Post: #1

Anyone who has played a game of Tekken is going to know who this guy is.



I'm more interested in the people here who have taken the time to learn about Capoiera.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ca...techniques

It had gotten a bit more public notice thanks to Lateef Crowder. But he is typically portrayed as the villain, so he always ends up losing somehow.



Back in college when I'd meet my buddies at the campus gym and trade techniques while training a couple of the guys knew Capoiera and also ended up teaching a class, which we'd join to help support while it was getting started.

With the fairly low stance ginga can take and having already wrestled for a few years the transition into learning this was fairly smooth, but short lived after leaving the country post graduation.

Even now during sparring, I like to pull out a few things from capoiera as they feel a little more natural and it's a bit entertaining to catch people off guard.



That noticing that actually got me a bit more interested in training the style a bit more. I had remembered that one of the guys would ask me a number of times to teach him grappling counters since in the Roda a lot of the more aggressive guys would catch him in take-downs.



Also, this art gets a bunch of hate from the "serious internet fighters" as something they assume would never be useful in a fight. I'm more of the mind that the weapon is only as good as the wielder. I take things from the styles I've been afforded the chance to learn and put them to use as I see fit, the things that don't work get altered or forgotten. I don't think I'm alone in that train of thought.



Anyway this is here to see who else has an interest or experience in Capoiera. And possibly to hear about whatever resources you may know of, really do miss training with my friends back stateside.

Post: #2

Everybody likes capoeira as a kid because it's so flashy and unorthodox but I imagine it would take decades of training to be stable enough and covered against anything to use it as a fighting skill against a reasonably trained opponent. Something boxing can give you in a year or even a few months.

Everybody who hopes to ever use copoeira in fight, should also learn a more traditional and stable art like boxing or any grappling art to not delude himself.

If you know a more traditional art then maybe you can squeeze in a move from capoeira from time to time, but relying only on capoeira is like entering a gunfight with throwing knives.

The biggest problem with fighting is that unless you do it daily then once you get to really fight for you life adrenalin pumps into your body you become stiff and can execute short moves like punches and low kicks really well but you instinctively round yourself and your instincts don't let you extend and expose vulnerable body organs to perform acrobatic moves, which is pretty smart natural self defense mechanism from nature.

One should be really cold blooded to be able to change all the stances, do handstands and land a high kick with precision in a real fight to life and death. Not gonna make it without experience in fighting the normal way.

Also caopeira uses a lot of space.

I really like and cheer for the rare situations when someone wins a fight with a high kick or a flashy capoeira like move but one must know the basics first before one can rely on such advanced things.

Post: #3

The movie Get Hard poked fun of capoiera quite a bit.

Post: #4

Here's a sick one from an MMA fight

Post: #5

This is the only Capoiera vid you need to see:

https://youtu.be/IrA_gUEP7TM

Yes it's a cool looking art but not as effective as other fighting styles.

Post: #6

(09-04-2015 02:09 PM)Racer-X Wrote:  This is the only Capoiera vid you need to see:

https://youtu.be/IrA_gUEP7TM

Yes it's a cool looking art but not as effective as other fighting styles.

That video is fake, its from the movie Never Back Down

Post: #7

(09-04-2015 07:49 PM)Cr33pin Wrote:  

(09-04-2015 02:09 PM)Racer-X Wrote:  This is the only Capoiera vid you need to see:

https://youtu.be/IrA_gUEP7TM

Yes it's a cool looking art but not as effective as other fighting styles.

That video is fake, its from the movie Never Back Down

Yeah it's very fake.

But this isn't.





Capoeira is a style based on extremely risky moves. It's not that the moves don't work, but compared to other things you can do in a fight it usually doesn't make sense to throw hugely athletic kicks and spinning elbows that could land you hurt in an actual fight.

Capoeira is great for athleticism, but it's not the most practical thing in the world. There's a reason risky moves like the ones found in Capoeira make up highlight reels and not most replays. They get a lot of attention when they work because they hardly ever do.

I think it's important to familiarize yourself with these kinds of techniques so you don't get caught off guard, but it doesn't make sense to me to try them. Punches are risky enough, why try a spinning crescent kick? It seems like an unnecessary Hail Mary.

Post: #8

I did Capoeira regularly for about four years. Not regular now because I moved away from my academy and there are very few academies in Canada outside the city centres. It's not very practical like say, jiu-jitsu, it will not teach you how to do close-quarters-boom-boom-boom-fights-over street fighting but it will make you very healthy, have a great body(there is less of a focus on upper body strength, but if you do a lot of "Angola", the slow, ground-level game you will build up a lot of core+pecs+arms) develop endurance, make you very flexible which is something most fighters do not have. If you like the idea of someday knowing how to backflip with ease then Capoeira is something you should look into.

I haven't done serious Capoeira for four years, and with the amount of exercise I've done in that period I should be a blubbery mass but despite that I've maintained a lot of my core area muscles.

Capoeira can be taken as a dance or a martial art. It is a very social activity, like a big party sometimes. If you've participated in a "batizado"(means literally baptism), or belt ceremony, the Mestre will bestow you with a Portuguese nickname based upon your personality. At my group in Vancouver, which I will not name, mine was Monje("Monk"). Amongst your group, you'll be known by that nickname. Capoeiristas will take the playful nature of Capoeira outside the academy. We would often meet up after class for sushi and drinks. It's probably the closest I've ever gotten to smokin'-looking chicks. At the time I was clueless about game and now that I look back, there are some seriously-good game opportunities when joining a Capoeira group. Roosh said at the State of Man talk that if you join a group you should be the top guy at that group to get laid. This is absolutely true and a Capoeira group is no exception. The thing is in Capoeira, it is very very difficult to be the tops in your group; you have be better than that dude who just got off the boat from Brazil who basically did Capoeira in their mother's womb. That guy is definitely getting Capoeira poontang.

In any given city with many Capoeira groups, there is a friendly rivalry amongst groups. Some rivalries are not-so-friendly and things can get really ugly where the game turns aggressive and then if someone decides to up the ante, kicks that were timed to miss are no longer timed to miss and then things get nasty. This usually happens during the summertime when there is a lot of outdoor Capoeira at some planned meet or when a member of a rival group participates in the public roda to intentionally humiliate the group holding the public roda.

There is also a pecking order within the Capoeira group that is accepted as part of the group culture. A good Mestre will try to keep the negative aspects of that to a minimum. The oldest and most experienced students literally wear their status with their rope around their waist(as do you). If they are good people they will not put it over you. Most mature Capoeira groups have at least one hotshot maverick who goes around half-cocked. A lot of them tend to be someone who's emigrated to a new country (typically from Brazil) and has a newfound status as being one of the few in the new city who are amazing at Capoeira(in Brazil, advanced Capoeiristas are a dime-a-dozen) and their newfound superstardom really goes to their head.

Another thing about the more militant Capoeira groups is it's pretty likely you will endure a hazing ritual on the academy floor. This would be long before the batizado, where you endure a ceremonial hazing ritual the moment before you get your belt and nickname. It's a test of your character and body and it sets your place in the group. Just get up and keep going like nothing happened. Like any group situation with an undisputed leader, the character of the group assimilates the character of the leader. If the Mestre is a complete punk, then it'll be all over the group.

I recommend you go to the Capoeira class at the university or the Y. There you will get to try it out without any serious commitment. If you show promise the Mestre will likely invite you to his academy or ask you to participate in a weekend roda. Go for it, but my recommendation is that once you get to that point of commitment, try out a rival group just to see how you like the other group's atmosphere.

Also find a Mestre who has decent Emglish-speaking ability; that is, someone who is able to explain higher-level concepts so you don't remain clueless about strategic ideas in the roda. I would've loved to have someone explain to me the difference in roles and purpose of straight kicks vs. circular kicks earlier on, for instance. Someone who can get across concepts, rather than just the English versions of basic kick names and escape-move names.

Post: #9

I did capoeira for a bit over a year with very mixed feelings on the whole thing.

I'll say first that I really did enjoy it, it was fun. I liked the musical aspect, the Portuguese language aspect, the community aspect, and the play-fight aspect of it. It is more like a game to me than anything, play-fighting. Fun. Standing in a circle clapping playing this and that instrument singing in Portuguese was a ton of fun to me.

But I quit for the reason of knee problems and the sheer impracticality of it.

In Capoeira there is a lot of mythology. They tell you slaves used it to kill their masters and escape, but of course capoeira is about as lethal as slap-fighting.

After doing capoeira for about a year, I had gone from no-fkn-idea to beginning to get a hold of things, beginning to be able to play well and feel like I was doing good at it. Then I took a few Muay Thai classes, and after 2 or 3 classes, simply learning how to throw a punch and block a punch, I felt like I was more prepared for a fight than ever before.

I began having all this cognitive disonnance during a roda. I would instinctively put my hands up to block my head from a kick, and would be told "No, no, go under it, ginga under it" like you would in reality do a ginga under a kick in a fight, as if anyone is going to throw a huge slow moving crescent kick that you can really get under. There was one kick they would have us do from a crouching position (cocorinha) where you basically fully display your nutsack to your enemy in an attempt to kick at his head from a crouched position. Makes no sense, displaying your most vulnerable part to an enemy for a chance to kick at his head from being on the floor.

I would watch videos online and learn moves, takedowns, straight-kicks, hook kicks, things that seemed more useful. I would try to use them in the roda and would be scolded by the mestre for doing such. Sometimes I would play against him, he would invite younger students to do this, and going in for a headbutt or a straight kick would just get him upset and make him dismiss me for not playing the "right" way. I was shocked that a mestre wouldn't have a simple way to dodge or counter this move besides stopping the game and telling me to cut it out.

Further, I'm tall and thin, and got knee problems from it. To the point that I would be icing both my knees several times a day every day. To the point that simply getting up from a chair might cause shooting pain in my knees. Everyone told me that would go away with time, go away with more training, but it never did.

That, combined with feeling like after a year I had learned less about fighting than I could in 3 hours from a real martial art made me quit. I still miss it, because it was fun, but when it came down to it I couldn't justify doing it anymore.

Post: #10

Just look at the movements. They require a ton of energy. Cardio and efficiency of movement are so important to fighting that there is no way Capoiera would be as viable a striking style as something more standard like boxing or muay thai.