Hi everyone. Not to beat a dead horse (too much), but there is an interesting article by Tadzio Goldgewicht over at Deve Devere's website:

http://www.emptyflower.com/xingyiquan/
click on the article "Xingyi & Grappling"

Tadzio is not comparing the two and claiming one is superior, but he is making a statement against cross training. As I know some here train in BJJ & Xingyi, I thought there might be some interest and comment on his ideas.

-Jess

That's great advice- if you do not want to be a well rounded fighter.

As a drummer, I have two options:
1. focus on one style of music.
(benefit: get really great at ROCK drumming)
(down side: only great at ROCK drumming)

2. cross train and learn as much as my mind
and body will absorb of the styles of music
that interest me.
(benefit: I don't get embarrassed when given
the opportunity to play or record with a
great funk band, or pop band, or jazz band.)
(down side: I haven't found one yet.)

Of course, if ROCK is my favorite- where my heart is- it'll be my strongest style. I've known way
too many musicians who didn't cross train and they
can't grow beyond a certain point.

The concept applies to all things:

Wouldn't football players benefit from weight training AND speed training AND yoga?

Didn't Bruce Lee attribute much of his corrdination to the fact that he trained hard at
ball room dancing?

Do you think the Marines would be considered bad asses if they only trained in shooting riffles?
--of course not, that' would be stupid.

So this guy is saying that you have to be a specialist in the martial arts of your choice to be any good at it. Wrong! The way to be good is training in the proper method and correct principles/concepts of internal martial arts. Specialization is for insects. As far as I know all good martial artist have crosstrained at one time or the other. Xing Yi Practitioners train in Ba Gua and vice versa. Some also train in Tai Chi, White Crane, Tong Bei Chuan, Shuai Chiao and the list goes on. Didn't Wang Xiang Zhai founder of Yi Chuan train in various internal martial arts? Of course. So did Sun Lu Tang. Crosstraining is good as long as the art that you crosstrain in follow the same principles. All internal martial arts follow the same principles/concept. And yes Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is an internal martial art. So what's wrong with crosstraining in it? Absolutely nothing. I train in Xing Yi, Yi Chuan, Bagua, BJJ and some Tai Chi techniques. At the same time I also try to keep up my knowledge of Aiki Jiu Jitsu and Ken Jitsu. I don't look at these arts as being separate. To me they are all the manifestations of internal martial arts principles. They're simply expressed differently. I crosstrain, but it is not the style or lineage that is important. I cross train to see the different expressions of the internal martial art principles. It helps me understand and internalize the essence of it all. It is the essence of martials arts that is important after all. That is Shen Wu.

You also cross-dress!

"There's only one Betty, Big Balled Betty!"

I'll be looking for Tadzio's stand up victory in the next UFC.

Well, folks, I've gotta agree with the statement that "Specialization is for insects" (that was great, eh eh eh!).

The author of the article, Tadzio Goldgewicht, used to live here in Brazil, not very far from me. He's a nice pal and one of the most skilled and devoted martial artist I've ever met.

That guy started really young praticing Judo, then moved to Hung Gar and, at last, to Choy Li Fut (a very potent Kung Fu style).

A few years ago, his mother told us he was training in China, with some old masters. I got really surprised when I found he had become a Xing Yi Quan expert. Indeed, Tadzio has an impressive knowlege in diferent kinds of martial arts.

See you, folks.


Morg.

Meynard:

Could you please share your thoughts on how BJJ is an internal art?

Thanks!
Scott Watkins

Good night everybody. This is a "more than dead" topic as far as I understand, but since Ricardo posted some info on me, I'd like to add that:

1 - I've never trained Hunggar
2 - I was, indeed, learning Cailifo in Brazil and at the same time learning Che style XY.

T.

If you train to "familiarize" yourself in groundfighting, then someone who specializes in it will beat you anyway, while you are losing valuable training time in your chosen art. There are only 24 hours in a day, and nobody masters it all. I have known people who mastered 2, even 3 arts, but they are the truly dedicated, and few and far between. Like Tim said elsewhere on this forum, highly proficient fighters begin to look similiar regardless of style. People who dabble in 5 or 6 arts are never truly good at any of them. I cross-train: Kung fu, silat, pistol and rifle! However, it is recommended that one train with and against varied types of fighters. I don't know why people agree that simplicity is good, then complicate their repertoire with various unrelated techniques. I guess cuz "mixed" MA is the current trend, like Minja was in the 80s, Wing Chun in the 70s, karate in the 60s, etc. Wonder what the "ultimate" art will be for the first decade of the 21st century?

The reality of training for groundfighting is that with even a month or two of training, especially in submission based arts, you will be able to effectively defend yourself against the vast majority of people who would have beat you on the ground a month or two before.

The odds of you fighting a groundfighting specialist are very small, the odds of you fighting someone bigger and stronger than you who knocks you to the ground are proportionately much higher.

Losing a month or two of "valuable training time" in your chosen stand up art may be well worth the time. It may even save you from serious injury or worse.

I've been training with a shootfighter, and although not with the aim of learning ground fighting, I find that by getting taken down, I develop a sense of why this happens and am becoming harder for him to take me down. Tim, one can't simply find good training in any system he wants. If one can't find a real BJJ school, could you point out some other arts that have a good repertoire of ground techniques? The shootfighting has a lot of wrestling, but is it as good as BJJ in your estimation? What about "catch wrestling"? Matt Furey is only 2 or 3 hours drive from me.

Kenneth,
I think training with the shootfighter will definately give you some solid wrestling and grappling skills. It sounds like you are putting in the necessary time already. By sparring with a trained grappler, you can learn how to apply what you already know to stopping throws and takedowns in a realistic manner, as well as picking up useful wrestling skills.

Any type of competitive wrestling/grappling style can teach useful skills. If you go to Matt of another teacher, I would suggest telling them you aren't interested in becoming a competitive grappler, that you are interested in basic grappling for the street, and hopefully you can streamline your training.

Thank you for the reply, Tim. Yeah, I guess my best bet is utilizing what I have at hand if you figure the shootfighting is good. I didn't get together with this guy to learn it, just that I was looking for a more realistic type of sparring than the BS "sport" karate stuff. And you're right, now that I think about it. I'm putting in 75 % of the time anyway, why not just ask him to teach me some of his moves during our sessions? Although I'm getting harder to take down, when he does take me down, he makes short work of me. The interesting thing is, my system HAS a groundfighting form, but it supposes that your opponents are still standing.

By the way, I'm not a "know-it-all", so I recall you saying something on another post about how Rickson Gracie beats most of his opponents with moves learned in the first 6 months of training. That fits in with your posts above, so I wanna see for myself. Thanks again.

Kenneth-

Cross training in groundwork, such as with shoot or wrestling/submission grappling or BJJ, does not take very long to develop a decent level of skill.

By that I mean with six months or so of regular practice in shootfighting or BJJ, you will be familiar with a number of common takedowns and ground positions that could be used against you in the street. Sounds like you have already discovered that with the shootfighter.

Learn how to keep from getting taken down, and if it happens, how to keep from being controlled on the ground and how to escape, and you will have all that you need for street ground-work. As Tim says it is unlikely you will meet a skilled submission specialist. You may meet a wrestler or someone with a wrestling background, and knowing how to manuever to a position which allows you to better use striking from your other practices is a very useful skill - and comes pretty quickly if you apply yourself.

Hissho,

You hear alot of statistics nowadays on percentage of fights that end up on the ground.

Since you work in law enforcement, you have "access" to alot more situations than the average person. How many street fights would you estimate actually go to the ground?

Hissho, what you said pretty much confirms what Tim was telling me. I wanna be able to "beat the specialists" also, but I don't think I will be able to do it by playing their game, but by making them play mine. This also requires knowledge in what your opponent is doing. Anyway, I'm actually having fun with this SF thing for now. The boxing fits in with the principles of my style (if not the techniques themselves), you realistically continue to fight once down and best of all, no ridiculous 16 oz gloves! Can anyone tell me how SF differs from NHB?

Hissho, I'm also curious as to your response to Tim's question. I worked on the local Sheriff's dept years ago. Unless his life is in jeopardy, a cop is practically obligated to submit his (opponent). Debilitating strikes are definitely OUT. Also, since most situations revolve around passive resistance, one finds how truly difficult it can be to make someone do something he/she doesn't want to do. Even a relatively slight person might cause 2 or more officers to go to ground with him. Imagine then what those cops trying to take down Rodney King faced. In taijutsu training, we used to practice being held by 2 or more people and unbalancing them so their body weight against each other would reinforce your own moves. As for street fights, a lot of the ones I personally saw ended up on the ground, but a lot of them didn't. I'd say roughly half, depending on the skill(or lack of) of the participants. In my town though, most streetfights seem to involve a weapon anymore.

Where to begin..

I am presently working on an LE-related article for just this topic.

The statistics you are referring to were developed by the LAPD. In a nutshell, in 1991 they did a review of all arrest and use of force reports from 1988, In 1992 they replicated the study.

They examined 5,617 use of force incidents. Of those, only 2,031 "contained a sufficient level of aggressive resistance by the suspect toward the officer to qualify as an altercation."

This is key. The vast majority of times police use force it is of a minor variety. They should not even be called fights. For example : you tell a guy with a warrant to turn around and put his hands behind his back, he says no, you take his arm and put it behind his back, or jack him with a wrist lock, and he goes K, OK! I didn't think you guys were serious!" The study excluded these kinds of incidents.

What the study DID determine was that when actual ALTERCATIONS were involved (and for LAPD altercations means):

Ofc takes hold of suspect, suspect pulls away....
Suspect attacks ofc with punches and kicks....
Suspect refuses to assume search position...
Foot pursuit with contact of suspect at termination...
Suspect takes fighing stance but does not immediately attack...

95% of the time these five, in this order of frequency, were what was encounterd.

I personally think this is where the "95% of fights go to the ground" stat comes from.

The actual finding was that 62% of all altercations "ended withthe officer and subject on the ground with the officer applying a joint lock and handcuffing the subject." I think the 95% and the 62% got glossed together somewhere.

Those are the main points, though the study is a lot more detailed. They then devised a committee to develop their DT program in light of these findings, which also explains why judo, jujutsu and essentially MMA with some come along holds are what is taught at LAPD now. They also had a REDUCTION in complaints and injuries to suspects and officers AFTER implementing more ground control training.

But Kenneth brings up a good point: these are POLICE confrontations. Cops goal the overwhelming amount of time is to control the suspect. Invariably against active resistance this means taking the guy down, controlling him on the ground, and keeping him from reversing you on the ground. This does not mean submission in the sense of making the guy tap, but in controlling his hands/limbs (often pain compliance is counter-productive to control). Weapons are of paramount concern.

If all you care about his hitting the guy and running, or taking him down and running, so be it. No idea what the civilian statistic for going to the ground would be, but it does happen a lot. All you have to do is watch a number of reality shows and watch the civilian, not police, confrontations, the ones that are real fights and not just swinging cocks, and make up your own mind how much you need to be prepared to fight on the ground. You do need to respond with a higher level of force when on the ground, on the bottom, since the level of risk just now skyrocketed. Watch Tito Ortiz work and this should be obvious. In the real world people are killed all the time by hitting the ground and then being stomped repeatedly or ground and pounded in the head.


Most civilian confrontations I have responded to, witnessed in person or on video, etc. are pushing and shoving matches, clinches and/or sucker punches. If one guy goes down the other guy(s) kick, stomp and otherwise pummel the guy, sometimes taking a mount to finish the job. A lot of wrestling just naturally happens unless there is a very damaging strike or brutal takedown that starts the festivities.

On a more serious note, stabbings tend to be scrums with milling about and headlocks and stuff and one person pulling a knife and pounding it into the other one like they are punching. A surprising amount of people relate that they did not even know they were getting stabbed until they saw blood or felt the physiological effects and then realized it. Otherwise a lot are "sucker stabbings" or one guy holds the victim, stabber does his work.

BTW, debilitating strikes are fair game for cops IF the situation warrants use of force raising to the level of serious bodily and/or injury/death, or the reasonable apprehension of same...civilians defending themselves are held to the same, and often more restrictive, standard, so some may be mislead into believing only cops are obligated to submit their opponents and can't use such strikes. I understand what you mean but a lot of folks read the wrong things into such things.

Great stuff! thanks Hissho.

When and where are you planning on publishing the article you mentioned?