Martial Arts Experiences Discussion Thread

[James Y]

Geoff Thompson is known as one of the world’s best and foremost authorities on self-defense. I’ve been reading his autobiography, Watch My Back, and his story is fascinating. He is a genuinely ‘hard’ man, and he speaks from a treasure trove of real-life experience.

Here he explains “The Fence,” which is the basis of his system, as it has applied to his work as a nightclub bouncer and in street fighting.

I will say that in instances like the time the three men attempted to kidnap me in Taiwan that I posted about earlier, The Fence might not have worked, because they ran up on me already dead-set on an abduction, as opposed to a fight. So there are some types of unavoidable SD situations where The Fence may not apply. Though I probably could have spotted it developing, and maybe avoided the incident altogether had I been a little more aware (code yellow) in the first place.

This video is an hour long, but is definitely worth watching the whole way through.

https://youtu.be/ETLWajTDzvE

Jim

[Naperville]

Geoff Thompson ....

I've watched 30 minutes so far and he is very good. I'll be looking for more of his YouTube vids!

I picked up a book, "100 Deadly Skills, Combat Edition" by Clint Emerson. I've only looked at the first 5 to 10 pages, but the first thing they go over is a defense based on the fence. The book is neat. You install a QR/Bar-code reader for your cellphone, read the story, the capture the QR code....and watch video on the subject matter.

It looks to be a good book.

[Naperville]

I watched the entire Geoff Thompson video. Just about 100% of everything he says sounds so legit that I have to run down to the bar and try it out, hahahahahaha.

Excellent material. I see he has books on Amazon, but I'd rather watch the DVDs.

[James Y]

Self-Defense For Girls (1969)

Featuring Alice McGrath and Bruce Tegner.

I’m posting this because the self-defense segment is so campy and (IMO) unintentionally funny, mostly due to the bad acting. Bizarrely, the film’s final moments seem to invalidate everything the film is attempting to teach.

BTW, Bruce Tegner was a legitimate martial artist, and was a California state Judo champion. IMO, his Karate was questionable (to say the least), but that doesn’t take away from his knowledge of Judo and Jujutsu. Tegner wrote a bunch of books in the 1960s and 1970s. The first martial arts book I ever bought was a paperback Bruce Tegner self-defense book that cost about 75 cents in 1974. I didn’t learn much from it, but I used to see lots of his books at the book shop that he’d written on Karate, JuJutsu, Savate, Kung Fu/Tai Chi, and “Jukado” (Tegner’s combination of JUdo, KArate and AikiDO).

The self-defense segment begins from around 3:50:

https://youtu.be/j2_mBVgHT0Q

Jim

[Naperville]

Women have come a looooooong way from being "helpless." The 50 year old video has it's bright spots but overall it is terrible.

There are better, more recent videos and books on the subject. I do not have a list of them, but I read and buy what I can. Self defense for women also inadvertently covers self defense for the elderly. I view those videos to get a general idea and take it from there. I'm getting old, 60, and I'll take any ideas that I can for self defense.

[James Y]

Women have come a looooooong way from being "helpless." The 50 year old video has it's bright spots but overall it is terrible.

There are better, more recent videos and books on the subject. I do not have a list of them, but I read and buy what I can. Self defense for women also inadvertently covers self defense for the elderly. I view those videos to get a general idea and take it from there. I'm getting old, 60, and I'll take any ideas that I can for self defense.

Yes, the film is dated. I posted it mostly because it’s campy. Especially the bad acting. I guess I also posted it because of its historical value, exactly BECAUSE women have come a long way. Heck, when I was training as a kid in the ‘70s, I knew and trained with a few women who could fight for real; they certainly were not delicate flowers. One of these women was already a Kenpo black belt with lots of experience, and helped me out a lot with my head movement.

I wonder what Bruce Tegner and Alice McGrath would have thought of some of the female professional fighters of today. :)

Yes, I know there are many much better films and books on SD out there. I have a BUNCH of great books on the subject. Real self-defense is a heavy subject. Once in a while, it’s just fun to take a look back at how things were presented historically.

I take my own training very seriously. And it has worked for me. But if I didn’t also love and enjoy my training to some degree (and occasionally have “fun” with it), I would have stopped doing it a long time ago.

Jim

[VashHash]

The old saying still applies. It's not the size of the dog in the fight but the size of the fight in the dog.

[James Y]

The old saying still applies. It's not the size of the dog in the fight but the size of the fight in the dog.

Very true.

Once again, it goes back to “Never Underestimate Anyone.” You never know a person’s background or life experiences. Some people’s lives or life journeys have toughened them, physically and mentally. From a purely physical standpoint, a person’s size/height/weight, physical condition (skinny, flabby, toned, etc.), sex, age, race, face (handsome/pretty, ‘ugly’, baby face, shy-looking, tough-guy looking, goofy-looking, etc.) is NOT always an indication of their real or potential capabilities, as far as physical conflict is concerned.

Jim

[NorWest_05]

I trained Boxing, and Aikido. Aikido when I was like 6 or 7, and boxing at like 13.

[Naperville]

I trained Boxing, and Aikido. Aikido when I was like 6 or 7, and boxing at like 13.

I bet that was a lot of fun. Something to look back on. I do the same....looking back on memories!

[Dr. Snubnose]

I’m surprised nobody mentioned Count Dante or Jerome Mackey....

[James Y]

I’m surprised nobody mentioned Count Dante or Jerome Mackey....

I remembered John Keehan (AKA Count Dante) mostly from the old comic book ads for his course, but I never bought into it. I also remember an offensive interview he gave in Black Belt Magazine in the early ‘70s. He was originally a legitimate Karate guy who went off the deep end and became a criminal. There was also the infamous “dojo wars” where “Dante” and some of his students invaded another martial arts school and one of his students, Jim Koncevic, was killed (I heard he was stabbed with a sword). “Dante” died in 1975 and was buried in an unmarked grave.

The first video, from 1964, was before John Keehan/“Count Dante” went off the deep end.


https://youtu.be/ExI-1T67JFk

https://youtu.be/gf-LJQuGc5o

Jim

[Naperville]

I taught Count Dante everything he knew.

:p

NOPE! I think Count Dante is the only guy in the Chicagoland area I never trained under! Hahahahahaha....

[James Y]

One guy from the past that nobody talks about is Tonny Tulleners. He was a student of the legendary Tak Kubota, inventor of the “Kubotan” and known as one of the toughest Karate sensei back in the day. Tonny (not Tony) Tulleners was known as “The Man Chuck Norris Couldn’t Beat.” IIRC, they fought each other at least 3 times, and Tulleners won every time.

Partly because of the “Chuck Norris Facts,” there is some nonsense surrounding Chuck Norris, that he was an undefeated world Karate champion. Chuck Norris was NOT undefeated. He had several losses in his Karate career, including to Allen Steen, Joe Lewis, Tonny Tulleners, Louis Delgado, and to John Liu (in a demo match). Chuck Norris did beat Joe Lewis in 3 of their 4 Karate matches. Lewis went on to pioneer American full-contact kickboxing, which Norris never competed in.

Another misconception is that Chuck Norris was a full-contact kickboxer. He was never a professional kickboxer; he was a Karate tournament fighter. At one point, Chuck Norris was part of an American Karate dream team comprised of American champions that competed internationally and received some pay; making him technically a “professional” fighter.

I recall a TV interview of Chuck Norris in around 1981, where he was asked if he ever fought in full-contact Karate, and he smiled and said “No, I was retired from competition by then.” But in an interview years later, someone asked basically the same question and he said, “Yes, I was an undefeated full-contact world Karate champion.” So which is it? I respect Chuck Norris as a martial artist and for his abilities, but he started changing his story as he got older. And started leveling little criticisms at Bruce Lee, without whom Chuck Norris would never have had a movie career and become a wealthy star, much less a household name. Interesting that he never spoke those criticisms when Bruce Lee was alive.

Jim

[Naperville]

In my early 20's I was working in concrete swinging a pick and sledge hammer 8+ hours a day and studied Chung Moo Quan, 7 days a week for over a year. They were brutal mentally and physically. Not to me, but for for many people they entrapped in a brutal scheme to take their money, it was like dealing with the mafia. They dispatched teams of people to bring you to class if you missed.

As you watch these videos, know this much, I've studied many martial arts, some very good ARTS, but none as physically and mentally demanding. They would take an entire class and make them hold a horse stance for 30+ minutes. If you could not hold a horse stance for 30 minutes(and some passed out and were dragged off the mat), they would make you hold a standing pushup position for 30 minutes. Sparring was once a week and it was full power, full contact with no protective gear.

That is why people they took for thousands did what they said, because they were freaking brutal.

Chung Moo Quan the Cult and The Con Part 1
https://youtu.be/OwxuyHh-52A

Chung Moo Quan The Cult and the Con Part 2
https://youtu.be/Pj7wdzClqZo

Chung Moo Quan The Cult and the Con Part 3
https://youtu.be/wgAahsPPfQY

[VooDooChild]

Jesus. Way of the cult cash cow.

I have watched videos of a lot of the mcdojo stuff, and the bs no touch/ healing/ ki / "powers" stuff, but I had never heard of that.

Something I really liked about my old school was there were no contracts. Just pay by the month. If you wanted to be there great, if not no big deal. It also kept the training straight forward, practical, and honest. You were free to go start training somewhere else if you liked it more.

[NorWest_05]

I trained Boxing, and Aikido. Aikido when I was like 6 or 7, and boxing at like 13.

I bet that was a lot of fun. Something to look back on. I do the same....looking back on memories!

Yes it was very fun. I have been looking at starting Aikido again, it'll be a good test to see how much I actually remember.

[Naperville]

Jesus. Way of the cult cash cow.

I have watched videos of a lot of the mcdojo stuff, and the bs no touch/ healing/ ki / "powers" stuff, but I had never heard of that.

Something I really liked about my old school was there were no contracts. Just pay by the month. If you wanted to be there great, if not no big deal. It also kept the training straight forward, practical, and honest. You were free to go start training somewhere else if you liked it more.

I'm not condoning what they did as I said, they were like the mafia.

[Naperville]

NOTE: I was a student, but they never did any of the things they were charged with to me. I had a job in construction before I joined, and paid them my $150 per month for about 30+ 2 hour training sessions per month. I tried to join the US Marine Corps after training with them for a year, and the USMC found out that I had a heart murmur, so I quit construction and Chung Moo Quan, and went off to college.

Nonetheless, everything in the videos I do know about happening from other students, some, who joined the military to get away from Chung Moo Quan. I never had a problem with them, but they did really nasty things to others that I knew.

Chung Moo Quan was not like learning escrima/arnis/kalis, hapkido, judo....it was like Tae Kwon Do with horrifically difficult calisthenics for a whole hour, before beginning martial arts training. There were times that I saw people in dimly lit rooms carrying 5lb buckets of sand at arms length walking in almost a horse stance for 30 minutes as a warm up to training. You basically paid to be tortured.

If you could handle Chung Moo Quan for a year, no fight was going to frighten you. Mentally, you were brutal.

[James Y]

NOTE: I was a student, but they never did any of the things they were charged with to me. I had a job in construction before I joined, and paid them my $150 per month for about 30+ 2 hour training sessions per month. I tried to join the US Marine Corps after training with them for a year, and the USMC found out that I had a heart murmur, so I quit construction and Chung Moo Quan, and went off to college.

Nonetheless, everything in the videos I do know about happening from other students, some, who joined the military to get away from Chung Moo Quan. I never had a problem with them, but they did really nasty things to others that I knew.

Chung Moo Quan was not like learning escrima/arnis/kalis, hapkido, judo....it was like Tae Kwon Do with horrifically difficult calisthenics for a whole hour, before beginning martial arts training. There were times that I saw people in dimly lit rooms carrying 5lb buckets of sand at arms length walking in almost a horse stance for 30 minutes as a warm up to training. You basically paid to be tortured.

If you could handle Chung Moo Quan for a year, no fight was going to frighten you. Mentally, you were brutal.

Chung Moo Quan was started by the same man (John C. Kim) who started Oom Yung Doe (the same cult renamed), that used to be active in my area. I used to see their ads posted up in various places into early 2K. Thankfully, they’re all gone now. I read a book about the cult called “Herding The Moo: Exploits of a Martial Arts Cult.”

That’s not the only martial arts cult I’ve heard about. I’ve heard of several, most of which were started by Korean martial artists in the 1980s or so. I don’t know if they were inspired by Reverend Moon (founder of the Unification Church cult) to start their own cults or not, but it seemed strange to me.

In the early ‘80s, I even met a Korean master, whose school I was passing by and decided to check out just for the heck of it. You had to talk to him through a speaker system to come into his “office,” which was semi-darkened; he was sitting on a huge, elaborate throne, with a huge tapestry of an attacking eagle above and behind it. The office had a two-way mirror through which he could watch his students on the floor, but they couldn’t see in. He had also started his own self-named system based on Tae Kwon Do, Hapkido, Yudo (Korean for Judo), Kumdo (Korean for Kendo), “Kung Fu,” Sip Pal Gi (Korean for 18 Chinese weapons), etc., etc., all of which he claimed high black belt degrees in, and had an elaborate personal backstory. We spoke for about 10 minutes. TBH, the guy was creepy. Even at my then-young age, I could tell he was trying to start his own cult. He even boasted how his students obeyed his every command, then as if to show me, he spoke to them through the speaker system to clean the mats. They immediately complied, but in an almost zombie-like manner. Then he steepled his fingers and sat back with a semi-smirk. In my mind, I kept hearing Jim Kelly (from the movie Enter the Dragon) saying, “Man, you come right out of a comic book.”

When I left, I took some of his free literature, not because I was interested, but as a souvenir of cult literature. He later closed his school and relocated it to L.A. sometime in the mid-‘80s to early ‘90s, when I was living overseas.

Jim