Tomcat-is the kickboxing gym you work out at in the Old Town, with a big picture of Mike Tyson up on the wall? I’m thinking if you’re kickboxing in Prague I may have worked out at your gym.
ICP,
One touch kill techniques are a load of crap.
I’m not saying that it isn’t possible. It’s just highly improbable that the opportunity to effectively execute one of these techniques will arise.
Also the idea that an untrained, (or book-learned), individual can count on being able to create the opportunity to effectively use one of these techniques in a genuine self defense situation is for the overly gullible.
If you don’t have the basics down about how to generate force, create an opening and how to take a punch all of the anatomical knowledge in the world is worthless.
i’ll say it again.
Re: the use of martial arts in a fight
It doesn’t matter what you know;
it doesn’t matter what you say;
it doesn’t matter what you think;
it only matters what you do.
After you have a solid foundation in how to execute the basics I’d say that a good course of study in human anatomy would do anyone some good. An atlas of human anatomy and a book on physiology will provide more reliable insight and inspiration than some mail order BS.
Look…all I want to know is how to rupture a man’s internal organs with my Chi. Is that too much to ask?
Anyhow, most martial arts is BS anyway, unless of course someone attacks you stiff-armed with a banana or pointy-stick.
ICP quick note as you said you are 16, are you expecting to go to college after school? If so college is a great place to learn martial arts.
Oh yes martial artists do read those books you refer to and the books by Ashida Kim, but only as a joke to laugh at how stupid and unrealistic they are, sorry.
Cheers, Bippy
I wish I could disagree with you. However, from what I’ve seen in the US, a large number of the people who have black belts that I’ve met are idiots. Many of them have never been involved in a real fight. Many of them have never been hit by someone who was trying to do them harm. Many of them don’t have the abs that are needed to take a punch nor the lungs to have more than a few seconds of fight in them. Many of them… Well anyway, you get the point.
You only get better at whatever you practice. If your practice is incomplete then your skills are incomplete.
SimonX- I don’t think it has anything to do with Martial Arts in the US. I know of many people that are excellent Martial Artists, in excellent physical shape. All of them are Americans.
I think a lot of it has to do with the styles, and the way the school is marketed.
I, like EnderW, took Kuk Sool Won for years. My instructor left, and his school was taken over by a new teacher.
1st thing the new teacher did was hike prices and get everyone into contracts. Then he started changing the style, adding things that weren’t part of the Kuk Sool Won syllabus.
Then he started running “Kardio Kickboxing” classes, and dropped the Kuk Sool Won name entirely. I left shortly thereafter.
The new teacher was teaching to make money. Nothing else.
Make sure you avoid places that “guarantee” a black belt in a certain amount of time. Avoid places (IMHO) that have a bunch of stuff to sell you… special uniforms, lots of patches that don’t actually mean anything. Generic T-shirts for the art… “KARATE!!” on the shirt, as opposed to the schools name. Mugs. Keychains. Etc.
pravnik, where in Old Town?
Here’s mygym. The black guy in the photo section is my friend Rory, he started the gym with another guy a long time ago, and they had a different location between Dlouha and the river. Now it is near Andel.
I know of one kickbox gym on Tynska that is above a climbing gym (Ants Climb or ???). It caters mainly to police…
-Tcat
“Anyhow, most martial arts is BS anyway, unless of course someone attacks you stiff-armed with a banana or pointy-stick.”
msmith537 -
I’m trying to think if being attacked with a pool cue falls into the pointy stick category…
I was breaking up a fight in a bar and this patron spun around with a pool cue and tried to put (the butt end) through my midsection with considerable force.
I think that my training, quick reflexes, and the fact I was doing 300 situps a day kept me from being seriously injured. I was even able to tell the guy to hand over the cue before he really pissed me off… which he did. There was no need for me to take any other action.
Or then there was the time we were attacked when we were leaving a club and three guys decided to go after my wife and a friend… I took two of them out in less time than it took to write the preceding paragraphs (I also type fast). The third guy had an ephiphany and became a pacifist when he saw one of his friends lying unconcious on the pavement and the other rolling around and screaming like a little girl from a little leg injury I had inflicted. I gave him the option to walk away which he gladly accepted.
ICP - There really is no substitute for practice; when these events happened I would estimate that I had logged more than ten thousand hours of training… not reading.
Tristan,
First, let say that I offer my apolopgies to any sincere martial artists who took offence at what I was saying.
I think that msmith was trying to troll.
Second, it may or may not have anything to do with the US. What I meant by saying “from what I’ve seen in the US” was that my experience was limited to the US.
I also know a large number of martial artists who are sincere.
I’ve been to places where these people, sincere ones, congregate so my experience is probably not typical of the average person.
I suspect though, that for every one who does what I would call a good job of training there are ten to twenty people who don’t. It seems entirely possible to me that someone outside of the field could run into a preponderence of people who train only at the mouth. This, coupled with the large number of BS ads in the back of MA mags and the number of teachers I met who make some outrageous claims gives me sense of sympathy with someone who thinks that most MA are BS.
I once heard a reputable instructor make the claim that he could step away from his own shadow! I told him I’d appreciate being shown that technique. Lessons on that were never forthcoming.
Not at all, as i will explain in a moment.
Ah…when you have become a true master…and so on…
Seriously though. I don’t mean to imply that there is no benefit studying a martial art. What I have a problem with is the Tiger Schulman/Karate Kid/housekeys to the face mentality where a couple weeks of training and positive thinking will produce a karate champ who can kick ass like the son of Chuck Norris. Perhaps I should have made a distinction between studying a couple months of Tai Kwan Do at the family dojo vs putting in 10,000 hours of hard core full contact sparing.
IMHO, all the fancy Karate techniques in the world are useless unless you also have the strength, speed and stamina.
(really…how the hell could skinny Daniel-san beat the bigger Johnny who has been studying full-contact Karate for years to Daniels 4 weeks of wax-on wax-off?)
Because Daniel knew how to fight, whereas Johnny had been taught how to fight dirty. Daniel took advantage of this obvious flaw in Johnny’s teaching and floored him.
It really isn’t that difficult. Back when I weighed, soaking wet, 90 lbs, and was 5’3 or so, I was attacked by a guy probable 5’8, 160. He tried to throw me into a bush … ass into the top of the bush.
He went in ass-first. Didn’t bother me for a while after that.
Size need have no bearing. I think there are maybe a half-dozen people on the planet who could have had any shot whatsoever at Bruce Lee, who was not very big at all. And strength is not necessarily evident in size. Bruce Lee was very strong and also fairly wiry.
Strenth and size are meaningless, in this sort of confrontation. A smaller person will win, if they are trained right, against a larger person.
Johnny, of Cobra Kai, was doing full contact sparring, but that seems to be about it. He lacked focus, and temper. He may have been a decent fighter, but Daniel was being truly TRAINED, if you can grok the difference.
Daniels moves had become instinctive and flowing, a new, natural part of who he was. Johnny could fight, but it wasn’t smooth, and it certainly wasn’t a learned reflex.
Bruce Lee is a movie star. It is hype to think that he is as great of a fighter as his publicist said he was. He was not one of a select “half-dozen people on the planet” in terms of fighting prowess.
As far as his JKD philosophy/style- it is old hat too. The Chin Wu academy already figured this out and got together diffierent masters to develop a curriculum. Take a look:
There are a number of other web site out there about Chin Wu/
Chin Woo. There are even places in the US where you can study this curriculum. I did. I studied under Master Lee Kwong Ming AKA Master Johnny Lee.
What you saw were MOVIES. They are not real.
Karate Kid is a MOVIE. It is not real.
Strength and size are not meaningless in a physical confrontation. They have real meaning in a physical confrontation. ALL physical things do. Washing some old guy’ cars is not being “trained right.”
What msmith seems to be talking about is the UNREALISTIC ideas that come from so many MA movies. Most of them center around the idea that in just a few weeks, (some even fewer), you can be trained to take on “The Champ” who has been training for years.
Unless “The Champ” is a chump who has been training horribly wrong and only fighting other chumps who are even bigger losers than himself, IT AIN’T GONNA HAPPEN. If “The Champ” is that kind of a chump, who cares if you beat him?
The ONLY way that something can become “instinctive and flowing, a new, natural part” is from LOTS of practice. Lots of practice of the right things in the right way. Well, there is another way I forgot to mention- lots and lots more practice of the right things in the right way. The only way that something can become “instinctive and flowing, a new, natural part” without lots and lots of practice and practice and practice is to be a FICTIONAL character in a MOVIE.
:smack:
SimonX- I am well aware of the cheesyness of the movie. I’m not saying “Wax On Wax Off” are right and proper martial arts training methods.
What I was saying was that the differences in training and the reasoning behind training can make all the difference in a conflict.
I am out of shape and haven’t trained in several years. I’m sure at this point that a mid-level Kuk Sool Won person could beat me in a sparring match, despite my brown belt and 6 years of training in that style.
However, when I was training and in shape, I was regularly used to demonstrate that a smaller opponent, with training, can defeat a larger one with none.
Bruce Lee, according to many accounts, also used to get in fights on a regular basis with the extras on his movie sets in Hong Kong. This fits in with everything I’ve heard about the early history of Modern Martial Arts. Bruce won his fights, usually very very quickly.
summary:
*Karate Kid fake.
Training needed.
Training matters.
Bruce Lee really was the man. *
Tristan,
My apologies. I thought you meant something else.
I took the statement about strength and size being meaningless too literally I guess. I know that training can be an important element in overcoming physical disadvantages. I just wouldn’t’ve thought to call strength and size “meaningless.”
I agree that differences in training can make a difference in a conflict. But…
What’s the phrase “reasoning behind training” mean? And how would it make a difference beyond or other than what the differences in training would make?
Bruce Lee doesn’t look very impressive in his movies. If he was that good, then with the camera’s help and willing participants he shopuld’ve looked magnificent.
If he was getting into fights on a “regular basis” he was picking them.
The Bruce Lee legend is Hollywood hype.
I think Chuck Zito kicking Van Dammes ass in a strip club is a perfect example how big, strong and tough beats out pretty fighting style. Training and skill can certainly help even the odds, but there is a reason boxers and wrestlers are divided by weight class.
summary:
Studying martial arts is not an asskicking-proof vest. If you are not strong and powerful with your technique or learn a lot of useless techniques (heel to the instep) you’ll probably get really badly hurt in a real fight.
msmith
It always come back to practice for me. You get better at what you practice. If you don’t try things out full speed and, yes, sometimes for real, you’re not really getting a martial education. Take aerobics and read magazines.
I’m in favor of experienced, strong, tough with a realistic fighting style opposed to big, strong and tough. I’m not as impressed with big as these other qualities since the real world has no rules nor a convenient regular ring or mat to engage in your “activity” on. Not that big is always a hindrance. I think that often it helps. But the qualities I mentioned always help.
Experience is the quality I’d choose above all these others, then tough, then technique, then strength. A sincere MA practice will develop all of these qualities.
I guess we are in agreement then, Grasshopper. Except that I don’t think you can neglect any of the areas you mentioned. I would say mental “toughness” comes first. That gives you the desire and discipline to train hard. Then you build physical strength and technique. Finally, experience comes over time.
Then again, I can barely get myself to the gym these days so I probably don’t know what I’m talking about.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by msmith537 *
**I think Chuck Zito kicking Van Dammes ass in a strip club is a perfect example how big, strong and tough beats out pretty fighting style. Training and skill can certainly help even the odds, but there is a reason boxers and wrestlers are divided by weight class.
IIRC, Zito is a multiple black-belt holder, professional bodyguard/heavy, holds some high national office in the Hell’s Angels, and has spent some time in prison.
Without knowing the guy personally, I couldn’t make the call as to which might have factored higher in that fight.
Not to mention JCVD’s rep as an all-around wuss…and he was drunk.
Zito is relatively clean, as far as I have heard, while Van Damme is a drunk and a cokehead. Plays hell on the reflexes and judgement