Aikido hate

[JP3]

Simpler than that. I am suggesting both techniques are viable. One doesn't negate the other.

I mean the origional idea was that Martial artists wont wrist grab in a certain way so therefore it is wrong to train from that wrist grab.

Ah, OK. Meaning, maybe martial artists won't wrist grab in a particular manner... but it is possible that someone might do so, therefore it's not a bad idea to at least have addressed the issue at some point?

 

[JP3]

Sort of. There are distancing tricks.

There is a self defense convention that suggests you need to be nose to nose to a guy. And the argument is you wreck them with elbows or some such.

That you sit there in the pocket with your defensive fence stance against a guy who has veins popping out of his head waiting for him to throw a telegraphed overhand right which of course you then use to ninja to death.

And honestly it is a really silly module to work from.

You cant get away with it in MMA because you just can't pick out attacks from that distance. That isnt because of the style. That is because you are too close to pick out attacks from that distance.

Now this is reflected in self defence with the concept of the reactive gap. But for some reason people dont seem to make that connection.

Ack.. If I'm nose to nose with someone, I'm doing it wrong imo... I might be that close, but got myself all over him,a nd again imo I've done something way, way wrong, or I'm in a judo class/match. For me, and this goes way, way back to working the bar days... If I've got anything to do with it, I do NOT get that close, in front of anyone, ever. There's no time. Some guys, even untrained have really good hand speed, and you literally do not have the reaction time, neuron-speed I'm talking about, to react properly and timely. You need that space. It is not a ... lot .. of space, but you have to have some.

 

[JP3]

You grip fight in MMA to shut down punching. It is also good for weapons. And standing arm locks. If you want to get all street.

Otherwise you are right in that being able to blend in your martial arts is an important skill. You really dont want Judo mode and Aikido mode.

Question. Grip fighting int he sense I'm using it is the type used in competition judo, where the competitors are moving and testing, seeking to shoot a hand in to get "their grip," meaning the hand position on the judogi that they prefer for their pet throw. It's intrinsic to the wearing of a judogi jacket.

I think you are using the term in a broader sense, from what you said above. Do you mean something like wha thappens in clinch work,w here the guys are exchanging hand positions on limbs, ont the other guys body, neck, head whatever and that is what you are talking about as being grip-fighting? I didn't have that included in my thought, above ... if it is.

 

[JP3]

I'm not familiar with any self-defense convention that suggests staying inside and waiting for the big punch. That's anathema to both extremes of self-defense approaches I've seen. One suggests you keep distance and wait for the mistake, while the other suggests you get in tight and finish them before they can continue.

In other words, the comparison between the "Stay away, I don't want to fight..." model and the "Get there fastest with the mostest" model.

 

[JP3]

For not blending. Compliment is a very tricky issue. Judo and Muay thai compliment but they are opposing concepts.

Complementing and blending are different concepts... for me anyway.

Not too many ways I can see blending being used in Muay Thai, but it really does work great as a complement to aikido/aikijutsu for me.

To complement to me in this sense, to work well with the other thing.

To blend in this sense means to aling one's energy witht he energy of the other person so as to disturb it the least but to influence it subtly to the other's detriment.

 

[JP3]

Using distancing to set up a counter punch on the streets. Which is more in line with what I would suggest to do.

My guess is the difference is this half assing issue again. You think you are using distancing well. But you are not really using it well.

Which was some of the many reasons Aikido guy was getting schooled in that MMA fight.

It is certainly why I ate the sucker punches I did.

And it is something that people dont realise untill they are put in that environment and then told they cant make excuses.

Is that a comment on the fact that people "Just don't know what they don't know." or is it a comment on how "Aikido does not work in real fights." I can't tell.

People who have not been in fights don't know what fights are like. Fights are ugly, ungraceful, accidental, cramped, hurried and shortcut. There isn't anything pretty in a fight.

In a sporting match between two highly-skilled guys, doing their thing, exercising a strategy overall and using tactics in the fights situation to situation, there can be. Street fight though... u.g.l.y.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

For not blending. Compliment is a very tricky issue. Judo and Muay thai compliment but they are opposing concepts.

Ah. It's probably a matter of semantics. To me, "blending" two arts or approaches is a process. It involves conscious work. I'm not sure much conscious work is necessary to make Judo and Aikido work together. I'm not trained in Muay Thai, so I'm not sure if there'd be much need for blending between it and Judo. I can say that working Shotokan Karate-do and Aikido together seems to require some blending, because they actually have some opposing principles (distancing, angles and lines, etc.).

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Question. Grip fighting int he sense I'm using it is the type used in competition judo, where the competitors are moving and testing, seeking to shoot a hand in to get "their grip," meaning the hand position on the judogi that they prefer for their pet throw. It's intrinsic to the wearing of a judogi jacket.

I think you are using the term in a broader sense, from what you said above. Do you mean something like wha thappens in clinch work,w here the guys are exchanging hand positions on limbs, ont the other guys body, neck, head whatever and that is what you are talking about as being grip-fighting? I didn't have that included in my thought, above ... if it is.

That latter is what I was assuming in my comments, more or less.

 

[drop bear]

Ah, OK. Meaning, maybe martial artists won't wrist grab in a particular manner... but it is possible that someone might do so, therefore it's not a bad idea to at least have addressed the issue at some point?

Even martial artists will. It depends on what they are trying to do.

 

[drop bear]

Is that a comment on the fact that people "Just don't know what they don't know." or is it a comment on how "Aikido does not work in real fights." I can't tell.

People who have not been in fights don't know what fights are like. Fights are ugly, ungraceful, accidental, cramped, hurried and shortcut. There isn't anything pretty in a fight.

In a sporting match between two highly-skilled guys, doing their thing, exercising a strategy overall and using tactics in the fights situation to situation, there can be. Street fight though... u.g.l.y.

People really need to quit saying street fights are things. That is kind of my point.

 

[drop bear]

Ack.. If I'm nose to nose with someone, I'm doing it wrong imo... I might be that close, but got myself all over him,a nd again imo I've done something way, way wrong, or I'm in a judo class/match. For me, and this goes way, way back to working the bar days... If I've got anything to do with it, I do NOT get that close, in front of anyone, ever. There's no time. Some guys, even untrained have really good hand speed, and you literally do not have the reaction time, neuron-speed I'm talking about, to react properly and timely. You need that space. It is not a ... lot .. of space, but you have to have some.

Boom. That.

People use this idea that in a real fight they will get that time and space to succeed at what they can't pull of live in training. Because an untrained attacker will behave in this predictable way.

The old "But I am not training to fight a trained fighter. I am training to fight an adrenalized bad guy who will telegraph his strikes."

"There is no time" should be tattooed on every self defence instructor everywhere so they dont forget.

 

[Paul_D]

"There is no time" should be tattooed on every self defence instructor everywhere so they dont forget.

Agreed, SD does not take place at sparring/sport fighting range, hence you have neither the time nor the space, as you say. It's why people who only posses fighting skills pretend that fighting is the same as self defence, that way what they teaches 'works'.

However I think "Familiare yourself with the rituals of violence so you know when to strike pre emptively, if escape and de-escalation are not available" should be tattooed on every self defence instructor. But that would probably take up too much space ;-)

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Boom. That.

People use this idea that in a real fight they will get that time and space to succeed at what they can't pull of live in training. Because an untrained attacker will behave in this predictable way.

The old "But I am not training to fight a trained fighter. I am training to fight an adrenalized bad guy who will telegraph his strikes."

"There is no time" should be tattooed on every self defence instructor everywhere so they dont forget.

I get aggravated when I see someone teaching a nice, smooth entering move that reaches a strike before it moves into the power zone, and telling students that they'll be able to read that strike and get to it that early. Oh, there's a chance you'll get in that early, but not on purpose. There won't be enough time to move your body that far once the strike starts. You only get there that early (usually) one of two ways: you either read the strike before it happens (like a pro baseball batter reading a pitcher's body movements - they're reading the pitcher before he releases, as well as the pitch, itself), or you came in for some other reason and ran into the wind-up of that spot. The latter is more likely, IMO. So, to me, many of these early-entry techniques/applications are best understood as either a way to take advantage of that coincidence or a way to recover from that screw-up (depending upon your point of view).

 

[Tony Dismukes]

Agreed, SD does not take place at sparring/sport fighting range, hence you have neither the time nor the space, as you say. It's why people who only posses fighting skills pretend that fighting is the same as self defence, that way what they teaches 'works'.

However I think "Familiare yourself with the rituals of violence so you know when to strike pre emptively, if escape and de-escalation are not available" should be tattooed on every self defence instructor. But that would probably take up too much space ;-)

Agreed on the "familiarize yourself ..." part. Not so much on the first sentence. Sparring should be done at all ranges where it is possible to make contact with an opponent, including toe-to-toe, chest-to-chest. If someone's sparring doesn't include that, it's a flaw in their approach to sparring, not with the idea of sparring itself.

 

[Paul_D]

Agreed on the "familiarize yourself ..." part. Not so much on the first sentence. Sparring should be done at all ranges where it is possible to make contact with an opponent, including toe-to-toe, chest-to-chest. If someone's sparring doesn't include that, it's a flaw in their approach to sparring, not with the idea of sparring itself.

Agreed, when I say sparring I only mean sport sparring - six feet apart. Not everyone shares that same definition of course.

 

[JP3]

Ah. It's probably a matter of semantics. To me, "blending" two arts or approaches is a process. It involves conscious work. I'm not sure much conscious work is necessary to make Judo and Aikido work together. I'm not trained in Muay Thai, so I'm not sure if there'd be much need for blending between it and Judo. I can say that working Shotokan Karate-do and Aikido together seems to require some blending, because they actually have some opposing principles (distancing, angles and lines, etc.).

Well, that's not the synonym of blending I was talking about... but I suppose it is one of them, in the Kitchen Aid Mixer variety of blending, i.e. mixing. Instead of blending as in harmonizing, aligning, joining, etc a movement thing. Which, I suppose in a sense, is exactly what a blender/mixer does.

Thai-boxing is simple, meaning that there are techniques to learn, then combinations to assemble. Once you do that, you spar/fight to test them, and then learn the other aspects of that particular type of duel. In/out, distancing, lines and angles, all that stuff came to me very easily and quickly as I'd been introduced to it from green belt in TKD when we were allowed to start to spar. What didn't make sense in TKD because of all of the rules (so people couldn't hurt one another) came crystalline when the other guy Was trying to hurt you. In a sporting way of course.

Punches are punches, kicks are kicks. They come from right and left, and/or straight down the middle. From a defensive point of view, it's not really much different if the attacker is a western style boxer, or a Chinese style one, the attacker still has 2 arms, 2 legs and a head with a body connecting it all.

 

[JP3]

That latter is what I was assuming in my comments, more or less.

Well, to me that's not grip-fighting. So, one of two things need to happen. Either I need to expand my definition or someone needs to feed me a new word. I'm stuck on this. For me, that's clinch-work.

 

[JP3]

People really need to quit saying street fights are things. That is kind of my point.

So, what would you call a fight out in the street? (Obviously, "street" here is intended as a global term for "not inside a training facility, or sporting event.")

The disappearance of rules alters both strategy & tactics. I'm not eye-gouging a dude with whom I'm engaged in a training or competition situation, but on the aforementioned "street," it could be fair game if the only way out is to maim. Ugly thought that, by the way. So, you can't call both of them just "fights," as they are different things. or, are you feeling that I'm missing something?

 

[JP3]

However I think "Familiare yourself with the rituals of violence so you know when to strike pre emptively, if escape and de-escalation are not available" should be tattooed on every self defence instructor. But that would probably take up too much space ;-)

Thinking on that... I've been accused of having a five-head (as opposed to a forehead) a few times, but I think that phrase would end up wrapping around to my left ear, even so.

 

[JP3]

I get aggravated when I see someone teaching a nice, smooth entering move that reaches a strike before it moves into the power zone, and telling students that they'll be able to read that strike and get to it that early. Oh, there's a chance you'll get in that early, but not on purpose. There won't be enough time to move your body that far once the strike starts. You only get there that early (usually) one of two ways: you either read the strike before it happens (like a pro baseball batter reading a pitcher's body movements - they're reading the pitcher before he releases, as well as the pitch, itself), or you came in for some other reason and ran into the wind-up of that spot. The latter is more likely, IMO. So, to me, many of these early-entry techniques/applications are best understood as either a way to take advantage of that coincidence or a way to recover from that screw-up (depending upon your point of view).

A thought for you, Gerry. Do you guys talk about the concept of mai ai (sometimes I've seen it spelled as miai ?)

Mai Ai is the "combative Interval" or the maximum outer distance from an opponent where they could actually affect you/do harm to you. It changes with body sizes, obviously, and with various length weapons. We talk about it as "If the opponent can take one step (not a full striding step, but the sliding in step of a striker, swordsman, sharpy-pointy-pokey guy) and do something harmful to you... that's Mai Ai. So, when you go "into" Mai Ai, it's hands-up and out of the Way" time. Therefore I'll offer you yet another way you can get intot hat intercept the strike thing, which Does require a certain amount of perception of aggressive behavior, I grant you. Read intent (usually very easy, sometimes not so much) and as you enter the field you are pre-emptively moving to the spot. It's A Thing. Play with it.