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- Newsgroups: rec.martial-arts
- Path: sparky!uunet!spool.mu.edu!agate!dog.ee.lbl.gov!hellgate.utah.edu!math.utah.edu!news.math.utah.edu!jon
- From: jon@zeus.med.utah.edu (Jonathan Byrd)
- Subject: Re: poor technique
- Sender: news@math.utah.edu
- Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 19:08:26 GMT
- References: <JON.92Dec10161806@zeus.med.utah.edu> <4366@unisql.UUCP>
- <JON.92Dec14165354@zeus.med.utah.edu> <4449@unisql.UUCP>
- In-Reply-To: wrat@unisql.UUCP's message of 28 Dec 92 16: 51:11 GMT
- Organization: University of Utah
- Message-ID: <JON.92Dec29120826@zeus.med.utah.edu>
- Lines: 47
-
- In article <4449@unisql.UUCP> wrat@unisql.UUCP (wharfie) writes:
-
- In article <JON.92Dec14165354@zeus.med.utah.edu> jon@zeus.med.utah.edu (Jonathan Byrd) writes:
- >Some competitors will let their blows penetrate just a little past the
- >contact point. These blows are often fast, powerful, and accurate.
- >The only thing "poor" about them is the fact that they make contact,
- >which is against the rules. Rules notwithstanding, hard contact
-
- To my way of thinking, deliberately disregarding agreed upoun
- rules to hurt your opponent is poor technique, in fact, it's the worst
- possible technique.
-
- Since a karate blow is supposed to smash bone and
- flesh - aren't you taught to punch right through targets? how _could_
- you have a real full contact match unless it was to the death? Either
- you're pulling your punches and fighting by rules - like we do in judo -
- or karate techniques are not powerful enough to need to be diluted for
- competition.
-
- I believe that you could not have an unrestricted, full-contact karate
- match without significant risk to your life.
-
- It is true that few karateka can consistently deliver killing or
- disabling blows against an opponent of similar ability. This fact
- does not impugn the effectiveness of the art. Just because karate
- blows do not kill or disable every time does not mean that they are
- safe for unrestricted use in competition.
-
- This discussion arose when you said that the participants in karate
- tournaments "pretend" to hit. You implied that techniques thrown in
- karate tournaments are somehow less than real. That runs contrary to
- what I have seen.
-
- The blows thrown in some non full-contact karate tournaments are very
- real, even when both parties are exercising reasonable care to stay
- within the rules. The line between "touch" and "hit" is inadvertently
- crossed quite often when both fighters are highly motivated to win.
- Sometimes when the line was crossed, I saw big, strong, spirited
- fighters disabled by a single blow.
-
- Only a very foolish person would enter a karate tournament thinking
- "the rules forbid full contact, so the blows must be pretended.
- People can't be hurt by pretended blows."
-
- --
- jonathan byrd
- jon@apollo.med.utah.edu
-