but regarding full contact - aren’t the gloves distorting the way you block ? I think once you take the gloves off, blocking becomes fairly different.
[quote=“MIRACLEARROW, post:1640, topic:131577”]
Define “traditional” blocks, because much of Chinese blocking IS about small parries.
Somewhere along the line, when things got passed over to Okinawa and such, this concept of using blocks to smash your opponent became popular.
That’s not the case in things like Shaolin or Choy Li Fut, or even Wing Chun (eeww).
Smashing blocks are a waste of time and energy - you’re simply trying to move an attack off its target. They shouldnt even be called blocks, tbh.
Blocking in general comes from the time when you didn’t have gloves. You didn’t want your head anywhere near the opponent’s handsn so you’d use your lead arm to parry and deflect with your forearm. Think the Fighting Irish.
[quote=“Wasted, post:1642, topic:131577”]
Probably half of the blocks I did in Sil Lum Hun Gar Kung Fu for 3 years were smash blocks or LARGE circle blocks. I’m not sure which styles you studied but the style I trained for years was an incorporation of many kung fu styles. Also to be fair, its not legit to put a blanket statement on ALL Kung Fu or Karate for that matter since there are so many styles so thats my bad.
But in the Kung fu I was doing a ton of smash blocks, hammerfist blocks or large open hand circle blocks. And when I trained Karate it was almost exclusively smash blocks.
Really the only portion of the kung fu style that I learn that were small parries were either the wing chun portion which focuses solely on small movements or Si Lum Tao which really is a massive part of Wing Chun as well. Half of what you discussed also proved my point RE: Karate lol.
Sure, and fair point but realistically training scenarios done at less than half speed with improper attacking techniques are not benefiting anyone as a martial artist either. And trust me, I’ve done my fair share of it all. I really believe the only way to get true practice is from creating the most realistic scenario possible. Obviously you break down those skills offline and conceptualize but at the end of the day you need to also practice putting those skills into practice in the most realistic scenarios available. Plus your hands aren’t your only tools… In your case you still have your legs, all of your locks, sweeps and throws.
That’s just my two cents.
I agree that the moves should be practised as realistically as possible (full speed, moving opponent).
I will narrow my question then, since I understand there are multiple types of blocking: what are your thoughts regarding smashing blocks ? Are the more circular ones better ? if yes, why ? I believe here lies the distinction between so called soft and hard styles - the way you are blocking.
Hung Gar is heavy on smashing blocks, yes.
I’m a Choy Li Fut and Tai Chi guy as far as Chinese training goes (TKD, Shotokan and Muay Thai before that). Hence the points about soft blocking and deflections.
Honestly, blocking, as in jamming, in general is pretty low on the list of defensive strategies. It’s more a last resort, since you have to be in range to use a block anyway.
I’m pretty pumped. One of my sensei gave me a free tournament shinai. Technically I won this thing at my dojo for like most dedicated student or w.e and they were going to give me some like small Team Canada gear but I never got anything. So then he was being nice and he’s like here, they never gave you anything so take this instead. He tried to play it off cool since technically he’s a shinai snob and won’t use it but he didn’t have to give it to me either lol.
If you had to choose a taekwondo club, what would you pick, WTF or ITF ? Is there a real difference between them, or it doesn’t matter ?
Also, how important is mit training ? I’m asking this since in my club we don’t train with mits, but I went to another club and they were using mits.
ITF because I’m biased as that’s my background (Conor Mcgregor also trains/trained ITF).
You’ll at the very least be allowed to punch to the head.
You’ll train a lot with mits at any school worth its salt.
3 weeks until tournament time. Its finally a reality. I’m really pushing to win my division this year. Last few weeks been back to training 5 days a week for roughly 3 hour sessions per time. Sadly I have a heavy work schedule with really random hours. 7am-3pm some days… 4pm-12am others… I really hope it doesnt affect me too much. I’m just going to do my best to sleep as much as possible. And week before the tourney I usually don’t do much anyways in preparation so shouldn’t be the end of the world. I’m hoping my sick mom will feel well enough to come watch me this year. Its gonna put a lot of pressure on me but a big part of me wanting to win is to show her I’m doing well…not sure if that makes sense.
Good luck man, get into the samurai spirit
Regarding the discussion concerning blocking, here it is a video of someone demonstrating karate blocks against a boxer’s punches - granted, this is Goju-ryu Karate:
it seems these blocks can be quite effective.
So I’ve been working 4pm to 12 Am lately, havent been able to practice and my last day I will likely have a chance to do Kendo was yesterday before the tournament. I went from being confident to not having a good class on sunday and being unconfident. Im putting so much pressure on myself to win. Anyone have any advice?
Great video analysis worth watching
The tournament this year had over 200 participants from all over Canada and US with a bracket of over 64 people in my division (Black belt/Brown belt division).
I came first place. My hard work really paid off and I’m still kind of riding the high. Also I won a massive trophy that will get my name engraved on it. Only thing I’m sad about is not having the chance to play in front of everyone at the end since my division usually plays right before lunch.
Here are some of the photos ^.^
Not the best way to end the year, but still, some interesting lessons to be taken from this incident : http://sooshimkwan.blogspot.ro/2017/08/lessons-to-be-learned-from-unfortunate.html
Among others being: don’t get into street fights; size is not everything; and fancy high kicks do work in a street fight. Basically an mma pro fought a olympic medalist bodybuilder and killed him with a fancy kick. There’s a video in the article, too.
Did you guys hear about this?
I find it really strange that some people like the writer of this article still question the effectiveness of MMA in a street fight when it’s the most effective combination of arts to learn. MMA is not like other combat sports. He’s trying to equate MMA to being no different to TaeKwondo because that the “sport” he competes in.
So…a bloke who is a relative expert, rocks a guy’s head with the hardest kick a person can throw.
What did he think would happen?
The author is not questioning the effectiveness of MMA in a street fight. Clearly it works, as a dude got killed.
Reminder that Conor’s TKD coach also killed a man a while back.
The author is trying to draw the distinction between fighting and self-defense. And there most certainly is one.
The MMA guy could have easily handled this fight with some groundwork or low blows and walked away. Instead, he acted like he was in the cage and killed the guy. A product of his training, as per how Rickson Gracie describes modern MMA in that same article.
Ironically, he killed the guy with a popular TKD kick, so yes, in this regard, you actually can equate TKD and MMA to an extent.
It worth noting that the guy killed was an olympic medalist in strongman’s contests.
Anyway, the effectiveness of MMA is undisputed, but there is a problem here - in the video, you see after the kick how the mma guy jumped on the fallen opponent and punched him in the face 4-5 times, even if his opponent was lying on the ground.
This is a huge problem, since this is classic mma training - you see this in most ufc fights. In the cage, you have a referee to stop you, in the streets there’s no referee.
Punching a downed opponent is fair game in mma, but this is a major offence according to the law - if you hit a downed person, you are no longer in self defence, even if you were originally attacked by that person, so you will be charged as an aggressor.
This is the difference between a sport martial art and a civilian defense based one - MMA might be very effective as techniques goes, but lacking the understanding of what you can (and should) and what you cannot do in a self defence/ street fight situation can be very dangerous. If the mma guy stopped after the kick, he might have gotten away with a couple of years. Hitting his downed opponent turned his sentence into 20 years - life time imprisonment
Did some Kyokushin Karate back in highschool and got the green belt (after that there is the brown belt and then the black). Took some class in Muay Thai and was interested in doing some boxing but never got around to do some (I always liked throwing punches more than kicks).