Martial arts discussion thread

[GoktimusPrime]

I only know this from studying to become an accreditated instructor but there are severe legal raminifications if anyone suffers a head injury in a Martial Arts School. I disagree with it as I prefer head shots and if I am alone with my Sensei he allows me to put on headgear and we spar with head shots. The same goes for groin shots. The protective equipment worn does not 100% prevent injury so head and groin shots are not allowed. It is that bad now that when knife defence is practiced a dojo is not covered legally if the students to not wear eye protection.

Yeah but there are still ways around it like getting the attacker to apply "light contact" attacks, or just pulling their strikes a few cm from contact (do the latter with inexperienced students, and allow more experienced students to do the former). Or just mix up junior and senior students together more often in training -- the more experience senior students will know how to safely execute a simulated head or groin strike without causing serious injury, and they also know how to defend themselves from incoming strikes from the inexperienced junior student. The risk I think comes more from when you put two inexperienced students together, neither possessing the skill/experience to execute a head or groin shot in practice safely. Or heck, just give the attacker a pair of feather dusters and ask them to use those to attack you. You can still feel the feather dusters touching you, but they're too soft to injure you.

Have you asked for feedback Gok? From what I've seen in big tournaments there usually isn't time on the spot to explain to the loser what went wrong but if you asked an instructor/judge later they will be more then happy to explain.

There were a lot of instructors at the Dojo that day, but they were all busy with the tournaments (which only graded students could participate in) and the ungraded students were made to do basics. There were 3-4 instructors who watched us when we did the Kata competition to judge, surely at least one of them could've come along to the sideline and had a quiet chat with the 'losing' student to give them constructive feedback. The instructor in charge is someone I've trained with before, and he hardly ever gives constructive feedback in his classes. Another instructor that I sometimes train with whom I find far more constructive was also there, so I'll ask him if he can give me any feedback when I see him next (if he remembers my performance ).

I think you have to let go of your love of traditional martial arts too. The rise in popularity in MMA has caused a rather quick evolution in martial arts and society has changed so much that there is no real practical need for traditional martial arts.

I see traditional martial arts as still being useful for civilian self defence in today's society. You're right in that it's no longer useful for its original purpose (combat), and it's definitely not suited for modern competition fighting either.

This again goes back to what I've learnt doing my accreditation. Using traditional martial arts in self defence can often leave you on the wrong side of the law. We did numourous case studies where the mugger took the victim to court because of the harm done to them because the victim was a martial artist. There is a fine line between self defence and assault. That line becomes even finer when you are a practicing martial artist and can get quite blurred easily for a judge. Tha is why most schools that teach self defence will tell you physical defence is the last resort! Traditonal Martial Arts are great but they are just not practical in todays world and I seriously think you need to understand that.

I've never come across any martial arts school that didn't teach physical defence as a last resort; traditional, modern or otherwise.

In cases where people have abused their martial arts training in self defence, I wouldn't say that the problem lies in Traditional martial arts, but rather in people who didn't know how to use the techniques appropriately. And that may very well come down to the teaching/learning aspect; and when you're teaching martial arts for self defence one ought to be mindful to remind students that the law allows for the reasonable use of force in self defence. But I think any kind of martial arts training can be abused in self defence -- traditional or otherwise.

As you know one of my pet peeves about martial arts schools (including traditional ones) are those who fail to be more selective in who they teach. I'm a firm believer that people with thuggish tendencies should not be trained in any kind of martial arts or fighting sport; that martial arts teachers/schools have a moral responsibility to either exclude these students, or modify their teaching of that student (so that the student is unable to use any techiques learnt from the school to harm someone else); e.g. exclusively teach passive/defensive techniques.

IMO a good martial arts instructor aims to teach his/her students to defend themselves from violent thugs but without becoming violent thugs themselves. But in order to become proficient at that, you need to understand how violent thugs attack ("Know the enemy as you know yourself and you shall not fear the results of a hundred battles" - Sun Tzu, The Art of War). One thing I see with some people who are "too defensive" in their training (i.e. never learn how to strike) is that when they train/spar with each other, they're defending themselves from incredibly weak and unrealistic attacks. Just look at this Aikido demonstration -- the attacks are far too "nice." There is that element of what 5FDP calls 'over compliance' from the attacker which makes it unrealistically too easy for the defender to counter. And I don't just mean to pick on Aikido, a lot of martial arts schools do this, including Tai Chi (many Tai Chi practitioners start with the attacker and defender already in contact, so there's no real learning of how to bridge that initial gap).

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Also... got any tips on how to tie up an Obi? Any good web sites with good illustrations or decent videos you can recommend?