Martial arts discussion thread

[GoktimusPrime]

Female runner successfully defends herself from attempted rapist after only 3 weeks of self defence training

This is what proper martial arts training should look like. Each class should teach you something new and you should feel that you are making progress, if not then you're just wasting your time and money (which is what was happening at my previous Tai Chi class). Your training should be preparing you to defend yourself today, not tomorrow.

[GoktimusPrime]

Okay, I'm definitely glad that I switched style/classes as this morning my Bagua teacher told me that from next week he wants to start running a "Push Hands club" for Tai Chi & Bagua students, which he describes as being more "rough and tumble" than our standard training. We also did pairwork today, something that never happened in the Tai Chi class, no matter how many times I asked/suggested it.

And the funny thing is that the Tai Chi class is explicitly marketed as teaching self defence whereas the Bagua class isn't, but the Bagua teacher understands that by learning how to use Bagua in real life it just helps the students to understand the movements a whole lot better. Because a lot of other martial arts classes that don't adequately teach apps are more prone to producing students who just don't understand the art properly. At most they can perform it at demonstrations (like memorising moves to a dance) or perhaps use it in restrictive competition fights, but not at the level where they can use it in real life.

Last week I caught up with a friend who I haven't seen in years. He's been doing MMA and he told me that his school solely focus on techniques for real life applications, nothing else, not even competitions. It's the first time that I've heard to an MMA school with such a primary focus on being so practical! This has made me further appreciate that it's the method of teaching that matters so much more than what style you do. I think that if you can find a good teacher of a style that works for you, then stick with that teacher.

The question that we really should be focusing on isn't so much what style we do, but whether or not we can fight (i.e. defend ourselves) with it. I'd rather have function over form than form over function. Not saying that form isn't important, but the form should be supporting the function of the fight, not vice versa.

[GoktimusPrime]

Smart alec bodybuilder gets pwned by female Juujutsu fighter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzXQGMqY8_E

[GoktimusPrime]

Navy SEAL on real martial arts

A really interesting video where a Navy SEAL offers his opinion on self defence and martial arts, and I find myself generally agreeing with the core of what he's saying. But just to expand on this...

• He's absolutely right in saying that owning and carrying a gun is more likely to be a better form of self defence than wasting your time and money in martial arts - this was the conclusion reached by Penn & Teller's BS episode debunking martial arts. Having said that, this advice is obviously not applicable in Australia since we (thankfully) don't have a highly armed civilian population and also it is ILLEGAL for us to do so. But I take his point, no amount of martial art skill can ever defeat a gun, it's a machine weapon.

• Yep, totally agree with him about the principal (and principle!) importance of learning about grappling. And I totally agree with his initial preference for an internal martial art (his preferences are Juujutsu and Wrestling), but also augmented with an external martial art (his preferences are Boxing and Muay Thai). Or ideally, finding a martial arts school that teaches BOTH internal and external elements, because that is what traditional martial arts is supposed to be about (the problem is that a lot of schools don't teach it, they tend to go with one or the other). The whole philosophy of Yin and Yang is based on the blending of two opposing concepts - hard and soft, striking and grappling - not one at the exclusion of the other. But if you can't find a school that teaches both, then his advice on learning an internal art first and then later augmenting it with external training is a good one.

[Sinnertwin]

Smart alec bodybuilder gets pwned by female Juujutsu fighter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzXQGMqY8_E

As one person commented, he isn't even trying against the girl.
Just let her climb all over you, roll on the floor and pretend go to sleep. But be gentle

[GoktimusPrime]

During this morning's Tai Chi Push Hands session I was up against one of the more hardcore instructors and a couple of times we ended up ground fighting. Others said that our Tai Chi looked more like BJJ. In actuality it was Tai Chi ground fighting - we were still trying to displace each other's cores rather than going for holds or locks as BJJ might prefer, but from an outsider's POV, yeah, it probably did look more like BJJ than Tai Chi. Oh... and no mats. My opponent was definitely better than me and I had to tap out.

Aaah... my whole body is so sore now. But definitely one of the best training sessions I've had in a long time.

[Bartrim]

We've recently brought in a boxing coach to our gym. I now do boxing from 6-7 and Muay Thai from 7-8:15. In the 6 weeks I've boxing I have noticed a massive change. My reach is a lot better and the past week the coach has been working on my movement and relaxing in the ring. I used to panic and move, almost run a lot in the ring and be exhausted after 4-5 minutes. Last night I did 10 minutes of movement and pad work in the ring, took a minute break and did another 5 minutes and although I was tired I wasn't exhausted like I have been in the past. Very happy with my progress.

[GoktimusPrime]

I've been hearing about this video for some time but only recently decided to look it up.
Tai Chi vs MMA
This video shows a so-called Tai Chi "master" being really easily beaten by an MMA fighter using fairly basic straight-up boxing techniques. The MMA fighter doesn't need to use any more sophisticated techniques because his opponent just falls so easily.

sigh

So naturally the internet's been flooding with people further criticising Tai Chi as a useless martial art on one side, and people on the other side pointing out that this so-called Tai Chi master is just crap - it's not Tai Chi that's flawed, but this individual practitioner. Naturally as a Tai Chi practitioner myself, I'm with the latter crowd.

But having said that, I can totally understand where those who side with the former are coming from. Tai Chi has long had a reputation of being a useless McDojo hipster martial art, and this criticism is not without basis. There are a lot of Tai Chi supporters getting angry and upset towards critics and even abusive... but honestly, the problem comes from within. There are a LOT of people who practise Tai Chi incorrectly and are thus giving our art a bad reputation. So looking from an outsider's POV, I can completely understand their criticisms. A friend of mine first told me about this video - and he's a non-Tai Chi guy (he's a Wing Chun fighter), and yeah, he too was laughing at this video. He asked me if this made me mad, but honestly... it doesn't. It makes me feel disappointed, but not angry, because I totally understand where non-Tai Chi people are coming from.

And some might say - and this includes people that I've spoken to from within the Tai Chi community - that a lot of people don't practise Tai Chi as a fighting style and don't want to. Many people enjoy practising it as a form of holistic exercise for the mind and body, similar to yoga or pilates. And yeah, I get that too, and that's fine. But I think the difference lies where people who are practising "holistic" Tai Chi lay claim that they can fight, when clearly they cannot. This is what is dragging Tai Chi's reputation through the mud. I get that some people practise martial arts for reasons other than self defence/combat. Fine. But just don't claim that it's for fighting when it's not.

But I think that the Tai Chi fighter honestly did not know that his Tai Chi was useless until he fought the MMA fighter. The poor guy's probably spent over a decade training in an art that he honestly thought was teaching him how to fight. And herein lies the danger in LYING to students by teaching them a non-combative form of a martial art but claiming that it's still combative. Because all you're doing is giving your students dangerous false confidence. It would be better for students to just know that their martial art is a non-combative form and thus never try to stand and fight against an attacker.

[GoktimusPrime]

The World Taekwondo Federation is now dropping the word "Federation" from their title. It seems that they finally realised that everyone's been laughing at their acronym for decades.
http://www.bbc.com/sport/taekwondo/40391326

[GoktimusPrime]

My long standing criticism of rules/competition fighting rang true for me this morning. The current Tai Chi Push Hands group that I train with always do so according to sets of rules, especially the idea of fixed step. But even with moving step there are still rules. Among the rules there is no touching of the head. Total no-go zone.

And as I've long theorised, when you start training with rules your fighting form eventually starts cracking and showing weaknesses as you soon forget (or never develop) specific skill sets as certain things are off limit. So today I copped a really basic hit to the side of my head. The lens popped off my glasses and one of the instructors went and got a miniature screwdriver set to help me fix it, so it was cool. And I wasn't hurt or anything. But it just demonstrated how, after months of training with the "no head strikes" rule that my own head defence has weakened. Because if I never need fear someone hitting my head then there's no impetus for me to defend it. And it would've been really simple to defend too.

Anyway, next term our group is changing venue. We're currently using a dance studio but the new place will be a proper dojo in a gym, with jigsaw mats already laid out. So hopefully this will mean that we can open ourselves up more to doing a wider range of techniques rather than holding ourselves back. I also suggested today that once we change locations that we all bring our own protective gear. Because if a person's wearing headgear then you're going to be more confident in taking a shot to the head, which is what you want in order to maintain the ability to defend your head!

When they first told me about the venue change the first thing I recommended was that we practise breakfalls as even some of the instructors has never done breakfalls! But they totally agreed and today suggested that we include breakfall practice as part of our warm up routine at the new place.