This is a video of the highlights of my test yesterday...?

Question

I'd like you guys to please tell me what I need to work on. I was most disappointed with my intensity and power in my forms. I also noticed I was a little sloppy during sparring. What do you see?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2d46ir9d7k&feature=youtu.be

In case you didn't read the video description, I'm the one with the flag on the side of my Gi.

Answer 1

Well, I freezeframed the whole thing, and noted lots of things from the comfort of my keyboard, so, it's easy to critique from that safety zone. Also, I'm a taekwondo fighter, so, I have certain predispositions with regards to where I kick and how much I kick. I expect that you'll have rules about target areas, and your sparring seems to be not street-fighting (since no grappling), and so, I withhold comments about that kind of missing technique.



In your forms, overall - keep chin up - it conveys your confidence.



@:42 - stance?

@1:02 - chamber at the (front of) chest?

@1:06 - kick not high

@1:09 - you're not looking at what you're kicking at

@1:12 - sequence of hand techniques is not "snappy". In other areas, hand techniques are snappy, but they don't involve many techniques in succession; this leads me to think that you need to develop more confidence and relaxation when doing combinations of hand techniques, so that you can build up speed.

@1:12 - I would never let a knee touch the floor, a broken glass shard or bottle or rock or debris will take the knee out, and in a painful way

@1:13 - round kick ought to be snappier and higher; I would point the knee as part of the chamber, then keep the foot as far back as possible

@1:15 - really bad example of lifting shoulder and burying chin down below it

@1:15 - after turn, the stances between several people change, so it's hard to tell who has the correct stance.

@1:18 - dip the head: some here do it, others look forward - not sure which is correct

@1:20 - everyone stumbles? I'm guessing it's some sort of 360 jump and land, but, it looks strange



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@1:50 - your steps suggest lifting the rear heel, and stutter-stepping the front foot. Hard to tell if this is a constant problem, but, because it is a tell and an inefficent means to move, I'd watch for it and correct it.

@2:02 - (and earlier, I can't remember when) - you have a sort of a "bow wrist" in your rising block; but then, so do other people - so maybe it's part of the technique.

@2:08 - again, your head is dipped forward - shows lack of confidence



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@2:34 - in your ready position, it looks like you're bowing your wrist again, and this is also seen in the previous ready position. Other people are clearly not doing this, suggesting you should look at this more closely. Here, it looks like your hands dangle down from your wrist. Others have a strong fist.



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@3:47 - seems a strange hook punch to opponent; I think you ought to more face him than strike w hook from the side.



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To me, the gun disarm seemed well executed. But, it isn't realistic. Most who have a gun wouldn't be so close to you in the front. That is the mark of an inexperienced user



@4:40 - Your stick disarm was successful... but your opponent is still standing. You should have pinned him, I think.



@4:53 - You fell for the side-kick feint. He was out of your range; you lost the opportunity to trap the kick and disable or throw him. Instead, you threw up a knee in defense, which disabled you momentarily.



@5:15 - Your knife disarm was successfull, but like before your opponent is still standing. Also, you took too long to disarm; during the disarm, a faster opponent would be able to recover in this time and strike back at you. I'll give you credit here because you aren't a black belt, so, you are showing green belt competency.



In all of these defenses, from the gun disarm to the last knife disarm, you did not show proficiency in both hands. You showed a tendency to hold a fighter's stance with your right foot forward. I don't know if the format of the event allowed you to repeat or choose a side, but, had I been you, I would have at least showed left and right side competency with other techniques.



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@6:00 - you threw a low spin kick to an opponent on two legs. You got lucky to take some balance, but, you lacked the speed for a good follow through. I would throw a low spin kick as a follow up or in conjunction with his movement in a given direction; a stationary opponent is very hard to knock down with a low spin kick.



In your sparring, you lacked authority. You need to assert yourself. The light contact may have been demanded by the event's rules, but you can certainly show speed and control without having to make strong contact.



@6:12 your high spin kick only got his stomach, and it was weak. consider higher (to the head), or a more direct kick to the same target using instead a reverse side kick. And in this case, you didn't judge your distance properly, so, your kick got stuffed. You got off-balanced and had difficulty recovering from it.



Overall your sparring was reactionary. Your opponent controlled you. Your goal is to control your opponent. Feints, counters, and combinations are how this is done. You had a tendency to throw one kick, and then stop. You showed competency with hand technique combinations, but none when it came to foot techniques. Your kicks lacked speed and strength. And, you showed a tendency to throw back leg kicks, which are notoriously slow. Your opponent show more tendency to throw front leg kicks. These lack power, but they're faster. Your opponent should not be using those gaudy orange or pink foot protectors. They contrast well with a black uniform, which means they're easier to see in your periphery. If you have them, don't use them. If your opponent has them, use them to your advantage.



In your 2v1 sparring, you failed to controll both opponents: don't fight two at once. Move to where you form a straight line such that you are not in the middle! You don't win 2v1, you only survive. The goal for 2v1 is to teach you how to strategize and use your sparring area.



On the whole, though, you did show passion and aggression. You also seemed to show competency in knowledge of your forms; since I don't know your forms, I can only judge in relation to others also doing your forms, and there didn't appear to be any mistakes there.



So overall, well done!

Answer 2

I see a lot of things wrong here and not all of them your fault either because many of the other students exhibit the same faults you did. So I have to believe it is largely in part due to the instructor and instruction. I also realize that some students have limited options for training and may not have good places and instructors available to train with so I will temper some of my thoughts about things based on that also and limit them ways to improve your own skills and reach a higher level.



First; make sure you bring every kick back like you should rather than leaving it hang out there at the end like I see you doing. That will help you to kick faster and harder and help you in other ways later especially in fighting. Secondly; you need to really pick up the intensity and effort with which you execute things and the speed and power of them. I am not saying you have to hurt the other person when sparring with them but you want to develop your speed and power here and along with that your control then as well. The techniques in your kata could be executed with a lot more power. In sparring your techniques would not hurt a butterfly-start experimenting with throwing them faster, harder, and more strongly while also developing your control as to how hard they land. At on point you do indeed pick up the intensity and speed and power for a few seconds in your sparring but then you quickly slip back into your old pace and way of doing things and so your techniques then lack those things I mention. You can't learn to do all this when its for real-its to late then and people tend to do what they practice doing because we are basically all creatures of habit.



Your defense at times has a lot of holes and you really need to pay attention what those others are scoring with on you and change that. In a real situation if a person hit or kicked you several times in a row with bad intentions while you waited or just took all that punishment then the fight would be over pretty quickly and not end in a good way for you. Its almost as if you are just ignoring them and when they score and just walking through it. In a real situation that won't work so your defense really needs a lot of work along with the approach you are taking here with your sparring.



If you continue to train there at this school and with the instructor you are currently with then the above is the best advice I can give you. At the end of a class or workout you should be walking out of that place with your gi wet from all the hard work and effort you put into things and I just don't see that or the speed, power, and intensity in technique that I like to see from a student of intermediate rank. You can't train one way and then once you are a black-belt suddenly do things with more effort, speed, power, and intensity or when caught in a street situation either. Start laying the ground work now for later by instead executing things with speed, power, and intensity now along with learning and developing the proper control when its needed for training so that later you will be more capable.

Answer 3

First of all, I'm no expert, I'm just another student of the martial arts, so you should take my answer with a grain of salt. I mean no offense man, it's not a question of whether you were sloppy, it's that you have no solid basics. That's the reason why you were off balanced most of the time while performing the kata, had no proper coordination and your techniques lacked power. I'm not saying this to be mean, I'm just telling you in response to your question of what you need to work on, based on what I see in the video. I also am a bit skeptical about your school's curriculum as the kata resembles non of the traditional kata I've ever seen before and a kata that has you perfoming kiai in almost every movement at that. You need to work on proper footwork as well as proper breathing and rooting so you can perform a technique with power, which brings me to question what you were taught during your basic training. And it's not just you, all the other students pretty much showed the same flaws as you did so it makes me conclude that it might be the material and quality of instruction that's at fault and not the individual student. And I'm not even going to talk about the sparring. Sloppy basic forms will always result in sloppy sparring. So there's my answer, hope that helped.

Answer 4

I thought that you were no worse than any of the other students so the conclusion would be that this is what you are being taught. If you feel that this does not meet your expectations and that you should have done better then maybe you need to look at a school with higher standards. As a student you are learning what is being taught and it is difficult to be better than what you are given. I don't think that you can get more out of your training than you did unless you can find a teacher who can give you more.

Your sparring reflects very much what you do with your Kata. There is no intent, focus or real power in your moves. Maybe that is why they felt sloppy to you. A Kiai does not signify intent nor is is enough to generate power by itself. The timing on your moves is off and your moves leave out small details that increase power. Unfortunately, it is difficult to communicate small details in writing in a technique without misunderstanding since martial arts is a physical activity. If I go frame by frame I often find your hands 'hanging' limp. There is no shape.

Your sidekick is better than most of the other guys but still it only flicks out like a tournament kick to score rather than with power and intent to harm.

Most of the times you look down especially on the lower moves which renders you off balance. Use peripheral vision and keep your head straight forward, chin up. Do a low block looking down like you do with all intend and then have a friend pull you off balance immediately after you finished the block. Now do the same block again but look straight forward and have your friend try to pull you off balance as soon as you finish the block. If done correctly your friend should have a harder time pulling you off balance, if at all, when you look straight ahead. It should feel this way for all your techniques.

All your energy is held inside you, rather than being released through your techniques. It's all just (arm) motion without engaging the hips and the whole body.

Keep your shoulders down with your techniques (i.e. double punch @ 1:09). Pulling up your shoulders will also not allow you to generate good power.

Do you learn bunkai for your Kata moves? That might help you understand what the moves are and help you put the emphasis in the right place and thus generate power properly.

Answer 5

It's great you are dedicated to it and were confident enough to post a video.

With your dedication it would be nice if you found a school that taught more practical use of the arts. Obviously concentrating on fixed, stiff movements as a focus (KATA) shows in all you did in the video. They are not properly training you to spar. The best thing you can do for your skills is find a school with real world applications to what you know and are learning. At your level doing kata is retarding your skills and growth. Look at the sparring, not great, not horrible but no different than all others that teach this way. Instead of learning kata you should be spending the time using what you know over and over in a slow sparring drill until the flinching and wasted movements are gone, or almost gone. Then slowly speed up so what you learned can actually be done by you in a proper way with actual power.

Look at the start of that video, the kata, nothing there from any student had the ability to do much more than brush up against them with no damage of any kind. I don't expect people to go full force 100% of the time but this is a test! you should be showing knowledge and ability to do the techniques with speed, accuracy and power. There was none of that I saw from ANYONE in that video.

Again, for what it was, I suppose you were fine but find a school that is not looking to cash in on Teaching Kata.

If you were to go find a student about your age, your size and level (belt) at ANY other school that taught basically the same thing but had little to no (or minimal) Kata and had the two of you, for this test, spar for the ability to advance to the next belt I would bet the other guy would win. It's not you it's the place you are going to.

Answer 6

I'm not going to say, and I'm not even half way through the video. Here's something, you should act and qualify as your rank or higher. You aren't someone who has been doing martial arts for years, so of course you'll have problems. You can fix those, and your instructor will help you. Just keep on training, and although it's good to get tips and/or advice, not everyone here is the best option. Just keep training, and do not worry yourself. Mistakes make you better, if you were efficient at nearly everything, then you would be better overall. Why? Because, you'd expect everything to perfected and you will say no to mistakes you make.

Answer 7

I see a lot that needs to be fixed. but not just your techniques but everyone on the video. during the Kata there are a lot of stance problems. You often double step. You move into a stance then at the last second of executing your technique you shift your foot or reposition it. You should be placing your foot in the final position, not part way then fixing the position at the last instant.



The gun defense would have gotten you killed if you were facing anyone with any real skills with a gun. You are just a little to far away to even be attempting that. Second, it was unclear what you were doing with the gun once you took it....? If you were shooting the attacker that is murder, not self-defense. The moment that the attacker loses control of the weapon any thing you do to him is possibly assault on him by you. You certainly can't shoot him.

Note: in all the self-defense techniques weapons and no weapons everyone is standing to far apart and also not attacking realistically. I realize that everyone has been taught to train with safety. But it builds a false sense of your real ability.



The sparring is a mess. not just yours but everyone there that I saw sparring. Unrealistic flailing and hoping to land a punch or kick. Often out of range both the attacker and defender. And that first black belt you sparred with, is a real mess. I feel sorry for him as he likely believes he is well trained. not even close. And what was with the multiple attackers...? If attacked with more than one attacker you never allow anyone to circle behind you. Fighting in the middle of the room will get you killed. And you take out the first one in range then deal with the others as they come. Of course if you could leave and not fight, that is what you would do.





Hope this helps!



...

Answer 8

Lol, after much reading from the others...



Well that pretty much covers it ;)



Room for improvement, but nothing to not be proud of.



Take Care

Train Hard

Fight Harder

Answer 9

It looks good.

Answer 10

Nice music in the first 20s.



Well first thing I see is this. Your arm movement isn't synched with the power of your hips or legs. What I get into the habit of doing is punching a target as my leading foot is about to land, but hasn't landed yet. This puts all the weight going down due to gravity, in the punch. If your structure can handle the feedback force that is received from striking objects. You are clearly landing your foot first, then extending your arm in those movements (first 45 seconds). Well, it doesn't really matter if those movements are strikes or not, get into the habit of doing it the other way first.



I'm going to assume you're the one in the middle (camera focus), since another person has something on their left shoulder too.



When you pull one arm back, making a fist, and use a leading attack with your other arm, there are some things to fix there. One, make sure your attacking arm's shoulder is flat, nailed down in its socket, and not raised up. The shoulder must be locked straight down, while rotating, else power does not transfer and ends up jamming up in the shoulder only. Secondly, think of your other arm's fist movement as grabbing something and pulling back. To you grab something, pull it back, and hit it with your other arm. You are probably using the other arm as a sort of lever to make your other arm stronger. That's part of it, but don't forget you're pulling something real, with real weight. Easier to practice it on a body. Pull their arm to you as you punch forward. That's the proper transfer of strength. If it isn't proper, then you couldn't pull as you punch. Reference frame 1:07. I don't know if it is your gi hunching over or your shoulder lifting, but make sure to smooth your shoulders down and out with your other palm. Smooth it out while it rotates. Imagine a nail nailing it down too.



As for your punching motion, you haven't been given the correct conditioning drills for it. Here's the one i started with. Get a really large candle with a large base of liquid wax, light it, and then punch at it. Try not to punch at the base, since air can easily snuff out the base of a candle wick. Punch at the middle or top, watch the flame move. The more it moves, the more power and acceleration you have in that strike. So the point is to watch the candle flame, not snuff it out, and feel what your arm feels like when it can hit the air and make the candle flame move the maximum amount you have ever seen. Works well for range too, since people who have no range awareness will often knock the candle off (fail). Or get too far away and the flame won't move at all (fail). Close, but not too close. Great for range conditioning. Do that for a couple of days and the snap in your punching motion should get a lot better. Alternatively, do the slow movement method of taiji chuan. 2 slow movements paired with 1 medium and 1 fast, repeated over and over. But that's only assuming you know how the correct form for a strike is.



I don't really like the reaction phase, but that's not your fault. I just prefer different drills. The better weapon drill I've seen is the gauntlet. Have the testee stand with his face to the wall, so he can't see anything. Then have a line of people on both sides, with their hands behind them, then give the people on the gauntlet various weapons or tell them to attack or not attack. The testee turns around, and walks through the gauntlet, never knowing who will or won't attack once he gets past them, nor will he know until he turns around what weapons, if any, they are using. Very good adrenaline hybrid conditioning.



Also as a tip, for guns, don't stand in the bullet's vector. Move your head out of the way as you go forward and do the disarm. Do not just stand there relying on your arm strength/speed.



Your overall movements in the Reaction phase seem well drilled. You know your goal and you step in and get that goal. That's a good mentality to have, overall.



In Sparring, you like to kick with your back leg too much. It's also slow. Amazingly slow, because it's on the back leg. Almost anyone with normal training can merely step on your front kneecap or top of your foot, and you'd be trapped and hanging in the air. Learn to kick with your front leg. That has the most range, and frontal snap kicks (which I know I saw in the kata) are much more effective at covering distance than wide angular kicks from the back. Snap kicks to the groin, knee, shin, stomach, solar plexus. Can't really get any higher than solar plexus without problems.



In order to kick with your front leg, you must be able to stand on your back leg, alone, in the air, for a stable period. So you just bring your back leg up, as if taking step, shift the weight to the back leg, do a one legged stand on the back leg, and do a front kick. Exactly like the karate kid 1, almost. It's really nice if you can enter, knock someone senseless, or trap their arm, before you kick them too, as they can't run away.



Someone needs to help you with your trapping. You have two arms in front of your body in sparring, but you don't defend against the front jabs with them via deflection. Your arms are like blades. You use them to parry enemy arms so they don't reach your heart or throat. Or spleen or liver. Solar plexus too, got to protect that.



7:10 the first multiple attacker sequence. Good job taking the initiative against orange shoes there. But against the second attacker, you needed to reposition yourself. Shift yourself to the left, your left, so you end up facing your opponents in a line. This is a manipulation of angles. If you just attack people straight on, you end up surrounded. Like so.



I don't understand why people there use kicking so much, yet their speed and precision of the kicks is nowhere near dangerous. Maybe they are toning it down. But Pugpaws kicks wouldn't be so sedate like that, even when sparring. Those kicks I wouldn't even bother defending or moving away from. They have no power, so you just dive right in and get to brawling range. 7:45, the front kick, is the kind of speed that is needed. One can kick fast, but delay the ending movement to lose the impact. Without power transfer, though, people can take the hit and it won't do anything to them. Pugpaws should know more about kicking. That's more of a conditioning tool on my part.



The black shoes guy was taking it easy on you right before 9:17. However, either he decided to go full out or just got mad at something, but that kick to your helmet was real, done with real intent and precision. So if you remember that, remember it. That's useful experience. Dangerous and risky, though, which is why the coach/head started lecturing him about hitting people in the head with that kind of kick. Dangerous to hit the temple that, and even with a helmet, shock can pass straight through it unless you're using some high quality foam. Avoid high kicks, you don't have the flex and speed for it. A more practical kick is below the waist. See them try to pick your leg up there, just stomp on their arm and watch it go down.



8:45 freeze frame. That's entirely wrong. Refer to what I mentioned above about front leg landing after you made contact with striking arm. Your rear leg is up, your front leg is down on the ground, and then you hit. That transfers almost no power. You might as well not do it. And you're off balance afterwards.



For speed of punching, if you recall how fast the black helmet foot guy's punches were, the speed that I want people to obtain is at least 4 times faster than that. So if the black helmet guy's combo punches looked fast and furious to you, it's actually relatively slow and weak to people like me. The higher your arm and body acceleration, the faster your punch is. Basic physics. There's a limit to how much your arm can accelerate your hand though. Same for kicks. It's not all muscle though.



Sparring looks like a fun time you had. Keep it up. Or at least, make the most use out of it while they give it to you. To do that, though, you need to work on some fundamentals. Building blocks. Complicated blocks though.



Since your sparring seems to be some version of kickboxing and your kata looks like karate or shotokan, the true boxer's stance might help out your sparring performance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHaSHHk9Y4M



Good luck with your training and work hard. Your basic conditioning isn't bad. Your physical coordination on the kata seems memorized well. But there are some things your dojo hasn't refined for you. So you got to do it yourself.