Training half of martial arts bugs me.

[drop bear]

Sorry I have to go soon so I will flesh this out better later.

But mentioning the fence made me think of this. Doing a fence but not understanding distancing or angles does not work very well.

Eye gouging without understanding striking or grappling well enough to employ it.

Doing half of the things needed to make martial arts.

It bugs me.

 

[skribs]

One thing to keep in mind in these discussions is the presence of one does not preclude the presence of the other.

There is a thing I see in a lot of posts and a lot of video comments, which is the assumption that absence of other techniques in the discussion means an absence of techniques in the art.

For example, if I were to show a video from a BJJ school about how to do an armbar, how many people would say "that school sucks, because they don't do chokes"? Or if a wrestler shows a video on how to do a fireman's carry, how many people would say "lmao, this guy can't even double leg." Or in a boxing video about a proper hook punch, how many people would say "lol your jab sucks."

It just doesn't make sense. But then you have a TMA where an eye gouge is brought up, and suddenly it becomes the only thing that school learns. Because they have eye gouges, the instant assumption is they don't teach distance and control, they don't teach power generation in striking, and they don't spar. None of these are known facts. They are assumptions made about the school without knowing anything else about it.

Now, if a school does fall into that category of only teaching the eye gouge, without proper striking or grappling training and without any sparring at all, then I'm inclined to agree with you. I just don't like the blanket assumption that "because this school does X, they don't do Y or Z."

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

Eye gouging without understanding striking or grappling well enough to employ it.

When you swing your palm (face down) across your opponent's eyes, what other training do you need for that?

If your fist can punch on your opponent's face, your fingers can poke his eyes too.

 

[wab25]

This is why I like to study the art completely. That means researching who developed it, how they developed it, why they did things a certain way and how and why things changed. I think too many people stop at "my teacher said so." It could be, that your teacher doesn't know.

I have recently started studying Shotokan Karate. Yes, this is the one with all the fancy line dancing. And for most, thats all it really is... with some fun games of tag thrown in. But, things start to look a little different when you go back to the origin, and learn what they were about and how they used these things.

This is an article I post a lot here, it talks about the famous karate down block. This is the down block that is supposed to block a kick... unless you actually try to block a kick where the other guy is intending to hurt you... then you break your arm on his shin. This article shows that Funakoshi actually taught this technique as a throw. It has demonstrations of it as a throw... demonstrations of early students doing demos, demonstrations of it being used in Karate competition as a throw and demonstrations of it being used in UFC against a Judo player, as a throw.

Lyoto Machida: Old-School Karate

So, why do most karate guys blow this off as a far fetched idea? Their teacher said it was a block, and even showed them how to modify it to possibly work as a block. "Their teacher said so." And that trumps the founder of the art...

Why do they do the fancy line dancing? People make up all kinds of answers for this. But some research will show that it is the first step in a process the Japanese used to transmit knowledge and skill. Its literally, the very first step. The problem is that too many karate teachers never learned the process and thought step one was the whole thing. And now, because their teacher didn't know, and told them that just by doing it enough, the magic would come... thats where things stop. And then over time, they change into new things... some of which, do not accomplish the original goals. To figure that out, you need to know what the original goals were and what the goals are now. This takes lots of research and questioning... which leads to more research.

 

[drop bear]

One thing to keep in mind in these discussions is the presence of one does not preclude the presence of the other.

There is a thing I see in a lot of posts and a lot of video comments, which is the assumption that absence of other techniques in the discussion means an absence of techniques in the art.

For example, if I were to show a video from a BJJ school about how to do an armbar, how many people would say "that school sucks, because they don't do chokes"? Or if a wrestler shows a video on how to do a fireman's carry, how many people would say "lmao, this guy can't even double leg." Or in a boxing video about a proper hook punch, how many people would say "lol your jab sucks."

It just doesn't make sense. But then you have a TMA where an eye gouge is brought up, and suddenly it becomes the only thing that school learns. Because they have eye gouges, the instant assumption is they don't teach distance and control, they don't teach power generation in striking, and they don't spar. None of these are known facts. They are assumptions made about the school without knowing anything else about it.

Now, if a school does fall into that category of only teaching the eye gouge, without proper striking or grappling training and without any sparring at all, then I'm inclined to agree with you. I just don't like the blanket assumption that "because this school does X, they don't do Y or Z."

If absolutely nothing is mentioned about basically all of fighting during the discussion of an eye gouge then the discussion is worthless. In the context of paying someone for something I could have come up with on my own.

So as an example if someone is using an eye gouge for a mount escape and is not covering the basics of a mount escape. And in demonstration is not doing anything other than frantically trying to hit the eye from the bottom so that the guy on top just gives up and leaves.

The instant assumption is they don't teach the fundamental principles that make martial arts work.

A person who teaches distance control will use distance control regardless whether he specifically mentions it.

 

[JP3]

One thing to keep in mind in these discussions is the presence of one does not preclude the presence of the other.

There is a thing I see in a lot of posts and a lot of video comments, which is the assumption that absence of other techniques in the discussion means an absence of techniques in the art.

For example, if I were to show a video from a BJJ school about how to do an armbar, how many people would say "that school sucks, because they don't do chokes"? Or if a wrestler shows a video on how to do a fireman's carry, how many people would say "lmao, this guy can't even double leg." Or in a boxing video about a proper hook punch, how many people would say "lol your jab sucks."

It just doesn't make sense. But then you have a TMA where an eye gouge is brought up, and suddenly it becomes the only thing that school learns. Because they have eye gouges, the instant assumption is they don't teach distance and control, they don't teach power generation in striking, and they don't spar. None of these are known facts. They are assumptions made about the school without knowing anything else about it.

Now, if a school does fall into that category of only teaching the eye gouge, without proper striking or grappling training and without any sparring at all, then I'm inclined to agree with you. I just don't like the blanket assumption that "because this school does X, they don't do Y or Z."

But, if they don't do Y or Z, but they Did do P, Q, R, S & even T... would that make them OK?

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

if someone is using an eye gouge for a mount escape and is not covering the basics of a mount escape..

If you have spikes ring on, do you still need to train "mount escape"?

A $20 spikes ring can save all your BJJ class tuition.

 

[skribs]

If absolutely nothing is mentioned about basically all of fighting during the discussion of an eye gouge then the discussion is worthless. In the context of paying someone for something I could have come up with on my own.

So as an example if someone is using an eye gouge for a mount escape and is not covering the basics of a mount escape. And in demonstration is not doing anything other than frantically trying to hit the eye from the bottom so that the guy on top just gives up and leaves.

The instant assumption is they don't teach the fundamental principles that make martial arts work.

A person who teaches distance control will use distance control regardless whether he specifically mentions it.

1. That's a baseless assumption. For example, at my school we'd demonstrate the technique, and focus on distance control as you drill it. You can't cover everything about a technique without going too long, and some stuff you assume as a prerequisite when you make a video.
2. What you assume as common sense or something you can "figure out on your own" isn't always the case. Stuff that seems common knowledge to you often isn't.

 

[drop bear]

1. That's a baseless assumption. For example, at my school we'd demonstrate the technique, and focus on distance control as you drill it. You can't cover everything about a technique without going too long, and some stuff you assume as a prerequisite when you make a video.
2. What you assume as common sense or something you can "figure out on your own" isn't always the case. Stuff that seems common knowledge to you often isn't.

1. Ok. So what you are trying to argue here is that we need to take all the evidence that exists and compare it to all the evidence that doesn't exist.

Given there is a finite amount of evidence that exists and an infinite amount that doesn't that basically means that impossible things are more likely to be correct than possible things.

Which is insane.

2. Stuff that should be common knowledge to the instructor doesn't not seem to be all that common to instructors. I mean let's be serious. Instructors don't spend an hour on eye gouges because their students are too dumb to grasp that a finger goes in an eye.

I don't train with rocket scientists but I will give them more credit than that.

It is because they have no other tools at hand to get them out of the situation they have put themselves in.

And that is because they have only trained half of martial arts.

 

[drop bear]

If you have spikes ring on, do you still need to train "mount escape"?

A $20 spikes ring can save all your BJJ class tuition.

Yes you do. That is precisely the point. Spiky ring is for assisting with your mount escape.

Not instead of it.

Imagine if that was a striking exchange. And you are like "Spiky ring save me" you may very well have an up hill battle without some sort of striking skills.

 

[drop bear]

When you swing your palm (face down) across your opponent's eyes, what other training do you need for that?

If your fist can punch on your opponent's face, your fingers can poke his eyes too.

If your fist can't punch your oponants face. Then good luck with that eye gouges.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

If your fist can't punch your oponants face. Then good luck with that eye gouges.

Now I understand what you are talking about, and I agree with you 100% there.

This is the problem for CMA. Many CMA teachers don't want to teach their students the foot work. The moment that a student has learned footwork, that student will have chance to give his teacher some trouble.

The moment that you have learned how to run your opponent down, the moment that your fight skill has moved into another level.

 

[drop bear]

Now I understand what you are talking about, and I agree with you 100% there.

This is the problem for CMA. Many CMA teachers don't want to teach their students the foot work. The moment that a student has learned footwork, that student will have chance to give his teacher some trouble.

The moment that you have learned how to run your opponent down, the moment that your fight skill has moved into another level.

For some reason eye gouges never include good footwork. As if for some reason you can just throw away everything that is fighting just because your finger is straight.

The very first video I found.

And he at least did a change level entry but then completely forgot about where his head was as soon as he made his fingers go straight.

 

[skribs]

1. Ok. So what you are trying to argue here is that we need to take all the evidence that exists and compare it to all the evidence that doesn't exist.

Given there is a finite amount of evidence that exists and an infinite amount that doesn't that basically means that impossible things are more likely to be correct than possible things.

Which is insane.

And the stuff people do know is virtually endless in some cases. I mention in the other thread, I know enough about roundhouse kicks I could probably do an entire week of classes on them (and nothing else) and maybe cover what I know. Should I have to write a dissertation on roundhouse kicks every time they're mentioned? Even if 99.999% of it is off topic? Just so that you wouldn't assume any holes in my knowledge of the kick?

That is insane. And that's basically what you're asking for.

2. Stuff that should be common knowledge to the instructor doesn't not seem to be all that common to instructors. I mean let's be serious. Instructors don't spend an hour on eye gouges because their students are too dumb to grasp that a finger goes in an eye.

I don't train with rocket scientists but I will give them more credit than that.

It is because they have no other tools at hand to get them out of the situation they have put themselves in.

And that is because they have only trained half of martial arts.

You're looking at very specific cases and applying a very broad brush.

If your fist can't punch your oponants face. Then good luck with that eye gouges.

Except a gouge doesn't need the acceleration of a punch to be effective. There are a lot of situations that wrestlers or BJJ fighters get in, where you're perfectly safe when eye gouges aren't allowed, but in danger if someone decides to. When you're defending a choke, what do you do? Tuck your chin down. Now your opponent can't sink the choke, but they can easily go for the eyes. The biggest advantage the clinch gives you is that you can keep your opponent from generating power with their strikes. But it doesn't take much power to scrape someone's eye with your fingernail.

The human eye is very fragile. Things that just roll off your skin like dust and water are irritating and unpleasant for the eyes. Sunlight takes hours to burn your skin, but just a few seconds to cause irreparable damage. Minor bumps that you would barely notice anywhere else nearly incapacitate an eye for a short time. It doesn't take much to gouge an eye. People are a lot more protective of their eyes than the rest of their body, because bruises heal, but eye damage is permanent.

Going back to point #2 above: I would have thought this was common sense. I would have thought it common sense that there are more ways to attack the eye than just punching with an outstretched hand. I would have thought it common sense how easy it is to damage the eye, based on living for decades with eyes and understanding how fragile they are. I would have thought it common sense to know that any situation where your opponent has his hand near your head is an opportunity for an eye gouge. I would have thought it common sense that because the technique is banned in MMA, that it's a dangerous technique. I would have thought all of this common sense, and yet you don't know it.

You like to assume people don't know things based on what they don't say. I'm looking at what you do say, and I'm not seeing much common sense as it pertains to eye gouges. And I wouldn't point it out, except you like to hold everyone else to an impossible standard.

For some reason eye gouges never include good footwork. As if for some reason you can just throw away everything that is fighting just because your finger is straight.

The very first video I found.

And he at least did a change level entry but then completely forgot about where his head was as soon as he made his fingers go straight.

And how is the opponent supposed to deliver a strike from his heels with his weight falling back?

 

[drop bear]

And how is the opponent supposed to deliver a strike from his heels with his weight falling back?

You step backwards. Admittedly from that eyegouge hook would probably be better.

Now you notice he doesn't mention it but he finished off that 12 o'clock.

It may not be part of the demonstration but because he understands the subject he still did it.

 

[drop bear]

And the stuff people do know is virtually endless in some cases. I mention in the other thread, I know enough about roundhouse kicks I could probably do an entire week of classes on them (and nothing else) and maybe cover what I know. Should I have to write a dissertation on roundhouse kicks every time they're mentioned? Even if 99.999% of it is off topic? Just so that you wouldn't assume any holes in my knowledge of the kick?

That is insane. And that's basically what you're asking for.

The information you do share should be correct to convince people you know about round house kicks.

So if like the eye gouge video you do something silly like expose your head. This would convince me that you have only trained half a martial art.

 

[Tez3]

I have recently started studying Shotokan Karate. Yes, this is the one with all the fancy line dancing.

That would depend entirely on who you are training it with as with most styles. Shotokan produces some of the best full contact karate fighters. In most places it's a very hard hitting, robust style. I suspect that if they aren't members of the ISKF they aren't actually teaching proper Shotokan or at best a watered down version.

In over 40 years of karate I've never been taught nor seen taught that a downward 'block' is for blocking a kick, anyone who tries will only do it the once. Rarely is a 'block' actually a block which most karateka actually do know.

There is a lot of research being done in karate, Iain Abernethy of course, John Titchen and Noah Legel are equally good, they all teach that 'uke' doesn't mean blocking.

 

[wab25]

That would depend entirely on who you are training it with as with most styles. Shotokan produces some of the best full contact karate fighters. In most places it's a very hard hitting, robust style. I suspect that if they aren't members of the ISKF they aren't actually teaching proper Shotokan or at best a watered down version.

Correct, it depends entirely on who you are training with. Over here in the US, its quite easy to find Karate schools, most of them will be Shotokan... most will teach the fancy line dancing and games of tag. You have to look long and hard to find the kind of Shotokan school you are talking about. I was lucky and found one.

In over 40 years of karate I've never been taught nor seen taught that a downward 'block' is for blocking a kick, anyone who tries will only do it the once. Rarely is a 'block' actually a block which most karateka actually do know.

Really? That is surprising... in my experience, its quite a common thing that is taught.

I am surprised you missed it... maybe the Karate over there is much better than most of what is here.

There is a lot of research being done in karate, Iain Abernethy of course, John Titchen and Noah Legel are equally good, they all teach that 'uke' doesn't mean blocking.

I like those guys and have used them as part of my study. Whats interesting is that Funakoshi was quite explicit about what uke meant. You are correct, it does not mean blocking. In Karate-Do Kyohan, Funakoshi talks about what the uke techniques are... he gives about 8 definitions. He starts out with concepts like blending, parrying, pulling, trapping, pushing... the very last definition he gives for these is that they can be strikes to vital points. He includes an anatomy chart showing where those points are. He then adds to that definition that alternately, you could use them to knock aside and incoming attack from a hand or foot. At least here in the states, we ignore all the definitions, except for the alternate definition to the very last one.

Whats interesting is that if you actually continue to read the Kyohan, Funakoshi goes through the line dances explaining what you are doing. When he talks about those uke techniques, he explains them as grappling type moves and insists that they always be practiced as such. He even explains that there are many throws in the line dances, that should also be practiced. Most Karate folks here, just want to stick to the basics, and use uke to block things... because thats what their teacher told them. I don't think these guys are even up to studying half of the art yet... but at least they enjoy their line dancing.

 

[Tez3]

I am surprised you missed it... maybe the Karate over there is much better than most of what is here.

Karate and martial arts as a whole is smaller over here, we tend not to be 'trendy' so perhaps have kept to older ways. The first Shotokan was brought here by Japanese instructors who trained under Funikoshi, my style Wado Ryu was the same brought over by instructors who trained under the founder. less dilution perhaps because we are such a small place there's less opportunities for those who want to open schools to do so making styles less diluted. It could also mean styles get stifled but on the whole it doesn't seem to happen a lot. When ever I've visited a TKD class that it is quite robust compared to descriptions I've read of classes elsewhere, there's sparring ( kumite) with hand as well as foot strikes. I think the answer maybe that we are parochial here with little chance for a huge expansion of martial arts classes. MMA while popular is exactly the same with just three or four 'big' gyms across the UK, lots of smaller, amateur/semi pro ones but again spread out.

 

[wab25]

The first Shotokan was brought here by Japanese instructors who trained under Funikoshi, my style Wado Ryu was the same brought over by instructors who trained under the founder. less dilution perhaps because we are such a small place there's less opportunities for those who want to open schools to do so making styles less diluted.

Do they understand and use the Shu Ha Ri method over there? Do they understand how kata is part of that system of transmission?