Full contact tournaments

[Harry Cook]

My experience of Goju Ryu is basically of the Morio Higaonna line. In Japan in the 1970s we certainly trained low kicks with the shin to the opponents thigh as well as groin kicks, knees close in, head locks and throws etc etc. This kind of training was very similar to the kind of material I later found in Muay Thai.
However training in the dojo and the reality of a match are not the same, and if you are going to enter a match (contact or nonn-contact) then you have to train to the rules of that match.
Actually I've always felt that one of the strengths of karate is that it is at heart a mongrel, and has always been open to new influences. This adapability is one of the reasons it has survived for so long.
In Yoyogi we had foreign students from many different backgrounds and styles, and it was the ability to learn from each other that added a useful dimension to the hard training provided by Higaonna sensei.
Good luck with your match; my advice, for what it is worth, work a lot on stamina and impact. The heavy bag is your best friend from now on.
Harry Cook

[risingsun]

Mike, if I was above taking advice I would not have asked for it. But for you not to see that yes Brian was being insulting then I really don't know what to tell you. Next time I ask a question I will try to direct it more towards the treditionalist and not the mixed martial artist. The two belief systems are completely different and when the face up it is just asking for trouble. Oh, and I will let you know when the big fight is, ok? I'll also hope to face off with an MMA "artist" just to have some idea of how it would be. Who knows? Might be fun!
Also, Harry, thank you for your advice. It is some I will take to heart.
With much respect,
-Margeaux A. Ellis

[dsomers]

Margeaux,

Hello, 1st I think you already know I am a Goju Ryu Karateka. I have been training Goju Ryu for many years, but have done other things as well. While, at first I started to get upset when I was reading his posts, however instead of getting upset w/ him I have given him knowledge. As Harry said, & I will agree w/ him, you will not be prepared by training in the Dojo. As I have said in my previous post, I have trained kyokushin as a teenager, been to a few JKD seminars; & I have trained/been around boxing the last 17 yrs. I know the type of condition/training you need to be in. These guys that train for a fight spend hours a day doing shadow boxing, skipping rope, pad work, bag work, wind sprints, running miles, etc on top of the sparring. If you are just training in the Dojo a few days a week, & not getting the proper training in, you are gonna set yourself up to get hurt. Please do not take my post as if I am trying to insult you, or talk down to you in anyway. It is out of concern. If you do enter into a full contact tournament, and end up getting hurt because you are not trained properly, it may discourage you to continue. I urge you, if you are gonna enter into any type of Full Contact tournament, find out the rules #1, & go somewhere to get the type of training you need. I wish you luck!

David

[Margaret Lo]

Mike, if I was above taking advice I would not have asked for it. But for you not to see that yes Brian was being insulting then I really don't know what to tell you. Next time I ask a question I will try to direct it more towards the treditionalist and not the mixed martial artist. The two belief systems are completely different and when the face up it is just asking for trouble. Oh, and I will let you know when the big fight is, ok? I'll also hope to face off with an MMA "artist" just to have some idea of how it would be. Who knows? Might be fun!
Also, Harry, thank you for your advice. It is some I will take to heart.
With much respect,
-Margeaux A. Ellis

Margeaux,
It looks to me that Harry is giving you advice not unlike that of Brian. Frankly I have trouble seeing how you were insulted? Brian's statements seem very true. Sorry that he mistook you for a young man since generally only young men have the brazen courage (foolhardiness?) for full contact.

Having only been in light contact sparring, I can only appreciate with respect the type of grind a few rounds of muay thai might inflict. His point in regard to the use of elbow strikes in karate vs. muay thai is dead on and points to the differences in training between goju ryu and muay thai. I did not read him to be comparing styles so much as emphasizing the necessity of training with full contact in the strikes you'll use in a tournament in order to make these things work when the time comes. He's also right that you need some grappling unless you go to tournaments which don't allow these techniques.

Regardless of one's original style, I find that in full contact, it all looks pretty similar because people adapt to the rules of a given game.

M

[risingsun]

Maybe I read a little to heavily into Brian's post and maybe I didn't.

[Margaret Lo]

Maybe I read a little to heavily into Brian's post and maybe I didn't.

Quit this b***hy behavior. Since you felt insulted, you handed it back to him already. Now you drop it because the match is over.

[risingsun]

Margaret, what gives you authority to say my "behavior" is that of a b***hy nature? You don't know who I am or how I trian so how can you say that Brian's statements are true? As I've stated before, any true martial artist knows you can NOT judge one martial artist by the performance of another. Brian's statements are espesialy troublesome since he thinks it would not be probable for me to win when he does not even know me. I don't know about MMA or Muay Tai, but Karate is a matter of the heart. I don't care who I offend by the comments Iv'e made because I know my heart is in the right place.
-Margeaux A. Ellis

[wmuromoto]

Margeaux,

You need to take your medication. Or, you need to talk to your inner child and tell her to stop flailing at people actually trying to give you advice you wanted but didn't really want to hear. Let's see, you wrote:

"...Margaret, what gives you authority to say my "behavior" is that of a b***hy nature?"

She has every right to. She and everyone else, you included, can post an opinion here. But that doesn't mean you won't get different opinions from others. Many of the posters, Harry Cook, Margaret Lo, and others who were really trying to help you out, have won a general consensus respect, I daresay, from others who go to e-budo because their posts have been in general informative, helpful and friendly. But they are not above stating strong opinions. Opinions are based on a person's understanding of facts. Some are good, some aren't, but you asked, they gave. Just because they don't match your own opinions doesn't mean they are wrong. In fact, I would venture to say that they're more right than you are. Some of them individually have more martial arts training than you have years. Think about it. If you think you're really all that good at...what? A couple years of training, think about those fellows who have two or three times your years of training. Kind of humbling, don't you think?

"...You don't know who I am or how I trian so how can you say that Brian's statements are true? As I've stated before, any true martial artist knows you can NOT judge one martial artist by the performance of another..."

Two fallacies. One is your training validates your opinions completely and you don't have anything to learn here. If so, why did you venture to ask the questions you did? Your training wasn't in question, anyway. You were asking about full contact tournaments and getting ready for them, not whether or not you're the meanest sister on the block. We may NOT know who you are, but your onscreen presence says something about your demeanor and behavior. I find that sometimes people like you get very belligerant on the Internet when they would never act that way in person. It's an affectation of the young. Be more circumspect, young woman. We are making judgements about you based on your replies, which IMHO is indeed very rude.

As to your second contention. No. Any true martial artist CAN judge another's performance. That's a basic survival technique. If you cannot estimate the strength of your opponent to a general degree, you don't have eyes and ears. In any traditional dojo, learning comes from active observation, especially those who are superior to you, so that you learn from the best. In a tournament situation, you have to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of your opponent. Even in limited randori or kumite, the mark of a good sempai is to judge his partner and not go too weak or too strong for his partner's abilities; either extreme will not help his lower ranking partner to gain more experience.

"...Brian's statements are espesialy troublesome since he thinks it would not be probable for me to win when he does not even know me. I don't know about MMA or Muay Tai, but Karate is a matter of the heart. I don't care who I offend by the comments Iv'e made because I know my heart is in the right place."

No. Your heart is in the wrong place. You think everyone else is wrong and you're right, even when you pepper your insults and arrogance with misspelled words and bad diction, another breach of general good sense in Internet etiquette. Think before you write. "Fowl" is a bird, not a technical penalty. "Foul" is the latter. "Espesialy" is NOT written how it sounds. It's "especially." Trian is not a word in the English language. "Train" is. I think I have a valid opinion here since I taught literature and journalism courses in the past, and I'm pretty sure they haven't changed English on me since last I looked.

I would venture to say that if you were to vent such opinions to your karate teachers, they would take offense at your attitude displayed herein.

I'm a "traditionalist" to the core, and I do make fun of many other systems, but only as much as I do my own style and my own form of martial art. On the other hand, if you have very clear eyes, you will see that for their purposes, each martial art has a lot to offer; whether your agree with their purposes are another thing entirely. But I wouldn't step into a ring and fight a MMA person with their rules, no way. They would mess me up but good. Nor would I badmouth a judo person and then step into a judo tournament thinking only my koryu training would beat any judo person who'd been training for national and international competition (up to eight hours a day, plus weights and running), unless said opponent slipped on a banana peel and hit his/her head on concrete before they met me.

If you want to train for a full-contact style tournament, you have to study the rules and train appropriately, and many other styles that sponsor such tournaments have a lot to offer in terms of how they train for such tournies, and all people were trying to tell you was that you had better have an open mind about learning from other systems that worked.

If you just want to keep doing what you're doing and then enter a full contact event without listening to any of the proffered advice, then don't even bother us anymore. You're always right. No one here at e-budo has anything to offer you, with all of your 20 years of life experiences. Not a one of us. Collectively, we're all ignoramuses compared to you. So go away and leave us to our veiled ignorance.

Wayne Muromoto

[risingsun]

I may have let my pride get in the way of my mouth on previous post and for that I am sorry. My spelling may not leave much to be desired but I really wasn't concerned with that, professor.
However, I guess if I need to be on "meds" then so should of Gogen Yamaguchi and his kumite champions. I was told by someone who had trained with Sensai Yamaguchi, and his classmates today who are Sensai Yamaguchi kumite champions, that Yamaguchi said himself that there is no need to train in more then one style. It takes a life time to master one style. To learn a second style, ad another life. To learn a third, ad yet another life. Because this is not possable there is no need to train in more then one style. By doing so, you are saying that each style you take is an incomplete style. Therefore, you are an incomplete martial artist. After hearing this I relize that mix martial artist, and those who support there belief system, are nothing but a bunch of clowns no matter how many years they might have spent running in their rat circle. Wayne you may claim to be a treditionalist but youre not. So call me immature and crazy but I think I'm going to ignore you, Margaret, the almighty Brian, and any other MMA "artist" I might run accross. I value the opinion much more of a grand master then I do some English professor, anyways. Not all of ebudo is ignorant or annoying so I don't think I'll be going any where for a while. If I offend you, put me on your ignore list, professor.
-Margeaux A. Ellis

[Ron Tisdale]

Part of the problem here, Ms. Ellis, is that you have no idea of your audience. People really are trying to help you, but they always leave just enough space for you to take the low road. And you consistently do just that. It's a shame really. Kind of sad.

Get a Clue...

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...=Google+Search

Best,
Ron

[powerof0ne]

I may have let my pride get in the way of my mouth on previous post and for that I am sorry. My spelling may not leave much to be desired but I really wasn't concerned with that, professor.
However, I guess if I need to be on "meds" then so should of Gogen Yamaguchi and his kumite champions. I was told by someone who had trained with Sensai Yamaguchi, and his classmates today who are Sensai Yamaguchi kumite champions, that Yamaguchi said himself that there is no need to train in more then one style. It takes a life time to master one style. To learn a second style, ad another life. To learn a third, ad yet another life. Because this is not possable there is no need to train in more then one style. By doing so, you are saying that each style you take is an incomplete style. Therefore, you are an incomplete martial artist. After hearing this I relize that mix martial artist, and those who support there belief system, are nothing but a bunch of clowns no matter how many years they might have spent running in their rat circle. Wayne you may claim to be a treditionalist but youre not. So call me immature and crazy but I think I'm going to ignore you, Margaret, the almighty Brian, and any other MMA "artist" I might run accross. I value the opinion much more of a grand master then I do some English professor, anyways. Not all of ebudo is ignorant or annoying so I don't think I'll be going any where for a while. If I offend you, put me on your ignore list, professor.
-Margeaux A. Ellis

Are you insane? Do you understand why there is no need to train in one martial art? This is true if you don't plan on entering tournaments that have rules that would benifit others of a particular style..which you were asking advice on doing.
I'm not an MMA martial artist..I have almost 10 years in Muay thai, over that in shito ryu, and about 3 in goju ryu along with a few years of bjj. Since I have studied more than one martial art I'm an MMA stylist? I was trying to give you practical advice and you took it the wrong way and took some weird elitist goju ryu attitude. I haven't tried to combine the martial arts I studied into "one art" and teach it to others. Most of my teaching experience is in Muay Thai. So please Margeaux, quit bringing up my name about stuff you are wrong about. I'm not an MMA/NHB practitioner, I have helped train these kind of fighters in their stand up game but that's about as far as it goes. I never once told you what ranks I hold but I have fought in point, knockdown, intl. rules kickboxing, and full muay thai rules bouts.
I and many others were simply giving you our opinions and advice that would help you but for some odd reason you got offended by me and took much of what I said the wrong way. I don't know why you came on here asking for advice if you don't plan on changing anything you're doing. Doing the same thing over and over hoping for different results is usually viewed as being insane.

[wmuromoto]

I see, Margeaux. You are putting yourself on the same level as Yamaguchi Gogen. My apologies. I thought you were a 20-year old with bad spelling (by the way, no matter how you put it, sansei or sansai or whatever comes nowhere near the correct Japanese term: sensei. You really ought to learn how to spell, dear. It will help you later in life when you seek a job that requires any kind of writing, such as working in a shoe store (I'm serious; my brother-in-law was a manager at a Foot Locker and he had to fire clerks who couldn't read shoe sizes on the side of boxes). I'm not asking that you memorize the AP Stylebook or anything of that sort, but at least learn how to use your spell checker or something.) I suppose your real world physical and mental self is that of a master instructor with 50 years-plus of experience under your belt, like Yamaguchi sensei. You ARE comparing yourself to them, you know. Funny, I never heard of you in all my years of messing around and being a clown. Shows how little I know.

BTW, I don't think anyone was saying you should quit Goju-ryu or that Goju-ryu is not enough--if you did only Goju-ryu style kumite. But you're talking about entering some kind of full-contact open tournament. I think it would be at least worth your while and the saving of some of your brain cells to--at the very least--be aware of what the other stylists are doing so that you can protect yourself against their attacks. And what are the rules? What are the gamesmanship involved? Ignorance is not the same as due diligence and loyalty to a system.

Thank you for calling me a clown, BTW. I do make my wife laugh a lot and being funny is one of my strengths, I'd like to think. Still, if there's nothing you can learn from all of us, why did you bother to even post your message other than to evoke some kind of misguided attention, like a crying child, and post such verbally abusive text? Do you KNOW who Harry Cook is? Or the others?

On the serious side, good luck if you want to enter a full contact tournament and only train in "traditional" Goju-ryu. Do what you want, good luck, and why even bother to ask us, we of little import or relevence? We are all silly old clowns who don't know anything. Geez. And to think I thought you'd catch the drift. Shows how much of an unreconstructed optimist I am about young people.

Wayne Muromoto

[MikeWilliams]

(self-important drivel snipped)

Margeaux, if you are not a troll then I feel sorry for you. Because, IF you do fight full contact with your present blinkered attitude, you are going to get hurt. Unless of course, you are the re-incarnation of Gogen Yamaguchi.

However, I've got a horrible feeling that you are going to have to find this out for yourself, the hard way. Mas Oyama called this style of knockdown training "imparting wisdom". Maybe it will knock some sense into you, too.

I must admit a certain (shameful) desire to actually see you fight. Having said that, I also suspect you of being all full of smoke and bluster, and unlikely to ever step up to the plate. Go on, prove me wrong.

Finally, I'm a complete nobody in MA. Brian and Margaret are very experienced contributors on here, whose opinions I respect. For pity's sake do a bit of research and find out who Harry Cook and Wayne Muromoto are before you adopt that tone with them.

[Katsu!]

I've been following this thread since it began and with all due respect the original point has been almost forgotten by everyone whos been replying.

The girl wanted to know of any full contact Tournaments and the first reply by Mike was

...In every single point-karate fight I have ever seen, the person who won*, actually lost. For exactly the reason stated above.

Have you considered kickboxing?...

Followed by all sorts of patronising comments about how she should train and how everyone knows this or that. But hang on a minute she might be using trees as a makiwara (if thats not the right spelling wmuramoto good for you) and hot sand for hand conditioning.

She asked a simple question and because of her comments about fouls people assumed that she is a ruffian.

I've seen in tournaments, as have probably many of you, weak Karateka win because of their tricks with point sparring over a real warrior simply because they made a loud Kiai 10 cm from their target. (In advance, no it was not me)
So she knocks them a bit, usually those fighters go in too close because they know they cant be hit and sometimes run into a punch.

All this really doesn't matter, what matters is that there is someone very dedicated to their Ryu and training and all she has gotten is flack for being full of spirit. Shamefull!

Did anyone think to guide her exuberance and passion with supporting comments? No. And sorry patronising someone doesn't count.

Margaret,

As my master says 'Jack of all trades, master of none'

Keep to your belief and conviction (somehow i get the feeling you would anyway )

Look to the Kata for ideas on dealing with other styles of fighting since as you know Go Ju is meant for close contact.

Aas you know low kicks, elbows, grappling and throwdowns are all within the kata so cross training is not a neccesity. Understanding other styles is important but does not mean one has to employ their moves to win. Rather pick the ones that Go Ju has to offset them. Musashi Miyamoto proved that enough i think.

On an end note, all the coversation has been that Margaret should do this and that to prepare herself for full contact implying that Go Ju is lacking and flawed. Go tell that to Miyagi Sensei or better stil try telling it to Higoanna Sensei and see if you have enough life left in you to finish your sentence.

M. Miletic

[risingsun]

Thank you, Katsu. I really don't see why anyone is pointing fingers at me and saying I'm insane just becuase I want to stick with Goju ryu and JUST Goju ryu. All this talk of crosstraining and insinuations that if I stick with treditition and trian in only ONE style then for that alone I would more then likely lose. All this and I guess they forgot who gave them kumite.
Yamaguchi looked down upon cross training then and it should still be looked down on today. I guess I'm crazy in the fact that I still practice meditation and kata, also. Becuase we all know there is no need to train in only one martial art.
Brian, you are an idiot to the true martial art world. Your age or how much "experience" you hold are years wasted. I have friends who unfortunately believe like you do and I tell them the same thing I'm going to tell you. If you put a whole bunch of great looking food in a blender and mix them altogether do you think you'll end up with something great? Seperately those foods are great by themselves, but when mix together they end up looking like a big pile of s**t. If you want to look like crap fine. But I'd rather be great.
-Margeaux A. Ellis