The Martial Arts Society

4th dan already!? How long have you been doing it for?

And, I'm sure you can get the belts at university pretty quickly for tae kwon do if you're that good?

I started when I was 6, got my third dan at 14, then have to wait till 21... Hugh gap! So i went on to train in MMA, that turned too technical for my liking so I now just help out with younger students.

It's not quickly, I've got to re-gain all my knowledge from when I first started and train hard to achieve what I want

What uni are you going to?

Sheffield Hallam

I'm sure there are plenty of ginger guys around..

Personally, I only feel really threatened if the person has a weapon or there's more than one of them. If it's just one on one I'm going to clinch up, get them down as quickly and (preferably) safely as possible and then choke them unconscious.

Great, good for you. Just don't expect the law to care very much for that. Simple fact is that you shouldn't try to seriously harm your attacker unless you're seriously threatened because you could end up doing real damage and get in trouble.

Better that than potentially being killed. If someone is attacking me I have to assume the worst intentions, that is the intention to kill me, on their part simply for my own safety. I don't think it's a victim's responsibility to protect their attacker.

You do realise if someone does have a weapon, the most stupid thing you can try and do is go and clinch up

Yeah man, that's why I said if it's one on one without weapons I'd clinch.

Then he can truely prove his grapple wrestling theories amoungst the shankers and rudeboys in Parkhurst I dont see that going well...

I love the "clinching with a weapon is stupid" ideology, despite...you know...the vast majority of treatises from the Renaissance dealing with weapons in a series of languages (everything from Italian to Sanskrit) in order to disarm better. Grappling is a pretty useful tool. But what did they know, those people, who lived and died by these things. Let's do Wing Chun or some **** instead, am I right?

Friends don't let friends Chun. Go do BJJ or MT kids.

Indo-Chinese Food doesn't take evidence from the Middle Ages. I posted images from Medieval Fechtbücher and other armed fighting and grappling manuals and he dismissed them.

I always assume he is a chinese takeaway menu.

I'm way too high for this **** right now.

Indo-Chinese Food doesn't take evidence from the Middle Ages. I posted images from Medieval Fechtbücher and other armed fighting and grappling manuals and he dismissed them.

Ah people in general don't seem to, but if you give them a book done by a Japanese guy twenty years ago its usually all fine and dandy eh?

In fairness I also think a lot of the stuff in the fechtbucher (diacritics!?! you either have a Mac or are a typing wizard) is a bit ****ty by modern standards (grappling much more developed, especially ground fighting; people no longer wielding gigantic knives with specifically circular handles just to make stabbing you more efficient etc) but I tend to think, except where work on body mechanics disagree, these people clearly knew what they were talking about.

I'm surprised and gratified to see somebody else on here who works with this kind of stuff as well as MMA etc. Too long have swords in the western world been associated with nerdy DnD dickheads rather than awesome alive training and full contact sparring. D

BJJ > Prison Rape.

Yup, I train with spatha-type swords (specifically the late, Viking Age forms - not the classical Roman), seaxes and axes. Generally either with a a full size shield or without a shield, although I'd be interested in training with a buckler and small, parrying shields (buklari in Old Norse) do seem to have been used to some extent in the period (specifically the Viking Age, but also the Vendel Period, the Anglo-Saxon Period and the "Völkerwanderung" generally). I train for about four hours a week on top of my 8 hours of BJJ and four of Judo (I have a lot of free time, haha). I've also found grappling, especially subtle Judo trips like De Ashi Harai, Sasae Tsuri Komi Ashi, and Ko Soto Gari/Gake incredibly useful.

I take it you're a swordsman yourself?