[Choi Kwang Do] FAO: Andrew Green

No, they where all basically the same, I just picked one which clearly illustrated the point.

Without ever connecting how do you know this? Shouldn't all full contact fighters suffer from broken ribs after every training session then?

You are confining you're experience to a small area. All the TKD schools might be of the same lineage, same for the karate ones. American kickboxing is not a traditional style by your definitions.

Even with different lineages, competing in the same tournaments will lead to developing similar techniques and ways of doing forms competition.

The Kung Fu school I'll refer to later.

Same one you've been to? 3rd dan?

So this is a Chinese school using a Japanese ranking system? Right there something should register as odd.

Or not a coincedence at all, they are confined to a small area and have likely influenced each other over the years.

Didn't you say it was mostly groundwork with only one class standing? Do you mean a ground position?

I'd rather take the risk and play, as would most people interested in baseball it seems.

You're stilll not playing the game. Just doing some drills which relate to it.

Do you think you could train this way, then call up a real team and start telling them they are doing things wrong? Do you think they'd listen to you at all?

How is it tested? You don't spar, How can you be sure what you are doing is improving it? Age has nothing to do with it. And there are traditional styles that don't spar.

My new hockey strategies, which I have tested are far superior.

But I have never actually played hockey, or really watched much...

But the NHL will be calling me any day now as a high paid consultant...

No, there is too much missing.

Perhaps they expect it because they are told to expect it?

Belt Rank is a traditional element, If you're style is "non-traditional" why would it be expected at all? Many styles don't use it, and they survive.

It does do a few things though, which I'd rather not get into here, perhaps another thread sometime.

 

Sorry to cut into this thread, just an interesting comment.

I understand your consternation with a Kung Fu school using a belt system, but this is becoming more common in the 'real' world. How times change eh. Even the Fillipinos are at it. The merits/benefits of using such a system have been characterised elsewhere. What's the big deal?

 

Yes they should.

I see. When you visit a CKD class, then comment on it. At least I've experienced the styles I comment upon to some degree.

A style based in Birmingham derived from Lau Gar. All I know about the ranking system is that their belt is black with three stripes, which I'd call third dan.

Less risk of injury in baseball than in martial arts. Would you like to learn fencing by being given a sharp blade and no body-armour on your first lesson?

I'd say the fact that it works on the street is a fairly good test. Measurements of power from techniques is another one, of course, you may prefer other criteria.

It works on the street, I've not yet come up against a situation which I can't adapt what I know.

Naturally. I doubt people would expect things because they're told not to expect them.

Belt rank is strips of coloured cloth showing which level of the syllabus you've reached. In a style where you get taught the whole syllabus at the beginning then no, it wouldn't make sense. Where you teach techniques as people reach new levels though there is some reason to it.

This may not be particularly coherent, but I have just finished a drive down from Scotland, so if anything doesn't make sense please ask for clarification.

 

Actually it was more the word "Dan" that seemed odd. If he'd said 3rd degree black sash it wouldn't have seemed odd.

But "dan" is a Japanese word,in the last post this seems cleared up though, Sounds like he applied the title based on the belt.

 

and yet... somehow... they don't...

Not really, you comment on "traditional styles" in general.

Statistics please.

You're right, I'd prefer to do as much testing as possible before hand.

By the way, You said "constantly being tested and improved". How? Without sparring how?

Do you have a special team that goes out and beats up drunks and druggies and then shares their findings with all CKD instructors? Would make sense as that seems to be your criteria for "effectiveness".

 

I don't understand why your so against sparring, unless you really think it so dangerous. ie with your comment of learning to fence by being given sharp blades and no body armour. My answer would be no!, but I would still like to fence, not just practise drills and hope that I could actually fence if somebody suddenly challenged me.

Sparring isn't the way we learn martial arts, its just one way!
And one of the more advanced ways at that, beginners don't spar, there gentily eased into it as there confidence and ability to protect themself grows.

If I did break someones nose or ribs sparring, I'd probably blame myself for sparring too hard with somebody not capable.

I've had a few broken bones, concusion, cuts bruises and lots of pain training, whether sparring or whatever. I'd prefer not to have been injured! But I'd never trade injury free training against what I've learnt during the years of hard training. Training so hard really took me to another level. To be honest I don't really care how other people train.

 

Yes, but by traditional I mean those styles that I've seen, as in the ones that do lock out, that do teach hundreds of techniques to white belts and then just hope that eventually they'll get them all right, before they injure themselves, that do pride themselves on doing things exactly the same way as they were done hundreds of years ago (the world changes, and a hundred year old Chinese whisper just isn't going to be the same).

Don't really see why you need them, nor do I have any. It stands to common sense that you aren't going to get as many injuries in a sport where many of the people at risk wear padding, and you're not trying to hit or tackle one another. I'm not referring to strain injuries and similar here, just ones caused by other people. Baseball isn't martial arts, I really fail to see the relevance of comparing them.

No we have a team who analyze the techniques, and look for ways to improve them. They look at the individual techniques, the patterns, combinations, speed drills, shield drills, focus mitt drills, defense drills, infighting, and so on, and come up with new, improved ways to practise, and improve on the ways we've already got as much as they can.

I agree, we don't spar because there's a risk of injury. We do defense drills which are a safer, moderated form of sparring if you look at them that way.

I'm not against sparring, I actually enjoy it, I just don't believe that it's necessary in order to learn self-defense.

 

Andrew, you've just given me an amazing idea!!!!

Colin

 

Thats fair enough, if you don't want to risk injury. I've never forced somebody to train in a way they don't feel comfortable.

I enjoy sparring too, plus I feel I get a lot from it. Although I'm sure I could learn martial arts without it, I've no way of knowing how my ability would be effected.

 

RE: Should martial arts involve contact?

What I'm saying is to learn to defend yourself against human beings is that you must at some point come into physical contact with human beings, otherwise its all just a nice untestable theory. I didn't say the contact necessarily had to be hard (or soft).

Whenever you punch with the front of the knuckles (eg. jab, cross, uppercut, hook or whatever variation on those themes) there must be some compressive force acting on the wrist joint, as a reaction to the impact. I presume you would not disagree with this?

The greater the force of the blow, and the elasticity and inertia of the target, then the greater will be these compressive forces. If enough force is applied then, in my experience, the result will be some mild discomfort in the wrist. This can be moderated to some extent by correct alignment and strong supporting muscles. Further, on anything like a firm target, there will be discomfort of the knuckle joints and surrounding tissues.

The only way I can see to avoid this discomfort is to:
A. not punch very hard, or
B. punch something very soft and elastic, like a big foam pad or, effectively the same, whilst wearing big padded gloves.

Now this is fine for beginners and intermediate grades, but I would respectfully suggest that senior grades should ALSO be practising striking something rather firmer, without gloves, in order to learn how to absorb the reaction of the impact without injury to themselves.

So, like I said, practicing striking must involve some degree of discomfort if you're going to do justice to the idea.

On the other hand, if students always practice against nice soft targets they'll get a rather rude awakening when they try to use their techniques against real aggressors.

That is quite a lot of injuries. I can only contrast it with my experience of seeing very few injuries in various dojo of different disciplines. All I've seen are about 4 cracked ribs and 2 sprained ankles. Unfortunately 3 of the ribs and 1 of the ankles were mine So it does seem perhaps that the injury rate does vary from dojo to dojo, area to area. A high injury rate merely indicates that you're training in the wrong dojo and you should find another one, it doesn't really reflect on the art being studied.

Of my 4 injuries, 2 were obtained during sparring, 2 during prearranged practice drills - so it doesn't just happen in sparring.

Maybe you are, but I have seen many fights and scuffles and have drawn the conclusion from this that the majority of people are inadequately prepared to deal with actually being hit. The occasional knock in training, along with exercises designed specifically to test your spirit, will naturally help prepare people for this eventuality.

It sounds like you've seen lots of your students being assaulted outside of the dojo. Could you give us an idea of how many times you've seen this? And were the aggressors determined violent criminals or high-spirited kids?

Thanks,

Mike

 

But we do come into physical contact, in infighting drills for example, and defense drills. We just don't spar.

Nope, I wouldn't disagree with this, however I have never seen any injuries due to this, or experienced any myself. We work on a variety of equipment, with young kids starting out on very soft focus mitts (while their bones are still growing) and most people working on ones with a little padding, then fairly solid. We've also got a few that are like hitting solid wood.

I wouldn't say lots, I've seen four incidents. Two of these were bullies attacking the students at school (my old school, I worked there in the library for a while after I left), the other was a friend of mine, who'd had a few personal problems. One of these came to light in a pub, and he was attacked.

The other was when myself and a friend were walking through the town centre, we were attacked by three people (this was when the chain incident occured) one with a chain, one with a bat, and the other without anything obvious. Turned out he had a knife in his pocket, kind of lucky he never got to use it.

So in two cases the aggressors were just vicious bullies, in one it was an average person, and in the last it was a group of criminals.

 

Re: Re: FAO: Andrew Green

Pain dooesnt always mean your injured. Pain is your body telling you that there is something wrong, that it doesnt like whats happening to it and would you please do something about stopping it...

Agreed, but why make it more risky than it needs to be? Tell me, do you wear a seat belt in the car, or a helmet on a motor bike? Why? I mean thikngs in life are risky, why wear a helmet to protect your head?

Ok, does Frank Shamrock know what grapplings about? His views, in combat magazine last month on womens self defence (I dont have the article at hand at the moment but i can remember what the gist of his words were)

"Self Defence for women is a load of B**l. There is no way that a women weighing 100 pounds would be able to go toe to toe and fight with a man 175 plus and not get beaten"

In other words, you need to teach women and smaller people to hit, break out of the attack and RUN!!!! Do you want to teach women to try and grapple and wrestle with a man?? NO

CKD is a self defence system for everyone. We are intereste din one thing. If you are attacked, CKD teaches you to minimise the damage done to you by any means. If you can run away, then run away. If you have to hit the person HARD a few times to get away, then we teach you how to hit HARD. If your surprised and grabbed, we teach you how to get out of that situation quickly, and get away form your attacker, not go toe to toe with them and try to beat them sensless. We are not trying to fight a person, but survive a fight and get away asap with the minimum of harm. We dont try to turn on the attacker, and then try to dominate them by staying to fight and trying to wrestle and lock the person.

By grappling, you are effectivly trying to fight and dominate your opponent by locking them or trapping them - Can we agree on that? If so then what you are teaching your women students and smaller students is immeadiatly setting them at a disadvantage if they were to be attacked by a larger guy (Think of Kimo and Royce Gracie in UFC 3... I think. Royce beat the guy, but he is someone who is VERY skilled at grappling, trained a lot for the fight and isnt exactly a 100 pound woman. His skills worked, but it took him such a long time and by the end he was knackered).

Also, if you have a mentality of trying to grapple, 9 times out of 10 your going to end up in the floor - Can we agree on that?

On the floor, you are more vulnerable. There is no way that anyone can say that being on the floor on your back is the best way to defend yourself. Ok, we will now look at the situation of how people are attacked. Where i live, the most fights start in bars and clubs where people (Including you) have usually had too much to drink. I dont know about you Andrew, but when i go out, i go out with a lot of friends - Its called socialising. If i get in a fight with someone and i end up on the floor with someone on top of me, what do you think my friends will do to that person??

Also, for every minute im grappling on the floor with someone, my energy is being used up. I admit, i havent gone to many Judo or Jiu Jitsu classes, but when i have, we have generally done some grappling and usually on the floor. I can punch and kick standing up for a long time, but grappling after a few minutes im completly tired. So if i fight someone, do i really want to grapple or go to the ground?? What i teach my students in CKD is to get out of these situations and release yourself from the attacker asap and then get up and away.

So, i dont think that grappling and groundfighting are the be all and end all of self defence. I also dont think that it is something that is very practical for smaller people to learn to defend themselves. Its fine for me, im 6 foot and 12 stone so im not going to be overwhelmed as easily as someone smaller than me.
I do however, believe that it is ESSENTIAL to teach people some basic techniques to use to get out of being grabbed or to get someone off of them if they have gone to the floor.

Finally, the way i look at it is that the majority of the people who come to any martial arts class in the UK, come to lear to defend themselves. They come because they want me to teach them how NOT to get hurt. If i used your philosophies i would teach them how not to get hurt by...... hurting them???? Can you not see the irony of that?

 

OK, now you seem to be saying that no-one gets hurt. Does that mean that no-one ever gets accidentally hit in the face, other than the rare dramatic events that you mentioned earlier. What I'm trying to get at is whether you've really minimised the risk of injury so much that it is only very, very rare - which is what you seem to be implying?

The way I see it there is a continuum with no pain and no martial spirit at one end, and bags of spirit and pain at the other. Its up to each individual to determine how much spirit they want and how much pain they are prepared to go through to get it. At one end you've got Tai Chi the way it is most commonly practiced in the UK, ie. no partner work, no impact training, everything done really slowly. There is no pain in this but neither does it do anything to increase martial spirit. At the other end you would have something more like 'celebrity death match' with no holds barred competition. Here the pain would be accompanied by serious, sometimes life-threatening, injury. It would make you very tough, but who wants to endure this high a risk of injury? Veering towards this end of the continuum you would have Thai boxing, followed by boxing and other full-contact activities. Now personally this is too much for me, I don't really want my brain-case rattling around. Most other arts are somewhere between this point and the 'nampy pamby' Tai Chi end of the scale. (by the way, I mean no offence towards Tai Chi, which I practice myself).
So my question is 'where do you see yourself' on this scale? You seem to be saying you're at both ends of the scale simultaneously - no pain but loads of spirit. I personally do not believe this to be possible.

And it does not cause you any pain or discomort to hit these 'solid wood' pads?

The incident with the chain and the bat sounds rather hair-raising. But 4 incidents does seem a rather small sample size on which to base such firm opinions and conclusions.

Mike

 

"At one end you've got Tai Chi the way it is most commonly practiced in the UK, ie. no partner work, no impact training, everything done really slowly. "
really ... the way i practiced would make u thing again ...
starting from qigong, to form to everything even push hands hurts...sparring...eww...we taiji ppl avoid cuz we can use too many Jin's and that might hurt seriously
Mike Wat style u practice...i know Yang 24, then doin sun 24...
-TkdWarrior-

 

Other than the incidents I've mentioned, and perhaps one knuckle-burn a year, that's it. We do have injured students coming in, but injured in other activities (dancing, football, that type of thing) rather than Choi. And we do have people occasionally injuring themselves outside class, practicing things they're not really ready for.

Not particularly, although I have spent years punching other pads first which may have conditioned me. The last time I noticed pain from punching was when I decided to hit a brick wall, still don't know why, and tore the skin off my knuckles.

Those are the ones which I've seen, there are others, but they're essentially anecdotal evidence.

 

I think you should stay away from talking about what his philosphys are until you ask him what they trully are. I can see your point though, which to some might apply. Anyone who has been in a real fight though (where they got hit) would know that pain affects your body in a number of diffrent ways and depending on how you inflict pain on someone (through a punch, kick, lock whatever . .) they will react in diffrent ways. I am still an advocate of pain (not lots but enought to realize how the move feels if applied with more force). Have you ever heard the phrase "Know your enemy"? Well pain is my enemy and I want to know some of his ins and outs before I have to confront him in a fight.

 

Re: Re: Re: FAO: Andrew Green

So your agreeing with me...?

Did anyone say spar full out all the time without any protective equipment at all?

Ok...

Do you think she'll be able to hit with suffiecient force against someone twice her size?

But if she's pinned on her back and can slip a triangle on that should be of some benefit shouldn't it?

You're right though, against someone much bigger then you you are at a significant disadvantage. Best to prepare for everything though. But if you where to try to do a women's self defence course do you not think the guard would be a useful tactic? It seems there is a good chance thats where it might end up anyway.

Not me, and quiet a few others it seems. But thats a nice marketing line.

Didn't you guys say you don't do grappling?

 

This debate is over that simple point, that our philosophy is to avoid pain as much as possible. If there's an argument with this then the only possibility is that you do not try to prevent pain in order to acclimatize your students to it. Whatever his philosophies truly are, this is the argument he is putting forward, so this is what we should talk about.

Fair enough, pain may not mean you're being injured, but it is your body trying to say 'stop whatever you're doing'. D'you stick your hand in the fire in order to become flame-proof?

Since our defense drills are effectively one-sided sparring at later levels with distance control and protective equipment, and you didn't like the idea of these, I think you can see why we might assume that you were talking about full out sparring without equipment.

Definitely, no argument against it. I've seen ten year old girls capable of hitting with enough force to knock an adult back several feet through a shield. If they're trained correctly.

Two things, try it first, then say whether or not its for you. Secondly by everyone most people generally take it to mean 'the average person' rather than literally everyone. We will train anyone to the best of their ability, regardless of natural talent or ability, and they will be able to defend themselves afterwards, to the best of their potential.

Nope, we said we didn't do groundfighting. We do cover HAoV and get-outs.

Such as?

Depends. If you're going in with a mind to groundfighting, and your opponent is the average attacker then yes, most likely you'll end up on the floor. If you're going in with a mind to hit and run, and your opponent is the average attacker then its unlikely.

Give me one genuine, real-life situation where you are less vulnerable on the floor.

Try and stand up, sweep them off you, hook them off with your legs, knee them in the back, but basically try to get back up.

A mounted position is a safer place, since you can rise, but you're still on the floor, and they may still have friends around. Your only advantage is that you've got one attacker underneath you, who may well still be able to stick a finger into one of your eye sockets.

I believe his point was that people in general have friends who will interfere in a situation like this.

As he said: "What i teach my students in CKD is to get out of these situations and release yourself from the attacker asap and then get up and away."

So does that mean you'll give that a smaller, weaker person is at a distinctive disadvantage in grappling, regardless of training?

Make up your mind, first you say that your students get hit and suffer pain in order to get them used to it, then you jump on our backs for saying that this is the case. Do students suffer pain in your class or not?

 

It's very simple Jimmy, you can only see extremes.

Either no sparring or full contact death matches.
Either No pain at all or you're being abusive and living in the emergency room.
Either you're doing CKD or your doing everything wrong and hurting yourself doing it.

Yes we get bumped and bruised, no we don't hold death matches.

Getting banged up a little is a part of training. You don't set out with the intention of getting banged up, it just happens as a result of training.

Yep, that won't work very well... You'll likely just annoy him and get punched more.

I'm sorry Jimmy but you clearly do not understand fighting on the ground at all.

Training in ground fighting will teach you what to do should you find yourself in such a position. It will teach you how to get free, it will teach you to control the position and give you the ability to return to your feet if you want to.

 

And yet you can only see that we don't spar, and can't see any value in defense drills, focus mitts, shields, hmm, interesting.

Depends how well trained he is. What do you suggest if someone's mounted on top of you then, out of reach of most of your blows?