• Archive through May 08, 2004 May 08 - 03:04 am [20]

• Archive through May 11, 2004 May 11 - 10:08 am [20]

• Archive through May 14, 2004 May 14 - 04:27 pm [20]

• Archive through May 28, 2004 May 28 - 11:57 am [20]

• Archive through June 03, 2004 June 04 - 02:47 am [20]

Are you a compulsive cleaner-upper? Maybe they figure you'd do a good job of mopping up the blood, body parts, organs, etc.

It has a lot of strategic advantages. I know you planned all of this since you're a master in the ways of guile.

LOL

Kenneth, shame. Of course those Shen Wu guys would have lots of cleaning up experience after exploding chickens.

Kenneth,
You're probably right, if I can scrape chicken entrails from the cracks in the mat, I suppose I can clean up anything.

Meynard,
As long as I'm there for the end of the battle.

Hey bruce,
still on the meds man or have you moved onto that waterfall treatment thing. Keep singing that funky mantra 'I am not scared of qui chu ji' you may start to belive it. Also you spelt master wrong.

Fool! In my hood that how we spell mastah! Mastah!

Good for you Leroy. Now go pick some cotton and shut the hell up!

Racist son of w ho re! Racist, racist, racist! T Jackson you are a racist bastard!

Are you sure? Or am I a reflection of yourself?

You're a reflection of your momma's cuchie!

Bruce Leroy is Number One. Don't fcuk with the Bruce...

... duh, class!... what were we talking about??
Short attention spans here... what grade are you kids in?

3rd.

I sure do see a lot of big egos and attitudes for a site that is supposed to be for the internal martial artist....is it because of the Americanization of these "internal arts"? I realize that much of this is joking and poking fun to one another...but it seems to get out of hand. I don't mean to offend anyone, especially Tim. I am just curious if anyone else sees what I am seeing.

A perceptive, and accurate comment about the egos and attitudes - but not much you can do about it.
If you keep checking in once and a while and use your B.S. filters - there will always be some great discussions that get started and remain untainted (at least for a short time) from juvenile bantering.
Tim (and Sysop) do an admirable job of keeping the "class" in line - but, the kids do get bored once in a while.

I didn't actually bother to read the entire archive of this discussion (only the first two pages of archive) but I would like to offer my own experience of two instances of grappling vs. stand-up fighting.

Just as a note: Before the first ground encounter last year I had never done any ground fighting at all.

My two previous street encounters included being bambushed in a bathroom at a wedding by the ringboy and another guy who eventually became a really good friend. The fight lasted around 15 second or less. I punched the first guy in the head (This was years ago and I had had absolutley no martial arts training but had seen rocky 3,4,5 The second guy I shoved up against a wall and punched or something. He got scared and ran (he's the guy who became a friend) the ring boy i kicked while he was moaning or something, I forget, it was a long time ago. I then left and went back to the wedding. The point. The first blows counted. My superior natural strength (everyone I know always calls me really strong despite that I'm not really that strong with weight-lifting, maybe I'm what interal martial arts masters call internally strong ?) allowed me to simply hit my opponents first when I saw the danger approaching and realized I was gonna have to fight.

Thus we learn from this fight that:
Hit first whenever possible especially when dealing with multiple opponents.

The second fight also occured a while ago. This time against a bully and his posse (or however you spell this, I wish Internet Explorer had a spell checker ) Fortunatly I only had to fight the bully alone (he was around 4-6 inches talles, 40 lbs heavier, ect.) He was kinda slow and I had only a few weeks of martial arts training. (a beginners class) I jumped over his attempt to sweep my leg and at the same time I pulled his shirt over his head and was proceeding push him down a large steep hill when some adults intervened, that woulda been fun. Anway, I later learned that some guys with baseball bats or something ambushed him (I live in the suburbs where you don't even have to lock your car doors and there are no vandals) and beat the •••• out of him. This happened when I was playing a baseball game only a few hundred feet away. Some adults asked some kids, why didn't you come and tell somebody that this was happening? The kids said, why? He deserved it

What do we learn from this:
Big bully guys really are usually not that tough and kinda slow. Stay cool headed. Also, if you pick on enough people, eventually some older brothers with baseball bats are gonna throw you off your bike and pound your ass to hell with baseballs bats and nobody's gonna lift a finger to help

The third fight occured last year against a college football player who was around 25-30 lbs heavier and considerably older (thus when you're only 15, much naturally stronger) We were playing touch foot ball and something got us arguing and he ran at me and tried a take down (He used to do wrestling in highschool)

I had real in BlackBelt magazine a few weeks earlier about a Ultimate Fighting Championship bout where some Hapkido guy or something had a guy do the same thing to him (The other guy was a BJJ expert or something similar and much stronger and younger) The Hapkido guy simply cought him in a choke as the guy grabbed him and let the guy fall down with him and choked him out in seconds.

I had been doing martial arts for a several years now (only stand-up) I did the same thing. We both fell but I had him in i think its called a guitine choke or something I locked my other arm into it to make sure it would hold and then I wrapped my legs onto him to prevent him from being able to get anything going. He quickly gave up. Because I was at a christian teen camp week, I was fortunate that there was no hard feelings.

What did we learn from this: Ground fighting should come as a progression of the fight when the two opponents are close, not artificially forced. Otherwise your opponent will be able to see what exactly you are gonna do and thwart you pretty quickly.


The last fight was actually just a series of traditional-wrestling/nhb style wrestling friendly fights between a pretty-good current highschool wrestler and me (about the same age, a little heavier but with only one piece of ground experience that was over in seconds). What happened. The first match was I guess just wrestling. I quickly grabbed him around the kneck and locked on with my legs. He was angry, saying that wasn't wrestling and that I was cheating . (I really don't know squat about wrestling or even anything about the rules) The next fight he told me what was legal and beat me in around 1.5 minutes. I said lets roll with "real" wresting as I call choke/tap out wrestling. I beat him pretty quickly (I had him locked up in a choke out hold in 30 seconds) That week he just sometimes randomly friendly attacked me and I made him tap out reach time We also had a few more tradional wrestling bouts and each time I got better and better. He said a few times I would have easily won if I had any experience and knew any holds (all i know is how to choke someone out). Each time it took him longer and longer to beat me until it took him 5 minutes of continous wrestling to beat me. But everytime we "real" wrestled I won. By the way, this was at a christian family camp week. I also played the punching game 6 inches with a very experienced player which ended in a draw and severe brusing because I had never played before and didn't know that I was supposed to take the blows to the arm I wasn't punching with like he was and didn't know that I was supposed to take the blows to muscles to avoid pain (i was taking them on muscle bare gap between the tricepts and deltoids)My friend I mentioned in another post (studied 6 styles of fighting, gymnastics instructor, 19 years old) said after I told him about these encounters, "Are these really church camps or unarmed combat training camps?"

What do we learn from this:
When on the ground, the throat is the ultimate goal because it is so easy to win once you got control of it. I also learned a lot of balance and how to avoid takedowns a lot better from my experiences.

Summary:
Ground fighting isn't really that difficult if you apply the same basic principles that you learn from stand-up fighting. Legs and hips for power, distance, rythm, explosiveness, and muscle endurance is really important from ground fighting because your muscles burn really bad after a few minutes. Go to the ground I think as a last resort because if any friends of your opponent show up you are at a severe disadvantage. It is a lot easier to hit your opponent first before he tries to close the gap and grapple. A closed fist can hit before your oponnent can get close enough to grab you well enough to grapple.

ElectronicSaiyan, you sound like a natural. However, ground fighting may not be as easy as you think. It may be easy to beat guys who have no experience in submission grappling, but going against people with experience is a totally different matter. There are very effective techniques to defend against the guillotine choke. I recommend that you go to a submission grappling school and roll with a few of the experienced grapplers before jumping to conclusions. If you live in Southern California, I invite you the the Shen Wu Academy. The guys there are cool and won't try to intentionally hurt you; they won't try to prove anything to you.

Thanks Koojo for the offer to go to the Shen Wu Academy in California, I'd love to but I live in Pennsylvania which is kinda almost as far from California as you can get and still live in the United States. (Both culturally and physically)

I don't mean for my post to be anything conclusive and I understand that I have a *LOT* to learn but I thought it might be nice to show a few examples of actual "streetish" fighting with grappeling since I hadn't seen any in the discussion so far. Anyway, thanks for the advice Koojo.

P.S. does anyone know if doing dead-lifts with weight (I just started but I do around 240 lbs for reps) can help you increase your ability to lift your opponent off the ground and control him easier? I know it has really helped strengthen my lower back which I seriously injured around 2 years ago and hurt me for 8 months sometimes so bad I couldn't lay flat on my back without horrible pain, forget practicing)

Lot of good wrestlers in Pennsylvania. I'm sure there must be some submission grappling schools there. If you ever get the chance to come out to Cali, drop by.

Mont,
Deadlifts are excellent training for lifting another person (or anything else) off the ground.

Hi,

There's tons of good BJJ gyms here in Philly. Mont F. Cessna Jr., what part of PA do you live in? (if you don't mind my asking) Thanks,
Josh

I live just outside of Harrisburg.

Go to the ground and die. http://9news.com/acm_news.aspx?OSGNAME=KUSA&IKOBJECTID=767ea616-0abe -421a-0137-ecb0659fd718&TEMPLATEID=b546d9ee-ac1f-02c5-003a-8e288dffed56

Better link to above: [url]http://9news.com/acm_news.aspx?OSGNAME=KUSA&IKOBJECTID=767ea616-0abe-421a-0137-e cb0659fd718&TEMPLATEID=b546d9ee-ac1f-02c5-003a-8e288dffed56[/url]