martial art styles

I wish I could have one of you batmanned... Every martial art has good and bad, just like Psyphon said. It really boils down to the practioner and their training rather than the art itself most of the time.

Segal sucks

Now he does sure. And has for a long time. But back in the 80s he was pretty bad ass

He sure acted like a badass. But he wasn't much of an actor.

I think he's funny

I have used tai chi combatively. Not by its self though. I also knew a guy who worked in a home for mentally handicapped teens, he used TCC all of the time to subdue the residents when they got violent.

And I knew this guy who subdued criminals with his mind dagger attack.

My best technices are trained in kata. My balance is trained in kata. My ma'ai is trained in kata. My breath is trained in kata. I haven't sparred in a long time, and I didn't spar much back then. But I do know the difference between kata and combat.

For the record, I don't consider myself a martial artist. I'm not particulary skilled at the stuff, I just know how violence works. It's mostly about controling thoughts, breath and channeling rage. If you can't do that, martial arts won't help you as much as it should.

So I just train and have fun, without a worry in the world. I could use training strategies more suited for violence, but the goal is never violence. So the training would feel meaningless, I'd get bored and uncommitted to the training. But I still spend 5-10 minutes a controlling thougths and channeling rage. Because it feels good to control my mind. And you never know...

I'm not Batman, and I love every minute of it!

@ Thanatos, yes, it works well when you can't smash the opponant
and you need to control the situation.


@ Dogman,"...channeling rage...", very very good.

You are a wise wagger

Urban Avenger wrote:

Now he does sure. And has for a long time. But back in the 80s he was pretty bad ass

He always sucked.

I don't have anger management issues but I suggest counseling instead of breathing a certain way....and just because you are unprepared for violence doesn't mean violence won't find you.

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I'm a big fan of this stuff.

practically anything Patrick Swayze does in Road House.

Nemesis wrote:

I don't have anger management issues but I suggest counseling instead of breathing a certain way....and just because you are unprepared for violence doesn't mean violence won't find you.

are we to guess who you are typing to?

How did that work out for you Nemesis?

I was obviously directing my comment towards Dogman. It has similar subject manner, as I am sure you can now tell.

As for Midnight, I'm not sure what you mean by how it worked out for me. My comment was disparaging your story about the success of a soft art in a violent encounter with nothing but word of mouth (and keyboard) as proof.

What could you possibly question about prof. Midnight? I've met the man, he's good on his word.

Nemesis, my wife has worked with mentally handicapped adults for years now. Regardless of how violent one can become, she is not authorized (and could face a lawsuit and/or jailtime) to use physical force if someone gets out of hand. She CAN avoid being hurt with misdirection, and use painless jointlocks to control them (under the guise of leading them by the arm). Midnight never said his friend fought the patients, just that he got them under control. No one ever said you could take tai chi or Karate katas into a biker bar and clean house.
The moral here: Don't assume that someone is lying or leaving something out JUST to justify haveing an additude. And don't mess with my wife.

I'd also like to add that nemesis accusing someone of making claims with only a keyboard to verify something is the pot calling the kettle black.

Nemesis: I once again invite you to relate any story where you had to fight to defend yourself from real danger, where failure meant the real possibility of severe injury or death. Just one anecdote, please, from your fountain of wisdom.

There is people on this forum NOT ignoring Nemesis? You are wasting your time trying to discuss, Nemesis is always "right".

I'm not asking her to prove a point, only to give an example based on experience.

Of which I believe she(?) has none

Dogman, I can't ignore anyone. Its my job as a moderator to monitor all posts.

Well, Nemesis, you have succeeeded in getting yourself ignored
and
have shown no signs of delivering on a perfectly acceptable request.

Was this your goal or were you hoping that
most posters would type that Nemesis really has a grip on the subject matter?

If the second was your goal and since you did not achieve it,
what would you change in order to achieve that goal?

To get back on subject and to leave all this conflict behind us, how about we discuss martial arts related situations. Can anyone share any stories regarding stylistic changes that have resulted in an advantage for you or your opponent. I'll even go first. and remember it's all just rock paper scissors.

Me and my best friend have been training together for a little over 20 years. About 4-5 years ago we were sparring at medium-hard intensity because we were playing a game of "chess" that we liked to play and it's hard to go full out in this game.

Basically the idea behind the game was for each person to start out within the confines of a single style of their choosing. Then at random intervals one of the two would switch to a different style. Once you switched your style you had to keep with it for at least 15 sec. before you could change again (we had someone timing off to the side). This is an awesome game to see how arts react against each other. It was also fun to pick up another style and toss it in unexpectedly when the other person didn't know you were learning it in the first place.

So here we are fighting, and I had shifted into wing chun against his TKD that he was using. I started to tear him up and then he switched over to western boxing.
The shift in style really messed with my linear chain attacks (especially with the bob and weave).

I went from completely offensive to barely holding up a defense in the flip of a switch.
Then I swapped styles over to bagua.
The circular motion of bagua completely circumvented his boxing attacks and forced him into turtling in (later he told me that the moves were to unpredictable to use any type of boxing defense against so he just turtled to wait til he was able to switch styles again).
His next style switch was to wing chun.
We were at a stale-mate for a long while so I decided to try something drastic.

I switched styles to TKD and shot out 2 finger pierces toward the throat that he blocked quite easily, but they were just the decoy techniques. We were in closed stance and I fired off a rear pivot side kick just to the outside of his head, but we were at a range where my side kick at full extension put the back of my knee in line with his head. I pulled back at the knee as hard as I could and turned the side kick into a hook and caught him with my heel to the base of the skull from the back.
A split second before the impact though he switched styles. I'm not sure what style he was moving into but I ended up with a deep palm heel in the center of my chest.

The end result ..... we both went down. He got K.O.'d and had a severe concussion. I wasn't K.O.'d but ended up with a bruised hip bone and a broken wrist from a failed break-fall because of the weird angle I was at, due to the high hook kick, and the huge impact from the palm heel.

Fun times. fun times. Goes to show though how much it can throw you off your game to fight a style that you're not prepared for.