He believes he can fly

Here’s the thing about throws and sweeps, though: they’re not very painful. The first thing you learn in Judo is how to fall without hurting yourself, which includes when getting thrown. Throws like this do look spectacular, but the objective isn’t to inflict damage to your opponent, it’s to get them to the ground and get a superior position from which to work a submission (or to ground ‘n’ pound in an MMA match). Now, there are times one fighter will pick up another and slam him to the ground as hard as possible, and that can be painful, but in general a takedown itself isn’t going to end a fight.

That all said, I’ve been getting more and more interested in judo and its throws and sweeps myself. There’s some judo in the Shuri-ryu karate curriculum, and I picked up a copy of Kodokan Judo to get a more complete idea of what’s involved in the art. I’m also reading a book called Falling Hard, a great book written by a British journalist who took up judo at age 50. I’m about 70 pages in and I’ve already learned a lot of interesting things about the history of the art and its founder, Jigoro Kano.

My karate school offers judo classes as part of the karate membership, so I may take advantage of those classes later this year. I need to concentrate on making ikkyu (first-degree brown belt) first because the last stripe is going to be a tough one. This just would not be the right time to shake up my schedule. Judo should round out my skills, and should better prepare me for my black belt test when the time comes.

If I do hit those classes, though, it’ll sure feel odd to wear a white belt again.

"Gimme your lunch money!" "No, you give me yours!"

We thought it was a joke at first, but when the bell rang, these little dudes went to town on one another. They punched, they kicked, they threw knees to the ribs.

And the crowd went nuts.

I felt almost guilty encouraging two little kids to beat the snot out of one another. This wasn’t a simple point sparring match, it was a full-on fight between a couple of what, first graders? Second?

"Eat leather!"

I got to wondering, though: should I really have felt guilty about it? A short time after the fight, these kids came walking through the crowd right in front of our table. Together, like buddies. And despite all that punching and kicking, neither had a mark on him. I’m guessing they’re still too small to do any real damage to one another, especially with protective gear in place.

Then I got to thinking, why not have the kids in a match? Most of the students at the Academy of Okinawan Karate are children, and they spar at least once a week (after reaching a higher rank). When we hit Judo in the curriculum cycle, the kids have full Judo matches. If we encourage throws and joint locks, why not (padded) punches and kicks?

Finally, it’s a controlled environment. There’s a ref and paramedics at hand for starters. One would also presume the kids have gone through quite a bit of training before being put out in front of a crowd. If they hadn’t, it wouldn’t be much use as a martial arts exhibition, and the kids would probably have just circled one another in fear (or one would have dominated the other).

I don’t know that it’s something I’d encourage my kids to do, but at the same time, the few minutes of fighting in this match probably amounted to the same amount of contact we’d see in junior hockey, soccer, or football games. I’ve seen kids go home bloodied from soccer cleats before, and again, these two guys didn’t have a mark on ‘em. Heck, when I was a kid we played keepaway games out in our school’s field that were rougher than this fight.

So what’s the big deal, then? Why feel guilty when they started throwing punches?

I think it’s all a matter of perspective. Violence between children is frowned upon, especially for those of us working for schools. But now that I’ve been involved with the martial arts, I have a much better idea of what’s happening in the ring and how training works than I did three years ago. It looks violent from the outside, but there really is more sport and competition involved than actual violence.

In short, these two kids had the guts to get out in front of a huge crowd and put on a show, and that’s not an experience most kids are going to have. If they had fun and they learned something, then more power to ‘em.

King of this cage

This is the third Throwdown event I’ve attended at the East Peoria Event Center, and the event gets a little better every time. For example, they went from a hexagon to a full octagon between their second and third events, and this time they added a projector and video screen to give fans a better look at the action. Our only beef with the logistics was the parking lot was an absolute mess of mud and gravel, and they filled it up before the event started.

All in all it was a great evening. Most of the fighters came from the Central Illinois Combat Club and the Peoria Athletic Club, and they were determined to put on a good show. Most of the MMA fights ended in submissions and ref stoppage, and the other fights included a mix of grappling and Muay Thai matches. Next time my friends and I intend to show up a little earlier so we can sit closer to the cage and get a better look at the ground work, as some of the fighters looked like they put a lot of work into their grappling training.

I shot over 300 pics of the event (not counting the couple dozen I erased between bouts), and I dropped 26 in a Flickr set. I stuck with my 50mm prime lens so I could work without a flash, but I still had to crank up my camera’s ISO rating to get an acceptable shutter speed at the distance I shot from. As a result there’s a lot more noise in the pics than I’d otherwise want to deal with.

The other problem I ran into was the cage itself. The camera picked it up as often as it did the fighters, so I boosted the aperture to get a larger depth of field. I also played with manual focus some, but the distance still made it tough to see the finer details I wanted to focus on (and the focus ring was right near its limit anyway). I probably could have gotten away with using my 55-200mm zoom lens for tighter shots and better control of focus, a trade-off for sacrificing another stop or so of aperture. Instead most of what you’ll see is tightly cropped from the originals, making the noise and focus issues even more obvious.

Next time I may suck it up and haul in a camera bag so I can have all my lenses available. I may be less polite and stand up to take some shots so I don’t get so many backs of other fans’ heads, too. Heck, if I wanted to really go nuts, I could borrow another camera body from work or a friend and have both lenses ready to go without having to mount and unmount them between bouts or rounds.

I’m sure my friends would love it. Heh.

In the following video, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu instructor Stephan Kesting of Grapplearts shows us two of his favorite ridiculous techniques:

I get a laugh out of these myself, but at the same time I hate to see them because they make martial arts in general look bad.

I decided to mimic that opportunity tonight. The kamiza is held by candlelight, and every karateka in the ceremony carries in their own candle. I had my candle at home, so I lit it up and started playing with the camera.

In the dojo, or in the living room?

Something I learned from this pic is I need a remote. I kind of like the pic, but the focus could really be better, especially since I used a low aperture resulting in a very narrow depth of field. I may retake this one when I get a remote, and play with the exposure to capture the flame.

Bonus pic:

I like the halo around the flame

While I was playing with the camera and the distance, I caught this picture. I did a quick crop, otherwise it’s straight off the camera.

Judo mocks your silly gravity

Judo is something I hope to work on myself, soon. There is just enough Judo in the Shuri-ryu curriculum to give karateka a taste, but the AOK offers a dedicated Judo class as well. Once I make Ikkyu (first-degree brown belt), I hope to hit more of those classes.

Not in the face! Not in the face!

Ass-whoopin’ jokes aside, it was a great demo. Wrath spent a lot of time discussing the distances between arts like karate and Muay Thai, covered some of his training, and even showed us his Ram Muay, the dance fighters perform before their matches. I was familiar with some of what he had to say, but a lot of it was new to me, especially the particulars of Muay Thai’s rules and culture, and for anyone interested in the martial arts, it was interesting stuff.

Then Wrath got to demonstrating why Muay Thai is referred to as the art of eight limbs; he started throwing punches, elbows, knees, and kicks my way.

You don't want to eat one of these

I’ve held pads for plenty of guys before, but this was the first I’ve done so for a professional fighter. Even at 70% power, I had no question I’d be hurtin’ if I hadn’t been holding up those pads. I trusted Wrath not to miss the pads and take out a rib, but at the same time I made damn sure to keep those pads out where he needed them so I didn’t set myself up for injury. One of those knees could easily have knocked out teeth or cracked a rib.

Like a frickin' freight train!

The flying knees were the strongest technique he showed off. I’m not a little dude, and if I stepped into the ring with Wrath we’d both be fighting in the heavyweight division. I even set myself into a front stance to brace against the knee. Nevertheless, those flying knees knocked me back a couple of steps with each blow. I can’t imagine the damage I’d have taken if he kept me in a tight clinch or pinned me against a turnbuckle or Octagon fence.

You can see a few more pics from the demo on my VisionCon Flickr set, and Jerrod Balzer has posted a some pictures on his blog.

The crowd enjoyed the presentation, and I felt like I learned something as well. In fact, afterward I asked Wrath a few more questions about applying a proper Muay Thai clinch, and I hope to show some of my friends at my karate school the technique.

Who knows, maybe I’ll even get an opportunity to apply it in a sparring match…

Enjoy.

It’s also been a running joke between myself and some of my fellow karate students that I’d use this song when I have to do ju ju undo (free exercise) to music. The joke being I have to go out and perform some karate with music playing, and chances are there will be kids and their parents around.

I’d bet the instant the first “fuck like a beast” lyric hits, I catch a roundhouse to the head, and thus endeth my review process.

Of course, this was intentionally funny. Another MMA artifact I can’t help but laugh at is this Bas Rutten commercial the Cartoon Network has been running to remind kids to wash their hands to knock out germs:

I think the best part about the the commercial is Bas isn’t necessarily putting on much of an act! Check out this cut of his self defense training video:

Ba-dangada-dangada, the man’s insane!

But in a fun way. Please don’t beat me up, Bas. I catch you on Inside MMA all the time.

At the last Academy of Okinawan Karate graduation, one of the guys I worked out with on a black belt attack team, Tim Mangan, was promoted to Ikkyu, or first-degree brown belt. As a Nikyu (second-degree brown belt), we learn the kata Bassai Dai, also called the Breaking Through the Fortress form.

I’ve seen several interpretations of this kata, but this is Bassai Dai as I’ve learned it. One of these days I’ll try to get in front of the camera myself.

Making Ikkyu myself is my main goal for next year. In our style, Ikkyu is the last step before black belt. I’ll learn two more kata and a handful of new techniques, and I’ll bust my ass until Shihan Walker decides I’m ready to test for black belt.

One step at a time, though. Next up is learning the full interpretation of Bassai Dai.