Congratulations !!! I would like to take the time to publicly announce the promotion of 4th dan in combat hapkido to martial arts planet member, JimH. We at the Bronx Combat Hapkido Center are proud and honored to now call you Sabumnim. You are a very capable and knowledgeable martial artist, and wonderful instructor. We are all better for having you with us. Martial Arts Planet, please help us here at the Bronx Combat Hapkido Center and congratulate Master JimH. Master Al Medina and students
Shihan, Thank You for the Post and the Congratulations. Master is Just a title,I prefer to just be a senior student ,learning,training and hopefully passing on the Knowledge. Thank you and all those from the school who have passed on the well wishes and Thanks to Master Medina for His teaching us the art we do and Like so much we devote years to it. Heal up quickly and see you back in class soon,you are missed my friend. All the Best
Hi Jim, congratulations to you. Keep up the good work and the great attitude. Good training to you and your fellow students.
Thanks to those who sent congratulations. Very nice Blog site Thomas,Thanks for Posting it. I had seen the Finland clips before,very nice delivery,glad they made it to that site. Jim
Congratulations Jim on your recent promotion! All the best to you in your training and teaching! Regards, Mike
Greetings Combat Hapkidoin - it doesn't look like we'll be making it to the Atlantic City event this time (Master Goldberg and Master Ticali's awesome event) so I won't be catching up with the the crew until later on (maybe March). I wanted to congratulate Jim in person and I wanted to congratulate Master Frank Huff on promotion to 6th dan!!!! (I sent a letter but it was returned for wrong address...) All the best to the crew!
Thomas, sorry I will not get to see you at AC. Thank You again for your Best wishes,Much Appreciated. I am sure we will meet up at an event or two or three in 2008. All the Best to you and the Crew.
As a big fan of the old style ICHF teeshirts with the silkscreened patch on the front (small) and back (large) , I was sad to hear that they are no longer carried and available. I loved buying a couple new ones (in different colors) at each seminar and really enjoyed wearing them in the summer. I saw that there are some available through the cafepress link (on the ICHF site) but some of our students ordered a few and were very disappointed with the quality (I looked at them and wouldn't recommend them - low quality at a high price). The new ICHF teeshirts that have replaced them, in my personal opinion, are not as nice. I don't care for the overall design and I am not very fond of the "Samurai" image on it... I just don't feel that a "Samurai" is the best representation for Hapkido or for a Korean art (historical bias and all that). The back of the shirt is fine... but I'd prefer the small ICHF patch on the front. Anyway, here's hoping that the old style will re-surface!
i think that what makes hapkido hapkido is yu, won, and hwa. basically, as long as it conforms to those things, it's hapkido, even if GM Choi didn't teach that particular technique, or those kicks, or whatever. i don't think GM choi OR GM Ji would want us practicing rote memorization for the sake of doing so. i think they'd want us to continually improve our skills, no matter what that entails. chances are that if GM Choi had access to eskrima or bjj...he just may have added those arts too. whoever your instructor is, remember their techniques, but more importantly the lessons they were designed to teach you. having said that, i don't see a reason to add those things to hapkido, they aren't hapkido necessarily, and it's perfectly ok to study bjj or any other art for its own sake, and add it to your self defense. i have yet to see a single person who uses and is perfect at anything, let alone an entire curriculum. high kicks are for some, some will decide not to use them, they're there if you want them, it's good to know them, but that doesn't mean you have to use them. everyone wants to see the differences between HKD, SIN MOO, CH..and their derrivatives but they all have a common link that is hapkido. isn't that what really matters? you can see people all over the world teaching goju ryu. even if they don't teach all 12 kata or teach them exactly the same as someone else...it's still goju ryu, and everyone seems to do the kata differently anyway...we shouldnt all strive to be the same as anyone else, founder or not. about kicks, i've said this before on other forums. my view is simple. i learn a sidekick...it's really up to me where i try to put it. if for nothing else, it's good to learn to defend against those kinds of kicks, so you will be needing to feed them to your receiver. to me an art is just a guideline. something to grow from, not be bound by. techniques are just examples of how people might put the principles into action. i'm not very experienced with hapkido, but i think the mainstay of CH is that it leaves out the meditation, fitness, breathing exercises, and jumps straight into self defense, especially for those who for example can only train twice a week for an hour or two, they really need to get down to business so to speak. created for a western society who doesn't want, or feel the need to "be korean" korean's speak korean, because they're korean. we speak english because that's our language. in italy, they speak italian, isn't it the skills, and knowledge that matters most? from what i have seen, HKD isn't for everyone, and most will agree with that statement. CH can be learned by everyone, especially those who don't want the cultural trappings of a traditional art. is CH any less hapkido for it? i don't think so, but everyone will have their own opinions. whichever one fills your wants and needs...then study it. i think at one time or another, or continually...all of us dream of making our 'perfect art'...i think that's pretty much what Pellegrini did, he could just as easily have called it Pellegrini Hapkido. another point about high kicks (not going overboard with the jump 970 spin hook kicks)...i know alot of kempo people (an art known for low kicking and fast hands) that practice high kicks just for stretching, balance, coordination...etc. but let's not forget too...how often are most of us really going to be attacked at gun point? how often are we really going to get robbed by a knife weilding crack induced nutcase? i think the main thing is...any training is better than no training...the best art on the planet is the one you ENJOY! on lineage...i believe it does say something about the 'authenticity' of what you are doing. but has little to do with whether or not you can use it. the main art i was involved with (kempo jujutsu) has no direct lineage to one person...but it's the best school in the area, and we had people who were quite successful in every arena from bjj tournaments, to tkd sparring, to mma competitions, to street fights. so ultimately i guess in my opinion the main thing is...does it work? and can you use it? i've sparred with people from traditional schools with good lineages and destroyed them, on the other hand i've been destroyed by some too. and the same goes for the 'mixers' ...in short it isn't the art, its the person using the art and their skill level that matters most. i agree that your attacker won't say..."wait..you studied with GM so and so..i think i'll leave you alone" you're doing hapkido...but in a real sense you're also doing aikijujutsu, jujutsu, judo, gung fu...because many many things overlap between styles. you just know it as hapkido, so a person COULD say that hapkido is just the method of transmitting that knowledge. so i don't think one is better than the other, they're just different. but if say, you had 6 months (hypothetically) to learn to defend yourself...CH would probably get you where you want to go faster than HKD...but if you're in it for the long haul, and enjoy learning about korean culture...HKD is more for you. hapkido truly has something for everyone.
Hi Hapki-jutsu. Very interesting you should mention Kempo-jujutsu. It was the first martial art I got involved with. For my particular school they spelled it Kenpo-jujitsu. I don't get too crazy about the different spellings Although the school was pretty short lived it was very similar in theory to CHKD. The Chinese influenced (Wing-Chun, Jeet Kune do) brush, trap, punch type blocking, low kicks mixed with Aiki-jujutsu techniques. I'm curious where you school was at? It seems that particular style has gone extinct here in New Jersey. If I remember my Instructor correctly this particular style had some roots to James Mitose, Bruce Juchnik.
Hi DaveS, kempo jujutsu, or if you prefer kenpo jujitsu, in my opinion doesn't necessarily refer to one specific system. alot of people over the years have called their art kenpo jujitsu. for example wado ryu karate, was once called wado ryu jujitsu kenpo. but...generally speaking kenpo/kempo as we know it in the west pretty much all comes from mitose/chow/juknick/parker/emperado..the whole hawaiian thing. ours comes from prof. Mike Hurst, and his student Pat Mcwhorter. mainly from mike...its sort of a mutt system, he was a taekwondo guy originally i'm told, then trained with Rod Socharnaski and JukoKai international, they basically screwed him over, so he went with Taika Seiyu Oyata (the guy dillman stole his stuff from) ..ultimately he was promoted to 8th dan by Oyata sensei. he is also listed on the Tracy kenpo website, so there is some influence there as well. but i'm told alot of what he taught was self taught, stuff he figured out on his own, the things he thought most useful from each of the systems he studied. i think he called it Honto Seishin Ryu Kenpo Jujutsu. i was trained in a style from his top student Pat...called Gokei Ryu Kempo Jujutsu. which was from what i gather pretty much his version of what he was taught (not sure why they split) it sounds similar to what you described. just to look at it, it will remind you of a krav maga guy in a gi, alot of the things they do, we did..thats why i dont see what all the fuss is about krav maga and its "new stuff"...yadda yadda blah blah woof woof...its good, but nothing new. basically from Rod S. we got some karate/kempo, and some aikijujutsu. (though he taught a separate aiki class) from Oyata we got ryukyu kempo, with a special emphasis on the tuite (joint locks) and some pressure point stuff. he was also in the army and learned other things from various sources, so there is also some judo influence as well, and we did alot of boxing/kickboxing too. we also did alot of the open hand (tan sao) type blocks, simple redirections rather than "blocks" ...we used low kicks, vertical fists, every strike imaginable...but how we used them was kind of unique. most striking arts kind of use locks to set up more strikes...most locking and throwing arts tend to use strikes to setup their locks. we did both. like striking "mid technique" for example, ed parker expressed it like...take something with you when you go (across centerline), you reach over to grab a wrist...rake their eyes on the way or slam your elbow into their face. any time you take a step or even lift your leg..you could be kicking something...things like that. i've talked to and trained with a few of his students who all basically went their separate ways, but the one thing that unites them is that they're all some seriously tough guys who went on to become bjj champions, mma coaches, some still teach KJJ. some of whom have trained all over the country in every art imaginable and they said they have not once been ashamed of what they learned from KJJ. he was somewhat of an innovator, when everyone else was just being introduced to karate, he was already teaching his guys more freestyle stuff, to keep their hands up, not to telegraph, etc. when alot of the fighters back then did what i call literal karate, as its done in the forms, actually chambering their fist on their hip and things.
I dunno Thomas. If HKDs origins are correct then we are the next evalution of the art of the Samurai. This is my belief anyways, even if it is not shared with 99.9% of the Korean and Japanese population.
One the one hand it is refreshing to see credit being given to Japan for “donating” the core art (DRAJJ) that would be modified/adapted/molded and turned into “Hapkido”. I would argue though that Hapkido has become a uniquely “Korean” art and would prefer to see an emphasis on Korean contributions than Japanese, even if they are more recent and mark the evolution of the differences between the arts. For Combat Hapkido, even though the core art comes from “Hapkido” (and all its evolutions from Choi Yong Sool Dojunim through the filters of various other masters and leaders), what we do is also heavily influenced by other arts such as Jeet Kune Do, Kali, Brazilian Jujitsu, and etc. So the choice to emphasize the “Japanese” aspect falls a bit short with me there as well… I think though for me, I just hate to see the Japanese military background (represented by the Samurai) as an icon on our “Hapkido” shirts (and certificates). Mainly I am bothered because of how the Japanese forcefully occupied Korea (early 1900s – 1945), tried to destroy Korean culture and language by forcing Koreans to learn Japanese/destroying temples and historical sites/ forcing Koreans to change their names/eradicating old traditional Korean arts and martial arts, as well as more vile deeds such as conscripting Korean men to be cannon fodder in the Japanese army and for enslaving Korean Women to be sex slaves for the Japanese (so-called “comfort women”) , as well as for continuing political problems such as land possession (Tokdo island and such). To me, having a “Samurai” representing Hapkido is a slap in the face of those pioneers who rebuilt Korean martial arts (using various arts) in spite of all the attempts of the Japanese to eradicate their culture. Personally I’d prefer a return the old shirts with the ICHF patch silkscreened small on the front and large on the back… maybe having both styles available would be a good compromise.
Though I am not a CHKD practitioner, I do agree completely with you Thomas on the fact that it is a slap in the face. Yes it may be the next evolution, but it is also now something that it uniquely Korean. Therefore it should be represented be something that is Korean. I think maybe the Samurai logo is influenced more by the the person(their fascination with the Samurai) who chose to include it. The fact that the Koreans took something like DRAJJ and made it their own like everything else the world has thrown at them, this is what impresses me and what I respect. Its almost as though surviving, thriving, adapting and overcoming are uniquely a Korean trait.
I would like to see a universal and uniquely Korean martial arts uniform developed. I mean you don't see the Chinese stylists use a gi. Just not the traditional one with that big 'ol bow on the top of the, well top. As for your new CHKD shirt I took a second look at it. It kinda looks like someone just threw some stuff on the front and didn't put a lot of serious thought into it. The lightning bolt looks wayyyyyyy outa place. It could have been done better.
I'm actually pretty happy with dobok pants and a teeshirt or even a wraparound "gi" ... they hold up pretty well. For a more unique Korean look, you could try: Taek Kyeon style Hanbok style or GM Myung Kwan Shik's WHF style
