Kuma

I like the technical ones and the bunkai ones right now, plus those with some new and interesting drills in them.

My instructor and I could definitely be considered friends. He has been training me out of his garage for a few years now and is one of the most knowledgeable people I know. Often it's just myself and him training, occasionally 1-2 others at most. The training is fantastic. However, recently I've been working night shifts and now my instructor has alternating shifts so training has been harder to attend. I just discovered a nearby Kyokushin school that is actually led by a friend of my instructor that could give me more training opportunities. I definitely don't plan on jumping ship, as I would definitely still train under my current instructor, but I'm interested to see what you as an instructor would think of a student like this. One who trains in your style as your student, but then also trains in the same style under a friend of yours as well (though a different organization). I don't want to offend either one but I don't want to hold back my MA training either. Thoughts, comments?

Check out some articles by Stew Smith. He's a big military/law enforcement fitness guy who has a lot of good running articles. He typically has his proteges skip running altogether on Week 3 of a 12-week program to avoid shin splints and has a few stretches and exercises to help avoid them. The best stretch for shin splint avoidance I learned in the Marines. Find a curb or other similarly high surface, and put your toes on top of the surface but keep your heel on the ground. Then, just lean forward slightly and hold for 20-30 sec. Great stretch.

Great input guys. I read a great quote just the other day which is very applicable to this. It was from Sensei Ihor Rymaruk, an Uechi-Ryu instructor. "There is a difference between a black belt and a Black Belt."

Here's some great at-home grip exercises that will add some size to your forearms as well as give you a grip that will make people sob when you grab them: (1) Fill up a bucket with a light amount of weight to start. Take an old belt or piece of webbing and connect it to the handle. Then take a pair of pliers, hold it upside down in your hand, close the pliers on the webbing/belt, and lift the bucket. You can do reps or holds for time, and each time you use it make it a teeny bit heavier. (2) Try stacking the bricks up together in a row on the ground, then crush them together and stand up with them. Now, crushing them together as tightly as possible, you can do curls and presses with them which will also seriously work your chest and biceps. (3) The wrist roller idea is a good one too. (4) Get a pair of decent-sized jars (empty protein jars work best) and fill them up with a decent amount of weight. You now have a pair of homemade nigiri game (gripping jars). Pick them up with the tips of your fingers and walk in Sanchin. You can also assume a horse stance and do alternating front and side raises with them. (5) Easiest one yet. Get a tennis ball and squeeze it all day every day.

The shin kick is a great move actually, especially when you're wearing hard shoes. The version I was taught that I've found some use for is similar to the second version of the kick shown in this video where he attacks the shin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC8AWVB5GEY It's easy to practice with a pad, just make sure your partner has his knee well bent and is leaning forward slightly so you don't hyperextend his knee.

I can't take credit for it, gotta thank my teacher's teacher's....well, you know Actually I think Funakoshi also mentions it in one of his Karate-do books. Something about how everyone thinks the makiwara is just to get those swollen knuckles when the real reason behind it is to ensure your techniques are strong and focused and your stance is stable enough to execute those techniques.

Besides, you never know. You might be awesome at it in time. I think Shotokan would be a good fit for you. It's very kihon and kata oriented but with the sanbon and ippon kumite (controlled three-step and one-step sparring) it will get you more comfortable with kumite.

Just wanted to say thanks again. It definitely was a surprise, I'm just like everyone else: a karate junkie that just can't talk enough about it. Glad to see at least one or two people enjoy what I say at times (I know my wife doesn't all the time! )

http://www.phoenixkarate.com/ A Kyokushin offshoot that's right in Bethesda. It incorporates full contact kumite with some groundfighting.

I'm a police officer in a pretty good sized city, and I never learned this style. We learned the basic PPCT stuff and some of the old-school DT stuff. Most of the CIA guys I've met tend to be bookworms anyways, more the scientific type than the scrappy type.

Thanks! This was a definite surprise. I figured it was another private message telling me I was bad in one of my posts again Thanks again everyone.

If my camera was working, I'd show you mine. We had an old clothes line in the back of our yard so there was already a solid pole in the back that has some give to it due to it being pretty flexible already. I took a lot of hemp rope and pounded it out with a hammer to soften it up some, then tightly wound it around the pole right about chest level. Works pretty well and because you pound out some of the roughness of the rope first hand it doesn't destroy your fist after only a few strikes.

Let's not forget the thigh at least. Not only if you use the heel can you shock the thigh and give them a charley horse, but depending on the angle you can also destroy their balance. The savate chasse bas is a good example of that. Not only can you hit straight on into the thigh as they show in the video, but if you're at an angle you can strike the inner thigh and take away the balance of that leg as well as causing that shock.[/i]

I actually had to bribe my wife that I'd clean out our garage if I could eventually score one of these. http://web.archive.org/web/20070319091956/http://www.isami.co.jp/item/img/000012/lsd-20.jpg It's essentially a "kick bag", two suspended sandbags used for seiken and sune conditioning.

Good technique and the makiwara will take you far. The makiwara will really teach you focus and good technique, the conditioning aspects are really secondary compared to those.

Good advice here. I'm in agreement for the most part. On high endurance days a moderate breakfast of complex carbs about 2 hours before is best, then some light simple carb snacks if it goes on a good while. Save the protein for after for the most part.

If the situation warrants deadly force, you'll be in the clear. A simple bar scuffle though, might be a bad idea.

You're right actually, got the year wrong as it was 1893, a little over two decades after the Marquis of Queensbury rules came into effect. Before that under bare knuckle rules there was a fight about six and a half hours in Australia I believe. Either way, incredible. I think the only thing that comes close to it nowadays is hyakunan kumite in Kyokushin, or the 100-man kumite where you have to fight 100 opponents in one day. (For a fun video, check out this one. Shokei Matsui highlight with a lot of clips of his 100-man kumite in it.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MftoFd8hMQg

I'm guessing you mean enhanced blocks (i.e. chudan uchi uke with the opposite fist on the blocking arm)? If so then many many karate styles have those types of blocks in there. Pinan San for example. I've never found much use for them, but admittedly I'm a decent sized guy and fairly strong. If you're a smaller person I can see some use for them.

BM is correct. Because of the lack of hand protection, if a quick KO didn't end the fight, as the rounds wore on it often turned more into a wrestling match. They would often wrestler back and forth to get their opponent into position for "choppers" (hammerfists) and use throws such as the cross-buttocks throw to score a knockdown. Some of those fights were LONG too. Longest fight was in 1855, 110 rounds of 3 minutes, or a little over 7 hours! (Ended in a draw too ironically as both boxers were just about dead)

I wouldn't necessarily say "stomp", but for more traditional techniques (i.e. oi tsuki from zenkutsu dachi, or a lead punch from a front stance), there's a lot of people who at the last second straighten out their rear leg and drive the heel of the rear leg into the ground for an opposite reaction much like a hikite (chamber). In this way your stance suddenly becomes more stable so when you do hit, any secondary energy effects your opponent more and not you (because you're more immovable than they are).

It's a club. No need to get more technical than that. It goes by PR-24, nightstick, and side handle baton on the LEO side as it is, yet whatever you call it isn't much of a big deal. A claymore's still a sword whether you call it one or not.

Maybe I'm just not getting it because in Kyokushin we already have all the same elements as kickboxing. I think most other combat sports are on the decline due to the popularity of MMA and the UFC, especially boxing. Nowadays most people are interested in the more full contact type stuff it seems, so naturally organizations that primarily do point fighting are not going to be quite as popular. Kyokushin used to be very popular, died down somewhat, now it seems to be on a slight rise again so I really can't say we're being affected too too much (though KK is far more popular overseas than it is in the US, that's for sure).

99% of fighters I know don't. It's easy to say that, but the reality is that injuries happen frequently, and they sideline you from training. If you want to fight full contact you train smart. Either way, NOBODY seems to grasp onto what I'm saying. This isn't a kickboxing is better than karate thread for God's sake, it's a Karate needs kickboxing to survive thread. Not even full contact kickboxing, semicontact would be just fine... What I mean is if you want to fight full contact, you're going to have to train for it. Which means sparring, padwork, and the whole nine yards that go with it. If you're not interested in fighting full contact, then you don't need to train that way. If you want to be able to compete in that area though, you need to train like others do in that arena so you can hang. In this instance, it's less the style you do and more the training methods you use. Just to clarify.