Ghetto Blocks

[Phil Redmond]

I did time for a 2nd degree assualt with a deadly weapon and was housed with the violent criminals because of my violent crime (protected pregnant mother of my child, bad lawyer, now I am a father of 2 and a highly paid software engineer so even bad kids can grow up to be good adults if they try). That and 99% of my freinds and associates did a good amount of time there too. How come I have never heard of this. It must be a rather rare thing being that everyone I know including myself has spent time in the house of pain and never heard of it. It may exist but it is far from common and I don't think it's a matter of only teaching minorities they just don't teach country white boys. About the only thing we ever did was throw on the gloves and go for only body shots using boxing techniques. It is kind of like a ghetto past time. However this **** from the 40s has never crossed my well traveled eyes before. The fact that it is probably so **** old is the reason why I've never scene it. The only thing any of us had an interest in that was old was KF. I figure it is a waste of time being that every prisoner I met while there and not there didn't know it and I handled myself very well in the prison riot that occured (the 2 week lockdown in a cell with 2 other men as punishment was worse than the riot) without it and so did many other people. Sorry but this OG is going to have to go with the hype theory. In jail or in the ghetto it's more about the mind than the techniques. As long as you have that killer instinct you will survive prison and the ghetto very well. Not some jail house rock bull. Peace out!

Were you in jail in NYC? You seem sceptical which I can understand since you've never seen JHR. Maybe it's mostly a NYC thing. I personally have seen it and know many of my CO (correction officer) friends have seen it. I know it to be real. Like I said before It's common knowledge in the 'hoods' in NYC. I was first exposed to it in the 70's. Fight would start and guys would say break the four. Whc\ich is a hand position used sometimes. I lived in ENY, Brownsville, Bed Stuy, and Ft. Greene. Anyone here from B'klyn knows where these place are and know what type of neighborhoods they are. JHR is live and doing well in the 'hood'
Phil

[Phil Redmond]

I did time for a 2nd degree assualt with a deadly weapon and was housed with the violent criminals because of my violent crime (protected pregnant mother of my child, bad lawyer, now I am a father of 2 and a highly paid software engineer so even bad kids can grow up to be good adults if they try). That and 99% of my freinds and associates did a good amount of time there too. How come I have never heard of this. It must be a rather rare thing being that everyone I know including myself has spent time in the house of pain and never heard of it. It may exist but it is far from common and I don't think it's a matter of only teaching minorities they just don't teach country white boys. About the only thing we ever did was throw on the gloves and go for only body shots using boxing techniques. It is kind of like a ghetto past time. However this **** from the 40s has never crossed my well traveled eyes before. The fact that it is probably so **** old is the reason why I've never scene it. The only thing any of us had an interest in that was old was KF. I figure it is a waste of time being that every prisoner I met while there and not there didn't know it and I handled myself very well in the prison riot that occured (the 2 week lockdown in a cell with 2 other men as punishment was worse than the riot) without it and so did many other people. Sorry but this OG is going to have to go with the hype theory. In jail or in the ghetto it's more about the mind than the techniques. As long as you have that killer instinct you will survive prison and the ghetto very well. Not some jail house rock bull. Peace out!

Were you in jail in NYC? You seem sceptical which I can understand since you've never seen JHR. Maybe it's mostly a NYC thing. I personally have seen it and know many of my CO (correction officer) friends have seen it. I know it to be real. Like I said before It's common knowledge in the 'hoods' in NYC. I was first exposed to it in the 70's. Fight would start and guys would say break the four. Which is a hand position used sometimes. I lived in ENY, Brownsville, Bed Stuy, and Ft. Greene. Anyone here from B'klyn knows where these place are and know what type of neighborhoods they are. JHR is live and doing well in the 'hood'
Phil

[hellhound]

I would have to say you'd have to kill ne before I'd hang out with some CO who only does things with numbers, clubs and mace. They don't really use hand to hand in the prisons I was in.

My friend did time in Rikers and other NYC prisons for carrying close to a kg of cocaine. He has not heard anything like that.

Maybe it really is only taught to blacks as he is hispanic and 90% of my other friends are hispanic. The other 10% that included blacks were more people I knew from people I hung out with.

Oh well,,, not imprtant either way. It's your mind that counts. Any decent set of techniques will work. There is nothing special about that system, only the mind set of the people using it.

[Eddie]

hey danmayete, where are you from?

i know some pretty cool african arts. what are you practicing?

[SimonM]

JHR is one of three martial arts cited in the credits to Lethal Weapon 1.

The other two are BJJ and Capoeira.

No point, just saw this the other day and thought I'd throw it out there.

[Phil Redmond]

. . . This is the core. The African arts are numerous, however, and owe nothing to anything foreign (non-African, as is sometimes erroneously asserted by those ignorant of these traditions).

Historically the oldest recorded martial arts were Egyptian, then Indian, then Chinese and so on. . . (I read this in one of the late Mas Oyama's books so I did my research). I have a copy of a documentary from the Canadian History Channel that show the ancient Indian Ma called Kalaripayatu (sp)? It from the same area where Damo was from. From watching their forms you can see where Shaolin MA comes from.
Phil

[SimonM]

Mas Oyama's work was mainly an attempt to prove that JJJ had the longest lineage of any martial art. I tend to disagree with it because it is predicated on the hypothesis of a single origin point for maritial arts and I don't subscribe to this hypothesis.

The two single origin theories are both derived from the Oyama work. One is that martial arts were invented in Africa, traveled to India and were then propagated to China by Bodidharma. The second is that martial arts were invented in Greece, traveled to India with Alexander the Great and were then propagated into China.

The Alexander the Great theory is laughable. There was already quite effective fighters in Afghanistan and India when Alexander got there. If there were not he probably would have kept on going until he had conquered the whole of Asia. Alexander is just too late to really matter and with the mountains and arid plains of Iran and Afghanistan there was little contact between the civilizations of Europe and Asia major prior to him (there was plenty of contact between the persian empire, other middle eastern cultures and Europe).

There were likely Africans in India long before Alexander. However the African origin of CMA (or for that matter the Indian origin of CMA) theories both are predicated on assigning Bodidharma as the founder of Chinese Martial Arts. This is despite the fact that there was wrestling in Mongolia about 2500 years prior to that. Also there are several Han Chinese martial arts which do not hold Shaolin Temple as their point of origin and which probably predated the temple (in some form). You also have to consider that part of the reason that Shaolin became the "origin" point for so many martial arts is because it became a place where martial artists congregated and traded techniques. Many martial artists who had been educated in "non-shaolin" styles would, after a stint in the temple, emerge with a new form. And since they were often Shaolin monks or disciples these forms would be labled as Shaolin.

In addition Kalariapayattu and traditional Shaolin Five Animal Gong Fu (one of the most significant of the "Shaolin" styles and the one that was the basis of many southern Gong Fu styles such as Wing Chun and Hung Gar) are quite different in appearance and technique. Now this is less important since Bodidharma was a couple thousand years ago and there has been plenty of time for divergence, no martial art remains static for even 100 years let alone 1000, but it still does not bode well for Oyama's theory.

I am sorry that this diverges a bit off-topic from talking about JHR, 51 blocks or whatever other name these underground prison styles go by but this particular piece of historical misinformation is one that always bothers me and it has become increasingly popular of late despite the fact that there is no solid evidence to support it.

[Phil Redmond]

Very good points. The probability of the simulteanous developement of martial arts by many different ethnicities world wide is very great.
Phil

[SimonM]

If you are talking about the doccumentary "Fighting Arts" I was particularly amused when the Guru tried to perform the secret pressure point technique on the host and it didn't work in the slightest so he quickly said "well it sometimes doesn't work on women".

[Phil Redmond]

If you are talking about the doccumentary "Fighting Arts" I was particularly amused when the Guru tried to perform the secret pressure point technique on the host and it didn't work in the slightest so he quickly said "well it sometimes doesn't work on women".

It was called "Deadly Arts". A female aikido Black Belt from Quebec was the host. She travelled to India, Okinawa, Brazil, Thailand, Japan, and France to find martial artists. It was a six part series and I have them all on tape.
Phil

[SimonM]

Yeah, that's the one. My bro and I used to watch that before I headed out to university in the morning. I never did get to see the one in Okinawa though...

That series increased my respect for MT quite a bit. It also reduced my respect for Aikido due to the brashly compliant training techniques it showed.

[Buby]

Were you in jail in NYC? You seem sceptical which I can understand since you've never seen JHR. Maybe it's mostly a NYC thing. I personally have seen it and know many of my CO (correction officer) friends have seen it. I know it to be real. Like I said before It's common knowledge in the 'hoods' in NYC. I was first exposed to it in the 70's. Fight would start and guys would say break the four. Whc\ich is a hand position used sometimes. I lived in ENY, Brownsville, Bed Stuy, and Ft. Greene. Anyone here from B'klyn know where these place are.
Phil

Phil speaks the truth. Hellhound come to Bk. In any of the hoods that Phil just mentioned and you'll see little kids doing moves that they see their older brothers or uncles that have done time do. My uncle learned from the Pebbles family and another friends like Lopez. But Lopez was also trained in boxing and Perry Pebbles (god rest his soul) was a black belt in karate, both crazy nasty with their hands. As a matter of fact my man Calvin (a Pebbles) dropped a pro boxer in (I think it was) Gleasons gym. I can't remember the boxer cause it was a while ago, but I'll ask my uncle.

There is a DVD called Felony Fights thats has an Africa American gentleman that uses JHR to knock his opponent out. Shuffles then drops a nasty rear overhand.LOLOL

TT:

I know of the short hook your talking about. I was taught to do it as a short overhand hook. 9 times out of 10 your opponent never sees it coming. It is a sweet move.

I never knew it as JHR, just as this is how they fight in jail.LOLOLOL Man I was mad young and I thought I was learning boxing.LOLOLOL When I hit my teens was when I learned about the whole jail thing.

Sifu:

I'll send you the DVD(Felony Fights) and a demo of the back on wall training. Lou has that down sweet. He incorporates some of these moves in his DTM, so its like I learned it from sources. Lou also got some of his from the Pebbles.

Peace,

Jail House Buby..LOLOLOLOL Ala YKM Style!!LOLOLolol

[hellhound]

I am not doubting it exists anymore. I am just starting to think this is really a black only art since the only people I knew well were hispanic. That and I am still stumped as to why someone like me or my friends have heard of it. Maybe I'll go and actually ask my cousin who did 3 years in various NY and NYC jails as I see him often since his Ford Expedition is on my insurance policy. I figure he would of mentioned it being that I study MA however it may have not crossed his mind to tell me about it. I'll be sure to let you know what he says. That way we at least have a hispanic who did years of time in Rikers and other NY and NYC jails. I have a feeling he just may know about it and never mentioned it. We'll see I guess.

Regards and have a great weekend!

[hellhound]

I have spoken with my cousin who did time in Rikers and other NYC/NY jails over a 3 year period. He says he has never heard of it which means either it does not exist or they really do only teach/speak of it to blacks since he and a majority of everyone I know and did time with (well... payed any attention to when I did my time) is hispanic. I am going with the it does exist but only for african americans and is not to ricans and the likes. You boys have fun then with your little jailhouse rock (almost sounds cute). While us other minorities use our good plain ol' fighting experience.

[Eddie]

even accupuncture is believed to come from africa, but it doesnt make it more effective does it?

africa really is that dark weird place you see on tv, just seem to me often that allot of African Americans have way to many romantic ideas about this place.

If you are interested in African fighting, do a search on " Piper system". You wont really know what they talk about unless you have experience it yourself. Africa is a weird weird place .

mayete is a typical southern african name. do you know where about your family comes from?