I can answer about the very low stances, it is usual when beginning to train using a very low stance (similar to a low “horse” stance in Karate) this is not because this is a favoured stance, quite the opposite really. It is used to help build up knee and hip strength, and is also good for pressing home the importance of correct foot work, as the exagerated distance between your feet will mean any mistake in angle is clearly visible to the practitioner. Such a stance would only be passed through in fighting but is used a lot in beginner lessons for the reasons stated above.
After a long stint in Shotokan Karate, I tried Tia-jutsu. Very similar to Nin-jutsu from what I hear. I is rough. After breaking my collar bone and some ribs, I left. Tai-chi is starting here in a few weeks. If I break anything in there, I am giving up on martial arts for the rest of my life.
Which seems to me to be the best reason to continue training in a grappling art until you can hold your own. People fall down in fights A LOT. Just cuz you study a standing art doesn’t mean you’ll always be standing, y’know?
Boxing/ Thai boxing gives you more bang for your buck in the beginning. In the first six months to a year you’ll come away from every class with something that you can/would/will actually use in a fight. This is in stark comparison to traditional martial arts where you learn the horse stance and punches in the first year that will teach you balance and exercise your control muscles, but not how to fight.
Plus, and most people here will probably back me on this, getting by a good jab-cross-hook combo is really hard to do without a weapon. And the side affect of getting punched in the head during training is that you learn to take punches and not let them phase you as much (and you will get punched in a real fight, guaranteed).
But don’t give up on grappling. Take seminars or a few private lessons. At least learn how to punch, kick, pinch, head-butt, bite and eye-gouge while on the ground. In a real fight you aren’t trying to pin your opponent (which is what you might be thinking). In a real ground fight you want to cause the person tons of pain so they get off you and you can get back up and run away while they lie there crying. Let the experienced grapplers pin, choke and hold the opponent until the police show up, you focus on getting yourself out of the situation.
-Tcat
If you break something doing Tai Chi, you need to see a doctor, fast.
So really, the grappling one would do in a fight is more the kind you’d do with your brother than you would in an actual martial art?
Sounds fun 
Bippy, is there any study of grappling in Bujinkan Tai-jitsu?
I am not sure what the line between grappling and not grappling is, so I’ll talk about a few parts of Bujinkan that can be considered grappling.
You will learn a lot of applications of wrist and elbow locks. You learn first to use them against an opponent who has grabbed your clothing (usually at sleeve or jacket). These locks often resolve into throwing techniques (similar to Judo, but without the emphasis on throwing the opponent onto their back).
Also taught is the understanding of your opponents balance, and how to (through encouraging them to over reach their attacks) control their balance. This will include such things as well timed strikes and pushes against the opponent’s head in order to knock them to the ground by unbalancing them rather than brute force.
A particular favorite of mine, and I believe rarely taught in other schools, is grappling with the aid of a weapon (typically a staff from 1 to 6 feet long), this gives further incite into balance, and includes many interesting and effective ways of locking opponents joints, and restricting their movements. Throws done with the aid of a stick can be excessively powerful. The skills I have learnt in this mean that I can be confident that even when I become old and need a walking stick, I will be able to protect myself quite well.
In my experience, groundwork isn’t taught very extensively within the Bujinkan, you will learn how to apply locks and lever them sufficiently to break joints, also techniques to turn an opponent over. But groundwork isn’t as important as in Judo or Brazilian Jujutsu. Typical Bujinkan groundwork would consist of keeping hold of the opponent throughout a throw, and then locking the opponents arm whilst rolling away in such a way that your body weight and momentum in the roll will cause the opponents arm to break.
There is very little in the way of wrestling against someone who takes a grip on you. Instead there is a lot of emphasis on explosive techniques to loosen a grip before it gets established, and on nasty techniques to use against an opponent who has taken a grip.
Finally there is quite a lot of learning about choking and strangling techniques, whilst standing and during ground work.
LMAO! I had that book, too. Ashida Kim, I believe it was. You can Google for him, if you ever get bored, and read up on his lack of credentials. As if you can’t tell from the book. 
My friends and I would take turns reading it to each other and mocking it.
My favorite part was the “Twin Dragon Fist” (aka Three Stooges style eye-poke). 
I got a reply from Brad Hutchinson. He mentioned a couple things you warned me to look out for!
For me the phraise “military combatives art” sounds darned dodgy, as if he is looking for survivalists to join. $85 per month for three nights a week is’t bad, less than $10 per lesson, but only if you go to every available lesson. The black belt program idea is just bullshit really, but I suppose if there is enough requests for such a thing, an instructor could invent one to make money.
Ask if as a beginner you can pay for each lesson at the time you go to the lesson, it may be worth trying a couple at $10 each, even though what he says in the quote is quite strange.
I haven’t seen any info to discredit, or give any real credit to Brad Hutchinson. He definately is a Bujinkan instructor, but he may be one of what the UK Bujinkan people might have called “them crazy survivalist Americans”.
If you can do it cheaply, try a few lessons and see how the vibe feels (are the other students psychos ? )
I think if I get involved with Bujikan, it will be through the city’s other program, the outdoor one. I didn’t really like the man the first time I met him, and I’m afraid first impressions are lasting impressions in this case…
Sounds good to me, any one giving off bad vibes is probably either a bad dude, or else even if not bad themselves are likely to attract bad dudes.
All the instructors I have met in UK have been really together people, almost always with good humor and humble natures (I studied with the top UK instructor, and several of his top students who became instructors themselves). I also found an excellent instructor here in silicon valley, but can’t get to his dojo since he had to move locations a couple of years back.
About ten years ago, at the London dojo, we used to have a Canadian black belt who would turn up infrequently as he was an airline pilot and often traveled to UK. He was an extremely skilled and very pleasant person, so there are definitely good teachers around in Canada.
B.T.W. this guy was the first person who while two step sparing with him, showed me the “invisibility” art… he had noticed that my eyes were following his hand movements too much, so with an action familiar to any practitioner of magic tricks he moved both hands into my upper right field of vision, then withdrew them very rapidly. When I bought my eyes back to my center of vision (tenths of seconds) he was nowhere to be seen. He had move down low to my side at my lower left hand quadrant. This was a very impressive demonstration, made by a large man over 6 foot tall, of how to use an opponents actions against him.
Just to clarify, by saying sounds good to me, I mean the idea of having nothing to do with this instructor that gives off bad vibes, sounds good to me.
It helps keep me going, though I signed up for a purple belt program. Knowing that I’ve made an committment is incentive to go when I’m feeling lazy, and seeing that damn purple belt with my name on it hanging on the wall reminds me that I’d like to stick around long enough to put it around my waist.
Interesting js_africanus getting the belt before you can wear it sounds a good incentive. I was really calling the ‘bullshit’ on the fact that the program had a given time period and so seemed to be saying “you will get a BB in 3 or 4 years if you pay this much, no matter what”. If instead the scheme said “If you train dilligently you will be able to gain all the skills necessary to get a black belt possibly in only three years, and this will cost you only this much per year” would sound much more honest and plausible.
My bad. Yeah, I definately agree with you on that. The three years to, in my case, purple belt is definately (and explicitly) not a guarantee. Rather it is like golfing par–I’m really not expecting it to be three years on the dot because I miss classes now and again, and so on.
Yeah, I’ve just realized it’s not 100% the fighting aspect that I’m looking for. I mean… by the time I know enough to fight effectively, (assuming sparring) I’ll probably be so familar with any art that it’ll come to some minor use.
As far as the Bujinkan is concerned, the amount of groundwork you learn, like anything else, is very dependant on your instructor. I’ve covered a quite a bit through various people. Still not to the degree of judo etc, but enough to give confidence. Again, depending on your instructor, it needn’t take too much time to learn how to defend yourself confidently. Definitely not years. But at the end of the day, not every art will cover every aspect of fighting completely, so it’s probably best to learn one style for a time to get the basics and then start to cross train.
As I see it, the best way to train effectively is to aim for an individual, rather than a style. If you can find someone with a good amount of skill in any MA, you should pop in and see what it’s about.
I find that it’s good to check on particular people from time to time, just to see where they are, and where their students are. In town we have a brazilian jui jitsu school that’s run(Albeit from a distance.) by Royce and Renzo Gracie, and another by a student of Bart Vale, so I could be confident that they’re providing top notch training. FWIW.
CBM if you don’t mind saying, where are you training in the Bujinkan?
I did most my training in and arround London, UK. With Peter King, and some of his senior students. I also trained in Silicon Valley with an instructor whose name I would have to look up to remember. Tho I havn’t trained for 2 years now, due to work commitments, lazyness, etc.
Cheers, Bippy
Copaesthetic hit the nail on the head. And CBM is right about cross training, though it is rarely good to cross train until you have achieved compidence in your first art, cross training too early can lead to confusion and make progression in the multiple arts very difficult.
I haven’t read the entire thread (bit too long to read at work), but I noticed that on the school’s site it mentions that he has studios with masters of other styles. One of them is Soke Don Angiers. I took a studio with him when I was in Akijutsu and he is amazing. You should definitly try to attend that with him if you can!