ISKA

[Runs With Fire]

Does anyone have information pertaining to or experience with the ISKA?

 

[tshadowchaser]

All i have ever witnessed was people screaming for no reason and doing acrobatics that would most likely never be used in a real situation. Not say the participants are not good at what they do it is that most of the winners performances are truly unreal and a stage production, at least in forms..
Weapons forms are much the same. A lot of stuff that is perhaps better suited to twirling and band baton or unreal sword maneuvers mixed with gymnastics rather than much that could be considered traditional. In other words most of the stuff is made up for the performance rather than having any correlation to anything practical

 

[Dinkydoo]

I haven't participated in any of the traditional stuff but I thought the kickboxing on display at the competition I fought in this year was good.

The rest is really personal preference: I'm not a great fan of that style of kickboxing anymore, I felt there was too much hopping around and point-style fighting, I hear the Muay Thai is good though. For what it's worth, the fighters were proficient at what they did and I did come away with another black eye so there was a good level of contact in my category at least.

Why do you ask?

 

[Runs With Fire]

I am looking for a good tournament to enter.

 

[Dinkydoo]

It really depends on what level you are at, which style you do and what you're looking for. Keep in mind, I only have first-hand knowledge of a small part of ISKA.

As far as I'm aware ISKA cover quite a broad category of tournaments that fit under the Kickboxing umbrella. My experience of ISKA is in what i would call the 'Freestyle Karate' ruleset (it might be called something else, and obviously, no offence to any Karate practitioners out there) - there are two types of fighting - point and continuous - and fighters can usually choose to do either or both on the day. I've been involved in this at the Open level where basically anyone from any club that registers can compete and you are then split into categories based on experience and weight.

Point - fight until a clean hit is scored and then reset

Continuous - medium contact, keep fighting until the round is over or someone falls over/you get seperated. Resets are much less frequent.

Personally, I'm not a fan of the Freestyle Karate rules in ISKA - no kicking below the waist, no elbows, no knees, no grabbing legs or clinching and usually light(ish) contact. It can result in a lot of hopping around on one foot, as people use the rules to their advantage; great if you have fantastic technique and flexibility, but somewhat unrealistic and to be honest, it's a real pain in the *** if you're at a reach disadvantage and not flexible as hell.

Depending on who you are up against it can be a lot of fun though; my old club were quite well represented in my category so I got three fights that day with training buddies and we just went 'balls to the wall' with each other, which is really in the spirit of how we trained at the club.

My old instructors used to fight within these rules at European and World level but I can't comment on that.

At a high amatuer level, expect stuff like this: