odee
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Post by odee on Oct 29, 2012 8:58:12 GMT -5
Possum I disagree with sports not being useful in the streets. I guess I made a mess of the explaination but I've seen the athletes do well in good varieties of situations and I think it's simply because they have deeper rooted ability in the techniques that they do know, they've come so close to mastering that niche that they find a way to make it work their way. There were a lot of self defense exponents who cropped up saying that mixed martial artists are jacks of all trades and masters of none then those same people would turn around and pretend boxers aren't closer to mastery of the fist than they are. How does a Boxer react to weaponry? He punches the bastard out. How does a Boxer respond to greater numbers? He punches all the bastards out.
Here's a good example of what I was saying. His skill with his fists alone was enough that it really didn't matter what they threw at him, he punched it down, he responded to new threats by doing what he does best, punching it.
Frasier. Rhee have a tendency to throw out students who interact with other martial artists. There can be many reasons for that but the story that seems the most prominently told by ex-Rhee students is that they don't want students finding out how poorly they stack up against other martial artists of the same training time.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 30, 2012 4:59:22 GMT -5
Thanks for that Odee. However I am confused which Rhee school. Is it the American or Australian based one?
The Australian based Rhee apparently teaches military style Taekwondo.....
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odee
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Post by odee on Nov 1, 2012 16:13:52 GMT -5
I've never met an American Rhee student so I wouldn't know. Personally I'm not particularly impressed by people who say their style is military, unless that practitioner has been in the military and actually used it such statements are meaningless. After all just about all martial arts were designed for military use and just about all martial art schools teach reasonable technique, what seperates good schools from bad schools is the number of students who can actually apply those techniques. Besides, the Australian Defense Force teaches Freestyle Karate, Hapkido and ADFSD which is like Krav Maga, a short-hand version of a martial art.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 2, 2012 1:35:51 GMT -5
Besides, the Australian Defense Force teaches Freestyle Karate, Hapkido and ADFSD which is like Krav Maga, a short-hand version of a martial art. WOW! That's interesting.....Hapkido...cool! Freestyle Karate is similar to Kyokushin yeah?
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odee
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Post by odee on Nov 2, 2012 6:43:58 GMT -5
Similar in that they are both Karate yes...other than that, not really. Kyokushin has several different sparring systems to safely cover as many of the elements of fighting as they can, I only understand the rules for two of their sparring methods, one is similar to Vale Tudo no-holds-barred and the other is kind of like kickboxing with dexterity gloves, I'm told throwing is emphasised more in Military Freestyle because it gives soldiers the ability to put people down or lock with them making it easier for potential back-up to shoot the enemy. Both parties tend to move too much in a punch-up for a clear shot to be made.
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Post by Possum on Nov 3, 2012 3:38:25 GMT -5
odee, sorry to wait to respond. Hurricane Sandy left me without power for a week! About the video - yes, that's a good example of a well-trained fighter defending himself. I will maintain that many pro fighters of any style could probably do what he did. But the vast majority of us martial artists - sport or otherwise - are not pros. Many of us are not even amateur ranked fighters. As a result, a pro fighter trains hard to do one thing, whereas the rest of us must contend with more rounded training over a longer period of time. And many of us will still not be able to do what this guy did, in the same circumstance. I will say, the video does teach some interesting lessons. And anyone who watches the video ought to take note, since the lessons apply regardless of your style. Take out the head; never underestimate the value of good footwork; in multiple opponent fighting, the multiple opponents will often attempt to strike simultaneously; be aware of your surroundings; real self-defense situations are sloppy affairs; use a disabled opponent as a guard against another; get off the line of attack. One punk tried to throw a kick which resulted in a well-placed face plant. So many good examples of fine self-defense skills are exhibited here it's hard not to use the video to showcase sport self-defense. But what if the attackers were a bit more skilled? Or had weapons? What if just one attacker got in a hard strike? What if the boxer's hands became too injured to use anymore? This scene is reminiscent of a brawl that had something to do with alcohol. Perpetrators intent on stealing a wallet do not attack mob-style in nice shirts like these punks did. This crowd was angry, not preying. Street predators - like animals in the wild - take their time with their mark. Determine the mark's capabilities, weaknesses, strengths, injuries. Is he armed? Where are his valuables? They'll circle, make small talk. Eventually, one in the group will attack in order to show bravado. In more organized packs, a leader will order someone to attack. Once the victim were down, then it's lights out and the mob will come in for the kill. Did you notice that once there was a KO the fight stopped? A gang mob would not have stopped their attack. They may have changed their intent (eg, from stealing a wallet to killing in revenge), but they would not have stopped. But none of that happened here. It was a free-for-all of sorts, almost as if the boxer was drunk and tried to pick a fight with someone at a party and the others tried to throw him out or something. I can't be sure of the circumstances that led to this scene. But I can say that the boxer - while demonstrating remarkably superb fighting skills - he got lucky. I cannot say how I would fare in his situation. It is possible I would have had my ass handed to me. But I train so that these people wouldn't be able to get up again. Each gets one shot, each gets placed cleanly on the ground never to get up again (at least, not without the assistance of a walker or wheelchair). Nevertheless, I enjoyed the video. I think I would rather not know such details as the catalyst for the fight, or of the others' skills. There are good examples of "how to" in this video without knowing more.
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odee
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Post by odee on Nov 3, 2012 17:51:34 GMT -5
odee, sorry to wait to respond. Hurricane Sandy left me without power for a week! That's a suck. Hope you didn't suffer too much house damage. Funny thing about Boxers and many other sports stylists is that unless they make it into the amature leagues and do reasonably well they are considered nobodies. Just like a martial artist who doesn't progress in fighting ability should never earn their next grade. A shodan of a broader style like Karate should have ability with his fists at least equal to a low ranking amature Boxer. That's a same case scenario for any stylist. Skills mean jack all when your assailants have even basic understanding or ability regarding fighting themselves. On the injured hands...have you ever heard of Dirty Boxing? As fair and honourable as an athlete may be he will encounter people in the competitions who ride the rules to the limit like me and people who downright cheat. Boxers can knee and elbow as well as any martial artist who doesn't specialise in such things and they're all the more surprising for people who believe that Boxers can't do such things. I'll also point out that if any fighter has the ability to punch someone in the throat it's a Boxer. Too true but I'll point this out, the first ambush of a mugging actually has more in common with being cornered in a competitive ring than a lot of self defense exponents would have you believe. Being stuck in a corner and having to fight your way out of a flurry of fists or feet is something Boxers, Kickboxers and Mixed Martial Artists know all too well and if you manage to beat your first attacker or attackers off, especially in an explosive method like a knock-out punch, kick or throw the rest of the group is going to hesitate on a continued assault, sometimes even give it up completely. Intimidation can have major implications in a fight. Boxers train to punch people unconcious, in spite of what he trains he only managed to KO a single person. As a Kyokushin practitioner one of my bread and butter abilities was kicking the nerve cluster above people's knees so they couldn't walk, I can break baseball bats with a single kick but in actual confrontation getting such shots in is actually pretty difficult. In all the time I competed in Karate, Kickboxing and MMA competitions I've only dropped five people with the first use of that kick, ten years of competition, over a hundred competitive fights with a seventy percent win rate and I only managed to win five fights in the first few exchanges by way of an opponent who couldn't stand up to continue the fight. I use the leg kick to illustrate my point because it isn't a common method, it's one of the easiest shots to land on the vast majority of people and one of my personal favorites. A single inch lower with those leg kicks would result in a broken knee for anyone who wears it but even considering that point and all my practice I highly doubt that I would have more than a fifty percent success rate on even a sensless drunk because people move. Do you honestly believe that just because you intend to put someone down with one strike that they'll go down? Do you think they'll care that you just tried to destroy their knee? Unless you actually manage to land these blows and accomplish their use their intent doesn't count for squatt. The fact that fights rarely go as you plan is a point known all too well by any competitive fighter, that's where it comes down to your ability to brawl until you can either create or find another opportunity, again, competitive fighters often understand brawling better than most self-defense students. I'll agree with that.
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Post by Possum on Nov 5, 2012 10:29:54 GMT -5
I don't know how to make the quotes like you did, so I'll try to get by...
In pro fighting, you are who you are when you win. When you lose, you lose your titles. This is true in many pro styles: boxing, wrestling... even sumo.
This is a big difference with TMA - you get a black belt, you get to keep it forever. And that's part of the problem, what is a black belt, really? To those who equate it with some sort of mastery or "I can beat everyone on the block", they don't understand, fighting has little to do with the black belt. Getting black belt is not like winning a title match. They are very different things.
That's a big difference between sport and TMA - the competition. And therein also lies a big difference: the reason they are there. TMA train to avoid fights, whereas sport fighters train for the opposite.
With sports, there are many planes, or concepts, to their fighting. These days, each fights under very strict rules. Partly designed for safety (eg, eye gouges), partly for fairness (eg, no steroids, weight classes), partly to allow more flashy techniques (eg, taekwondo kicks), partly for commercialism (eg, limited times, attire and advertisements, and pre-fight mongering to get more people to pay to watch). So a sports fighter has very different considerations to a fight than does a TMA.
Conversely, TMA have to concern themselves with multiple opponents; weapons (knives, sprays, and the like); fighting for other people (family); unfamiliar terrain, environment, and assailants; undefined time frames; unpredictable assailants (drugs, alcohol, steroids, psychosis, sickness, disease).
It is foolhardy to compare the two. And yet, the argument that both can successfully defend against the same self-defense conditions is just as foolhardy as saying the black belt can win matches (either against each other; each other of different styles; or of others with no TMA experience).
The sports practitioner must train to maintain strength and endurance. That's partly because of the rules: be strong enough to last through anything for 4 minutes. The TMA must be efficient and use and conserve as much energy as possible, because who they are up against may well be out of their weight class and they will not know how long the encounter will last.
In a way, using sports as a means for self-defense is like using a butter knife for unscrewing a screw: it'll work sometimes, but there will come a time when a proper set of tools is needed - either a Swiss Army knife or a toolbox.
Many, many sports practitioners - even pros - have been beaten to a pulp because they did not know how to fight for self-defense.
You are very right about ambush and being stuck in a corner. Here, both will have to rely on conditioning and luck. Often, the TMA fails miserably here. I asked this very question in Y!A, and got surprising (in)direct answers: you are done for, that your only hope is for a hail mary of sorts. A few TMA practice for conditioning - like the Iron body folks.
And you are very right about intimidation. But I will also say that someone devoid of ANY emotion can be just as intimidating to an opponent on the street. Often, perpetrators rely on intimidation in order to get what they want. One who displays no emotion at all frustrates those trying to elicit an emotional response. Granted, this idea of mushin, or oneness, is very, very hard to do and most TMA do not possess this capability. It is, nevertheless, believed to be more effective then showing more outward intimidation. I don't know the psychology one way or the other (I'm only guessing here), but by showing intimidation allows it to be measured by the opponent. Such things can show weakness, fear, injury - or even superiority. When no emotion is used, critical information is withheld. Which is better? I think it depends on the comfort level of either practitioner.
Were I to be in a confrontation, considering my current skill set, I would probably rely on a bark before I bite. And it is something I would like to have in case "no emotion" fails. But for me, the "no emotion" thing will take many more years, if ever, for me. I don't think it's in my blood :-(
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Post by jwbulldogs on Nov 5, 2012 17:50:30 GMT -5
I've been away for awhile. There has been any new topics that have caught my attention and many of the others I have gotten bored with. But I must say nicely stated Possum.
I can't speak for every TMA school, but I was taught and I teach that if there are multiple attacker you are to put your back against a wall. Therefore you are fighting out of a corner as Odee so eloquently put it. If you believe that TMA martial don't know anything about doing this you are simply fooling yourself. The back against the wall you have nowhere to run. The attacks can hit you from behind. The wall is your friend and should be used.
I can't tell you how many confrontations that i have been since I began learning martial art or prior to learning martial arts. But I can tell you this none of the after learning lasted more than a few second. Everyone prior to learning was much like my boxing training that seem to go on forever. They were swing to knock me out and i was swing hoping to knock them out. They didn't want to get hit and neither did I. As I look back on it now they were pretty pitiful.
It is also a fallacy to believe that a TMA person is looking for one hit one kill. I know that is talked about but if that were true we wold never teach a student to follow up with several techniques. We would never teach transitional flow drills. Those wouldn't be necessary. One of the biggest problems that is taught in many TMA schools is overkill. This has led to many being arrested even though they were initially using self defense.
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odee
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Post by odee on Nov 6, 2012 19:25:10 GMT -5
Good to have you back JW. I didn't say TMA students don't know being cornered I said sport stylists are more familiar with the experience, usually way more familiar for the same training time. I was taught both the skipping ahead and backing up against the wall methods but I prefer the wall, I'll put more stock in my fighting ability and endurance than my running speed and endurance any day of the week. I'm not saying all traditionalists believe blindly in 'One strike certain death' I'm trying to illustrate the point that sport stylists don't just randomly swing at each other. Sport stylists work as efficiently as the rules will allow, the reason boxing matches tend to last more than a small exchange of punches isn't the fact that they aren't fighting as efficiently as they're allowed to it's the fact that the guy they're fighting is clued in to how they move and how they fight, unless there is a massive skill difference another Karateka would likely have an answer to everything I could do when my skill-set was exclusively Kyokushin and vice-versa, same with you, replace Karate with Taekwando and the same applies to Possum.
Possum, unless you're particularly dense learning to avoid trouble takes all of two minutes. One solid beating and a side-note that you can't gauge fiighting ability by looking. I'd rather spend the rest of my time working on my ability to solve the problems I can't avoid or talk my way out of and that means the ability to fight or fight back. When I cross-train I'm not interested in how they don't fight, I'm interested in how they do fight, I want to experience how that kind of person moves and thinks I'm glad there are people who focus on the fighting element of their martial art, it means I don't have to put up with the avoidance crap that I've known since I was five and get straight to the business of fighting experience. Knives are a tool used by every culture, people don't need a lesson on how knives can be used to cut and stab. If someone has a knife I'm going to get cut or stabbed and I accept that as a fact but I'm a direct kind of person, if someone has a knife there is only one thing that will stop me taking possession of it, that person's skill with a knife is such that I can't overcome it with my skill without a knife. Nobody taught me how to take a broken bottle off the guy who tried to stab one of my fellow bar-tenders but I was taught how to knock a person out with a kick in the temple, that ability solved the problem pretty quickly. I disagree, using a combat sport in a street-fight is like using a screwdriver to undo a screw, if there is more than one screw you just keep going until the job is done, using a martial art with all it's extra elements is like using a multi-tool. Multi-tools usually have a screwdriver but they're hard to use because all the things that aren't useful in dealing with a screw make the design awkward and cumbersome.
As opposed to the the thousands of self defense 'experts' who have been chump-stomped out on the street the number of sports stylists who've suffered that fate is minuscule.
Intimidation depends on the person you're facing, someone who can fight without emotion might intimidate you or me or JW because we understand that look, we can recognise someone who means to play for keeps but by the same account all of us understand that even an emotionless killer can still be a crappy fighter and sometimes be put away with little fuss, there are also people who wouldn't know the look of mushin and wouldn't care. The kind of intimidation felt after seeing these things in action is more global. Everyone feels a twinge of fear and far more respect towards a person they have just witnessed beating someone down in epic fashion. One of the bouncers I work with is a massive New Zealand Maori, similar build to a Samoan, and quite handy with his fists but I know from experience that I can beat him, in spite of that my respect for him rose and I even felt a solid lump of fear when he lifted a person my size and threw him out the door. I know I'm fast enough to stop him doing that more often than not but seeing it happen to someone else was enough to make me imagine it happening to me. I'm never going to have mushin. I use my emotions, thoughts and feelings, I learned to channel them.
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Post by Possum on Nov 7, 2012 0:19:35 GMT -5
Odee, your passion for sport styles being adequate for SD is reassuring to me, that I haven't wasted my time in a sport MA.
But, I am getting on in my years. It's not that I'm old, but I'm coming down with old-people things, like arthritis and aches and pains that can't be explained, and which hinder my practice. I can no longer do the things I used to be able to do to defend myself. I relied in strength, speed, stamina, and a bad-ass attitude. But I'm a wreck now - and I've got a family to manage. I need to get smart about my training. I no longer want to compete - in part because I can't handle the training anymore. I want to practice for self-defense without all of the competition aspects getting in the way, like travelling, or complaints about crappy judging, and so on.
I don't wholly disagree with what you say, but it takes a special person to be able to do that at my age, condition, and lifestyle. However, I stand by my analogy of the butter knife. TMA are much more well-rounded in fighting concepts than most sport stylists. Perhaps, the agument can be made that what the sport stylists do can be much better than the average TMA doing the same thing: this is where specialty comes in - like boxing, for instance. A boxer does one thing, and does it exceptionally well. Will a TMA fare the same way? I don't think so. The TMA, then, will resort to a defense that is more efficient to them than the boxer might use. In the end, perhaps, the result could be the same. But herein lies the TMA's specialty: dealing with things the sport practitioner doesn't train for - the said multiple opponents, weapons, environment, etc.
I think the video proves a good point. The boxer's defense was nothing except typical boxer techniques. A karate-ka or taekwondo-in of similar caliber of quality as the boxer may have resorted to other techniques, with the result potentially being the same. In this case, different journeys to the same end goal.
But as it is, will the boxer prevail if the attackers were better skilled? Or armed with a weapon? I would say it all depends on the boxer's training: without the training, it's not likely he'll survive. And that is the difference with a TMA: they WILL have trained for that scenario, and the boxer WON'T have trained for it. The TMA's odds are much better.
I do admit that watching that boxer was breathtaking. Textbook perfect techniques. But i think the boxer had a lot going for him, like poor technique from his adversaries. I think their technique was so poor it didn't even help that they outnumbered the boxer 6 to 1.
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odee
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Post by odee on Nov 7, 2012 18:52:20 GMT -5
You've done competition Possum, you've probably got what a person needs from it and moved on. My issue is with people who haven't done it at all or who have tried it, lost badly and hunted for reasons to put it down as pointlessness. I don't believe competition is something for a whole life but I do believe it is something martial artists should have a real crack at if they truly want to become capable. There are so many street relevant things to find in competition that often just don't exist or would never be tolerated in a good dojo. Rudeness, bullying, rule bending, cheating, complaints, threats, unfairness, pettiness, arrogance, bad-ass attitudes and the list goes on. A lot of these things are the reasons fights break out on the street. Crappy judging is a good one, I stated once on Yahoo that I made a bad judgement call when I stepped in to stop a mugging and punched out the victim. I've seen others make bad judgements as well, three bouncers and I watched a bully victim turn around and give his bully a good thrashing, a patron only saw the thrashing and king hit the bully victim. Bad or biased judges are a good lesson for people to learn.
If the attackers were better skilled any martial artist would struggle. That's a truth of what we do - We revolve around skill and ability and to work efficiently we need to be far more skilled and able than what gets thrown our way. This is the main reason I believe so passionately in competition, more often than not you are pitted against people who possess at least your skill and ability so you're forced to find new ways to come out on top in those situations, you have to dig deeper and hunt for the extra something to make that difference, that's the reason a lot of TMA students come unstuck in their first competition, technique and rules have nothing to do with it, the simple fact is their opponent usually has a more practiced ability to dig up the difference. I believe that if someone had a knife the Boxer probably would have been cut or stabbed, I'd say the same for anybody no matter what martial art they practiced but I'd also believe that none of the wounds recieved by the Boxer would be fatal in the same way that not one decent blow was landed on him. The Boxer would have put the knife weilder down the same way he punched down every other thing they threw at him. A knife is a definite factor in a fight but it doesn't add anything by way of reach or speed the way a gun, sword or even a broomstick might. I've been trained to deal with guns through Karate but since I have never had a real, loaded gun pointed at me by someone who might or might not have the intention of shooting people I have absolutely no idea how I would respond, neither does anyone else who has never had one pointed at them. I don't care how many hours a person has spent relieving people of wooden guns, that all becomes irrelevant when someone is toting the real thing and considering who to shoot first, unless they're dumb enough to jam it straight into your potential removal area you're going to stick your hands in the air for fear of getting yourself or more terrifying still, someone else shot. Hundreds of hours just equated to nothing. By the same logic he could jam it into your removal area and you might give relieving it a crack, in the same way that a Boxer might give braining him a go, a Judoka might consider throwing him and a BJJ student might try to control the gun with an arm, wrist or elbow lock. All these solutions have the potential to work or go horribly wrong.
The Boxer probably hasn't trained for multiple person situations but through his Boxing training he has developed every single trait needed for a multiple person situation, speed to hit fast, strength to hit hard, skill to hit what he wants to hit, skill to block or dodge incoming objects, endurance to keep hitting and moving and the ability to control a striking range that suited him.
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