Martial Arts Thread

Because I am a slow poke seconding Turnbull as a good source. You will be hard pressed to find anyone better.

Stephen Turnbull is...polarizing in the historian circles and occasionally downright reviled. Mentioning him often starts flame wars of epic proportions.

Antony Cummins is good, if you're interested in a more archeological method of examining the ninja and samurai. He works only with contemporary sources such as the manuals written in the 16th and 17th century and other direct sources. This does make him a bit...dogmatic since there's no direct evidence of something he simply ignores it, so legends and oral tradition means nothing unless it lines up with something else..

EDIT: Antony also suffers from not really speaking Japanese (translation is handled by Yoshie Minami) and not necessarily understanding that martial traditions can often have periods where they disappear completely from historical record (kept secret due to military reasons or otherwise) and pops up later. He's very literal minded.

edited 6th Aug '16 10:44:59 AM by TerminusEst

First I heard of Turnbull being controversial to the point of flame wars. Might be a better discussion for the history thread though.

Benefits of wrestling.

Well, not really, but you do see some applications here and there.

The only cards you need are the basics of CQC

"I'm stunned, Boss. I am glad we are the same side."

Hey guys, I have a big question to ask.

I've decided to learn Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. I've done some judo and wrestling, and figured that grappling martial arts suit me pretty well.

Here comes the question: How do I find the right gym?

I'm primarily looking for the gyms that are cheap within reasonable distance from where I love, because what good is a gym if I can't go there?

Also, while I would like to also learn other martial arts like boxing or muay thai, just BJJ will do for me. So I don't necessarily want to go to a MMA gym to learn BJJ, because they tend to be tad bit more expensive.

I'd most likely to get in shape, get belts (because I'm going to be honest, if I get purple belt or above that would be one hell of an ego boost), go to competition (I have no interest in pursuing a career in that, of course), and maybe get some martial art skills that can be applicable to self defense.

Is it possible to learn a martial art (under an instructor of course) within six to eight months?

edited 13th Aug '16 2:01:50 PM by GAP

Yep. I got my Yellow belt in Shotokan-ryu in about the outer edge of that time frame, with Green coming a bit later.

So I was wrong about that training thing. I suppose the whole training under an instructor and become a somewhat good at martial arts in a few months is a truth in television.

In my case I did several training sessions a week as I was rather keen, so I picked up stuff faster than if I had just done it once a week or something like that.

Maybe try to find a school where the instructors are clear about their credentials. Their rank will affect pricing and availability. Brown and black belts are obviously going to come at a premium. There's nothing wrong with training under a purple belt or even a blue belt. Many successful instructors are below brown, and BJJ is generally good at maintaining quality control with their rank progression. However, the popularity of the style is causing a lot of people to exaggerate or totally lie about their training.

It depends on the system and your initial skill level. For example, MMA owes part of its popularity to the fact that many of its exponents are fairly easy to figure out. It's not uncommon for an average person with a decent intellect to get comfortable with the fundamentals of boxing or muay Thai in about 3 to 6 months of solid training. Under a jiujitsu school, you can figure about basic grappling in less than a year, but you're not going to be armbarring and choking people left and right.

Less competition-oriented and more traditional systems take more time, but it depends on what you want out of it. Chen style Taijiquan takes decades to greatly harness, such that it understandably scares away many people. I like Shotokan karate. However, despite having a fairly good payoff (great footwork and economy of motion), it's a technically demanding martial art. Frequent hard and semi-hard sparring can help with the learning process, which is why I suspect many traditional martial artists overly complicate things by not offering direct neural feedback (again, mitts, heavy bags, speed bags, padded sparring gear, etc.). This isn't to say that you should go to a macho fight club that goes hard all the time, but even delicate-to-moderate repeated contact with other human beings will help you learn much faster. You'd be surprised how many martial arts instructors don't realize this.

I think I learned better body mechanics from deep study in Shotokan karate and judo, but I picked up kenpo karate a bit faster because it's a somewhat simpler system (albeit too watered down in some areas) that makes you a reasonable jack of all trades. More traditional styles of karate and judo are a bit counter-intuitive at times, and some of the instructors really don't explain themselves very well partly due to organizational insularity. Though I think this says less about inherent flaws in traditional martial arts and more about the kind of people who manage those arts.

If I had to throw someone into the basics of fighting in a short period of time, I'd point them to boxing and wrestling. In fact, the US Army Combatives system and MCMAP are really good examples of pre-packaged "TV dinner" martial arts that are easy to intellectually digest on the go.

edited 16th Aug '16 11:05:46 AM by Aprilla

How Taekondo in the 2016 Olympics has changed

After some problems with the events in 2008 several changes were made. There is now electronic scoring equipment with strike points for the head and chest, refs have gear that allows them to apply penalties and award extra points for technical strikes such as round house kicks to the head, and they changed competition area from a square to an octagon to eliminate corners.

edited 16th Aug '16 6:24:59 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Your words of wisdom are always appreciated.

Agreed.

Honestly, my belief is that if you want to learn how to fight, you might want to choose a martial art that is utilized in either MMA or military/law enforcement organizations outside of the original country (Korean police learn TKD, and I believe I made my point on its practicality very clear).

Give award higher points for punches and allow punch to the face, then I might actually start caring about TKD again.

-sighs- I have a black belt in TKD, but now I really wish that I spent that time and money and judo instead.

Minor correction it is supposed to read now not no for new electric scoring equipment.

Several full-contact fighters have incorporated taekwondo techniques in their repertoire with moderate success. Taekwondo has limitations like any other style, but I find that, again, the problem lies less with limitations in the repertoire and more with practitioners not making particularly good use of that repertoire.

Michael Brock has a YouTube channel with some really good taekwondo tutorials. He's enjoyed a decent amateur career in muay Thai, having transitioned from taekwondo after noting similarities in the kicks. For example, taekwondo has side kicks and hook kicks that are taken for granted.

You would know better than me, but I think taekwondo is pretty good. It's just that a lot of taekwondo people aren't encouraged to think critically about what they're learning. Many of the kicks, footwork and even some of the punches aren't explored enough.

EDIT: I've sparred with some extremely competent taekwondo practitioners, but as for the average practitioner? You can tell they didn't get their bang for their buck.

edited 16th Aug '16 7:30:41 PM by Aprilla

This is pretty much what it all brings down to, at least to me.

Sure, every martial art will make you a badass if you train long enough, but some martial arts are just so much more cost-effective, both in time and money.

In another topic, this is the best goddamn counter I've ever seen.◊

Quite a few classical martial arts are meant to be taught as part of a total education over many years. Live combat would come later, which would teach the lessons you can't learn otherwise (if at all).

Random question for a story I'm writing.

Would it be possible for an athlete to compete in both wrestling (Greco-Roman, to be specific) and boxing in the Olympics?

Never bring a sword to a fistfight.

Any idea what game that is? As the balancing is screwed.

Hey, I figured this was the perfect place to bring this up.

I belong to a group of Tropers that watches movies in a chat room every night (at 8 PM Eastern US time), and riffs on them in a chatroom.

The part that concerns this topic, is that every Friday, the movie is a martial arts film. Every Friday is "Kung Fu Friday" (regardless of the martial art in question), and typically, 45 minutes before the movie starts, we have a pre-show that tends to mix Godfrey Ho goodness with videos of bad dubbing.

Tonight, the main feature is a Godfrey Ho film, so the legend himself is well represented.

If you'd like to drop by, check out the link in my sig (may want to jump to the end of the thread to see the most recent postings), and it'll explain all. You can simply visit the chatroom at any time, so you don't need to worry about being late or early, or leaving early.

I figured some of you might enjoy this activity.

A look at the techniques described in the Bubishi, with an intro by Patrick Mc Carthy.

Now I am wondering if the Corps MCMAP has adopted part of that into its program. Some of that looks really familiar.

All the techniques can be found in karate and many other martial arts, so I wouldn't be surprised. Trying to achieve a certain result guides people down certain paths.