how it is sometimes .

 

We love ya, anyway CKava. Besides, MAP gives me something to do when I'm NOT training My kwoon isn't open 24/7, and man cannot live by Kung Fu alone!

 

Maybe we should eye gouge the maker of this thread.

 

That would be easy enough to do as poor mai thai is sports trained and would therefore be no match for that deadly street technique.