Forum detritus #493

I beg to differ in opinion. First thought was the warmups in Honolulu's Universal Kempo. Before doing shrimping and then reversals on linoleum (on concrete) guard to side to full, we warmed up upper body for a few minutes. But instead of waving arms or (I hate 'em) jumping jacks, we did front, side, back double eye strikes. While the dojo spars plenty hard, they of course don't practice eye strikes. But I believe that a good degree of muscle memory is installed.

This is a school with plenty of aliveness - it's not BJJ. I love that the kids' BJJ class here in Logan that has 11 year olds doing full resistance (not rolling, but trying not to be turned or moved) while learning moves, that's the great thing about BJJ, they figured out how to train/roll with resistance, safely. Of course their sparring is live, but they teach sd drills in ways I haven't seen on the mainland. Like Professor calling out, "I want to hear it every time!" As he does the response to an attack; flack, block, duck under, and backhand the groin. Hard enough to make an loud crack. It's rehearsed sd, true...

But as one Hawaiian member wrote some years ago about "Luna" Emperado's Kaju dojo, he'd put their bbs up against anyone, come in and test drive your skills (as I did). It's intense and I think has value.

Second thought was a couple moves that I've done that were learned in kata - without thinking I used them sparring.

And I've done some and been witness to plenty two person kata, 'embu' they called it in Okinawan 'karate' (they used a lot of techniques that look like JJ, locks and takedowns, some throws). As the Sensei told us, as students progress, ".. a good uke is a resisting uke." Oh, maybe Gezere said that, anyway, he encouraged realism. The same beginning embus were done by every level in testing and while yellow belts didn't convince me of much effectiveness, seeing bbs going for 2nd or 3rd dans doing the two person kata was impressive, they went hard and fast and bodies were flying.

I think that if you practice well, adding such techniques as hair grab can work. If you do live training, one gets to a level of training, I think, where it's natural to be able to use full force at will, even thought it's techniques that aren't practiced in sparring. For instance using the head for takedowns. One of my karate/judo instructors had us do it "light" in class for obvious reasons. But we did do them and I use them in self-defense drills. He also would do 'fighting' judo moves, slowly and carefully, showing us how to drop the opponent in various dangerous ways. We did our best to keep the motto If You Throw, You Have to Make Sure of the Landing, and advanced students and bbs got thrown hard, while n00bs like me were set down more carefully. While the instructor didn't practice neck breaks / head drops and such, I think that in a s-d situation, he would.