Strikers have bad balance. Just get them to shoot in on you and sprawl hard. Their heads go right into the ground every time!
Guys, i am currently learning uechi-ryu karate and i support kata, and i purposely seek out people of different styles to spar/watch how they work, and many of my friends study traditonal styles as well. So dont start thinking im bashing styles. If you think i am, then the countless arguements with Tekkengod, Ikken, and Sonshu have really made you guys *****ly. But i am bashing some of the crap spouted by many 'purists', and stuff spouted specifically for marketting. Ive heard a goju teacher...a very TOUGH goju teacher say that "UFC is only marketing, marketing just one type of fighting. Put a good Goju guy in there and get rid of the rules, and those grapplers wont walk out standing."(while UFC has marketing, it is a harsh generalization) How many of you have not heard such retoric? I remember Yuki once saying that before he started MMA, he 'though his side kick can stop anything, and that those grapplers have no skill and are messy' or something along those lines. Does every traditional style produce such a mentality? No not all, but some do. And it annoys me. This thread was essentially a rant for me. In edmonton we have some really good schools that produce tough fighters. But even good schools, particulary traditional stand up styles seem to have very bias views on grappling. The most ludicous thing i heard is how grapplers supposedly have bad balance. While not the most common polemic, ive heard it more then once, once even on MAP a long time ago.
Especially if the person in question doesn't NEED to kick high to beat you into the middle of next week.
balance is balance...but... depending on the effective range of the art in question, depends on how someones balance skills develop... i have a judo background, some people i train with at our dojo have striking art backgrounds... many times at 'sparring range', i find myself struggling against them, they have more expereince of balance at that range and readily keep me on the back foot... but if i can get 'inside' their strikes, then i find it easy to get to get them to the ground... so they teach me how to use body positioning and various methods of putting together combinations to get better control of balance in the 'striking' phase of a fight... and i help them learn how to recover and maintain balance when the striking range is broken down and the opponent has moved onto 'takedowns'. all arts have balance...it sort of goes with the territory of general moving about...and each art has its own 'specialities of balance' that make its methods effective if applied in an appropriate way.
Thats pretty funny coming from TKD and kung fu guys. Balance is one of if not the most important thing in grappling MA.
The smartest thing to do is to make yourself well rounded in both hard styles (karate, kung fu, tkd), and soft styles (judo, jujitsu, aikido). If the martial artist has experience in both then he can't jump to the generalization that one style is superior to the other. I believe that to be a big problem in the martial art community. So in case you have a short attention span heres what I said in a nutshell, you shouldn't bash other martial arts, and if you do, try it and see for yourself whether you have any room to judge.
Ok I agree that it is best when a beginning fighter learns both soft and hard styles, grappling and striking, internal and external methods. But sometimes it'd be refreshing just to indulge someone's curiosity, obviously a balanced style is best and the answers to these types of questions are subjective but so what? You can't have a discussion on anything about techniques are always "it's best to be balanced" or "do whatever works best". To answer the original question I'd have to say wrestlers actually have better balance. Strikers expertise is to be able to shift their weight into an attack and then recover quickly. In general a good wrestler's attacks don't unbalance them, In my opinion.
They are different kinds of balance. Ever see a Bruce Lee movie? He's fairy friggin twinkle toes. You stay light, moving fast and never grounded and committed to a position. While when I used to watch my brother's wrestling matches I noticed the wrestlers go low, get grounded, and set up a wider base. They were surprisingly fast, but their stance alone was very committed to the position they took...successful rearward moving retreat would not have been probable. I think it's about how much you commit to being grounded. Charge a striker in his stance and he will topple over...grapplers seem to take a low grounded stance that could resist a charge but wouldn't be great for continuous scrambles.
Well, in a fight(MMA), a grappler usually has a striking stance and doesnt ever get really low. That low, grounded stance is for when you are grappling/wrestling only. And Ive seen boxers, not in real competition, but while sparring, will keep sort of a low, crouched stanced just to try it out and theyre still succesful.
