I give the average TKD practitioner more credit than this. I think when it comes to protecting themselves they are just as practical as the rest of us. They will do what they must to survive.
That is right! What is so hard for people to understand about this basic concept? Really I sometimes don't get it. If it is SD that one wishes, scrap most TMA places, including the fancy uniforms & keep on the clothes that you where most of the time & seek a place that will have realism & resistance in the training, with the focus on protecting yourself. This starts with self awareness, be smart to avoid situations & places, working on verbal skills & common sense to defuse a situation, along with down & dirty, get to the point of how to hurt someone, while protecting yourself & seeking to run away. TMAs often get a bad rap on SD, because that is often not their entire focus & they emphasize so much that is not SD related & at times may be counter-productive. Of course, TKD, being the world's most popular martial activity, bears the brunt of the criticism. But I rarely see a commercial MA school, no matter the style, do a real good job with SD. It really is mostly about money & retention. Sadly we do not retain a lot of customers if we make them sweat, have high standards & have them engage in training where they may get hurt, shed some tears, split a lip, blacken an eye or bloody a nose!
If you realy want to train mma for the street get tanked up first, and bring your girl friend along to gee you up during sparing
i have seen the second part more than i can remember sparring is never soft when the other lads girlfriend is sat watching lol
Im glad someone said it, this its like asking a basketball player to compete in football malarkey doesn't wash, a fights a fight, you can take things out to make a sport but as long as we all have two arms and two legs what you leave in should always look standardized if its going to work.
A fight is indeed a fight. And a sport's a sport and works within a ruleset. They will look different because of that ruleset. Try it for yourself; spar with low kicks and sweeps, then without. Add in grappling or remove it. Allow head punches or don't. Changing rules around dramatically alters the strategies that succeed. As with all competitive sports the proof is in the constant testing in a live, competitive environment; if different tactics worked in WTF Olympic style sparring then people would adopt them immediately because they are there to win competitions and medals, that's how some make their living. Whether we like those rules or the results they produce is another matter of course. Mitch
Dont wanna really get into this, but this snippet of info is interesting. In Big John McCarthys MMA gym, he employed a TKD instructor specifically for that purpose. I was chatting with a guy that trained there and he said (to paraphase as it was a while back) that Big John felt that even though kicks in MMA are decent.. theres still a long way they can go.. which is why he employed the TKD guy (who was a traditional ITF'er btw). Take it as you will, thats all i know about it. Stuart
whilst Big John is a great ref, he is not a producer of world class fighters, or even good fighters, for him to say the likes of Anderson, alves or jose aldo need to improve their kicks...well ....
Not sure how you go from an observation that kicks in MMA could be improved to picking out three of the most notable kickers from all of MMA and singling them out.
Oh so he was only talking about bad MMA fighters then because the quote seemed to suggest MMA fighters in general, so i named a few with what most consider good kicks? i could name other MMA fighters if you like with good kicks, from champs like Overeem to journeymen fighters like dan hardy, paul daley, etc would that be more acceptable?
If the quote did suggest "MMA fighters in general," that might still be a fair characterization. Even if you rattled off the names of two dozen good kickers in MMA, think about the thousands of people participating at various levels in the sport now. Big John is seeing more than just the top-level competitors represented in UFC and other similar events. And it's not preposterous to think that many of them aren't brilliant kickers. Is it?
brilliant compared to what though, how do you judge them wanting simply because they are not as good as the top guys, and the top gus got their skills largely from thai not TKD in the main correct? until he starts producing fighters with good kicking skills that come from a background other than Thai his view isn't really worth much more than say Joe Rogans on the matter is it?
I would think the whole notion of 'mixed' martial arts is to borrow from any discipline. Why not Tae Kwon Do? With respect to Muy Thai.
Nobody said that John McCarthy's view is worth more than Joe Rogan's view. And nobody is insulting the overall skill of your average MMAer. I feel like you wouldn't be having this visceral reaction if it had involved some other style (judo or Greco Roman for instance). The fact that Big John knew a taekwondoka he thought might be useful to his guys isn't a condemnation of anyone. As for Joe Rogan, the only video I've seen of him doing instruction was to work with GSP on the spinning back kick, a kick he got from his taekwondo background. So it seems clear to me that while Rogan doesn't necessarily value the overall package, he seems to find value in some of its component parts. So why the resistance to the idea that Big John might feel likewise? I feel like this hits an unnecessary nerve. It seems to me that a basic unwillingness to even entertain the notion that something might be useful runs contrary to the philosophy displayed by folks like Maurice Smith (who planted high kicks on experienced fighters at will). Innovations in MMA generally come from someone who's willing to say, "yeah most guys aren't doing this, but let's see if it works... "
Savate kicking rocks!!! [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMJed79-WoM"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMJed79-WoM[/ame]
