I think the above comment is what drew the criticism. Most decent real punches are chambered because they involve holding on to the arm or body of the guy you are hitting - that is the purpose of chambering the arm. If you aren't doing that then you keep the arm up by the head (which you do see in a few Kata (Sochin). I used to think Horse stance was duff until I started applying many of my close range techniques in Karate in offine situations - then I found that it was a position I most commonly went into, with my thigh touching the other guy and my groin in no position to hit. But I wouldn't get hung up to much over stances, they are just a teaching tool for weight distribution - I don't even teach them per se any more myself in my karate style.
You are totally correct. Nascar drivers need to get in the car and drive. THAT IS THEIR JOB. They get paid money to do it PROFESSIONALLY. If a guy is going to fight in the UFC his training better be different than my training. Although they still don't go 100% every practice because, like any sport, the object is to arrive healthy to match. If you watch Pride veterans Shogun and Silva training their sparring is light to medium contact. Plus it is obvious they are at the verge of total physical exhaustion...a good portion of their practice is probably pure conditioning. Now lets compare that to a recreational martial artist. For my own training I do the warm up with conditioning like pushups and situps. This is followed by traditional hand-techniques (in many ways more warm up). Then I do the traditional kata/hyungs. By the time I'm done with them I'm sweating profusely and fully warmed up. Next we do kicking drills (including jumping kicking drills). At this point my heart-rate gets to the point where I have a good cardiovascular burn. We end with free-sparring (light contact) and bag work (including boxing style combos). A guy in the class who does triathalons and monitors his heart says the entire workout is the equivalent of running 5 to 6 miles for him. A couple nights a week I follow it with a two hour grappling class. Is that hardcore? Probably not enough for some people. It certainly isn't up to the level of a professional fighter. But then my job, the one I make a living at and feed my family with, is not in the martial arts (despite also being a TKD teacher). I work full time during the day. To equate me to a professional NASCAR driver is totally wrong. Oh yes and my wife does it as well. She loves kata/hyungs and doing them keeps her fit. And she also enjoys sparring with me light touch (and everyone else as well). But I outweigh her by 80 pounds or so. If we were to go full contact she wouldn't be able to do it with me. There is a self-defense element to the training of course. We've had students, including teenage girls, that have knocked an attacker down with a kick and ran like heck. But it is only one element of the greater picture of why most people do it...the main one being to encouraged continued health through exercise.
Ever since Choi died all the in-fighting has been slowly but surely destroying the ITF as a whole. Part of the reason I left...
Yes, they do. A driver needs to know where they are going to be racing. Obviously, the top guys cant spend all year walking or driving around a particular track so they know the best exit speeds for corners or the best braking and gearing points for one particular race of the season. However, they can sit in front of Gran Tourismo in their hotel room in the middle of the night and go round the circuit in an equivilent car with similar handling so they can get straight into the setting up and racing when they show up rather than having to learn their way around the circuit. To put that into an MA sense, a fighter may watch his next opponent's fights on TV or DVD before he actually fights. Why? So he can plan his own fight and gear his own training accordingly. That way he goes into the fight knowing his opponents weaker areas and doesnt have to work it out while being clouted. We were discussing the car vs game stuff in a lecture yesterday so I just had to respond
I knew there was a reason i enjoyed your session at the meet so much This is what i've found in my (much lesser) experience as well , the problem we seem to face is that everybody thinks that(certainley with shotokan) we only fight using these "impracticle" front/horse stances etc when they are either transitionary , or the stance is used as an attack itself , shotokan , and all karate , has all the same weapons as every other striking art , and a fair bit of the grappling as well , it's just that we tend not to train with the sameferocity or intention as say muay tai , as has been mentioned karate is a much longer journey than some other styles , this doesn't make it any worse , only different.
Indeed, the training regimes of someone wanting to defend themeselves and someone working towards a fighting competition will be different in technique, philosophy and physical demand. I learnt a while ago that training to exhaustion is not a good idea if you are going to a night club afterwards. :cry: The degree of ferocity in our attacks varies from club to club and scenario to scenario. I've seen many applications that have had me crying with laughter, but I've also demonstrated many applications that in certain arenas would have people crying for the police. Unfortunately Karate has suffered a great deal from the teaching by rote and teaching by achieving the perfect picture from a book method. This has resulted in moves being frozen in static positions, turning a ball that should roll into a cube that has to be forcibly pushed if you will.
If you read the last part of my post I said Nascar drivers do not go 100% all the time as this is a waste of car and tires. The NASCAR driver analogy is not accurate, you are correct. By the way I like your training. Its what karate should be. Starting with kata and kihon to warm up, doing pad work and sparring. This is how I wish all karate is but you must agree that most of it isn't. But even to be a regular driver, you must get inside your Neon (Mopar or no car!) once in a while to make sure you really can drive. Again if you read the last part of my post I said Nascar drivers do not race all the time. This is a dangerous over use of a car and a waste of tires. Not to mention the fatigue on the driver. The point I wanted to make is that people shopuld try to train in alive manner (sparring) and in order to at least adequately defend your self including being able to escape you should be in at least okay physical condition (pad work, calisthenics, etc.) I like your training and agree with what you say. I am not trying to say everyone needs to train to fight in the K1. But karate for the most part needs to move forward. The point I was trying to make is that most karate needs to include more physical training and and some form of free sparring. That or we can all just give up and do Wushu.
Karate is my base art that I still practice and refer all my subsequent training to. I still read books on Karate, watch DVD's on karate and occaisionally get back to my old club and teach karate. My own opinion on the future of the art? The likes of Iain Abernathy (mentioned earlier), Russel Stutely even Geoff Thompson is an old Karate-ka. These guys are bringing the Martial side of the art to the forefront, making karate a respected system standing alongside all the "RBSD" systems such as Krav Maga and the like. The sporting side of karate I can't comment on as I've been away too long. Somebody (I'm not gonna trawl back to find out who) made a point that the american style points fighting is bo***cks, I strongly agree! The way we fought in karate competitions was with good contact to the body, light to the head, minimal to the face. Only a strike that would actually do damage would work. The modern kickboxing style points fighting is more flash than anything else. There of course are a vast amount of familly Karate schools. Yes you could equate them to a Tai-Bo class, but at least it gets kids off the streets and away from the Playstation. So the future of the art looks ok. Although it may continue as three seperate entities, Traditional (the way most people train), Reality (a term I hate but it works for GT and Abernathy) and sport. I can't say this style will succeed where others will fail, as all styles are part of the one system, but with different emphasis.
I agree with you that bag work is crucial. We have 6 hanging heavy bags so that we can incorporate bag work. Now in a large class the bag works becomes fairly minor (5 sets of the basic kicks, plus two sets of five basic hand combos). If there is time we do some free sparring with the bags. But I don't think of our TKD/karate club as all that different than what is out there. Yes we have an outside grappling program taught by someone else, but frankly few people take advantage of it. I'm always there and a few of the more athletic young guys, but few people in the group ever show up. So they remain totally ignorant to grappling. But I wanted to make sure that it was a separate program that had its own hours because I didn't want to become one of those schools that claims they teach five different martial arts in one class and are equally crappy in all of them. We have the mix of kids, older folks, and young studs. I believe in a class martial arts that is non-exclusive and open to everyone. I started at 10 after all and if martial arts was only for tough guys who wanted to do K-1 training I wouldn't have been able to do it. Personally I like training with that 60 year old woman who says, "I haven't jumped since I was in gradeschool. My body hasn't done this in years." What does sparring with a woman like this do for me personally? It really doesn't make me any better, of course. I'm 35 and a decent athlete who has been doing this for over 20 years (note not a worldclass athlete like Mirko Crocop!!! ). But it isn't always about me...and someday I'll be 60 and I want to keep being able to work out. My point is I don't think Karate or Karate based styles (like our style) are necessarily broken. In my time I've trained with plenty of karate guys (mostly guys on exchange programs from Europe and looking for a place to work out) and I have usually been very impressed with their technique and athletic ability. Some slight tweaking and crosstraining...yes. But I hate to see the martial arts of my youth, where people from different generations worked out alongside each other, dropped in favor of this MMA fad. Ha ha...sorry for the long ramble.
Chamebred ounches dont work hmm. The whole point of the hip punch in karate IS for it to be super powerful. Due to Okinawas treaty thing saying they couldn't have weapons they had to fight somehow. If i have read correctly the main karate punch was designed to damage the bamboo armour lots of common soldiers wore and go through it if necessary... its not designed to be fast or tricky or dodgey or anything like a boxing punch purely because that absoloutely was not its purpose!!
oh no, why, why, why do you beleive this, your whole post (the count) is wrong, punches have never and will never go through armour and they were never desighned to do so....what youve heard is a lie and whoever told you you should punch verry hard in the face(not the armour )
Armour made out of BAMBOO, doss. And yeh, if you can think of any other common sensical reason for the punches being executed as they are (compare to the evolution of Kung Fu where the strikes are designed to hit the body effectively unarmoured).
Ever read "Okinawan Karate" by Mark Bishop? It pretty much debunks much of the myth here that you're referring to. The hip punch in karate is not for breaking through bamboo armor. Most CMA employ a similar punching method in one shape or form. Weapons were not banned, contrary to popular belief.
I want you to stand in front of a boxer (even with a huge 16 oz glove) and let him throw a right cross right in your face. Then tell me "tricky" it was.
It seemed as though he was implying boxing punches have no power behind them. At least not enough power to punch through "bamboo armor." Calling punches "tricky" or "dodgey" seems to imply boxing punches have no "oomph" behind them, by allowing himself to experience a right cross to the face from a practicing boxer (with a 16 oz glove and headgear on), The Count could clearly see that this is not the case. My point is that The Count does not appear to have a clear understanding of the physics behind boxing punches. Do you understand?
What I would like to see is someone actually try and reverse punch their way through someone wearing bamboo armor. I'd also like to see Okinawan bamboo armor. Cuz I've looked for it, and I haven't found it. The whole thing is just another karate legend, right up their with the ancient form of TKD being used to flying crescent kick people off of horses.
Boxer, right cross, let me see thats using what, deltoids, triceps and maybe some pectoral muscle yeh? Without at 16oz glvoe thats a bit nasty. Hip punch, using deltoids pectorals, abdominals, stepping in using your full bodyweight on a centre line focused on a single point of impact. Didn't say boxing punches had no power, on the contrary they do, just not as much power in some cases. Also using a decent hip punch someone lighter built can potentially punch harder than a boxer using some techniques. Like the Wing Chun punches vs those that use the abdominals for extra power. Punching through bamboo.. those mental TKD'ers punch through boards... whats the diff
Actually boxers use their hips as well as their shoulders when employing punches like crosses, they also lean slightly into the punch transfering even more power. They use more of their body in a more biomechanically sound way than karateka in a large number of their punches. I have read one or two studies that actually measured impact of punches which showed that the boxing punches were actually more powerful, unfortunately I can't think of ther source right now (we are going back about 5 years at least) but I'm sure that a net trawl would come up with them. I can remember wearing bamboo vests against reverse punches about 11 years ago in a Shotokan dojo, just standing there and taking it (it was a psychological exercise for the puncher to train them to actually hit a human for real - only teh Dan grades took the hits). It didn't penetrate the armour at all (not enough speed to overcome the resilience of the bamboo fibres plus the shock absobtion of the body behind them), just hurt. The mae geri attacks were a bit much though.
