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What is more important- strength or confidence?


Ninja traveller
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Ninja traveller

In trying to master handstands, cartwheels, and flying forward somersaults what do you believe is most important? Upper arm strength or confidence?

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Good coaching.  Having a knowledgeable person watch you and give you feedback is invaluable if one is trying to master those skills.  Proper practice, too.  

 

Upper arm strength and confidence are minimal contributors, in my opinion.  At least for those skills.  For meeting young ladies, confidence is very important.  To a lesser degree, upper arm strength.  

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Christian Sørlie

For meeting young ladies, confidence is very important.

Confidence to approach, strength to deal with the rejection

:-(

:-P

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Katharina Huemer

what are flying forward somersaults? do you mean front tucks? and why do you need confidence for a cartwheel?

I don't know exactly what you want to know but all gymnastics moves, I mean floor skills like tucks, saltos, handsprings etc, not strength moves, require a little bit of confidence. The most important thing is to build it up gradually. If you have never done a front tuck before, you are likely to be scared. But if you have worked your way up to it doing different drills (on trampoline, on air track, onto soft  mats, with a spot etc) you are not so scared anymore! 

For a normal handstand you don't need so much strength, but for press handstands you do need overall body awareness and flexibility!

As for strength, on floor it's definitely explosive leg power you need to have, not so much arm strength. A little bit is needed for handsprings, but most of it needs to be in your legs. But of course, the stronger the tighter and the tighter the better, because that is what makes you fast!

On the other events, especially men's, you need A LOT of strength, of course!

If you could tell us what you want to do exactly, it would be easier to tell you what you need most :)

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Ninja traveller

Katlinchen, for context I don't attend a conventional gymnastic class, I am a member of the Bujinkan which is martial art ( its the modern day adaption of the ninja arts).

 

By forward flying somersaults i mean our Shidoshi places a obstacle on the crash mat such as a chair, a sword or even a larger crash mat. Usually its between 2 to 3 feet high, and the objective is to do a forward roll over the obstacle without touching the obstacle in order to land on the mat and go straight into a forward roll. Now, this is proving tricky to me as I am not sure if i am using enough leg power to get my legs over the obstacle or if my lack of upper arm strengh is causing me to land in a crumpled mess. Usually what happens I am landing on my side, or kidney area and I end up getting winded. Then I go into a roll but I move off like a bolt on its side rather than a round wheel.

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Jonathan Pettit

Are these dive rolls?  As in, jumping, whole body off the ground, and 'landing' in a forward/shoulder roll?

 

If so, forget confidence or strength, technique is the most important thing.  You need to fully master regular rolls before trying these, and I mean fully master.  Rolling fast, rolling slow, while walking, while sleeping, not even think about it because you just do it.  Only after that do you start adding little hops and get into full jumping over things.

 

Speaking generally, as I know nothing about Bujikan, the martial arts are pretty terrible at teaching rolls.  I don't know why, but we are.  It's a lot of learning by trial and error, throwing yourself at the matt and trying not to land on your spine.  Works great with kids, less great with not kids.  Perhaps you lucked out and have a great instructor, but it sounds like, since you aren't so much rolling as falling, that it's a technique issue first and foremost.

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If you want to learn a dive roll (the name in gymnastics). Best go to a gymnastic adult class, or get a private class. Ask for the progressions, and im sure you can practice them at your Dojo. Once you have the gymnastic dive roll down, then you can adapt it for the martial art style (shoulder roll if i'm correct).  Also once you have a decent cartwheel, you can do all kinds of cool stuff like dive cartwheel etc. 

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There is no historic evidence of acrobatic movements being part of the repertoire of the shinobi no mono of the Sengaku or Edo periods, and any such movements which are part of the syllabus or training of a modern school have been borrowed from elsewhere, like gymnastics or tumbling.  So it makes sense to go to the source.  

 

Some gendai budo have ukemi as part of their curricula, such as Judo and Aikido. Parkour also places great emphasis on rolls and other movement that could be added to a modern approach to martial arts training.  These arts have good resource material online, in books, and on video.  Respective dojos and teachers will spend more or less time on these skills, but you should be able to find something.  Again, though, you can only teach yourself so much, and a skilled teacher will greatly expedite and improve the learning process.  

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With proper training and progressions comes confidence.

So you need to follow the progressions. First you start building your Foundation (1-4) in the relationship. When you have built a proper foundation then you can progress through rings 1-4, rings 1 is engagement, 2 is wedding, 3 and 4 are for your anniversaries. You can begin your movement series preferably when you have a good foundation, as otherwise the lady in question may be put off by your terrible dance Movements (1-3). Of course, Coach has layer out a foolproof plan that will allow us to become masters of GST (Girlfriend Solicitation Training).
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 Well, as for your dive shoulder rolls you need to master the basic one at first. I'm sure your shidoshi knows a few different setup methods. There are also about a zillion good and bad Bujinkan videos out there on ukemi drills and what not. However, if you are a noob that doesn't really help you as to which ones you should watch and which you shouldn't.

 Then you learn how to stretch it out. You start going over small stuff and build it up. You don't just put the bo at chest height and say "Go for broke, ninjas!"

As for going up and over objects, part of that is just ballz but it's nice to know you're not gonna break should you do so. You need to make your ukemi very good. Or maybe you will get hurt or die.

 However, it is a good idea of training your body to prepare yourself to move. You can see it on the old Hatsumi videos back in the late 60's/70's with the old school shihan. Hatsumi actually has a loose system in the Bujinakan simply called Junan Taiso. You generally see these more as flexibility/mobility exercises but there is some other stuff you can find out there. Nothing too gymnasticky though certain shihan in Japan are known to be more acrobatic and some of it has been shown in the TaiKai or Daikyomosai videos. Interesting progressions I recently saw.

 By all means you should be able to do pushups and pullups, situps, leglifts, move through seiza or tate-hiza, lunges, basic parkour-ey stuff. More important in the Bujinkan is the ability to move and flow and have good basics, blah blah blah.

 But bare in mind the acrobatics are a small part. You must be able to do ukemi and it's pretty awesome if you can flip out of arm bars or wrist locks or sacrifice throw yourself doing similar crazy stuff like judoka or known to do in matches.

 

 

 

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Strength and coordination are more important. Feeling controlled in the position. A feeling i felt for the first time the day after handstand wall runs.

Confidence is knowing you are enough, so you trust your instincts without thinking. If you lay out the ground work and developed the strength and coordination then confidence is the cherry on top. Both are valuable and will help you develop the other, but a certain level of strength is required while 0 confidence is required as long as you don't have crippling fear from being upside down.

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Ninja traveller

Sensei JP "Are these dive rolls? "

 

 

 

Yes, that is what i meant. Not sure why i didnt know the correct terminology, but thanks. lol

 

most of the time its less about knowing the names and more about being able to do it, aside from the random tidbits of Japanese.

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