I pulled it off!

[red5angel]

Learned my first acrobatic move last night in class. It's called Macaco. I tried finding a video but haven't been able to so here is a picture of what it looks like about halfway through it:

http://www.fortunecity.com/marina/strand/602/images/macaense_malandro.jpg

I didn't think I had it in me but literally the first time I tried it I did it! It's still really rough, right now I have to do it squatting to get the power but it came a lot easier by the end of class so I'm hoping tuesday to learn it from a standing position.

[Starchaser107]

kewl dude,
that was one of the first moves i learned, before i started training formally.
naturally i was a bit apprehensive at first but youre right ,its one of those moves thats really simple to do once its taught correct.

as time progressed i started trying to turn the macacao into a back hand spring... ended up veering sideways for some reason :p , but nowadays its a bit straighter...

way cool

[Chang Style Novice]

I was worried that I'd pulled it off once. Turned out I had just forgotten I'd stashed a keilbasa in my undies.

Man, was I drunk.

[red5angel]

starchaser107 - yep, that's my plan too. Get the macaco down from the standing position then work on the back hand spring.

CSN - no, Im pretty sure you actually pulled it off. ;)

[Ray Pina]

Red, I thought you were training MMA and becoming a fighter ... what's this talk of back hand springs:confused:

[Starchaser107]

Evo duuuuuuuude

I dunno what red5's intentions are but

it looks koooooool as fugg...

:D

seriously tho... u doubt the validity of capoiera as a fighting art ?

maybe u just havent met any serious players yet, i had my doubts at first...

[red5angel]

I was going to but some health issues came to light that preclude me from being able to train hard enough to fight effectively in the ring. I'm getting enough fighting at open fight nights a couple of times a month so decided to find something to do for fun instead.
The last year and a half to two years I've also been stuck looking for a good school. Thought I had found a good shaolin school but that fell through.
Overall I think the change to something non-chinese is refreshing. Arts from a certain culture share alot of commonalities and going to an art from a different culture has been a breath of fresh air. Essentially I"m doing this for me, and no other reason. I don't care about self defense, I don't care who's the best at what, I'm just looking to have some fun and get some exercise.

[red5angel]

oh yeah, on back handsprings - not practical in combat, but fun as hell, and I could see it has its uses. Capoeira is not the most efficeint art I"ve seen or been involved with but that's not the point. It's supposed to be flashy and showy. It can work, I have no doubt about that, like any art out there if you work hard enough you could make it work.

[Ray Pina]

Nah, Red, that's cool. I love the music and the sound of that bow instrument that have.

I've only played with two capoeira guys and both just happened to be training on the beach ... supposedly they train with someone pretty good in Queens and Manhattan.

On both occassions they tried the same exact thing .... the one handed hand stand/kick. This was incredibly easy to block, beight that my hands are already anticipating covering my head from hand strikes and that's a hell of a lot of movement to kick me in the head.

Needless to say, I shielded the kick and just ran them over. If it was for real, the running over would have been joined by my own kick to their head .... that's the way to kick someone's head, when it's hovering about 1 foot off the ground with only a single arm for support.

I respect all types of arts and all hobbies and loves that people pursue. But as a fighting art, honestly, I don't think highly of it..... it's tooooo watered down and thus lost:

There was the REAL African Fighting art
Then there was the Real African fighting art hidden in dance (lost some already)
Then the uprising, and Real african fighting hidden in dance while bonded in chains.

No doubt these guys are powerful and have great control of their bodies and can get some wicket momentum going, but I haven't seen a good "aproach" or "strategy" or an understanding of what is a higher probability situation to win a fight. The entire body supported on one hand while upside down is not ideal.

[red5angel]

supposed to be some top guys in NYC, can't remember names though.
As for the other stuff, a couple of things. As with all arts capoeira has evolved and branched out. Regional, what I mostly study, is more acrobatic then say angola. You might also say angola is more practical then regional. My take on it is that the acrobatics, while possibly being made to work, are more for the game, or roda and not for actual fighting. Believe me they still use capoeira to fight, especially in brazil and apparently it can get ugly. Doing the hand stands, the flips and all that is really unnecessary but if your quick enough.....




There was the REAL African Fighting art


It's still in there, and if anything I'd say real capoeristas have only improved upon it by adding techniques. From what I understand, Mestre Bimba was a love of Jujitsu, and integrated some of what he learned form that art into capoeira. It's also evolved into a more acrobatic style for some people.
Part of the reason for my other thread was because you can see the inherent weaknesses in capoeira when doing it (in any art reall - anyone who claims to have the whole package with one art is an idiot). My thought was, what if the guy just charged in and took you down. Well, if all you knew was capoeira, you might be in trouble, depending on how good you were, and how good they were.
As an example, I fought a couple of capoeiras guys a few weeks before I joined. I found that they were incredibly hard to get a hold of, because they were constantly moving in unconventional ways. Of course I'm not the best grappler in the world either. Someone like MP may not have had any trouble at all in getting them wrapped up and on the ground.
The instructor at my school was telling me a story this past saturday about how he was at a batizado with mestre loka, the man who started the organization my school belongs too. They were playing and mestre took him down and jabbed his finger into a nerve cluster in his neck that made his whole body go sort of numb, he was shocked. To me, that just went ot show that even capoeira has a deeper level if you just take the time to look for it and understand it, train it.

Like I said, I'd be the first to admit that it is not practical but as with many arts and artists, dismissing it as ineffective because of an exeprience or two may be making a mistake.
The other thing to keep in mind is that those acrobatic moves the guys you were messing with aren't what a capoeirista would call practical either. Some guys try it, the two I fought were always fooling around, it made things interesting in my mind, and it wasn't as easy to deal with as I thought. I couldn't use the ubiquitous "I just did this" statement to cover even the more acrobatic stuff they were doing. Sometimes I hit them, sometimes they hit me.

I'd say capoeiras strengths are in kicking and sweeping on a practical level. the art itself can you give you an incredible amount of bodily control, but so can other arts.

by the way, that stringed instrument is called the Birimbau pronounced "beedeembow" roughly.

[Starchaser107]

it's still a relatively under exposed art.
it would be unfair to judge the validity of chinese martial arts based on our first hand experience with one or two students of wing chun
(who may be beginninner , intermediate, or advanced who knows?)
they might not even be a testament to thier own style much less cma in general,
likewise players from one school of capoiera don't and rightfully shouldnt be the basis of saying the style is watered down.

it does have its weaknessess i agree, and i'm sure i'm just stating what you already know.

by the way I'm pretty sure I've heard mention of a third school
Contemprado or something?
my potugese is non existent but if you could verify this please it would help.

[norther practitioner]

Right on man..

I know that feeling from when I learned butterfly kicks and one handed cartwheels. However, that looks a bit more difficult.:D

[red5angel]

NP - funny you should mention butterfly kicks. I was right at the stage where I was going ot learn it at the shaolin school when they closed down!
As for harder not sure. It seems macaco comes naturally for me because it isn't "hard", meaning I did it right away and it wsn't a fluke but it needs some work to become clean. My wife however is struggling with it.
I did learn the one handed cartwheel last week, and I'm thinking of trying no hands this week :D

[Starchaser107]

you cant do a butterfly kick yet still you contemplating the no handed cartwheel...


you're a very interesting fellow red.

[red5angel]

LOL! I did mealua last night with no hands and that was easy enough with one foot on the ground. After doing it I figured a no handed cartwheel can't be that much harder! I could be completely wrong here but I guess we, and my noggin, will find out on tthursday!

[Starchaser107]

actually
its different body mechanics from butterflying
more hip
dude , have fun and continue to share.

[Akhilleus]

When I was in Brazil I saw one dude KTFO another guy with capoeira. You could see all the techniques. It was incredible.

[Meat Shake]

I wouldnt mind learning a little capoeria one day for the acrobatics.... But as a fighting art? Erm.... Ive seen quite a few capoeistas..? I forget what you call them. Anyhow, the ones with straight capoeria dont really know dick from balls about fighting, but the one with 5 years wingchun and 2 years boxing seemed like he may be able to integrate the style into something a little more effective.
Also, a guy who had like 3 years capoeria came and trained a couple of weeks of shuai chiao with us, and he could move really well.

[Starchaser107]

dude whys it gotta be like that though.
crosstraining is great, i think its an effective way to train...
but

why do ppl have to be all up on this : wing chunners need to compensate for thier lack of footwork and ground skills so therefore they need to introduce jj or tkd or both in thier game

or tkd'ers need to introduce western boxing into thier game to compensate for thier lack of hand skills...

whats up with that...

huh

huh

[Ray Pina]

Because not one style is perfect.

[Starchaser107]

not even e-chuan?

[red5angel]

I'm with e-fist on this as my other posts states. I personally do believe that you could get by easily with capoeira if you applied yourself. But I also tend to think of your average street fight, atleast in my area, which tends to be started by guys who just like to fight but don't really know how.
Against another martial artist? Who knows. Capoeira certainly isn't a "complete" art so to speak, however, like other arts they have an approach and they learn to use it well. It's smarter to be a well rounded artist then not.

starchaser - one thing I noticed about the difference between butterfly kicks and the Au, is that it appears, atleast to me, that you have to "go higher" with a butterfly kick. With a proper Au, you're not really going up, so much as just around.

[MasterKiller]

Originally posted by EvolutionFist
Because not one style is perfect. Perfect for what? Wrestling is perfect for defending against wrestlers...boxing is perfect for defending against boxers. Boxing isn't so perfect for defending against wrestlers, and vice versa. That's why you cross-train.

[Starchaser107]

any word on that 3rd style red?

[Ray Pina]

Starchaser, e-chuan is definitely not perfect! In fact, that is the entire premise.

E-Chuan is different today than it was 3 years ago when I started. I feel it is my duty to learn the e-chuan formula while my master is still young enough to beat it into me so that I can help it evolve 20-25 years from now .... and then again, and again.

We fight at all ranges but the real study is on mechanics/delivery system.... learning the formula, not the form.

You name the style, someone at the school has put in at least 5-7 years in it. We have BJJ, Judo, boxing, wing chun, bak mei, s mantis, hung gar, aikido, hapkido, TKD, college wrestlers at the school.

This is good because we all have our ways of kicking and punching, we all know how to punch and kick hard/fast, ect. We are training something else.

The thing we try to remember is: you're not the strongest guy; you're not the fastest guy; and you're getting old!

Train the mechanics. Work the mechanics. See a technique. Learn a technique. Beat the technique. This is our school's thinking.

For me, I believe in being open to what's out there. Going out and trying what I have accumalated out against what's out there and being critical. If I win, great. If I lose, why?

[Meat Shake]

I never said that other arts didnt need supplementation.
I meant that without any other art, capoeria practitioners know nothing about fighting. They know how to dance. If they go somewhere and actually fight, good for them. They may yet have a chance, especially if they integrate it with another style that fights on a regular basis.
And I make fun of TKD just as much. TKD always sucks.
:eek:

Edit: Capoeria at least has the potential to help get you laid. (Body movement while dancing subconciously translates to the opposite sex as how you will be able to work it in the sack.) TKD has the potential to get you beat up.

[Starchaser107]

lol, k shake.

evo fist

forgive my ignorance... what makes e-chuan e-chuan?

what's the defining quality about it...
does it have one?

i thought that this method of integration was what bruce lee's jkd was all about.

[red5angel]

you know starchaser, I'll have to look into it. I know of angola and regional for sure. Some of the Senzala guys consider their style a seperate branch as well. Capoeira doesn't seem to be as divisive as other arts can be. You always get those personalitites but in general it seems like regional players also play angola. Angola players often play some regional as well.

[Starchaser107]

word

give thanx

[red5angel]

no prob. Got my feelers out now.....


my instructor was telling me a story about when he was in brazil and he stopped to watch a street roda. He said two girls started playing and one kicked the other one pretty hard and they started really fighting. They got broke up and for like a minute they were just yelling back and forth, then they just stoped yelling and walked to the middle of the roda and hugged.
Capoeira has a weird mentality.