Is ninjitsu a respectable style?

[crosstrainedwar]

I would like to start learning ninjitsu. However, due to its reputation of being used for evil purposes, I am afraid that my current instructor would have an unfavorable opinion of me for wanting to study it. I am not intersted in espionage or assassination, so could studying ninnjitsu ruin my reputation or cause my current instructors to discontinue teaching me? Thanks in advance.

[koto_ryu]

I would like to start learning ninjitsu. However, due to its reputation of being used for evil purposes, I am afraid that my current instructor would have an unfavorable opinion of me for wanting to study it. I am not intersted in espionage or assassination, so could studying ninnjitsu ruin my reputation or cause my current instructors to discontinue teaching me? Thanks in advance.

It is in no way "evil." Most ninjutsu practitioners I have met (Genbukan and Bujinkan alike) are some of the funniest and most light-hearted guys around.

Here's some links for you to check out:

http://www.livingvalues.com/

http://www.winjutsu.com/source/takamatsu.html

http://www.winjutsu.com/source/hatsumi.html

[bodhisattva]

Yes, but satan himself is lighthearted..and he cracks me up all of the time..

Did a nun ever crack you up, man? I mean, aside from the obvious and unstated reason?

--

Ninjutsu is like anything else: fascinating done right, almost never done right..almost never ever.

Information is never evil. Knowing how to survive in any situation is never evil. You have the right to survive. Everyone has the right to survive, in my opinion.

The question is if your teacher is the person to teach you. You must understand, if you have little experience with functional fighting arts, it will be very hard for you to tell the phoney from the real. A man can be a fabulous athlethe, and able to do countless fighting-like moves..that look kickass.

But they may not even have any real application in fighting.

Same goes for the stealth and so forth. It may look good, but are their better methods now?

Of course, this is for you to decide on your own.

Look for a class that really fights - allowing wrestling and boxing and kicking all at once. Look for a class that fights hard - injuries shouldn't be an all the time thing, and they shouldn't be too terrible, either. But then, sometimes the fighting should be rough. NO pointfighting, kata, or any other silly crap, in my honest opinion.

But, trust me, if you have a boxing/kickboxing/judo/jiujitsu school in the neighborhood, you'd probably be better off there. Unless the ninjutsu school fights in an alive fashion. Then, I really don't know. Maybe.

that writing by Takamatsu, by the way, was really great.

[sirmattu]

not another kata hater.

[bodhisattva]

You are totally correct : I am not a kata hater.

However, I do hate that people teach kata as a method of learning realistic self defense. The only thing Kata will teach people is how to do that particular kata. It will teach nothing else.

If people do kata purely for the joy of kata, then I have nothing to say - more power to them, too! If they do it to develop fighting ability - more power to them - but I will kindly offer them my opinion that it is worthless for fighting. That's what I wanted someone to do for me when I was still practicing kata. to come along and say "Hey, they are teaching the REAL THING over there, and with success!"

[sirmattu]

haha man im not tryin to pick on ya or nothing, but i still feel different. ive always been taught ( mainly by my judo instructor ) that you train in kata to make your moves more perfect. if you train your techs. in just a sparring situation you'll begin to get sloppy, but when you also train in a slower, more demanding situation on form, you're moves should in essence become better. im not trying to say use the combos you learn in kata to spar or even in self defence -- but when you train in kata you use moves in different situations, maybe offballanced or at different angles. so you get to learn moves with a better outlook and understanding of why they are done in a certain way..... sorry, not tryin to preach here. but im a big fan of kata. but you have to use it right.

[bodhisattva]

haha man im not tryin to pick on ya or nothing, but i still feel different. ive always been taught ( mainly by my judo instructor ) that you train in kata to make your moves more perfect.

The fact that he is your instructor does not mean it is impossible for him to waste your time.

if you train your techs. in just a sparring situation you'll begin to get sloppy,

That's really not true. It's also no reason to spend time doing kata.

but when you also train in a slower, more demanding situation on form, you're moves should in essence become better.

"Should" is the key word there.

im not trying to say use the combos you learn in kata to spar or even in self defence

I don't train for any other reason than to spar better. I train for self defense and fun. But the applicability of my training is key. So why would I do something that won't help me spar better? That's why I say it's a waste of time. If it doesn't help your game, then it isn't part of the game.

but when you train in kata you use moves in different situations, maybe offballanced or at different angles.

No one should do anything from an offbalanced position. This is a common point of judo that "Offbalanced" = "No Strength"

so you get to learn moves with a better outlook and understanding of why they are done in a certain way..... sorry, not tryin to preach here. but im a big fan of kata. but you have to use it right.

You can be a big fan of kata all you like. But it will not teach you how to fight. There is no way to "use it right". You can not use a poor method of training in a way that is "right". And you needn't feel apologetic. You're just expressing your opinion in a friendly way. That's what we all come here to do.

[Cobra_nVidia]

Kata are wonderful.

Kata are not useless. If Kata are useless, martial arts are useless. If you only spar, and aren't taught how things work, you will lose to someone who spars a lot, but also knows the principles of fighting.

All martial arts evolved during their golden ages, the days they were actually used. Kata are a way of passing down this wisdom.

There isn't a single martial art in the entire world that says "You're going to learn how to fight by fighting, I'm not going to teach you anything, you're going to learn it all yourself."

Ya right.

This is why most arts are not brutally effective in a fight anymore. Because no matter how much you try, you can't learn everything about fighting by sparring. It just isn't the same. Sparring is about testing, not learning. At least with respect to how to generate power and such. And like any science or body of knowledge, martial arts are based on the knowledge gained by those before us. Guns are better than they used to be. This is because the knowledge was passed down through time. If it was lost, then there would be no progress. Every time a gun was made, it would be made slightly different. But it's statistically unlikely anyone could make a modern gun without knowledge of previous makers. Similarly, a modern Jeet Kune Do "master" would get their ass handed to them by real martial artists.

Kata are a way of passing down knowledge systematically, without input from the instructor. You do the Kata and learn the movements. But there's a right way and a wrong way to do it. Someone who practices one Kata will gain more than someone who practices 5 Kata in the same time period. There are many reasons for this. One is simply that the person who learned the 5 Kata did it because they got bored. If you're bored with a Kata, learn the applications, if you're bored with the applications, practice it in sparring.

The problem is that if a Kata is just handed down as a series of movements, it isn't very effective for helping you defend yourself. This is exactly what is meant by a "dance" - physical movements without any thought to how to use them, or what you're gaining from it, apart from fitness or performance.

Kata techniques are designed to look like a dance - with strange stepping motions and odd hand movments. They aren't directly applicable until you understand the entirety of the movment. In a real Kata, there is no "set" motion because you don't have time. If you're moving your arm to your hip, it's because you have the opponent in your grasp, not because you want to remove your own guarding ability. But that's the thing - Kata were designed with secrecy in mind. Just look at the UFC. The arts that dominated early (BJJ practictioners) aren't doing as well now, because the strikers have seen their tricks - they can't hide them anymore. But what would happen if a BJJ guy fought a boxer on the street before anyone had seen the moves? The takedowns, throws, the arm-locks would end the fight pretty quickly.

_________________________________________________________________

Now, are Kata the best method for what they do? No, not anymore. We don't live in the same world that created them. All the real Kata are old. So, if our goal is self-defense, we should study the kata and improve them as a means of learning self-defense, using the tools we have now. Secrecy is more difficult now than in times past anyway, so good luck hiding techniques. Instead of teaching a series of movments, why not explain the basis of combat? What a person can or cannot do. I know how to break someone's arm because I was taught how to do it, not because I "figured it out by myself"

Does that mean we should abandon Kata. No, not really. It might make you sound like a smart mother f**ker, but you're just ignorant - and you're just repeating what someone else has already said. We say we live in a violent world - we are such liars. We have no perspective. If we lived in a violent world, self-defense would be incorporated into schools, or passed on through families. But it isn't. There aren't any new mainstream martial arts for the civilian. Boxing is a sport - a highly evolved one for it's rules. So's football. Sport MA are evolving too. Kata are becoming more athletic, and more flashy. This is a natural evolution. But in the end, destroying Kata because we don't have any immediate fighting use for them is hypocritical, because everyone wants to learn self-defense, even if they don't need it. Of course, if you live in a rough neighbourhood, that's different. You learn a martial art that has been developed for that situation.

Saying Kata is just a dance and is useless and should be abandonned is like saying dance should be abandoned.

[bodhisattva]

Yes. We all heard our teachers say that stuff to us, too.

And we all found out it was a bunch of "hooey".

Nothing about Kata teaches anyone to fight.

No, most martial arts don't just throw a guy in the ring, they train him first. But they sure as hell don't train him to do techniques in the air in totally dead patterns - not if they are passing on valuable information.

YES the best way to learn to fight is to just jump in the ring and fight.

"Saying Kata is just a dance and is useless and should be abandonned is like saying dance should be abandoned."

No. I said Kata is a dance, and is useless for LEARNING TO FIGHT. Please don't misquote me.

"and you're just repeating what someone else has already said."

No. I'm speaking from personal experience. You, on the other hand, are the guy who is just repeating a bunch of nonsense his teachers have filled him with. (shrug) EVERYONE on this forum has heard that SAME nonsense from their teachers. And you just wasted a bunch of time FEEDING IT BACK TO US when it's not even true.

[koto_ryu]

Some kata can actually be useful. I never liked kata until I got into the Bujinkan as before it was a long series of boring movements that were supposed to mean they were attacking with this particular thing at this particular moment. The Sanchin no Kata in the Bujinkan, however, is pretty decent as they're limited to maybe 2-3 moves tops, most involving a block and a strike and that's it. Far more worthwhile than pretending to jump in a horse stance, grab the guys scrotum, rip it off, tear out the nads, throw them to the ground, and squish them into paste.

[Cobra_nVidia]

Yes. We all heard our teachers say that stuff to us, too.

No, you didn't. Your teachers said Kata was good. The stuff I posted belongs to me, I heard it from no one. Obviously, you didn't read it.

Nothing about Kata teaches anyone to fight.

No, that's stupid.
I am a Shodan in a Karate Organization. If I get in a fight with someone who has never fought in their life, or with maybe a few fights, and never trained in a Karate (martial art), they will get their ass handed to them unless they are naturally talented and/or physically bigger than me (which is equivalent to talent)
This is because of a few things that I've learned by practicing in non-fighting environments, where I can fully concentrate on DEVELOPING, not applying.
Kata:
Balance, speed, breathing

Makiwara:
Powerful knuckles, instinctive pounding of a target

Focus Pad:
High accuracy against a moving and tiny target

Sparring:
Timing, blocking, reflexes. Testing my speed, balance, breathing.

You don't need a Kata to learn balance, speed, and breathing, but that doesn't mean you don't learn them from Kata. That's stupid.

No, most martial arts don't just throw a guy in the ring, they train him first. But they sure as hell don't train him to do techniques in the air in totally dead patterns - not if they are passing on valuable information.

please read what I wrote, and think before your post. "Don't train him to do techniques in the air"
What the hell kind of art doesn't teach someone to punch in thin air.
Western boxing? Yes they do
Thai boxing? Yes they do
Karate? Yes they do
Gong Fu? Yes they do
Jeet Kune Do? Yes they do
Every punch is taught in the air before anywhere else.

YES the best way to learn to fight is to just jump in the ring and fight.

No, it isn't. You just contradicted yourself.

No. I said Kata is a dance, and is useless for LEARNING TO FIGHT. Please don't misquote me.

Please point out where I quoted you. Please.

No. I'm speaking from personal experience. You, on the other hand, are the guy who is just repeating a bunch of nonsense his teachers have filled him with. (shrug) EVERYONE on this forum has heard that SAME nonsense from their teachers. And you just wasted a bunch of time FEEDING IT BACK TO US when it's not even true.

You aren't just speaking from personal experience. You agree with that line of thinking that centers around Bruce Lee (who is at least it's most well known proponent).
I have my own experiences too. Against an untrained opponent, even if they are trying to hurt me, if they don't know my moves, they are afraid. At least a little bit.

Just so you know, I'm posting this response for two reasons. One is the most important, is so that it can be the last post on the thread, obviously. The second is the off-chance that you might have more insight in the arts that just puking back the lines you damn near steal directly from masters. I dunno, guess you feel smarter that way. Not my problem.

[masterdan]

I've only practiced a few kata's from TKD books before, but I think they would definatly make you more balanced and coordinated. If you don't like Kata's, it's probably cuz you can't do them.

[bodhisattva]

Amazing. Have a good day, gentlemen.

[sirmattu]

lol wow where did this bod what ever guy come from?

[bodhisattva]

Where did I come from?

Well. I did plenty of Kata. For one.

And I found it was "hooey".

And when people say "Performing kata will make you a better figher!!!" I tend to jump up and say "Hooey."

Because, simply put, it is.