Has anyone here heard of Combat Hapkido?

[Drac]

The thing to remember about CH is that it is an escalating art. Each technique can be done with minimum or maximum force depenmding on the situation. If somebody you know is drunk and gets obnoxious with you, it is not necessary to break their arm or wirst or neck. It is a very flexible form of self defense. If you have futher questions please feel free to contact me at steve@ichfohio.com Good luck with whatever you decide.:yinyang:

Father Greek is MY instructor and a longtime friend as well as the State Director here in Ohio for the Combat Hapkido Federation...

 

[MBuzzy]

I'll take a chance to chime in here. We've had plenty of discussions on CHKD around here and my opinion hasn't changed. It is good stuff. It is effective, it is taught well and it it eliminates a lot of the "unnecessary" techniques from other styles. I've trained with Drac and Father Greek a number of times and I am always amazed at how CHPD is packaged.

But that is the key - there are plenty of people who like to put it down, but it is geared for a particular audience and is packaged in a certain way. It isn't for everyone - I am constantly surprised that people so often feel a need to try to discredit something that works so well. If you don't like it....don't train in it, that simple. It is great stuff and I'd recommend it to anyone who is interested in a simple, effective martial arts style.

 

[Drac]

I'll take a chance to chime in here. We've had plenty of discussions on CHKD around here and my opinion hasn't changed. It is good stuff. It is effective, it is taught well and it it eliminates a lot of the "unnecessary" techniques from other styles. I've trained with Drac and Father Greek a number of times and I am always amazed at how CHPD is packaged.

Thanks..It was a pleasure having your and your crew here...

But that is the key - there are plenty of people who like to put it down, but it is geared for a particular audience and is packaged in a certain way. It isn't for everyone - I am constantly surprised that people so often feel a need to try to discredit something that works so well. If you don't like it....don't train in it, that simple. It is great stuff and I'd recommend it to anyone who is interested in a simple, effective martial arts style.

Very well said....Go attend a seminar and experience it first hand..Don't just go by what you see on YouTube..Until I took my first seminar I was very skeptical..I came from a very traditional discipline and I thought what is this skinny guy gonna show me...He showed me A LOT...

 

[MJS]

I don't think it's a sad commentary on Hapkido specifically. Rather, I think it's a sad commentary on the martial arts in general.

But in this particular instance, should not ALL hapkido be "combat" hapkido by default? What are the other schools doing? Tickle-me-Elmo Hapkido?

My point is just that ALL martial arts ought to have a solid useage focus, and it's sad that some feel the need to make the distinction because many do not have a strong useage focus. But that's just me getting up on my soapbox again.

I don't do CH, so maybe one of the resident practioners can comment better than I, but I'll take a stab at this. I'll view it like this....we have arts such as Kenpo, Ninjutsu and TKD. We also have the RBSD guys. Both are teaching (at least I would hope) effective skills. However, the RBSD guys are taking the whole package, and trimming it down. They're not doing kata or punches in a horse stance, they're working on things that are effective, short, sweet, simple and to the point.

If we look at the CH site, it states what CH is and is not. So while both may and probably are effective, CH is trimming away the board/brick breaking and jumping, flashy kicks.

 

[Paul Borst]

I trained in Combat Hapkido for 4-5 months in Northern Virginia and really enjoyed the instruction. My instructor, John Scali, was probably until now the best martial arts instructor I've ever had. In many ways, your instructor will affect your view of the style you are being taught. I stayed long enough to get my yellow belt and gained a great deal from the experience. In the end, Combat Hapkido is a style I greatly benefited form studying but have found that JKD Concepts has met my needs better for a no-nonsense self-defense based training system. Briefly, I will summarize the pros and cons and bottom for CH for me.

Pros

• excellent all-around self-defense based martial arts system. Virtually all of the techniques and training are useful for self-defense over all ranges (weapons, kicking, punching, trapping and grappling).
• an excellent ground & pound program. Not based on MMA but what to do to get back on your feet. (Note: some of this could depend on your individual instructor. John Scali has an excellent ground game for those of you training in the Northern Virginia area).
• Cost-effective. Compared to some Brazilian Jujitsu places, this is much lower and very competitive to going rates.
• excellent conditioning, the warm up and physical conditioning aspects are great.

Cons

• weapons are limited and emphasize cane. I don't walk with a cane and would prefer not to fight empty hand if it came to it. The stick and knife of JKD are much better, hence my move.
• weaknesses in the curriculum, palm heal strike isn't taught in the Pelligrini curriculum until green belt (much too late as it's among the most practical strikes and easy to execute). No headbutts. The offered reason was not to hurt your head. But if it's the top of your head against a larger opponent's nose, who's going to get hurt? Crescent kick???? I didn't buy it on Billy Jack. And I do not believe I would ever throw one. Front, back, side and roundhouse are a complete set in my view.
• overemphasis on breakfalls. Knowing how to fall is important. Falling backwards should be limited to a back breakfall and not a roll. I got hurt from improperly falling backwards. My fault. But I question the emphasis of the techniques.
• No sparring. I think you need some muscle memory for your techniques. The "our technique is too deadly to spar" line gets old quick. I think some kind of limited sparring would be useful.

Bottom Line

Combat Hapkido is an excellent style. And your decision may largely depend on both where you live and the quality of your instructor (more importantly) as well as price and location. Driving 50 miles each way doesn't work for me, even if the instruction is stellar. If you are single and have the time, your picture may look different than mine. Best.

Paul

 

[Omar B]

One of your cons is the reason I quit Choi Kwang Do. Brutal style, mechanically sound, but no sparring! Plus there are no schools in the NYC area, but that's academic because I quit a while before I moved.

 

[K-man]

I have just returned home after a two week vacation to the US. While staying at Lake Placid (NY), I trained with the local CH guys and they were fantastic. Not only did they allow me to train with them but they went out of their way to show me a variety of their techniques. We can all learn from other styles and it is amazing to see how many similarities there are within the various disciplines. I will incorporate the new techniques I learned into my teaching. Most MA schools welcome visitors and are very happy to allow them to train while on vacation. Take every opportunity to broaden your knowledge.

 

[exile]

I have just returned home after a two week vacation to the US. While staying at Lake Placid (NY), I trained with the local CH guys and they were fantastic. Not only did they allow me to train with them but they went out of their way to show me a variety of their techniques. We can all learn from other styles and it is amazing to see how many similarities there are within the various disciplines. I will incorporate the new techniques I learned into my teaching. Most MA schools welcome visitors and are very happy to allow them to train while on vacation. Take every opportunity to broaden your knowledge.

I agree, absolutely—we can and should learn from what each other are doing; that's how progress is made, no matter what the area of activity is.

But in a sense, it's not that surprising that there are many parallels across different MAs. The task is the same, really—defend yourself from attack—and there are, as many people have observed (Bruce Lee most famously, but I doubt he was the first), only so many ways for an object structured like a human body to inflict damage on another such object, using the limbs as the weapon. At the level of basic tactics, all MAs run into the same limits: how joints move, how many ways you can attack if you're using certain parts of your body to defend, etc.

Where the styles really differ, I think, is in strategy. My sense of Combat Hapkido is that it definitely belongs to a family of arts where the primary weapons are forcing movements against joints with limited freedom of movement. The striking arts—Karate, TKD/TSD and a few others—may use tactics that employ such movements, but the payoff, the punch line (so to speak, lol), is a finishing traumatic strike that either damages a limb sufficiently to incapacitate an attacker or, more seriously, interrupts some vital activity—breathing (knifehand attack to the throat), vision (claw strike to the eyes, with sincerity) or consciousness (punch or hammerfist to the temple). It's in the area of strategy, I think, that whatever stylistic differences between MAs exist that are really worth talking about are to be found...

 

[Father Greek]

I trained in Combat Hapkido for 4-5 months in Northern Virginia and really enjoyed the instruction. My instructor, John Scali, was probably until now the best martial arts instructor I've ever had. In many ways, your instructor will affect your view of the style you are being taught. I stayed long enough to get my yellow belt and gained a great deal from the experience. In the end, Combat Hapkido is a style I greatly benefited form studying but have found that JKD Concepts has met my needs better for a no-nonsense self-defense based training system. Briefly, I will summarize the pros and cons and bottom for CH for me.

Pros

• excellent all-around self-defense based martial arts system. Virtually all of the techniques and training are useful for self-defense over all ranges (weapons, kicking, punching, trapping and grappling).
• an excellent ground & pound program. Not based on MMA but what to do to get back on your feet. (Note: some of this could depend on your individual instructor. John Scali has an excellent ground game for those of you training in the Northern Virginia area).
• Cost-effective. Compared to some Brazilian Jujitsu places, this is much lower and very competitive to going rates.
• excellent conditioning, the warm up and physical conditioning aspects are great.

Cons

• weapons are limited and emphasize cane. I don't walk with a cane and would prefer not to fight empty hand if it came to it. The stick and knife of JKD are much better, hence my move.
• weaknesses in the curriculum, palm heal strike isn't taught in the Pelligrini curriculum until green belt (much too late as it's among the most practical strikes and easy to execute). No headbutts. The offered reason was not to hurt your head. But if it's the top of your head against a larger opponent's nose, who's going to get hurt? Crescent kick???? I didn't buy it on Billy Jack. And I do not believe I would ever throw one. Front, back, side and roundhouse are a complete set in my view.
• overemphasis on breakfalls. Knowing how to fall is important. Falling backwards should be limited to a back breakfall and not a roll. I got hurt from improperly falling backwards. My fault. But I question the emphasis of the techniques.
• No sparring. I think you need some muscle memory for your techniques. The "our technique is too deadly to spar" line gets old quick. I think some kind of limited sparring would be useful.

Bottom Line

Combat Hapkido is an excellent style. And your decision may largely depend on both where you live and the quality of your instructor (more importantly) as well as price and location. Driving 50 miles each way doesn't work for me, even if the instruction is stellar. If you are single and have the time, your picture may look different than mine. Best.

Paul

I would like to address the cons that you presented. I have no doubts that you experienced all of what you stated. However, one must not judge all of Combat Hapkido by one instructor or the base curriculum. I for one teach the Palm Heel strike from day one as do many other instructors. We do not emphasize cane, in fact we very rarely teach it as it does not pertain to most of our students. We do teach the principles because many of them can be applied to other items such as a stick or pipe. The headbutt is taught but rarely used because most of the time an attackers head is usually not in a place where you can get to it ie. buried in your shoulder from a bearhug from the back. Please ask some of my older students how important breakfalls were to them. In several cases it prevented serious injury. As far as sparring is concerned, I think it is unrealistic in a self defense based system to even think of traditional sparring. We use a series of drills where you are attacked by classmates one after the other for several minutes. Each person attacks differently and you never know what direction it is coming from. In short i am sorry that you did not find CH to your liking and found something that fit your needs. But as in all styles each instructor has their own ways of doing things and place emphasis on those that they feel are more important.

 

[Paul Borst]

I would like to address the cons that you presented. I have no doubts that you experienced all of what you stated. However, one must not judge all of Combat Hapkido by one instructor or the base curriculum. I for one teach the Palm Heel strike from day one as do many other instructors. We do not emphasize cane, in fact we very rarely teach it as it does not pertain to most of our students. We do teach the principles because many of them can be applied to other items such as a stick or pipe. The headbutt is taught but rarely used because most of the time an attackers head is usually not in a place where you can get to it ie. buried in your shoulder from a bearhug from the back. Please ask some of my older students how important breakfalls were to them. In several cases it prevented serious injury. As far as sparring is concerned, I think it is unrealistic in a self defense based system to even think of traditional sparring. We use a series of drills where you are attacked by classmates one after the other for several minutes. Each person attacks differently and you never know what direction it is coming from. In short i am sorry that you did not find CH to your liking and found something that fit your needs. But as in all styles each instructor has their own ways of doing things and place emphasis on those that they feel are more important.

Father Greek,

Thank you for your perspective. As you say and as I tried to communicate in my prior posts, it's as much or more your instructor as it is the style you are studying. I only have one small bone to pick which is that you focused only on my cons when overall I have a very favorable opinion of CH. For the record, I have a very high opinion of Combat Hapkido and even higher for Master Scali. I think where we disagree on the extent and value of the breakfalls (how much emphasis, not whether) , and lack of sparring I will leave to the reader. To each their own.

Paul

 

[Father Greek]

I fall on my sword (cane) sir. I did not mean for it to sound like I was ignoring the pros. What you said was very insightful. I thank you for your positive remarks!