Got my ass handled by a PFS instructor, today...

[Underdog]

Rene, from what you posted I now know that this guy I met is the real deal; he explained the clinch as you did; almost to the letter; however, don't you think that lowering your body to headbutt and then ram forward with the top of the head can possibly be dangerous for you?

I've ALWAYS headbutted with the spot where my hairline is (WAS...actually...sob....).

[ReneH]

Hello! Underdog

I made some adjustments to the RAT based on my height, I am 5'7 inches and generally everyone I've done RAT with is usually taller than me. So in response to your post, there is very little danger from any repercussions. If you start the RAT without the intitial pain and enter then you are facing some liabilities because of many factors. One being that if your opponent is bigger and heavier than you are, you have taken the risk of entering his weight class while he is fesh and not in pain....continue later, wife calls!

[Underdog]

Great; btw I'm 6'3 so the chances are that the majority of my opponents would be shorter than me; that pose problems, because to headbutt I Must lower myself quite a bit.

[bjjboulder]

pauls opponents

I would like to expand on the reply by twisted up made earlier.
I think he's right, PFS guys would get killed by vale tudo guys because of the alive training involved in real NHB. I want you if you have access...to watch Paul Vunaks streetfighting tapes 1-4..but in particular the Straight Blast tape. Go towards the end where he is demonstrating the stuff "full contact"...What a freakin joke! Look at these fat slow guys lumbering pitiful looking kicks at paul while they stand there and like a damn sandbag taking pauls punches and elbows. It is truly depressing! At one point a taller guy with a small degree of real ability gos at it and totally nails paul with a good hook..completely rocked hom sideways. But then the guy realizes that he's making paul look bad and so he slows down and lets paul blast him. Its stupid!

HOWEVER...the absolute worst, worst thing is where paul explains that if you understand the straightblast you'll never end up on the ground. And he proceeds to have the big fat lumbering guy demonstrate again in the most ugly rendition of of a takedown attempt I have ever seen. The poor bastard lunges at paul with the verocity of a barrel of slow mollasses and then cowers down as Paul blasts him into oblivion. "See, with the st. blast you can't be taken down!" WHATEVER!

The straightblast is a grapplers dream! I know, I used to be a hardcore PFS guy, and got my ass handed to me buy a royce gracie bluebelt because I tried to straight blast him!

Now I do jiu-jitsu!

[Ryu (JKD?)]

LOL, what a way with words! I smell troll though.

But I kinda agree a bit with what BJJboulder said. The straightblast is not something I would try against a grappler....being a grappler myself I've taken guys down who tried it on me. But that doesn't mean there isn't someone out there who can take me out with it.

But.... I think honestly a good grappler's clinch might be better for taking control. You can shove better, slam, push the guy against a wall, and headbutt, etc.

I do want some feedback on what you guys think about the strategy of clinching, throwing, and staying on your feet where you can really lay into the guy you just floored with stomps, elbows, punches, etc.
Take a look at how people like JR Palmer and especially Ray Cooper fought in SuperBrawl, and you'll have an idea what I'm trying to do...

Ryu

[Underdog]

Ok guys, very good responses here;

As for aliveness: I did a private with this PFS guy last Monday, It lasted 6 hours, we sparred full contact and with minimal gear, we trined groin kicks with 70% power, and I was glad I wore my thai steel cup!, then we did destructions, this time without power, then we did freestyle sparring (I got a black eye, and assorted bruised; he got biten and slammed to a wall...go figure...) then we ground sparred, when he tried the blast on me, he did it as a COUNTER, exclusively (as a matter of fact, he VERY RARELY initiated an attack, he countered only) and Only after he nailed my knee with a Savate fouetee or a stomp kick.

The only thing I'm rather skeptical is the chain punching, go see my thread elsewhere...Ciao!

[ReneH]

about the troll...

I think he can't blast because he lacks the attributes to do it.

I've been in one of Uncle Vu's video, Anatomy of a Streetfight 2, and I can tell you first hand how these shoots are done. First of all, I got my scalp cut from a beer bottle broken on my head! I think the prop bottles were mixed with the real ones along the way!

In the mass attack scene, people were letting loose on the punches, elbows like crazy! People have to remember that Paul trys to accomplish the shoots with no accidents, there is no need for liabilites. Why go all out for the sake of the video? It's up to you to get your ass dusted while working out the HKE and those other things in actual training. It's up the PFS guy to take the material and alter what you have been given to make it work for you, it's even stated on the certification. If you can't do that for yourself, maybe you belong in another art that does the thinking for you. They will think for you!

That's the beauty of PFS, you get to learn material that can be tweaked and modified to your liking.

[Halloween Jack]

That sounds peculiarly like the "It's not the technique that needs work, it's you!" reply that you sometimes hear from instructors when you find a flaw in their method.

Of course the straight blast will keep a wrestler from taking you down IF YOU'RE GOOD ENOUGH. It will also enable you to punch through the hull of a battleship or run up to a guy 20 feet away and hit him before he can blink, IF YOU'RE GOOD ENOUGH.

The blitz (what I call a straight blast) is a great technique, but there are defenses against it.

[ReneH]

I'm tired but here goes anyways. The SB, like any other tool, has its limitations. There many situations where a SB is not ideal, then there is that moment in time where it fits just perfectly. Question: is a sidekick a tool that can be used successfully in a streetfight? Of course it is! There is a moment in time where that particular tool can cause a lot of damage and end the fight. After you landed a few elbows to the head and gelled your opponent, you can step back, assess that he has no way to counter because he is stunned and side kick the shit out of him. The point being that there is a time and a place to insert any tool. Even the sidekick.

I am not saying that the SB is God's gift to PFS, it's just one more tool that if used when it is needed can turn the tide in your favor. Your job as a martial artist is to not lie to yourself. Try all your tools against any conditions, against as many arts as possible and gain an understanding of when and where to use them.

Halloween Jack: there are defenses for virtually every technique out there, even against the jab, punch, kick, etc. Just because there is a defense against the SB it does not make it completely worthless. What about the boxing jab, punch, etc? Are those tools worthless now because there are counters to them? It goes back to your attributes, if your hand tools are not to par how do you expect to compete against someone that has exceptional hand tools and beat them at that game?

Now about your post:

"Of course the straight blast will keep a wrestler from taking you down IF YOU'RE GOOD ENOUGH. It will also enable you to punch through the hull of a battleship or run up to a guy 20 feet away and hit him before he can blink, IF YOU'RE GOOD ENOUGH"

Maybe I should not have replied to your post? I was expecting a little more intelligence and depth to your reply. Perhaps I'm wasting my time.

[Svevin]

Clarities

Hi, I'd just like to say I am new to this forum and it is nice to meet everyone in here.

I've been reading a lot of questions on why JKD practitioners like to do things certain ways and I thought I'd lend some answers. Now please remember when reading these that I am by far no expert on the matter. I've taken JKD for a short 6 months now, but I do pay attention in class .

About the clinching. The thing my instructor likes to say is "We are training for guys who SHOULD beat us. We are imagining that our partner is bigger, stronger, faster, and has more fighting experience." With that said, the reasons my instructors have given me are that if you do a full clinch on someone twice your size (which in my case is very often) you are gonna go for a ride. With the partial clinch, you can manipulate your opponent via control of the neck and still have your elbows on the inside to block if he shoots in on you. Now, what if he pulls away? You let him pull away, and kick into your straight blast.

As for the headbutts. There is a reason they like to do it with the top of the head. My instructor says that they used to do it with the part of your head near the hairline (being the greatest bone density in the head apparently) but they changed it for a good reason. He likes to tell a story of a JKD practitioner that learned it first hand. Apparently the JKD guy went for a headbutt on someone and they ducked their head as a defensive reaction. The JKD guy ended up plowing his own face into the top of the guy's head and put himself into the hospital. Also, doing the assisted headbutt especially is more in how you control the neck than the actual throwing of your head into the guys face. The way we do it in class is we drop our heads down then "assist" their face into the top of our heads by pulling on the neck.

Sorry for the long post, but I hope that this post was helpful to at least one person . Keep in mind again, that I am no expert!

[Svevin]

Just one more thing. About the straightblast, yes there are counters of course... if you do it wrong. That whole comment about hitting a guy from 20 feet away before he can blink is just showing when NOT to do it. My instructor says that there is no counter to the SB because the way he does it, there really is no counter. When he does it, the first hit HITS. If its not going to, then that isn't the time to use it. So about the clinching counter to the SB, it is a viable counter then assuming he can take that first hit and however many repeated hits afterwards while he's shooting in for the clinch (i have very little experience, so i'm not sure if someone could actually do that. personally, i'd be flat on my ass or if not that bad, be on my heels backing away).

Please respond on what counters you think are still viable if the person only uses the SB where the first hit is sure to hit. I'd love to hear them and take them into consideration. Thanx.

[Halloween Jack]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by ReneH

After you landed a few elbows to the head and gelled your opponent, you can step back, assess that he has no way to counter because he is stunned and side kick the shit out of him. The point being that there is a time and a place to insert any tool. Even the sidekick.

There are a number of situations where the side kick is very useful, and in my opinion, that isn't one of them...

Halloween Jack: there are defenses for virtually every technique out there, even against the jab, punch, kick, etc. Just because there is a defense against the SB it does not make it completely worthless.

When did I ever say the SB was worthless? The blitz is one of the best fighting tactics ever developed. There are times when it's not the soundest tactic you can choose, one of those being when someone is shooting at your legs. Thinking that the SB will work in all situations and saying that its failure to work in a given situation was the fault of the person using it is a mistake.

By the "punch through the hull of a battleship" thing, I mean to say that, theoretically, ANY technique will work in ANY situation, theoretically. Theoretically, I could defeat an army of cybernetic vampire ninja bikers using nothing but aerial spinning hook kicks, but I would have to have a godlike level of skill. Likewise, if you were really really good, you could take out someone trying to tackle you from the lower body using a blitz, but I would use a different tactic.

It goes back to your attributes, if your hand tools are not to par how do you expect to compete against someone that has exceptional hand tools and beat them at that game?

I don't see self-defense as a competition.

Maybe I should not have replied to your post? I was expecting a little more intelligence and depth to your reply. Perhaps I'm wasting my time.

Yeah, whatever, lick me.

[Halloween Jack]

Originally posted by Svevin
Just one more thing. About the straightblast, yes there are counters of course... if you do it wrong.

That's self-evident. Doing a move "right" means doing it so that it can't be countered. If a move doesn't work, then it wasn't done right. There aren't any moves that can't be countered even if you do them wrong, are there?

In other words, you don't decide whether a move was done "right" or "wrong" until after you've used it and seen whether or not it worked. If it worked, you did it right, if it was countered, you did it wrong. You can't say "A straight blast done right can't be countered" because the definition of a move "done right" is one that is used to a desired effect.

When he does it, the first hit HITS. If its not going to, then that isn't the time to use it.

Well, I would never do any move if I didn't think I could make it hit.

Please respond on what counters you think are still viable if the person only uses the SB where the first hit is sure to hit. I'd love to hear them and take them into consideration. Thanx.

Basically, you're asking us this: "How do you counter a move after you've already failed to counter it?" When you fail to keep that first hit from landing, you've failed to counter the attack.

[fatfist]

irony

i find it funny that we go to such extreemes to find and train in the best fighting system/s available. looking for truth in combat. only to come full circle back to the undisputable raw effectiveness of plain old fashoined dirty street fighting:
biting,eye-gouging..etc.etc.. And to think, we will pay good money for something we can learn from any "true" street fighter..

[7blades]

Street Truth

If the PFS format is followed the way Uncle Voo has layed it out, and you train with a wide range of body types and skills.

If you need to, and being right-minded (on the side of true personal righteousness) your street fight will shine like unreal!!!

That's what PFS is made for... Period!!!