George Dillman

[arnisador]

To use the term FRAUD is a bit extreme. I'd say the NO TOUCH KO is something I've yet to experience

You'll be waiting a long time.

I do agree that Mr. Dillman's kata interpretations have really revolutionized how people utilize the Okinawan kata, and that's a great thing. I've gotten a lot of good stuff out of his seminars.

However, I no longer attend them as it simply embarrasses me to do so.

 

[Drac]

Drac, I've been an advid learner/student of the DKI since 99-2000' when I was first introduced to his knowledge. I had heard of him before but never put alot of emphasis behind what he had to give.

I was invited to one of the many workshops w/ him and MSTR Presas and boy that was it, I was hooked. ALL my years of karate training that I had discarded had finally came together in that one afternoon seminar. I was so mislead and undertaught in all I was learning in all the years. I felt like I was able to pick up the pieces and start to walk from a crawl that I was on since the early years. I was like many and HATED KATA with a passion until I actually understood them and what they were for. I come from a TOURNAMENT type karate school and we only practiced, learned kata for that purpose only.

Once Bunkai became a major part of my study I then was like MAN its all right here.. today many students are lucky to have this training upfront and personal I however was not until I had many years and a black belt into the system. As for me I owe alot to DILLMAN for opening my eyes and giving me a new found love for what I thought had died out.

If any ever have the chance to train or meet Mstr Will Higgenbotham from Indy, he is a great MA as well. Im certain if anyone follows Dillman they know of him and understand.

I hear ya..I too was a little wary of all I had read about him..Right after he numbed me I became a believer, his explanations of the kata were also impressive...I have heard of Master Higgenbotham, never had the oppertunity too train with him though...

 

[cstanley]

Anybody can do parlor tricks with uke just standing there. Dillman has embarrassed himself on national television and in public a number of times. He makes such statements as "holding your tongue a certain way can keep his stuff from working..." He has misappropriated Oyata's kyusho, made many unsupportable claims, and is a standing joke among most traditional karate practitioners. I met him back in the 80's and my impression was that I had never met anyone as self-absorbed as him.

As the gentleman above said, put on some boxing gloves. If the stuff is so magic, why hasn't a Dillman student entered MMA and "kyusho'd" his way through a bunch of real fighters? Why didn't one of his ilk lay Gracie down back in the day? They must have known the tongue trick.

 

[Drac]

Anybody can do parlor tricks with uke just standing there. .

That is quite true..But I have been hit by Masters and Grandmasters since I started my training and had NEVER experienced that kind of reaction..Maybe I'm just getting old...

 

[cstanley]

That is quite true..But I have been hit by Masters and Grandmasters since I started my training and had NEVER experienced that kind of reaction..Maybe I'm just getting old...

Or maybe you just want to believe.

 

[Drac]

Or maybe you just want to believe.

Naw...I had heard all the throwing chi-balls crapola stories so I was entered the room with a " lets-see-what-this-charlatan-is-gonna-try-and-pull"...I was surprized..

 

[arnisador]

I have heard of Master Higgenbotham, never had the oppertunity too train with him though...

I met him at several George Dillman seminars he hosted in Indianapolis. Nice guy! I never had a chance to work with him though. Like many of those who studied with Mr. Dillman's group (I think he's since broken off), he also does Modern Arnis and Small Circle Jujitsu.

 

[jks9199]

Personally, I think that Dillman had some good stuff to introduce early on. I've never experienced it directly -- but enough people have found some effect of the basic stuff (and I HAVE experienced some similar things) that I believe the core idea of kata containing pressure point information IF properly understood is true.

But I think he also fell prey to "talking head syndrome." He liked the attention and liked being The Man on the subject. So he started getting further and further out there. The no-touch, chi-balls, etc... Nope. Especially if it's so easy to defeat that if your tongue is in the wrong place or you push down with the big toe, it doesn't work...

 

[exile]

In a funny way, something very similar happened to Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, whose early work, especially On Death and Dying, was considered a pioneering work on the process of dying and on our response—particularly in the western world—to that process. She acquired the status, first of an expert, and then of a guru on the subject, became involved in various afterlife-cult groups, and she became heavily discredited. As Wikipedia puts it somewhat tersely, in later life, Kubler-Ross became interested in out-of-body experiences and mediumistic attempts to contact the dead. This led to a scandal connected with one medium, as well as attacks on her healing centers. The scandal in question showed her to be an extremely naive and gullible sort who was taken in by tricks of exactly the sort that Houdini was so so fond of (and good at) exposing.

This is a serious trap that people who should know better often seem to fall into...

 

[thetruth]

As the gentleman above said, put on some boxing gloves. If the stuff is so magic, why hasn't a Dillman student entered MMA and "kyusho'd" his way through a bunch of real fighters? Why didn't one of his ilk lay Gracie down back in the day? They must have known the tongue trick.

I actualy had this discussion with the guys on the Kyusho International forum. Evan Pantazi (7th dan under Georgeandfounder of KI) said he had some MMA guys come and learn off him but never used it because 'they weren't ready to embrace their teachings and were resistant'. I followed that with 'What a crock of ****' and subsequently got booted from their forum.

Cheers
Sam:asian:

 

[Kwan Jang]

I do MMA and I have felt and been convinced of the value of kyusho/tuite. I am NOT a proponent of the "no touch" stuff, though. I do use pp's as the "poison on the arrow" to enhance my grappling and so far it has worked pretty well against resisting opponents. I use what part of it that works for me and I file the rest. Like Drac, I was more than a "bit skeptical" about this when Leon Jay (Wally's son) put me down with a light touch about a decade ago. I have been a pro fighter and have trained with and hit by some of the best in the business and I was also a nat'l level strength athlete. I don't go down very easily and before Leon did that to me, I wouldn't have thought he could have taken me down with a baseball bat. The experience adjusted my attitude very quickly.

Will Higgenbotham is a friend of mine and it has been my pleasure to host for seminars at my school several times. He's a great teacher and a wonderful guy that I would recommend his seminars to anyone. Personally, I prefer Will and Leon to Dillman as I feel that George has strayed away from the core of what he did that really did bring value to the martial arts community. I pretty much agree with what some others have said, Dillman's early work in kata interpretation was of value and IMO, he's going too far way from the mark now.

 

[howard]

Kwanjang, thanks for posting that. Maybe it will help some people realize that pressure point techniques can be very effective, but just not in the sensational way frauds like Dillman would want you to believe.

We use pressure point activations in many of our Hapkido techniques. I think most people have the notion, which I think is mistaken, that the techniques rely on creating lots of pain. Ours don't. Rather, they rely on fairly soft disruptions of the nervous system that are enough to render you vulnerable for a fraction of a second. During that fraction of a second, you apply your primary technique, while your enemy is unbalanced physically and psychologically.

When people who know what they're doing use these techniques on me in training, it literally buckles my knees. It affects your whole body. I'll grant that I seem to be more sensitive to certain pressure point techniques than many others, but they still work on most people.

oh, btw... our techniques work on most people even if they have their big toe or tongue in the wrong place. :wink2:

 

[DavidCC]

I'm thankful to GD for obscuring the truth of the matter. Do you really want every monkey-neck mook out there gunning for your liver-13??

 

[Jim Greenwood]

George Dillman deserves a lot of credit but catches a lot of s**t because he says stuff that should be kept private and just keep the basic stuff at hand.

PP aren’t magic Chinese voodoo… they are nerve attacks that really work. And if you train them as nerve attacks/strikes to affect the body well... guess what?