Girls and Martial Arts
Draconacticus's post about girls in martial arts brought back several painful memories from the years.

I regularly get beaten up by girls.

I have been studying a variety of martial arts for the last 6 years, mainly Wing Chun, but also TKD and a bit of Eskrima. Despite training alongside professional fighters, bouncers, police, soldiers and the like, I have come to the conclusion that the people you should be afraid of when training are girls. The smaller, the more you should be afraid of them. Especially if they're new.

Girls, especially more petite girls, have an inbuilt viciousness the likes of which you cannot train. In Wing Chun, as it is a means of self defence not a sport, we teach people to strike in more vulnerable areas - eyes, throat, kidneys, floating rib.....groin.....

Whenever we explain that to new girls, their eyes always light up at the last point, and we instantly know the rest of the evening is going to be spent getting kicked fiercely in the balls. It's like the go-to answer to anything:

Being grabbed from behind - Heel kick to the balls.

Being grabbed from the front - kick to the balls.

Bear hug - knee or shin to the balls.

Rear naked choke - Punch in the balls.

Standing there minding my own business - Kick to the balls...


On top of which, the smaller the girl, the harder they think they can hit you and you can take it. This is sort of true, but when when you spend hours and hours teaching people how to punch effectively, size stops mattering as much and it just fucking hurts anyway. I genuinely nearly had my arm broken once by a girl who was about 4'7 after I taught her how to do an arm bar. I explained very carefully that if you do it with enough force, you can break or severely damage someone's arm regardless of how big they are, so do it carefully.

She immediately put as much force into it as she could, and I could feel my elbow joint wrench as she did it. if I hadn't moved with it, she would have seriously fucked my arm up.

I asked her why she did it with so much force. She replied "Well, you're about six foot..."

"What did I JUST say!!!"

So yeah, girls are dangerous. Much more dangerous than men.
( PMGT -Bacon., Fri 20 Apr 2012, 13:26, 17 replies)

Rear naked choke?
Sounds saucy.

Beginners I find are more dangerous than women. A big mass of flaming arms fueled by fear and enthusiasm. It's like being happy slapped by Mr Tickle.
( Draconacticus Reject shampoo. Demand real poo!, Fri 20 Apr 2012, 13:30, closed)

Yeah, enthusiastic beginners are just dangerous full stop.
Especially the cocky ones. It takes a lot of patience to deal with people like that.

We do a thing called Chi Sau, which is like a light sparring game to improve reflexes and speed. It's the first type of sparring you do in Wing Chun, so people always get over-excited and the first Chi Sau lessons usually end up in someone getting a black eye through lack of control. That's been me a couple of times.
( PMGT -Bacon., Fri 20 Apr 2012, 13:34, closed)

Our style is influenced by Lau Gar
Is the chi sau thing like sticky hands? You practice with those wooden rings right?
( Draconacticus Reject shampoo. Demand real poo!, Fri 20 Apr 2012, 13:41, closed)

Lau Gar is cool, met a few guys that do that.
and yeah, it is sticky hands. Although we don't use the rings. Some styles of Wing Chun do though.
( PMGT -Bacon., Fri 20 Apr 2012, 13:52, closed)

Good Chi Sau video
www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvnas8sC4Fw

this is Ip Chun doing Chi Sau with one of my teacher's students, Shaun Rawcliffe. Ip Chun taught my teacher, and his father Ip Man 9the one who has just had a couple of films made about him) taught Bruce Lee the first three forms of Wing Chun.
( PMGT -Bacon., Fri 20 Apr 2012, 13:56, closed)

Normally I find my sticky hands videos on less salubrious sites than youtube :P

( Draconacticus Reject shampoo. Demand real poo!, Fri 20 Apr 2012, 13:58, closed)

yeeeeeeeah
It's an unfortunate name... hence why I call it "Chi Sau" instead....
( PMGT -Bacon., Fri 20 Apr 2012, 14:02, closed)

I must admit
I don't like the idea of regulalry being punched.

A friend did Wing Chun and I occasionally sparred with him to our mutual benefit. Over 2 feet away he got worried, closer than that I got worried.
(Kliper Filllets Getting noticed by twats on the internet since, Sat 21 Apr 2012, 10:19, closed)

Yeah,
that was why I used to combine Tae Kwon Do with Wing Chun. Wing Chun is devestating at any range of about 5 feet away or less if your footwork is good. I used to love using Wing Chun in Tae Kwon Do sparring matches when we got too close. I got disqualified from one match for kicking someone in the back after I used a bit of Wing Chun footwork to get round the back of him when he lunged at me with a snap kick. Not allowed to hit unpadded areas apparently.
( PMGT -Bacon., Sat 21 Apr 2012, 11:51, closed)

In Tang Soo Doo
It was more sport based, so no padding, and in competitions there aren't any sweeps, jumping punches, etc. A kick to the back wouldn't score a point.

It's why I got involved with other styles, for situations like you described.

Fortunately the only time I got disqualified was for kicking a much smaller kid in the head when he literally run at me. He bit his lip and drew blood, so out I went. He got absolutely thrashed by some meatwagon in the next round, so I wasn't too worried. The peril of being at the lower end of a weight group and meeting someone at the upper end!
(Kliper Filllets Getting noticed by twats on the internet since, Sat 21 Apr 2012, 21:56, closed)

I weigh about 17 stone,
but I can move for a big guy. I used to always get paired up with the properly big fellas that were slow and powerful. The guy in question was a red belt (I was a yellow belt) and he overcommit to a lunging kick. It was easy to get behind him.

I think it's ridiculous to get disqualified for something like that. I don't want to fight someone head on if I can avoid it. I'd rather be at a positional advantage. And what the hell was he doing letting me get behind him in the first place? He should have been disqualified for being a shit fighter.
( PMGT -Bacon., Sat 21 Apr 2012, 23:16, closed)

Sssshh!
Don't fucking TELL them!!
( shinyshinyscalp less a man, more a way of life, Fri 20 Apr 2012, 13:31, closed)

Biggest problem as a teen doing martial arts against women
Was being told to punch them in the tits. Yes they may have had protective guards on but it just felt WRONG. And at the time It was probably the closest time I'd been to breasts since I was a baby.
( Airman Gabber Living life like a 70's BBC presenter, Fri 20 Apr 2012, 14:29, closed)

It does give them some sense of perspective
For what it's like for us to be kicked in the balls.

I've only had to do it once in class, where a rather agressive woman I was sparring against didn't seem to understand the concept of me holding my hands up to stop her advancing as I had little'uns behind me.

She just kept swingling her legs and shouting and I could see someone else was going to get hurt. Sometimes a quick, short and painful lesson is the only way to get through to someone.
(Kliper Filllets Getting noticed by twats on the internet since, Sat 21 Apr 2012, 10:15, closed)

I agree there.
See my earlier reply about cocky beginners. The quickest way to get them in line is to forcibly demonstrate superiority over them, as arrogant as that sounds. I don't mean it in a violent way. Whenever I do Chi Sau with beginners I always limit myself to what I'm doing, or it becomes pointless for them. But that always leads certain types of people to think that they're getting one over on me, when in actuality I'm using probably 20% of my ability. A quick demonstration of what 100% of my ability entails is usually enough to stop them from trying to punch me in the face. I don't even make contact, just a demonstration that I could have made contact with them is usually enough. Although there have been exceptions, and I have refused to train with some people until they sort their attitudes out before now.
( PMGT -Bacon., Sat 21 Apr 2012, 11:48, closed)

Careful
Ringofyre or Real will accuse you of macho bullshit.

It's funny, I read your reply and having seen or been in similar situations I don't for a second doubt what you're saying.

The control you describe is something we all start to learn from day one, and only get better with time. I can relate to that without a second thought, but I wonder how many of the insecure and bitter posters out there will interpret it as "turning my skills up to 11".

It's a shame, we've probably got many interesting stories to tell but will no doubt hold back lest we start a trollfest.
(Kliper Filllets Getting noticed by twats on the internet since, Sat 21 Apr 2012, 21:52, closed)

Yep.
I actually remember when this place was a decent community of people.

There nothing macho about it. just like if you were a Geography teacher and you had a student say that Scotland was South of England, you would go "no it isn't, here's a globe, look for yourself".

If you start to teach someone martial arts, and they try and hit you and think that's the way they should conduct themselves, you show them why that's not a good idea and why that sort of attitude isn;t conducive to learning martial arts.
( PMGT -Bacon., Sat 21 Apr 2012, 23:13, closed)