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And what the hell is this shit? Why mess around and start off with throwing a damn finger dart or even worse a side kick that will leave you off balanced from the get go instead of just keeping it simple and throwing an edge of hand and following up from there. Why does he feel the need to show off and try to be fucking Bruce Lee here lol.
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These guys…useless. If it was in a WWII era self defense book, they took it as gospel.
There is a lot wrong with WWII Combatives. It suffers from the same problems martial arts does.
Regarding these tow chuckle heads…
I met Carl in 1989 and trained intermittently from the summer of 90 until 92. Training with Carl went like this: you got together one or twice a week for a few weeks, then he would drop out of contact for a month or two.
Among other things Carl suffered from severe bouts of depression where he just didn’t talk to anyone. Later when his health suffered, he was even more difficult to reach.
Carl was teaching at my brother’s dojo in the summer of 1992. Until that time, this was the longest stretch he’d ever stayed in one place. For 3 months we trained 2X a week for 90 minutes.
After combatives its was mostly aikijujutsu and judo since, well – there’s only so much you need to do with combatives. That’s what makes it great (and work). It’s easy. I have to laugh when these guys spout off about how long they trained with Carl…the point is YOU DON’T NEED THAT MUCH TRAINING (but more on that later).
Carl and my brother had a falling out and that was that. Truth be told I paid for 6 months and only got 3 – still worth every penny.
In 1996 my brother and I had a falling out – seems to be a lot of that going around. But it wasn’t until 1998 that I reconnected with Carl.
Now when I last saw Carl in 1989 he was fresh out of prison and was a bulky 225.
6 years later he looked like a skeleton at 150!! I was floored when I saw him.
In 1998 Carl was in bad shape. His famous basement where these guys claim to work out all the time was filled with boxes of his wife’s shit. Carl said no one had trained down there in years. Granted, that wasn’t the only place you could train – his friend Al had a deli in Garwood, NJ where the basement had some equipment in it and we did work out there once or twice. He had Yonezuka’s Dojo in Cranford, NJ where he had a handful of seminars.
When I met Clint he was a kid who lived around the corner from Carl. All they did was sit on the couch and watch martial arts videos. Ralph was a guy who would spend his time tracking down rare books and photo-copying them for Carl.
Now these guys claim from 1993 to 1998, all the did was “train every Friday in Carl’s basement”.
Well, from their physical shape and the actual possible time window, they maybe had 1993 to 1995. Notice how their time with Carl is conveniently AFTER my first contact with him.
It get’s better.
Clint and Ralph NEVER worked out.
They would teach…occasionally. Clint would never come to a regular class (Carl and I would joke about it) and the only time he went to a judo session at Yonezuka’s dojo Jackie Fershwieger through him on his head and that was the end of his “career”.
Other than demo moves – these guys did nothing. I remember Ralph having a small training group in his back yard and garage, but Clint NEVER did anything consistent.
It’s funny, they had nothing to say when Carl was alive, but after he died, they open their mouths.
My lawyers said I needed to keep quiet, but now I don’t have to anymore so I can openly mess with them.
The problem that I had with all of this training was that there wasn’t formalized training program – just a collection of moves and tactics. Carl and I put the original Tekkenryu Syllabus together (there were times Clint was in the room) but the creating was done by me and Carl.
At the end of the day, the Tekkenryu system was just too complicated. And while Judo, jujutsu and karate were a big part of my life, it was detracting from the overall effectiveness of what I wanted to teach.
Also, from 2000 to 2005 (the last 2 years of Carl’s life he was in really rough shape). Most of his teaching was judo and aikijujutsu – NOT COMBATIVES.
Another reason you see Clint demonstrating in these seminars was that Carl wanted him to get teaching experience. I was teaching 6 days a week and it was an opportunity to Clint to teach.
Also, there are some things that these guys are teaching that I completely disagree with – case and point, these two techniques.
Specific defenses and over commitment to a low percentage technique. I think I leaned that flying side kick in TKD!
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@Damian Ross said:
These guys…useless. If it was in a WWII era self defense book, they took it as gospel.
There is a lot wrong with WWII Combatives. It suffers from the same problems martial arts does.[Damian Ross],
Truth be told, at this point I pretty much take anything you say as “gospel”, but ONLY because I have been around long enough now to realize that a) what you teach actually works in the real world, and b) you have consistently demonstrated that any time you find something that does not work, or you discover something that works better, your ego is not so huge that you refuse to change (e.g., Tekkenryu system). It’s quite refreshing to meet a Master/Guru/Sensei/Whatever who is willing to admit something is wrong or just plain sucks. And though you have your moments of “because I said so”, it’s because you’ve already done the research (and probably have the bruises to prove it!) and are not just talking out your ass like so many of these guys. I actually find you to be most humble.
Bottom line, for a mere $20/month you are my own personal test lab, running through everything out there and winnowing away anything that is too complicated or ineffective. I no longer have to waste time cutting through all the crap myself… why bother when all I’m going to discover is what you have already found? This is why I like you so much.
You’re the best, brother!
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Thanks James.
I really appreciate it but were all of the same mind here. We want the truth about this stuff, period. You must reflect on your real life experience along with your common sense. You also have to be willing to walk away no matter how much you’ve invested.
Ego is the real killer here. Too many times are people focused on the wrong thing. They have invested a ton of time and money along with their beliefs. They also genuinely care for their instructors and that muddles their thinking. Fact is there are a lot of good, tough, well meaning people just teaching the wrong thing because its “tradition”.
In reality that “tradition” only started 50 or hundred years ago (best case). Martial arts are a modern invention with a faux history.
The Japanese are the best documented martial arts society period and even their teaching were largely word of mouth and full of hyperbole and folklore. Anytime there’s a human component attached to it, there are human faults.
A lot of this stuff was created to promote culture, fitness and sportsmanship, and as soon as we figured out how to make money at it, well, the rest is history.
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Exactly!
I found this out first-hand when I was studying a “traditional”style that I was told dated back to ancient Japan. I found out later that it, in fact, only dated back to the late 1950’s when the “grandmaster” basically took the standard karate style he was trained in and “blended” it with techniques that he supposedly found in “ancient” Japanese texts. He mixed in some spiffy uniforms and armor, added a handful of sword techniques that I found out later he got from Kendo, and — voila — a samurai art is born.
It was at this point that I pretty much gave up on traditional arts. I just couldn’t trust their lineage any more. Ironically, it was only AFTER I walked away due to false history that I began thinking about whether the shit actually worked or not. Sad, really; I should have been asking that question all along. It would have saved me 30 years of training. I was so caught up in tradition that I never questioned whether or not the spinning-reverse-wings-of-fire-crouching-dragon-hidden-tiger technique would work on an actual resistive opponent. Oh, well, now the truth is known and I will never go back.
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