HAPKIDO in the UFC...

[grubbogoppoly]

Tom Yum

Was that a SANE person ?

[Tom Yum]

The guy in the video was an off duty police officer who trains in a well known Korean MA. He sees this pimp beating down a prostitute, pretty big looking guy.

He tries to reason with the pimp. The pimp steps up to lay the smack down on the little white guy. Pimp throws an overhand right, white guy slips the punch and simultaneously throws a palm strike at his ear and its nighty nite.

The prostitute tries to wake the pimp up. It takes him about 2 minutes to get his act together and walk off.

The only other guy on this forum who remembers seeing this is our long lost Don Giussepe, who is probably posting from the Clif. Penn.

[Thai Bri]

Why don't all traditional martial artists (and by that I mean those who wear white pyjamas, do kata/forms, semi contact sparring and kick/punch thin air all day just wander into any boxing, that boxing, wrestling, BJJ or even kick boxing club and see what happens to them. They will get their arses kicked - LIKE I DID!

But at least then you can stoip the theorising about how your art is good, and start learning the stuff that can actualy do it in practice. LIKE I DID.

[Spookey]

I saw that one while ago...thought it was a knife hand to the "Karate" artery but regardless, the pimp went down...hard and fast...the only thing slow was the getting up part!

[Tom Yum]

Could've been a knifehand to the cartoid; I saw it about 4 years ago.

Just goes to show that traditional arts can be street effective.

[TylerDurden]

Gary Goodridge's bio says he trained in Kuk Sool Won, which is Hap Ki Do. So there is at least one out there, he is like 18-15 overall I think.

[m.artist]

hapkido and kuk sool wan are not the same....they r usually taught together but aren't the same though

[TylerDurden]

The inventor of HapKiDo is Choi Yong Sool, his school's name was Kuk Sool Won. HapKiDo came out of that school.

[m.artist]

oh well thx for clearing that up for me

[Tom Yum]

The inventor of HapKiDo is Choi Yong Sool, his school's name was Kuk Sool Won. HapKiDo came out of that school.

close. Hap kido and Kuk Sool Won are closely related and are taught together at certain schools but are 2 different styles. the founder of Hap kido is GM Choi Yong Sool; the founder of Kuk Sool Won is GM In Hyuk Suh.

Technique wise, the styles overlap but the KSW system has a Buddhist MA influence, so you see sets of techniques that aren't included in HKD.

[m.artist]

oh...well thank YOU for clearing that up...i knew i was right

[jules]

Royce Gracie has a Won Moo Hap Ki do instructor to help with is stand up game.

[ryanhall]

Royce Gracie has a Won Moo Hap Ki do instructor to help with is stand up game

Can you prove that? I don't see why Royce would need help with joint locks, and there's no reason to go to a hapkido guy for standup striking. So...is this actually true (you can somehow provide a link as proof), or did you just hear this on another internet forum?

[jules]

Training includes:
Jiu-Jitsu training with Royce Gracie,
Standup Fight Training with Royce's instructor NoNo Cardio & Endurance Training
Yoga.

http://www.roycegracie.tv/camp.htm

and royce offical site http://www.roycegracie.tv/fan/interview/5.htm


"Paul@Choke - Apart from Jiu Jitsu, do you do train specifically on your striking skills?

Royce Gracie - I have a French guy. His name is Nono and he's based in LA. He runs a Hapkido school, but he's adapted training around me to suit my needs. Like I said before, I'm not going to stand and exchange firepower. It's more like a couple of hits to come in or a couple of kicks to come out. So he's modified a style of Hapkido, Boxing and Kick Boxing to suit my style. Actually, because I'm not fighting right now he's teaching me some stick fighting."
His stand up coach is a man named "nono" who is a Won Moo Hap ki do guy. Won Moo Hap ki do is a bit more street oriented than other Hap Ki Dos.

about Nono:

"Yes sir, Mr. Nono
A small martial arts school challenges children and their parents to grapple with pain
by Kevin Cody

A dozen barefoot 5- to 12-year-old students in white kimonos lined up on the blue mat facing the room-length mirror on a recent Tuesday evening. Mr. Nono stood before them holding Mr. Stick, a two-foot long rubber-padded pole. He told the students he wasn’t happy. He asked if they knew why. No one had the correct answer.

"Because you didn’t hug me when you came to class. Always hug me at the start and the end of class," Mr. Nono told them.

To reinforce the admonition, he walked down the line cracking each kid on the head with Mr. Stick. He walked back to the center of the dojo, and faced them again, still looking unhappy.


"Now, Mr. Nono is really angry," he said. "Mad Dog, why am I angry?" he asked the smallest kid in the class.

"Because we didn’t hug you," the boy answered hopefully. Wrong answer. The entire class received another crack on the head. Not friendly taps, but hits that rang their bells. Tears welled up. The students’ parents, crowded on the window seat, began to look uncomfortable.

"Brain. You always have the answer. Why am I angry? You have five seconds to save your classmates," Mr. Nono said. He started counting.

At the count of four Brain’s face lit up. "Because we didn’t block," he said.

"Very good, Brain. Never let anyone hit you without blocking, not even your teacher," Mr. Nono told the class.




An unlikely choice to each children

Nono’s One on One Hapkido is a small Pier Avenue storefront sandwiched between the Java Man coffee house and C’Est La Vie clothing in downtown Hermosa. A speed bag and a few dummies and pads for kicking and punching are the only visible accessories. The walls are bare except for an American flag, bars for stretching and a few framed photographs of martial arts masters. One is Master Kwon, Nono’s teacher whose Torrance dojo is a place of pilgrimage for hapkido students from around the world.

Hapkido is a Korean martial art defined as "the way (do) of coordinated (hap) inner strength (do)." Students learn to bring their opponent under submission, ideally with little or no injury to the opponent, using a bewildering number of kicks, punches, blocks, breakholds, and chokeholds.

Nono accepted only adult students when he opened the dojo in the early 1980s. Most were professional martial arts fighters or members of law enforcement. But there were also Lakers players, doctors, lawyers and other non-professionals with a variety of motivations for studying hapkido.

Dr. David Fogelson stopped in Nono’s dojo six years ago on a walk from his Hermosa Beach home to the downtown. The white-haired, 55-year-old oral surgeon had been a tennis player until his knees gave out. Years of bending over patients had also taken a toll on his body.

"You can look at a guy and tell he’s a dentist. He’s all crinkled up from being hunched over patients year after year," Dr. Fogelson said.

The doctor’s curiosity about the martial arts dated back to his son’s days as a martial arts student. It was reinforced shortly before he moved to Hermosa when he awoke after midnight in a pool of blood outside his Marina del Rey apartment. He has no memory of the mugging.

"Nono told me if I wanted to work out, go to a gym. People here become family. At the time I didn’t realize the level of commitment he would demand. But without Nono and his students, I don’t know how I would have gotten through either the physical or mental stress of work over the past few years," he said.

Royce Gracie is Nono’s most prominent student. The Gracie Jiu-jitsu Academy in Torrance founded the no-holds-barred, pay-for-view Ultimate Fighting Championship. Royce is a repeat winner of the event. Gracie Jiu-jitsu emphasizes ground fighting, where most street fights end up. Nono coaches Gracie in kickboxing and stand-up techniques.

He was in Gracie’s corner last May in the Show of Pride Grand Prix Championship Fight in Tokyo, against the Japanese no-holds-barred champion Sakarabe. Royce fought the final 45 minutes of the 105-minute fight with a broken foot and a torn Achilles tendon, before his corner threw in the towel.

Asked to explain how the 175-pound Gracie could force fighters twice his size into submission, or fight seriously injured for nearly an hour, Nono answered, "A warrior’s heart."

In the late 1980s, Nono’s adult students began asking him to teach their children. They were concerned about the downsides to their children’s privileged upbringings — including lack of discipline, lack of respect for authority, and ignorance of life’s less pleasant realities — both Mean Street’s and Wall Street’s.

Nono thought the idea was crazy.

He had a military background, not a kindergarten teacher’s. His teaching philosophy was based on relentless persistence. Persistence requires discipline. Discipline is learned from mistakes. In the martial arts, mistakes are painful. He didn’t believe parents would tolerate him inflicting pain on their kids.

Nor was he interested in running a martial arts mill, where the goal is to advance students from white belt to black belt as quickly as possible — with testing fees at every level.

If he taught children, the parents would have to watch. Tuition checks would be made out to Warriors on Wheels, a New York martial arts academy for the physically handicapped. The academy’s motto might also have been the motto for Nono’s children’s class: "If I can do this, I can do anything."



Not for everyone

Nono’s reservations weren’t unfounded. He started one class of 10-to 12-year-olds with seven enthusiastic students and supportive parents. After a year four remained. After two years, two remained. There were dozens of reasons for the attrition. Adolescent rebellion was one. Another was the lure of win-win youth activities that promise self-esteem without pain.

Three years passed before the two who persisted were allowed to test for their yellow belts. In the first part of the test students must demonstrate mastery of the yellow belt’s seven punches, six kicks, four punch-block combinations, five kick-blocks, six breaks, five block-punches and five block-kicks, as well a similar number of white belt exercises.

The second part of the test is a street fight against two adult students. One’s hand was sprained from an opponent’s kick in the street fight. The other was choked into submission.

"This is not about practicing forms in front of a mirror. A street fight is about how much pain you can take," Nono said in congratulating the boy who fought on with the sprained hand.

Children who start at younger ages have proved to be more willing students. Nono has a theory as to why.

"If you want to plant a tree first brace the tree so it will grow straight. If it grows crooked it can’t be straightened," he said.

Seven-year-old Alexa, inspired by watching her parents study with Nono, begged permission to join the children’s class. But after observing a class she changed her mind. One month later she asked to observe the class again, and this time said she wanted to join. Her mother wanted her to learn self-defense. But the improvement in her dancing and soccer playing from the kicking and stretching exercises are what motivates Alexa.

Another girl, who has graduated to the adult hapkido class, attributes her development as a varsity high school volleyball player to hapkido’s blocking and hitting drills.

Sometimes the transference of skills doesn’t come naturally. Mad Dog was being picked on by neighborhood kids because of his small size. When he complained to Nono, Nono made him fight every kid in the class. He won most of the fights, and stopped being afraid of the neighborhood kids. They don’t bother him anymore.

Nono’s use of corporal punishment is easy to defend in the abstract because of its immediate results. One parent, after observing his child’s uncharacteristically respectful demeanor in Nono’s class, suggested to the child’s grammar school principal that the school be declared a martial arts academy for the sole purpose of bringing back corporal punishment and control to the classroom.

But not every parent believes in sitting by while children are thrashed by the teacher and other students.

One boy eagerly attended the twice-weekly class for nearly a year. The parents were divorced and the father observed the class. One day the mother brought the boy. He never returned.

On a recent Tuesday, a middle-aged man poked his head into the dojo after observing the class through the picture window, and told Nono, "Don’t hit the kids."

"What if I hit you instead," Nono said.

"I’ll hit you back," the man said.

Nono laughed appreciatively, and then told the man to mind his own business. The Good Samaritan went on his way, seemingly assured that no harm was being done.



Grappling with pain

After impressing on the Tuesday night class the importance of blocking, Nono had the students practice "standing up in base" — the first exercise taught in all hapkido classes.

The students sit cross-legged on the mat. As one of the students calls count, they kick out at an imaginary attacker with their left foot, block with the right hand and spring to their feet.

Then they repeat the exercise, reversing their hands and feet.

All of the exercises are done with both sides of the body so that the students become ambidextrous.

The stand up in base was followed by the splits. Both boys and girls must be able to do full splits for the white belt test. The dexterity that comes with the splits enables the students to kick over their heads. Dough Boy was having trouble getting all the way down.

A few hits from Mr. Stick got the 12-year-old surfer’s crotch within inches of the ground. His face contorted in pain. The remaining few inches were beyond his mental ability. Mr. Nono kicked the boy’s right ankle out, then his left ankle and finally his crotch hit the mat.

"Suck up the pain and take a deep breath," Nono ordered.

After regaining his composure, Doughboy stood up in base with the knowledge he could do something moments earlier no one in the room except Mr. Nono believed he was capable of.

The students were ordered back in line and asked if they had finished their homework before coming to hapkido. All answered yes. But Brain, when pressed, acknowledged that he didn’t finish his homework. His lying earned him a crack on the head from Mr. Stick.

"Homework is like standing up in base or doing the splits. Homework is practice. The more you do it the better you get. Your goal next week is to have all of your homework done before coming to hapkido," Mr. Nono told the students.

Mr. Gumby, a round dummy, was placed in the middle of the mat. The kids lined up at one end of the dojo, ran at the dummy, then tucked their heads and somersaulted through the air.

"No hands, no fear, roll to your feet," Mr. Nono instructed them.

They ran through the drill a dozen times.

Then Mr. Nono raised the dummy upright and asked the students what they learned the previous week.

"Five seconds, Kamikaze. One, two, three, four…"

"The jump spin side kick," Kamikaze answered.

Kamikaze demonstrated the kick, but missed the bag.

"The bully only gives you one chance. Jump at me, not away. Before you kick I want you to concentrate on three things. Look your opponent in the eye, land in the same spot and don’t fall down," Mr. Nono told the class. When they missed a kick he ordered them to repeat aloud the three things they were to concentrate on.

After several rounds, all of the students were hitting the bag without falling down.

"Now, I want to tell you a secret," Mr. Nono said. He asked Alexa’s mother, a purple belt, if she had learned the jump, spin, side kick. She said she hadn’t.

"That is a black belt kick. You all did it. Belts mean nothing," he told the students.

With 10 minutes remaining in the hour-long class, the students matched off for grappling. The goal was to pin one’s opponent, or to convince him or her to tap out from pain. Punching and kicking were not allowed. Choking and break holds were. Losers were called losers and ordered off the mat.

"Some students are more gifted than others. But with persistence the equation comes into balance. I’m not here to babysit. I’m here to bring out what’s inside the kids," Nono explained to a parent unused to seeing his son called a loser.

A plaque on the wall near the dojo door quotes from South African President Nelson Mandela’s inauguration speech: "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure…We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God…"

At the end of class the students lined up, faced the American flag, slapped their hands against their sides, and recited in unison, "Cha ryut, kyung ye ("attention, bow" in Korean)."

Then they turned to face their teacher, slapped their hands against their sides, and repeated, "Cha ryut kyung ye."

After bowing to Mr. Nono, the students raced to hug him. ER
"

http://easyreader.hermosawave.net/news2001/0118/coverstory.asp

[ryanhall]

Now that's what I call proof . Thanks for posting it, Jules.