I love this clip

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01_kQd8pOus this was posted on another section but I wanted you to see this. This to me isthe best tma stuff I've seen.

great stuff

nice!

that elbow at about 1 min 35 secs was a beaut!!

How the fook were those people being knocked out...traditional martial arts don't work.

Nick

PS: Ade, you must be seeing things. It's well established on here that elbows don't work in fights either...what's wrong with you people?

Awesome! "Hockey-jutsu".

Nick Hughes wrote:PS: Ade, you must be seeing things. It's well established on here that elbows don't work in fights either...what's wrong with you people?

I'm glad I'm not alone as this stuff closely resembles what we do but I must admit their sparring is better. Mike, I think Nick was being sarcastic, seeing as elbows have been dismissed by many who don't know how to use them. For me this progressive tma at it's best and these boys could tangle in both mma and street with the added bonus of using gi's, more applicable to street. Cheers, Rob

Boy, some of you guys are getting hot over this one. Good clip, though, and one that clearly shows the direction TMA should be going, and I said as much in a reply to Ken Milling when he referenced this clip quite a while ago by e-mail to me.

My mind must be going. Because I'm sure that somewhere I’ve seen this fighting before. Let me think. It was without the helmet, without stomps on the ground to represent stomps to the head, and without checked gyaku zuki’s to simulate ground and pound. And it had more groundwork.

But where was it I remember seeing it? Was it in one of the dojos I trained in or visited when in Japan or Okinawa? No. Was it at Oyama’s first knockdown tournament? Mmm...no. Was it on one of those clips of ZDK that appeared over on Nick Hughes’ Q&A a while back? No.

Oh, now I remember. It was at 9 Earlham Street circa 1973! Bloody hell, my own gym! It was when I was experimenting with full contact fighting both in the gi when I was still a member of Goju kai, and after breaking away, without the gi. But it isn’t surprising, because the originator of Daidojuku was referencing boxing, Muay Thai, judo, ju-jutsu, sambo, etc. to extend his Kyokushin Kai so as to get a more realistic approach to training for the street. Those are similar references to what I used. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daido_Juku

The thing is, he did come up with it a little bit later than I did. But unlike me he’s made a success out of it.

If the karate community had been listening to what I had to say about how to fight train back in the 1970s when I was still going out of my way to talk to them, then this topic on the forum would be obsolete, because karate fighting would have already undergone its evolution. Daidojuku has broken away from Kyokushin Kai, and that breakaway has taken it to another level. But for it to progress further, it needs to evolve within itself. Or somebody needs to break away from it and make it more multidimensional. At the moment, there are a number of significant restrictions that keep it back from being a full-fledged fighting system.

I’d like to see the competitions made more open, so that other MMA fighters can enter. I’d like to see how a wrestler/ground&pounder would do against these guys. Unlike the examples that Luciano gave on another thread recently, this is an example of a case where dissimilar types of fighters would challenge the system and force it to evolve. When Oyama had his first open tournament, there were a lot of Muay Thai fighters who entered, and they were eliminated in the first round on various technicalities, because the first three places had already been determined. Oyama was eliminating anybody in the competition who could be a threat to that, even to the point of actually reversing decisions.

You need to have open competitions. This closed competition is not the way to go.

I’d like to see the headguards go. They give a false sense of security, and paradoxically at the same time they can contribute to the knockout because of blind spots, the percussive effect, and the fact that the radius of the head becomes larger, the angular velocity of the hit is greater at the brainstem, resulting in a more violent twist and disruption to that area. Secondly, I’d like to see the pseudo-stomps eliminated. Pride had them, and nobody died. And why simulate ground and pound when you could actually do it? Guys are getting knocked out anyway, so what’s the difference? Also the groundwork needs to be extended a little bit.

Anyway, when you show me a clip like this, I’m looking at something that’s 35 years old as far as I’m concerned. It doesn’t impress.

What you’ve got to remember as well, is that Kyokushin Kai knockdown fighting is nothing more than Muay Thai and kickboxing with a few safety rules thrown in. Oyama didn’t draw on his tradition to produce modern Kyokushin fighting. He drew on Muay Thai. And in the same way, Daidojuku is MMA in a gi with a few extra rules. It’s not coming out of a tradition; it’s obviously been derived from modern fight sport. To call it a tradition is misleading. When I did the experimental fighting in Earlham Street, I didn’t call it karate. I called it contact fighting. And that was a very loose term.

The thing is, a fight is a fight. Yes, a real fight uses elbows, knees, fists, and so do TMAs. But TMAs train these tools in a stylized, formal way out of context of the live situation. Then when the traditional martial artist sees the same tool being used in a real fight, they claim ‘That’s my elbow strike! It works!’ But the tool you’ve trained has to be made to work in a fight or something that closely replicates a fight. A punch is not the same as a gun or knife. It doesn’t give you the same advantage. You have to make that tool work for you, no matter whether it’s a punch, kick, elbow, headbutt, lock, choke, whatever. Otherwise it’s worthless. And that’s the problem I have with the traditional martial arts.

What comes out of this clip and other MMA clips is that you can actually do this shit without seriously getting hurt. And you should be encouraged by that as a martial artist and realize that you can challenge yourself in this way. It’s not going to kill you.

So my question to you guys is: how many of you are fighting or training like this? My lot are, every Sunday, with a lot more in the mix because I’m ahead of the curve. How about you?

Do your guys train like this, Nick? I know you do door work and you’ve proved your karate works for you on the door, but what about the guys who don’t work on the door? Do you engage them in this kind of fight training to make their tools work for them?

If you do, great. But if you don’t, then you should. Because—to the individuals reading this--that’s the only way you’re going to know that it works for you personally. That’s the vital thing to remember. Not whether it works for your teacher or trainer, but whether you can make it work for you.

And here’s another question, Nick. Now, you posted a question to me once what would an MMA fighter do if he was ambushed in the dressing room by a guy with a knife or a machete or words to that effect. Does that apply here? Because there isn’t much room to hide a knife in lycra shorts, but there’s enough room in a gi to carry an axe. In fact, you could probably fit a hand grenade in those helmets. Then again, the hand grenade would probably sort out the lager louts in steel toecapped boots!

As I said before, I applaud anybody who engages in this kind of fighting. And I applaud this lot. Just as Kyokushin Kai has contributed some great K-1 fighters, I’m sure that Daidojuku will do the same for MMA and probably that process has already begun.

I just wish the rest of the TMA community would catch on and put it on the line rather than just talking about it.

Rob Mac wrote: Mike, I think Nick was being sarcastic, seeing as elbows have been dismissed by many who don't know how to use them.

Don't worry, Rob, I got the sarcasm (I'm British, old chap!).

I was just unsure who he was referring to as having dismissed elbows. Certainly no-one on this forum, surely?

Agreed with Steve to the extent that the clip looks like (a more limited version of) MMA in a gi and crash helmet, to me.

Still looks exciting to me, though... quite enjoyed the judo throws, etc, which are quite rare in MMA (perhaps because you are forced to give up your back, as well as the lack of a gi?)

Steve, you say Daido-Juku ought to ditch the headguards, but that's what allows them to use full-on headbutts (UFC banned these years ago and Pride never allowed them). What kind of dojo permits full-contact flying head-butting without protection? -A very sparsely populated one I reckon.
I actually think their rules are good for the person who wants to become a formidable well rounded fighter but without entering the sports arena (cage-fighting etc). Timed ground-fighting forces you to go for a quick finish (not much lay and prey in the street) and just demonstrating stamping on the downed opponent means that he can be back training next week.

Personally, I see certain pros and cons with the headguard and it's a debate that could go on. I personally attack the head in very much the same way that these guys do: an all-out assault. But you don't need a helmet on your head to be able to do that, and the helmet can actually give you a false sense of security. You have to be aware that the head is a major target, not only offensively, but defensively. When they're fighting, as in Kyokushin kai, there's very little consideration for defence of the head. There's nothing to make them protect their head because they're wearing the helmet. Even a moderate blow to the head can check you, but that moderate blow with the helmet on may have absolutely no effect. To me, a stun is almost as good as a knockout in a fight, and a cut eye is a bonus.

With regard to the headbutt, the helmets allow for some quite experimental headbutts. Again, there's a good side and a bad side to that. I've used some pretty flamboyent headbutts myself. Once took a guy out with a flying headbutt from six feet away. Having said that, I also had somebody's front tooth embedded in my head. Again, in Daidojuku they're doing it without any regard to the consequences for themselves. It's great for an all-out assault approach, but you'd have to then see if it would work without a headguard.

Until you try it you don't know what would happen, and that's where the fighting that's in this clip is too limiting. Personally I wouldn't reference it.

The idea of a timed ground fight is good as a training aid, to keep it from turning into a game of chess on the floor. I do that myself: I have ten-second missions where it's do or die. But that's only as a training aid. In reality, you don't always have the choice as to how much time you spend on the floor in a fight. When you say that in the street you've got to finish quickly, you're implying that if you don't you're going to get kicked in the head by another guy in the mix. But that can happen just as easily in the first five seconds as it could later on. The idea in those multiple scenarios is to train so that you can get back to your feet. Or, have elements within the training that are going to challenge you to stay on your feet--i.e., guys in your gym/dojo who are really skilled and are going to take you down. That's what I mean by dissimilar training.

With regard to the stomping, in training you obviously don't execute the full stomp on your training partner. But you could actually set up a conditional fight in which your training partner is allowed to stomp you and you know fully what he's going to do and you have to deal with it one way or another. That replicates the reality and maintains a safety factor. You can do this with any dangerous move. You isolate it into a snapshot.

But if all you're ever doing is this pretend stomp, or a reverse punch which you get a point for, then you're never actually testing it. You're right back to square one. You're taking it on faith that it's going to work. And it won't work in the way it's being demonstrated here. Look at Vanderlei Silva, that's the way you do a stomp. Now he's doing it for real, and I don't know how you modify that in sparring, but in training you'd need to be switching back and forth between sparring and equipment so at the end you don't know which is which. But just pretending to do it isn't good enough.

I can see the point of Daidojuku for people who want a taste of the fight without running too many risks. But I don't quite get it, because they are knocking each other out. So how safe is that?

It's an approach. But it's not one I would use. Though, having said that, I would recommend it to guys who are practicing karate who want to test themselves out. If you're going to stay in a tradition, then this is a good way of testing yourself if you don't want to go the full MMA route.

Cheers for the reply Steve. My main reservation about those headguards would be restricted vision -esp as in the clip you can see a guy's one is steamed up. I also reckon it would be unpleasantly claustrophobic!

-Dave.

hi steve,

interesting posts.
i read today that when he first formed the style he still included some kata. though recently they were completely removed. so some evolution is still taking place (albeit very slowly, but then japan has never been one for fast change haha).

concerning the headgear. seems they have modified it somewhat.
heres the current bubble http://www.isami.co.jp/hayashi/iteminfo/iteminfo.asp?BmpFileName=z-100&Lang=1

and heres the latest version
http://www.daidojuku.com/home/goods/6_p_1.html
looks like the bubble has been greatly reduced. maybe one day it will be thrown away all together.

not sure how truly open their tourneys are but the website seems to say they have been open to anyone of all styles since 2001. maybe due to no cash (?) involved it hasnt attracted many. would be great to see fighters from more diverse backgrounds competing in it.

another positive move is that daido juku fighters have started to compete in other events. steve, have you seen any of the recent shootboxing promotions? for those that arent familiar with the sport, its also known as "standing vale tudo". its basically muay thai rules with throws and standing submissions allowed. however due to the boxing style gloves being used, subs are rare. so its essentially the same as sanda. the great k1 max fighter andy souwer (2 time tourny champ) came from and still competes in shootboxing. well last august the lightweight daido juku champ took on the shootboxing champ under shootboxing rules. the daido guy was very good and dominated the fight in all aspects. was impressive. so i think they are on the right track. sadly the shootboxing guy got the decision. was absolute robbery. that wont come as a great surprise though im sure haha.

Ha Ha, I once had to go to hospital with someones front teeth in head, the nurse was none to sympathetic as I tried bullshant my way out by saying I tripped and fell into someones head. Having said that the other fella never got up and I've used the headbutt on countless occasions with good effect. That's why I like their use of headbutts, helmet or not, although we couldn't spar using headbutts because after one lesson everyone was bleeding. The gi gives them the opportunity to grab and butt as well. I'm not saying that this stuff is some holy grail, but it is the best I've seen of the gi type variety. Also with some of the mma stuff there is far too much floor work and some of these guys have a very strange idea of what would be effective on the street. Cheers Rob

I've liked Daido Juku since the first time I saw it. I think it's the next step in the evolution of Traditional karate (although very late). By that I mean, as has been said in this thread already, for those who still want that traditional connection it's a good choice. But, as has also been said, Daido Juku is still evolving.

I have heard, as Steve mentioned that the helmets have added to the knockouts. Steve made a good point about the (perceived) safety factor of the headgear causing the fighters to neglect protecting their heads. This leads to a tactical flaw in which your strategy doesn't take into account getting cut or stunned or hit in the face/head etc. What puzzles me though is "why is this?" They are still getting knocked out so you would think they'd be smart enough to protect their head more.

I think they are getting knocked out a little too easy which leads me to believe it has something to do with the weight of the headgear.

Tommy

Steve if you were designing your ideal MMA competition what rules would you have? And specifically what moves/strikes would you exclude?


Youve mentioned it should be inclusive and allow all schools and styles to compete and obviously the organisers should be impartial and perferably not gangsta's What else?


Would you also have weight categories and if so how many ie light/medium/heavy or say 8 different very specific subdivisions "superfly", "superheavy" etc?

PullupPastor wrote:Steve if you were designing your ideal MMA competition what rules would you have? And specifically what moves/strikes would you exclude?

I remember on the first Morris course I went on, he had us drilling kicks to the groin and seemed a bit put out when we mentioned to him that you couldn't use them in most MMA rules!

That kinda set the tone for me

Hehe Mike - i can dig that....you are afterall simulating fighting..

I cant understand the anachronisms where pride allowed stomps on the ground but not elbows? And the UFC allows elbows but not stomps on knees to the head (what a hands on the ground). Didnt really make sense to me


Ill add what safety equipment would you allow as well Steve

Brian S wrote:

MikeB wrote:
I was just unsure who he was referring to as having dismissed elbows. Certainly no-one on this forum, surely?

As I recall Geoff Thompson dismisses elbows, at least when standing up. He feels that they are much too hard to actually apply in a real go.

Myself? Not sure either way. At this moment in time I cannot remember ever throwing one when the fight was for real. But, then again, it's only in the last couple of years when I have trained them with any real regularity and effort.

This is Steve's bit of the forum, so I do not want to mix it with Nick again..... But yet again we see anything working as being called "traditional" when it suits.

Brian,

First point: I know Mr. Thompson appears to be a bit of a legend amongst the Brits, but if he reckons that elbows are too hard to apply, he aint doing them right (heresy!)...

Last point: I don't know what your background is mate, but I certainly know Nick's. He isn't just making up the facts to suit himself. He is a self-confessed traditional martial artist, who has proven the effectiveness of his method in practical application.

We studied under the same instructor, Bob Jones, who, funnily enough, would cringe if he thought that someone was calling him a 'traditional' martial artist, becuse he is an innovator and a borrower of all things good and a chucker-out of all things bad...

IMESFHO, Bob IS a traditional martial artist. To the extreme. Perhaps not by your definition, or even his own (!), but that's where the issue is, the definition.

Steve, I would argue that YOU are a traditional martial artist as well! But before you send out a virtual arse-whupping, allow me to explain my definition...

By 'traditional', most people in here seem to refer to (let's take karate here as an example) the schools that stopped all progress back in 1932 or 1976 or whenever it was that their grand poobah died; the ones who say that they are practicing the 'pure' art because they are practicing it the way (let's take Goju for common ground with Steve, Nick & me...) Miyagi did, or Yamaguchi did, or Miyazato did (etc.).

For me, these people are NOT traditional martial artists at all. They are luddites, deluding themselves that blind adherence to long-out-of-context practices is somehow 'traditional'...

The 'tradition' of the forefathers of our respective arts (before a certain point in time) was to study a broad range of things, adapt it to their own place and time, and get on with teaching it. Back to Goju, for example, Miyagi took elements of his training with Higaonna, Gokenki, Fukien chuanfa masters, etc., developed it, and taught it as a new school of martial arts.

The 'tradition' was to break with the 'tradition' of the past and create something that suited its new context. Just as Miyagi did, just as Oyama did in his time, Azuma has tried to do, just as MMA has developed, etc.

So, I am not trying to change the facts to suit myself, just as Nick wasn't; it's just that my definition of 'traditional' martial arts is different - and I stand by it...

Slainte'

BK

Just a quick point re the headgear...in one breath some of you are saying it lulls the user into a false sense of security so he doesn't protect his head like he would if he wasn't wearing them.

In the next paragraph/sentence (I'm too lazy to go back and look) the knockouts come easy due to the helmet.

If these guys have been at this since at least 2000 (youtube tournament I watched was from then...maybe they've been round longer) are you seriously telling me they're too dim to figure out they're more susceptible to knockouts due to the helmet.

In other words, if the helmets were making ko's easy surely they'd be covering the head even more than normal, not less. Duh!!!

Steve, I'm assuming those questions were rhetorical mate hence my not answering them. If that's not the case let me know and I'll ping my 2 yen in.

Nick

PS: Bryson. My mate Gavin came up with a brilliant definition of the difference between what you and I refer to as traditional and the guys who are plugging away preserving the art form.

The guys doing the preserving are classic martial artists...they wear the costumes, they speak the lingo and nothing will ever change (nor should it if that's what their goal is). These are the guys we see typically doing Iaido, Kyudo and battlefield re-enactments with muskets etc.

Traditionally however Okinawans used whatever weapons were to hand when fighing hence the use of nunchakus, tonfa, bo etc. If, therefore, we are to fight "traditionally" we would use our weapons to hand which would be ashtrays, pool cues, tire irons, billiard balls, bottles and bar stools et al.

Methinks that's about the best I've ever heard it explained.

PPS: I'll deal with young Mr Brian down on my Q&A section

Bryson Keenan wrote:So, I am not trying to change the facts to suit myself, just as Nick wasn't; it's just that my definition of 'traditional' martial arts is different - and I stand by it...

So long as people are honestly "defining" what "they" do, I don't think that anyone can argue with it. The problem I have with the vast majority of "typical" TMA people, is that they are selling their "art" as a fighting system, or self defense system, when it certainly is NOT!

Nick Hughes wrote:The guys doing the preserving are classic martial artists...they wear the costumes, they speak the lingo and nothing will ever change (nor should it if that's what their goal is). These are the guys we see typically doing Iaido, Kyudo and battlefield re-enactments with muskets etc.

Now that's scary as hell, because I've been saying the same exact thing (almost verbatim) for over a decade!

I've got some other posts I've got to deal with today because they've been hanging around a long time unanswered, and I'm busy this weekend. But feel free to continue the discussion, particularly with regards to what is a tradition and what isn't, and I'll be back in the mix next week.

But a general question to you guys, whether or not you consider yourself a traditionalist by whatever definition, is this: are you engaged in some kind of competitive fighting or dissimilar/aggressor training? Are you testing your practices?

Hey Nick, do you reckon we've tested our practice mate...?

Hi Steve,
Yes indeed. I won't go on at length about testing its effectiveness on the job, lest I be labelled as 'hard man' wannabe (!), but ihard contact sparring against fully resisting opponents, scenrio trining, testing against dissimilar systems (boxingm wrestling, bjj, et al).

the wy nick and I were 'brought up' by our ma seniors, we didn't know there ws ny other wy to do it...!

what most of the folk in here are claling tma, I refer to as 'classical' ma. and I think there is a place for it, but it isn't fighting...! hehe

as I sid in an earlier post, I think YOU are still a traditional martial artist by my definition (see previos post), you just no longer study classical ma...

slainte

bk

ps plese excure my scrappy typing; I am doing this on my pda in the car on the wy home from work!

Well now this is interesting!

I has long been my argument (and I must have written this hundreds of times throughout forums and articles) that I don't think there has ever been a problem with the techniques of traditional karate but there is a problem with most of the training methods and how they use/train those techniques.

Even those of us that practice more progressively or are mixing things up, we are still using a lot of things found karate or in a martial arts in general. It's the method of training these things that differs. No silly stance rules or postures, endless kihon drills marching up and down the floor etc....spear hands!!!
Solo kata or in some cases kata at all (I believe kata is worthless these days).

The funny thing is that when I first saw MMA I loved it. But everyone was saying it was the "new" thing. I disagreed because I thought it was a return to the old. I always thought that before karate was systematized, it must have just been fighting. And if you fight it looks like that (MMA)...it has to. Before MMA I used to debate with my dojo mates that karate should look more like pro wrestling (Hulk Hogan and such).

These days I don't care anymore. I'm tired of debating over it and the arguments go round and round. It takes more effort than its worth. I don't care about styles or names or anything other than "training" methods. Just being the wrong guy to fuck with.

Tommy

Isn't Pancration the father of all MA? If so MMA is very old indeed. I personally don't give a shit. If I like something we train it see if it works under pressure and if it does keep it. Because we've got guys training for comps, myself included, we have to train a few things that wouldn't work on the street and vis versa but I think it's worth it to be able to compete. I've never (apart from that clip) seen anything in Karate that I would use, the way I've seen it used, that being said I most probably just haven't seen authentic Karate, or trained with decent Karate guys. Cheers Rob.