The Martial Arts Thread: Just Buy Running Shoes

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kimbo305: Jun 9, 2007; actually, yeah, I am a little mad

Those reflect different philosophies in the expected amount of control/preparedness you have going into being thrown. Secondarily, reflect differences in ruleset and training.

The fetal position offers you maximal head protection in the case of being caught off guard by a big throw. Of course as you practice, you can figure out the timing of throws more and unfold halfway through and at least slap to diffuse the throw momentum a bit.

Modern shuaijiao is strictly a sport, one where you get scored on and reset to standing as soon as you get thrown, no matter how gracefully you exit the throw. Energy put into controlling how you fall or roll out of a throw that's already going to score is potentially wasted from getting up and going right back into trying to win the round.
This only works if the throws don't hurt. Anyone who grapples can of course tell you that hitting a wrestling mat at speed can still hurt enough to affect your performance if not outright injure you. But I'm talking about the difference between having a mat vs the extra consequences of getting thrown on hard ground or floor. If that's your training environment, you obviously need to take much stronger precautions against meeting the ground at speed with less structural support.

# ? Mar 17, 2024 05:18

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# ? Apr 26, 2024 00:29

slidebite: Nov 6, 2005; Good egg

slidebite posted:

Trained with our sparring team last night and we spent the first 20 minutes doing various full power kick drills up and down the floor with a partner holding the kicking bag.

Last drill was full power back kicks. Get to the switch so I start holding. Get back to the beginning, one last kick to go and I tell my partner (late teens, tall lanky kid) "One more, make it your best one!"

And he proceeds to kick me full tilt into the front of my thigh, right into my quad.

Dropped me like a sack and gently caress me, did it hurt. No bruise yet, but it was a deep one. He dug in nicely with his heel.

Made the rest of the otherwise awesome class suck and I am walking like a 95 year old cripple this am lol.

Took about a week for the bruise to come out

The kick was a couple inches higher than the bruise.

Hellblazer187 posted:

I learned today that I'm very bad at kicking.

As said, that's the first step in learning.

# ? Mar 17, 2024 20:32

Morter: Jul 1, 2006; Seashells by the
Seashorpheus

Looking for a freestanding heavy bag for striking at home. Are there any specific things to look for in terms of features or materials, or conversely, brands to watch out for/avoid? (Practicing Wing Chun, if it matters)

# ? Mar 18, 2024 20:29

Thirteen Orphans: Dec 2, 2012; I am a writer, a doctor, a nuclear physicist and a theoretical philosopher. But above all, I am a man, a hopelessly inquisitive man, just like you.

Morter posted:

Looking for a freestanding heavy bag for striking at home. Are there any specific things to look for in terms of features or materials, or conversely, brands to watch out for/avoid? (Practicing Wing Chun, if it matters)

If you�re doing Wing Chun, have you considered a wooden dummy with strike pads attached?

# ? Mar 18, 2024 20:30

Morter: Jul 1, 2006; Seashells by the
Seashorpheus

Thirteen Orphans posted:

If you�re doing Wing Chun, have you considered a wooden dummy with strike pads attached?

Admittedly not but the main reason I want a standing bag is to practice my kicks. The stuff you do against the dummy is more to practice your hand technique, and your short range (leg/knee-kicking), but I imagine I'd get a lot of use with a standing bag to do my round and thrusting kicks.

# ? Mar 18, 2024 20:33

Thirteen Orphans: Dec 2, 2012; I am a writer, a doctor, a nuclear physicist and a theoretical philosopher. But above all, I am a man, a hopelessly inquisitive man, just like you.

Morter posted:

Admittedly not but the main reason I want a standing bag is to practice my kicks. The stuff you do against the dummy is more to practice your hand technique, and your short range (leg/knee-kicking), but I imagine I'd get a lot of use with a standing bag to do my round and thrusting kicks.

Ah, I see. Then yeah a mook isn�t what you�re looking for.

# ? Mar 18, 2024 20:37

slidebite: Nov 6, 2005; Good egg

I've got one of these paired up with a ~100-120lb heavy bag

https://everlast.ca/products/heavy-bag-stand

It's "OK" - biggest issue I have with it is doing truly strong kicks, you can absolutely move that thing around even with 50lbs+ of weight on each corner in addition to the bag.

So unless you can anchor it or put it up against a wall or that can absorb it and resist the movement, it's just going to happen. But for realistic home use without going to a massive gym size thing with a massive frame or bolted to the ground, it's a decent enough compromise. I don't use it every day by any stretch, but it does the job.

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# ? Mar 18, 2024 22:55

Xand_Man: Mar 2, 2004; If what you say is true
Wutang might be dangerous

I'd suggest you budget some extra for weight plates; sand bags will get shredded up over time :sigh:

# ? Mar 18, 2024 23:58

Sherbert Hoover: Dec 12, 2019; Working hard, thank you!

Wear gloves with a heavy bag btw, you will gently caress your hands up.

# ? Mar 19, 2024 02:33

kimbo305: Jun 9, 2007; actually, yeah, I am a little mad

slidebite posted:

I've got one of these paired up with a ~100-120lb heavy bag

The rare times I�ve tried this shape of bag frame, the front weight pins and the slanted supports kinda bothered me. They weren�t in the way of most kicks but definitely occupied some mental space for lower kicks. That�s if you use a banana bag, which imo you should for general kicking. Not as big a deal for punches on a regular bag.

Sherbert Hoover posted:

Wear gloves with a heavy bag btw, you will gently caress your hands up.

The gloves will protect your knuckles and metacarpals. You need to wrap properly to prevent your wrist from rolling painfully on misaligned punches. Which will happen frequently early on.

# ? Mar 19, 2024 03:52

slidebite: Nov 6, 2005; Good egg

kimbo305 posted:

The rare times I�ve tried this shape of bag frame, the front weight pins and the slanted supports kinda bothered me. They weren�t in the way of most kicks but definitely occupied some mental space for lower kicks. That�s if you use a banana bag, which imo you should for general kicking. Not as big a deal for punches on a regular bag.

The gloves will protect your knuckles and metacarpals. You need to wrap properly to prevent your wrist from rolling painfully on misaligned punches. Which will happen frequently early on.

The side things, even the general supports kinda sketch me out too, but we really never kick anywhere near there in practice so it's not a big deal, but I feel you with that for sure.

Pretty much the only hand techniques I'd do with a heavy bag are knife hand (board breaking techniques) which it works pretty well for, tbh. The biggest issue is that the bag is "round" where the boards are obviously going to be flat.

I've actually been meaning to try and prop some sandbags on it to see if that helps more with movement.

# ? Mar 19, 2024 14:43

kimbo305: Jun 9, 2007; actually, yeah, I am a little mad

Has anyone used an elbow brace to practice compliance / catch wrestling / qin na joint attacks that are sudden and not controlled like in more coventional (safer) grappling?

What I've always read about catch wrestling is that some of the techniques don't have much safety margin, and obviously benefit from be applied explosively. I always wondered how moves like that could be drilled safely to improve skill level. A lot of joint locks from Chinese martial arts seem to have a similar flavor, where best case scenario, you go with it and get thrown, and worst case, something pops.

Been wondering if a hinged and angle-limited brace would offer sufficient insurance at the extreme range of motion to let some stuff like this be worked out somewhat more safely.

# ? Mar 26, 2024 03:49

Novum: May 26, 2012; That's how we roll

Never seen anyone using a brace to intentionally train techniques in a manner that might explode your small joints.

# ? Mar 26, 2024 22:32

SeaGoatSupreme: Dec 26, 2009; Ask me about fixed-gear bikes (aka "fixies")

finally got a cheap heavy bag set up from christmas, but the drat thing still moves around with 200lbs in its base.

it feels really good to wrap up and beat the everloving crap out of a bag again.

I think I'd like to get back to classes once my conditioning comes back, does anyone have any suggestions for a gym that would cater to later classes than most? starting at like 8pm for muy thai or boxing, with a possibility of something more ground based a couple days a week in the norfolk/virginia beach area.

# ? Mar 29, 2024 23:09

Duck_King: Sep 5, 2003; leader.bmp

SeaGoatSupreme posted:

finally got a cheap heavy bag set up from christmas, but the drat thing still moves around with 200lbs in its base.

it feels really good to wrap up and beat the everloving crap out of a bag again.

I think I'd like to get back to classes once my conditioning comes back, does anyone have any suggestions for a gym that would cater to later classes than most? starting at like 8pm for muy thai or boxing, with a possibility of something more ground based a couple days a week in the norfolk/virginia beach area.

If the bag sits low enough, put an old tire at the base of it.

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# ? Apr 8, 2024 18:15

SeaGoatSupreme: Dec 26, 2009; Ask me about fixed-gear bikes (aka "fixies")

sadly it's a standing heavy bag, so no tire shenanigans. I'm probably going to just dump water into it to fill all the space between the grains of sand and pray i stop knocking it over when i hook it

# ? Apr 10, 2024 14:08

OctaMurk: Jun 21, 2013

SeaGoatSupreme posted:

standing heavy bag

those are gonna move around a lot no matter what especially if youre kicking them hard

Imo use it more like a technical tool, like a double end bag, not power shots

OctaMurk fucked around with this message at 14:18 on Apr 10, 2024

# ? Apr 10, 2024 14:16

CommonShore: Jun 6, 2014; A true renaissance man

A horse mat will help

# ? Apr 10, 2024 14:35

Novum: May 26, 2012; That's how we roll

Punch a horse

# ? Apr 13, 2024 01:46

Novum: May 26, 2012; That's how we roll

Or do what the other guy said and accept that it will be for technical work and not annihilating with ancient muay thai devastators

# ? Apr 13, 2024 01:49

slidebite: Nov 6, 2005; Good egg

Probably goes without saying, but if you can put the stand next to a wall, preferably with something to protect your baseboard, will help a lot. It'll still move though.

# ? Apr 14, 2024 22:07

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# ? Apr 26, 2024 00:29

kimbo305: Jun 9, 2007; actually, yeah, I am a little mad

I forgot where I was posting my Mongolian wrestling reporting to. Quoting here from the grappling thread:

kimbo305 posted:

Ok, effort post is here. Took a lot longer to edit these than I wanted. Part of it was switching over to Davinci Resolve, and part was not having a good workflow for clipping out the interesting bits and ordering them thematically.
Please call out or comment on or ask about anything.

Some top level comments. Again, it's only been 6 months, so my understanding and execution are still very shallow. My best skills right now are footwork when not attached and hand speed, both of which unsurprisingly come from doing sanshou and kickboxing. My biggest limitations are strategic bandwidth and basically all techniques.

When it comes to switching over or training another martial art, it's interesting to make a distinction between the ruleset and the body of techniques. One of the most comforting things in this early phase has been the significant overlap between sanshou and shuaijiao. They have the same definition for what constitutes a fall and very similar throw scoring systems.
In shuaijiao, a fall is whenever someone touches any non-foot part of their body to the floor. For a throw to score, the thrower needs to remain standing (not having fallen) or demonstrate control, at the ref's discretion. Generally this means having any kind of top or side control, with your weight over their body. Both people falling and one person poised to do a heelhook would not count as in control or on top.
Once a fall happens, whether there's a score, both people are reset to standing and the action continues.

This general framework is super familiar to me, and that's made transitioning over much easier. If I were to go back to BJJ, the ruleset would be so different that I'd have a decent amount of extra mental overhead on top of trying to execute a variety of new techniques and positions.
Offensively, my repertoire is very limited. My sanshou grappling style was centered on catching kicks, and of course there's rarely any legs coming at you without striking. The rest of my throw game was based on staying far outside and popping in and landing a trip. Once I was wearing a jacket and not punching, it was way harder to get in without getting tied up.
Defensively, my existing takedown defense translates the most readily. Staying on the feet, avoiding trips and sweeps, using whizzers -- I have some base for that already. Not wearing boxing gloves only adds to my defensive options up top. I just need to avoid muscle memory of punching to spoil a tie up. Another small bonus is that from all the kicking, getting hacked on the shins doesn't bother me all.

Ok, first video is some highlighting of how my grip game has developed. When I started, I could see what grips I wanted, but I had no sense of timing or space to get my fingers right inside the sleeve or on the lapel. There was a lot of over and undershooting and jamming my fingers. On the shuaijiao side, I now have a decent sense of distance and timing to shoot out and get a single grip. Still struggling with keeping up a steady counter pace as my attacks get blocked. The jacket has a lot of options, particularly the lapel and sleeve, which are similar distances and let you retarget pretty efficiently. On the bokh side, in the early months, I couldn't believe how stiff the sleeve was, and how much my fingers hurt after a session. Even now, the lack of the lapel in bokh means less frantic pacing on attacking and counterattacking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Beli1rUMxNc
The grip break attempts you see first -- it's funny -- before this session, I watched a random Shintaro Higashi video that included a side shot of that yanking your own lapel to pop the fabric out of your opponent's hand, and I decided to try it. Before that, I knew that I needed to get out of grips but didn't have well structured techniques. This session was the first time I was adding both attempts and successes into the overall game.

The thing I marvel at the most is, when grip fighting, how much the whirling of forearms looks like stereotypes of Chinese kungfu. A lot of principles of trapping from Wing Chun, as well as similar range ideas in Praying Mantis and Hung Gar -- they would all apply better here than in a sport striking context. The speed advantage I have moving barehanded over having boxing gloves on is very noticeable (and appreciated cuz I'm lazy). Shuaijiao was not directly related to any indigenous martial arts, though, and would have had cross exposure in the early 1900s. So some of it has to be coincidence more than matching applications. And some is how Vincent and my particular standup styles mesh.

Next video is some defensive stuff along with some bad throw attempts and the counters. A lot of holding on while getting inside leg tripped and trying to free the leg, or pushing up and whirling out. With the top sleeve grip in bokh in particular, you have a very convenient handle to go ham to start whipping someone around. The defense is pretty intuitve, move with it and don't get too tense, hop over or step around any leg blocking attacks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MY16EySEQmk

Now a particular tactic I was focusing on in that bokh session: making contact with the lead arm, pulling in a bit, and making a quick angle off to the side. I did this kind of stepping off the centerline all the time in kickboxing, and it made sense to me to adapt pawing the lead jab hand out of the way into this grip on the forearm. I told myself if I could get deep enough between stepping outside and close and also pulling them in a bit, that I could try to trip behind them and push over.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5ZgYVH42PU
I had more success with this tactic than anything else, both in terms of specific offensive effect and taking more control of the standup positioning.
I also tried some arm drag like moves.

Finally, some flaws I saw watching the footage. The first has already been shown in a couple spots. If I feel like we're going into a grip on a single side of my body, I'll stretch out the distance, making an swing attempts slower, and also buying myself more time to react to linear attacks. But I subconsciously put my free side arm back and down to further counterweight and counterbalance. I guess I might be swinging the pendulum too far away from kickboxing, where you want the hand by your head most of the time. Now that that's not a concern, I'm being too free with that hand, instead of engaging it sooner.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KHdPXItSM0
Then two different shameful lapses in footwork. I never walk like that in kickboxing, and I don't think I was particularly tired when I was just standing straight up and walking around like that.
The marching and getting my hips up and down -- I do remember being more tired, and was trying to keep a wider base than I'm used to while shuffling. Ugly.
Then it's a montage of all my unsuccessful lift attempts. I got a bit better about bringing my hips in on the initial lift, but just don't have enough overlap for my leg reap to do anything.
Last thing I only noticed while editing, not when it happened. I try to do an outside trip, but Vincent steps back and I plant my foot while my leg is still swinging sideways, and then I get pulled over, so my lower leg definitely gets at an awkward angle. It hurts to look at, but not sure how I can make it safer other than drilling a lot.

I'm having a lot of fun. I'm highly engaged in part because the ruleset being limited to standup makes it familiar territory for me. The lack of structure in training is fine because I don't have any specific goals for development. It would be a big blow if Vincent move away and I lost my main training partner for both these arts.
I look like such a fatass in some of the bokh shots where the jodag's beltline is becoming a pushup bra for my spare tire. Just being able to see myself in this shape (maybe 20lbs over my training camp weight) has gotten me motivated to do a little extra work all around.

# ? Apr 16, 2024 22:14

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > The Martial Arts Thread: Just Buy Running Shoes

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