So doing karate I kinda felt bad for not fully memorizing some techniques from scratch, just like in overlapping clusters of 5 moves

In retrospect I realized that was probably a better way to learn them than whole technique-by-technique memorization, a lot of times they were really vessels for teaching that belt level’s new motions and transitions and strike-into-strike chains

Like, chaining fist strikes together with attacks up to two major joints forward or back (eye pokes/gouges to elbow strikes [really with the shin-like bone just handward]). The one bar fight I got in and I’m really proud of, he opened with a sucker punch and I closed with an uppercut transitioned mid-swing into an elbow cross when I saw the punch was gonna be blocked (time slowed down, it really does that!)

Sometimes they were good techniques in their own right, the shorter ones especially tho, American Kempo was based on street fighting in the martial arts melting pot of postwar Hawaii and I actually know a lot of basic disables that range from temporary stun to permanent crippling

I kind of wonder if all the so many specific anti-stat moves in JRPGs are a legacy of these sort of disable moves in Japanese martial arts