Tim Cartmell Seminar: Bagua And Tai Chi Applications

Terry and Alex below, Tim Cartmell in Blue pants above


Tim Cartmell was back in Seattle for a seminar on Bagua and Tai Chi applications on Saturday. Tim (Read his Bio here) is the author of "Effortless Combat Throws", and teaches that these internal arts are composed of 70% grappling and throwing techniques. And believe me, after six hours of grappling and throwing, my nearly fifty-year-old ass feels it!
After fundementals, The Bagua portion delt with defense from a straight jab and a wide hook. The straight jab defense involved moving to the outside of the opponent and using an "eyebrow moping" technique, where you use your forearm and palm to turn the opponents head and neck to the point where he can no longer maintain stability and is taken down. This could begin with a forearm smash if needed. On the wide hook, Tim's technique involved moving into the hook early in it's arc and jamming it with Peng at the elbow. A strike with the other hand can be used. The opponent's arm is taken in a low pass across your body for an oblique shoulder-type throw (which is hard to describe in writing) or the arm is not passed but held with an overhook while your other arm (palm) is placed against opponent's thigh as a fulcrum for a snake-form takedown. There were many options and variations of these techniques.
Tai Chi applications began with yielding drills, showing that when one part of your body is pushed back, the rest of the body moves into the opponent. Also when pushed, your arms in a relaxed state will swing up to intercept and stick to the arm which is pushing. There were quite a few of these drills and variations. An important point I understood was that slant flying must enter the opponents body at near 45 degrees upward. Tim's comparison was that even a small kid can push over a heavy refrigerator if this angle is used. One thing that he really made a point about is that "Parting wild horse's mane" with your arm under opponent's arm and extending across opponent's chest is a flawed technique. He points out that it leaves you wide open to have your arm barred and broken across the opponent's chest. He recommends using it as a shoulder or elbow stroke instead, something I had not considered.
As always, Tim's approach is very scientific, no-nonsense and ultimately practical. His approach is on the grappling aspects, because the hitting options are self-evident.
This is in no way a complete description of the entire seminar, I'm still mulling things around in my mind and making notes. I'm also nursing some sore spots, in that good "I had a sound thrashing" sort of way.
Information on future seminars and Chinese martial arts in the Seattle area can be found at Jake Burroughs website www.threeharmonies.com

Small-Circle Jujitsu And Push Hands

Sensei Rick Alford

Here is a fairly good demonstration of how Small-Circle Jijitsu (Wally Jay style)
sticks and flows with the opponent. You can see some of our versions of lock-flows on the video bar to the right of the screen.
At our Dojo, we are trying to integrate the techniques in the video above with Tai Chi Chuan push hands practice. In that case I guess it would be called Chin na.
You can see how well they would work together; close proximity, face-to-face, constant contact. Push hands may appear more circular than the demonstration above, which clearly has the Japanese Jujitsu influence.
I'm curious what the Aikido and BJJ guys have to say...

Kung Fu Badfinger

Badfinger Cocanut Killer

And... The real "Badfinger"

Ahh, yes, this takes me back to Eighth Grade.
The history of this band is fascinating. Originally from the UK, they headlined with groups such as "The Yardbirds" and eventually a roadie for the Beatles hooked them up with Apple Records. The Beatles were very supportive of the group. Unfortunately, they fell into the hands of a mob-connected manager who squandered their money and left them in near financial ruin. Friction also arose when wives of band members got involved in management issues (there's always a Yoko). Lead singer Pete Ham comitted suicide, the others ended up laying carpet and working for an industrial plumbing company. I believe surviving member Joey Molland is still out on the Casino circut with remenants of the band.
So tragic, with ethical management, these guys really, really could have had a nice long run...

Review Of "Redbelt"

(D.R.) Nathan and Rick over at TDA TRAINING posted a copy of this movie trailer earlier, but I found a good review which is posted below. Mamet's writing is legendary, and now we find out that he is also a ranked Jujitsu student himself. I wonder how Mamet's usual fans, whom I suspect are not fight-game-types, will react to this type of screenplay? It really looks great, here's the review:

'Redbelt' an oddly intriguing Mamet mix
It's like 'Rocky' with literate patter, same end
By Christy Lemire, AP movie critic
Friday, May 9, 2008
It sounds like a jarring combination at first, as if the two just don't go together — until you learn that Mamet himself is a purple belt in jujitsu. Clearly, this is a subject that's dear to his heart.
Then you realize while watching "Redbelt" that many tenets of the sport — the ideas of control, manipulation and one-upmanship — jibe perfectly with themes the playwright, director and screenwriter has explored for decades in some of his best-known works, such as the plays "Glengarry Glen Ross" and "Speed-the-Plow."
And so "Redbelt" makes sense in its own weird way: a mix of sports-flick cliches and Mamet's patented rat-a-tat writing. It's "Rocky," it's "The Karate Kid" — only with more stylized, rhythmic dialogue.
Several Mamet regulars show up (Ricky Jay, Joe Mantegna, David Paymer and Mamet's wife, Rebecca Pidgeon), which does put us in somewhat comfortable territory. But it's Chiwetel Ejiofor ("Dirty Pretty Things"), the film's star, who commands our attention. As the unflappably moral, placid jujitsu instructor Mike Terry, Ejiofor can be both attractive and warm, fierce and intimidating.
A series of strangely intertwined events forces Mike into the ring, a place he's never wanted to be, to fight for $50,000. Among the players pushing him into battle are his sexpot wife (Alice Braga), a jittery lawyer (Emily Mortimer), an aging movie star (Tim Allen), a producer (Mantegna), a loan shark (Paymer) and a shady fight promoter (Jay).
It goes without saying in Mamet Land that none of these people can be trusted.
But Mike truly practices what he preaches, handling every obstacle and challenge that thrusts itself into his path with the same calm he urges his students to achieve.
"Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. You know the escape," he'll repeat when someone looks particularly defeated during his class. Here's a bit of advice that he takes, which comes from his wife, Sondra, and gets him further into trouble: "Let the wheel come around."
Mike and Sondra are already struggling to maintain their West Los Angeles studio at a time when the more violent Ultimate Fighting and mixed martial arts are in vogue. A shattered front window, the result of an accidental gunshot, puts them further into debt. Then a chance encounter at a bar with Allen's Chet Frank seems to turn their financial troubles around.
In no time, Mike is visiting Chet on the set and talking about receiving a producing credit, and Sondra, a fabric designer, is working with Chet's wife, Zena (Pidgeon) on a clothing line. (Allen is surprisingly good in an uncharacteristically cynical, haggard role.)
Could all this happen so quickly? And could it all disappear just as fast? Probably not. But something has to get Mike into the ring for The Big Showdown. Even though the championship match doesn't play out exactly the way you've seen it before, it still adheres to the same hackneyed conventions. And the final moment, which was probably intended to be poignant, instead feels laughable.
"Redbelt" is also overly familiar in its serious, "Crash"-like collision of disparate Los Angeles denizens, tied together by fate.
It is novel, though, that Mamet didn't subject us to the obligatory training montage. Perhaps that's because he figured it would be one less opportunity to have his characters talk.

Pat Crowe; Outlaw

Outlaw Pat Crowe, 1920

Reprinted from "Time" Feb. 01, 1926:
In Manhattan, a month ago, detectives observed the conduct of a raggedy, bearded "bummer" on an elevated railway platform; questioned him, arrested him, took him to court, whence he departed with a pocketful of money given by court attendants who thought they knew a good old scoundrel when they saw one.
He was Pat Crowe, "outlaw, author and lecturer," whose misdemeanors began with robbing Omaha streetcars in 1890 and included a diamond theft, homicidal attempts, a visit to and escape from Joliet prison, hold-ups and pilfering on railroads. Lately Pat Crowe has been going straight, the foeman of crime and drink. Pamphlets that stuffed their author's pockets said: "The best man we have this side of eternity is the man who warns us of possible danger. . . . Beware of hypocrites and deceivers who sit in high places."
Last week, a detective in Washington, D. C., was reminiscing to newspaper reporters about a plan Pat Crowe had once had (and been foiled in) to kidnap John Davison Rockefeller. Crowe had figured he could get as much as a million dollars for a Rockefeller, and he knew the market fairly well. He had once got $25,000 for a Cudahy, 15-year-old Edward Aloysius Cudahy Jr., then of Omaha, Neb., where Mr. Cudahy Sr. was engaged in the meat business. On trial, five years later, Pat Crowe had successfully maintained that young Cudahy had suggested the kidnaping himself and had received $6,000 of the ran-By coincidence, Edward Aloysius Cudahy Jr. also appeared in the news last week. Many years have passed. Pat Crowe has gone straight. And newspaper readers discovered how false was the impression they have had of Cudahy Jr. ever since Pat Crowe's kidnaping trial. Last week the boy who was once suspected of being a sly young rascal was elected President of the Cudahy Packing Co., of Chicago, after 20 years in the business, during the past ten of which, as Vice President, he "had relieved the elder Cudahy of many of his more arduous duties," so that "the recent progress of the company is due in no small measure to his efforts."

(D.R.) Ahh.. Back in the days when Outlaws could go straight and live on to represent the face of the American frontiersman...

Music And Chi Flow

For a couple of years now The Dojo Rats at Shima Dojo have been having a music jam and a few Beers after our workouts. It started when we were traveling to other Martial Arts seminars and events, which require us to wait for hours at times to catch a ferry back to our secluded island hideout. Full-sized guitars are too big to sit in your car and play when it's cold, dark and raining outside. So we started packing Ukulele's, 1/2-sized kids Guitars and Harmonicas. With the right amount of Beer we start to make noise that resembles something like music.
I sang in a church choir and had a few guitar lessons when I was a kid, but didn't play much until about 10-12 years ago. Now I've got all the Dojo Rats playing.
But more to the point; I'm sure that there are some of you out there that play music or sing also. I'm sure that you would agree that there is something tremendously stimulating about giving yourself up to the rythyms, patterns and vocal expression that is found in playing and singing songs.
I had read in the past that Masters in the best Karate schools in Japan required their top students to play or sing some kind of music. Think about this: playing an instrument requires intense focus and concentration, and also lulls the mind into a meditative state when you relax into it. First you must develop dexterity to manipulate the keys or strings correctly. You must have a sense of timing and rythym, which is the most difficult thing for many people to learn. Then, if you are singing along with the instrument you are playing it brings all of your brainpower into one unified moment. You have to keep chords, notes, words and proper pitch in place or it really sucks. If you really belt out a song and get everything right, it is a fantastic rush. You have unified your mind and body in what might be the highest form of human expression. Think about how that would be amplified with 15,000 fans screaming for you at a concert and you can imagine how much energy rock stars recieve.
Well, The Dojo Rats are no Rock stars, but we sure have a great time.
Check out these kids if you want to see real talent, this blew my mind...

I Don't Know How I Missed This One

The Foot Fist Way

Oh My Gawd...
I can't believe I didn't catch this one before. It looks like John over at Martial Views had a brief post on it, and fellow Dojo Rat H2H brought it to my attention.
So, so many stereotypes in this hilarious trailer I have to get this movie. I'll pick up a copy on Amazon or elswhere and have more to say about it later...

(Edit.) Hmmm... It doesn't appear to be out in DVD yet...