When the kata is applied to self defense

[drop bear]

Drop bear said it.

You implied it by trying to group by style when discussing fighting ability.

Tell that to Jow Gar

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

Personally, I don't think there are 200 different throws in a situation like that. There are probably 25 groups of throws,

I can write down at least 230 different throws from 62 different categories. Just the "foot sweep", there are over 35 different ways to do it.

It's the different contact points. For example, the "hip throw" can be executed by using your arm to:

- wrap around the waist.
- wrap around the head.
- under hook the shoulder.
- over hook the shoulder.
- palm smash behind the head.
- ...

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

Some days, I just want to...

The way that I look at this is if I try to do everything, I may end with nothing.

I can make my

- 1 wife very happy.
- 2 wifes 1/2 happy.
- 3 wifes 1/3 happy.

I like the freedom that you train. I have trained the past 10 years just like I train in 1 day. Every week I go through the same training and I'm afraid to change it. For example, every day I always start from 80 sit ups.

PRO: I can always keep my body in good shape.
CON: I may live a very boring life.

 

[Buka]

Yes. I get that, and I agree to a point. My point was that most of the styles known for producing competent fighters tend to not contain any katas.

Plus I don't know if taebo really counts as a style. Blanks is a karate guy that made his own karate workout to sell videos to soccer mom's, and it panned out pretty well for him.

Edit - also, taebo is pretty much all katas isnt it?

I was Billy's sparring partner when he started the whole Tae-bo thing. He originally called it "Karobics". It was never meant as any kind of style, he was trying to find a way to get people to exercise.....people who didn't want to do the Martial Arts.

No katas in it, just movements taken from Martial Arts and other things.

Somebody went behind his back and copyrighted the Karobics name, trying to hustle him. He called me and said he needed another name for it and for me to give it some thought.

He calls me the very next day and says "I got it. I'm going to call it Tae-bo. For Taekwondo and boxing, two things I love."

I said, "Billy, that's the stupidest name I've ever heard. And it's unmarketable."

We all know how successful it was. He eventually sold the Tae-bo name and rights for over a hundred million dollars.

Unmarketable, man, can I call em' or what? Duh.

 

[Martial D]

I was Billy's sparring partner when he started the whole Tae-bo thing. He originally called it "Karobics". It was never meant as any kind of style, he was trying to find a way to get people to exercise.....people who didn't want to do the Martial Arts.

No katas in it, just movements taken from Martial Arts and other things.

Somebody went behind his back and copyrighted the Karobics name, trying to hustle him. He called me and said he needed another name for it and for me to give it some thought.

He calls me the very next day and says "I got it. I'm going to call it Tae-bo. For Taekwondo and boxing, two things I love."

I said, "Billy, that's the stupidest name I've ever heard. And it's unmarketable."

We all know how successful it was. He eventually sold the Tae-bo name and rights for over a hundred million dollars.

Unmarketable, man, can I call em' or what? Duh.

Were you an industry stunts guy or something? I'm pretty sure I remember you mentioning training with celebrities before at some point.

 

[now disabled]

What? I'm not understanding what you're asking here.

Are you talking about this;

answer what I asked

What about it?

 

[DaveB]

If the founder of the style opposes sparring, that will filter down to his students. Clearly some students may deviate from that, but some won't. And yes, lack of sparring or contact retards fighting ability.

Except the exact opposite is what actually happened.

Yet another time example of your position crumbling beneath reality.

 

[Steve]

this may sounds really lazy, but could someone sum up @Hanzou ’s position and @DaveB ’s position? I am trying to keep up....

I’m counting on you @gpseymour ! Don’t let me down.

 

[Martial D]

this may sounds really lazy, but could someone sum up @Hanzou ’s position and @DaveB ’s position? I am trying to keep up....

I’m counting on you @gpseymour ! Don’t let me down.

Nutshell -

Hanzou - "tradition, bad"

DaveB - "nuh uh"

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

Hanzou - "tradition, bad"

I don't think Hanzou said that "tradition is bad". I believe he said "non-sport is bad."

It doesn't matter whether you train tradition or modern, as long as you test your MA skill in the ring, or on the mat, you are good. Black cat, or white cat, as long as it can catch rat, it's good cat. So "catch rat" is the key. Whether it black cat, or white cat, it's not important.

 

[Steve]

I don't think Hanzou said that "tradition is bad". I believe he said "non-sport is bad."

It doesn't matter whether you train tradition or modern, as long as you test your MA skill in the ring, or on the mat, you are good. Black cat, or white cat, as long as it can catch rat, it's good cat. So "catch rat" is the key. Whether it black cat, or white cat, it's not important.

It’s funny how people read different things. If I had to sum it up, I’d say hanzou said, “kata is meh.”

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

It’s funny how people read different things. If I had to sum it up, I’d say hanzou said, “kata is meh.”

If Mike Tyson wants to train form, I don't think Hanzou will have any issue with him.

When my teacher taught me Taiji form, he said that I won't appreciate it until I am much older. My teacher never said that learning Taiji form will make me a better fighter.

When I was 11, my brother in law taught me an open hand form and a staff form. One day I got into a fight. I didn't know how to use the information from that form. I complained to him. He said that he didn't know I was that interested in fighting. He stopped teaching me any more form. He forced me to train "1 step 3 punches" for the next 3 years.

Both of my teacher and my brother in law didn't believe that form training can improve fighting ability. Today, I don't believe it myself either. If I can step in, throw 3 powerful punches in lighting speed, I may be able to solve most of my street problems right there. Everything else are not really that important after all.

 

[Hanzou]

It’s funny how people read different things. If I had to sum it up, I’d say hanzou said, “kata is meh.”

Pretty much.

I have no issue with tradition. I rather enjoy the traditions of several martial arts. I'm especially fond of the old Japanese sword arts and their etiquette and discipline.

However, you start running into problems when tradition begins to compromise your style's effectiveness.

 

[Buka]

Were you an industry stunts guy or something? I'm pretty sure I remember you mentioning training with celebrities before at some point.

Not really, no, I did work as a stuntman here in Hawaii for a short lived tv series being shot here, but that was back in 95.

I used to fly to L. A. every month from here, stay with Billy and teach and train at his school in Sherman Oaks. Busiest gym I’ve ever seen, really something. Half of Hollywood trained there at one point or another, and all kinds of professional athletes. It was a whole lot of fun. Great learning experience as well.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

old Japanese sword arts and their etiquette and discipline.

I don't know anything about Japanese sword arts. But if a student wants to learn Chinese sword arts, the teacher will ask him to go to the woods and chops off 1,000 tree branches.

I have always believed that kind of training. Unfortunately, we just don't see many people still train that way.

 

[DaveB]

this may sounds really lazy, but could someone sum up @Hanzou ’s position and @DaveB ’s position? I am trying to keep up....

I’m counting on you @gpseymour ! Don’t let me down.

I don't know what may have happened recently, but Hanzou tried to argue that doing kata caused traditional martial arts to produce few if any competent fighters.

He justified this by suggesting that only movement that is identical to the movements employed in a fight are beneficial.

As the absurdity of his position was revealed he softened to the bland to the point of pointlessness position that too much kata is the problem.

So when it was pointed out that too much of anything is a problem, since if it isn't a problem then it's not too much, he tried to insist that it was the style that dictates how much kata a person trains.

My position is that training determines fighting skill.

Style influences how you train but does not control it.

Fighting skills are generic, in order to fight they must be developed and no fighting style excludes them.

A fighter losing a fight does not invalidate an art, nor does a lack of fighters.

Most tMa practitioners don't do tma to fight in the ufc and know where to go if they hunger for combat.

The individual chooses their goals and must train accordingly.

Hanzou's view seems to be based on the idea that thousands of tma students across the globe are being told that they can fight in the ufc by just doing kata.

I challenged him to support this view and as with each point that explodes his arguments he has thus far ignored said challenge.

I reiterate: had his position been from the start,
"there are more effective ways to learn fighting than kata and too much kata will.produce bad fighters,"
Then the response would have been:
No doodoo sherlock? Figure that out on your own? Have a cookie!

As it stands he went down the, "Tai chi master got beat up because Tai chi has Kata" route, and here we are.

 

[LastGasp]

I don't know anything about Japanese sword arts. But if a student wants to learn Chinese sword arts, the teacher will ask him to go to the woods and chops off 1,000 tree branches.

I have always believed that kind of training. Unfortunately, we just don't see many people still train that way.

Thank God for that! The world's forests are under threat enough as it is, lol

Don't kata/sets/forms teach you something about balance? About correct technique? Aren't they a way of learning the techniques that you then learn to apply separately in competition or on the street, if it comes to it? A kind of 'first steps' thing?
Not to mention the fact that when performed well by an experienced martial artist, they are beautiful (I especially love to watch double sword forms). You can see the poise, power and balance of one who has been training for years. And once you get to that kind of standard, I feel certain that many of the moves incorporated would be very effective in a more dynamic situation. But you have to have the base first. That, to me, is a large part of what these sequences are about.
Also, it teaches the discipline of perfection, which translates to other areas in more than just straight fighting application. But even in fighting, if you get sloppy, you get beaten.

 

[O'Malley]

I don't put much stock in stories of old masters defeating hordes of Ninjas and Manchu armies. Funakoshi for example opposed sparring, so I seriously doubt he was much of a fighter. In fact his staunch opposition to sparring is what led many like Mas Oyama to leave Shotokan and form other karate styles. Everything I've seen out of Ueshiba brings his supposed combat prowess into question. Most of it borders on the fantastical, and it sounds more like folk tales instead of hard history. Kano also wasn't much of a fighter. He typically had his "Guardians of the Kodokan" take care of his heavy lifting.

The few videos of seen of old Chinese martial art masters leaves much to be desired. Frankly, I think @JowGaWolf could wipe the floor with most of them. He has displayed better functional fighting skill than they do, and he's not even a professional fighter.

In his book, Karate-do Kyôhan, G. Funakoshi lists sparring as a valuable form of understanding the application of kata. He considered that one had to train kata (which includes the basic movements and mechanics) then apply it in sparring. What he was opposed to was people getting too "enthusiastic" about sparring to the point that they neglected proper movement. He was not opposed to sparring.

Ueshiba has many recorded victories against skilled martial artists including judo champion Kenshiro Abbe, boxer Tsuneo Horiguchi (who recorded more bouts and KOs than any other Japanese boxer in history and held national and international champion titles), sumo champion Tenryû among others. Moreover, J. Kano, upon seeing Ueshiba do a demonstration, saw his skills as so valuable that he sent some of his best students (among which M. Mochizuki) to study under Ueshiba. This is similar to the way he included the ground techniques of Tanabe Mataemon of Fusen-ryū when the latter defeated his students (which gave birth to the newaza of judo). And Kano has also had to fight in order to prove the effectiveness of his art, the "Guardians of the Kodokan" was a nickname, not a function.

Your dismissal of those masters and arts are based on misconceptions (like the way you assert that BJJ is eating away at other wrestling disciplines or the way that you lump in BJJ in all your positive statements about MMA as if those disciplines were identical and shared the same advantages...). Doing a little research would help you see the bigger picture.

 

[Hanzou]

Ueshiba has many recorded victories against skilled martial artists including judo champion Kenshiro Abbe, boxer Tsuneo Horiguchi (who recorded more bouts and KOs than any other Japanese boxer in history and held national and international champion titles), sumo champion Tenryû among others.

I looked over the fight record of Tsuneo Horiguchi, and Ueshiba is never recorded as one of his opponents. Additionally, the Kenshiro Abbe "victory" was a supposed meeting on a train where Ueshiba supposedly threw him on the ground by holding his finger.

Can you provide some objective sources for these claims?

 

[jobo]

I don't know anything about Japanese sword arts. But if a student wants to learn Chinese sword arts, the teacher will ask him to go to the woods and chops off 1,000 tree branches.

I have always believed that kind of training. Unfortunately, we just don't see many people still train that way.

Possibly run out of branches to chop ?