skullsplitter

I've seen it too, but in our school. A blackbelt kid joined our school after leaving his tkd school. His sparring technique was noting but hands down and a couple of high sweeping kicks. Our underbelts ate him alive. He never really overcame the "guard down" technique.

I'm many years away from learning it, but my favorite to watch is sochin.

My son has a very mild case of a muscle disease. We started him in karate to keep him stretched and active. After watching him for 7 years I finally decided to give it a try. I'm at the school all the time anyway so why not. I'm a little over a year into it and now I'm hooked. I wish I would made the decision sooner.

Thanks for the replies. I was hoping the sponsored kids and teams would stick to the NASKA divisions and leave us newbies to the non-NASKA divisions. I was also hoping the judges stick to the published NASKA rules for the traditional diviosions. See below. Regardless, it should be a great chance for to stretch his comfort zone a little. From NASKA:  Traditional Forms and Weapons – These forms must capture the essence of classic martial arts movements, displaying the traditional techniques, stances, footwork, and weapons. Emphasis is placed on execution of technique, application of technique, balance, speed, power, solid stances, and focus. Forms may be unmodified or modified from what a system or school considers to be the original version of the form; however, performance of the following movements will result in a downgrade of the form, or upon unanimous vote of the judges, a “no score” as a form inappropriate for the division: more than two kicks with the same leg without putting the foot down in between; front or back flips; cartwheels; front or side leg splits; releases of the weapon other than simple hand switches; or any other gymnastic movements or extreme exhibitions of flexibility or agility with the body or weapon that are deemed in the opinion of the judges to be inappropriate for the division pursuant to the general guidelines set forth here. Commentary: There has been a great deal of debate among reputable martial artists regarding whether a form or series of moves are outside of the bounds of the Traditional Division. Because NASKA is a tournament circuit open to all styles and schools (across the nation and around the world) and from which judges are utilized, each competitor must make his or her own decision regarding whether to include movements, which might be to be objectionable for the Traditional Division.

This. In our school as well as the tournaments we do, ridgehands and axekicks are allowing in sparring. Spinning kicks too, but not spinnng hand/elbows( no spinnign backfists, spinning elbows, etc).

Does anyone here have any experience with NASKA tournaments? My son will be competing in one over the summer. It's his first national type toruney. He's not a NASKA member so he'll be in the non-NASKA divisions for jr blackbelt traditional weapons and forms. He and I are wondering how large these non-NASKA divisions normally are. I've heard that the NASKA divisons get pretty big, but I've not found much info on the non-NASKA ones.

I'm only doing point sparring now, but I love it. Even with the padding I love the contact. Moving to light continuous once I get some more endurance.

Thanks for all of the replies! One of my instructors actually runs into a guy that uses this strike frequently so he's going to work with me on it and get me ready. He echoes many of you in that I need to recognize what he is doing to set it up.

Ladies and Gents, I'm looking for some help in defending against the ridge-hand. I've been to three tournaments this year and participate in point sparring. I've went against this one guy at tow of those tournaments. We've beat each other once. This guy loves to throw a ridge-hand and I'm having trouble with it. I'm just not seeing it. One second I'm ready to strike. The next second my head is getting rocked. First tourney he nearly knocked my headgear off. This last tournament he hit me with it hard twice leaving me with a rather bad headache. Part of my problem is that at my dojo nobody uses it in sparring. We learn it, but it's not a favored sparring tool. The obvious answer is to keep a guard up to the outside of my head, but then that leaves my face open. Of course it would also help if I saw it coming then I could move my guard or move in or out. Any tips? I have another tourney in 2 weeks and he'll be there too.

I’ve had a lot of these same thoughts off and on over the years. Our school starts kids at 4 if they are able to follow simple instructions and pay attention. I have seen kids fail the basic eval and were asked to return later when they were more ready for a group environment. We also test every 3 months, but not all pass. We also require sparring in order to test pass the 2nd belt. So yes we take kids and kids can earn their black belt if they progress on time at 4 years, but there are also requirements of paying attention, learning to hit another person, etc. Seems like we may be somewhere in the middle of a mcdojo and hardcore school. My advice to you as a parent is to make sure your kid is learning and progressing. If your kid starts being one of the kids who is lay like a slug then he/she may not be ready yet or may just not be interested. If this happens, take a break from it and see if he/she starts wanting to go back. We have an 8.5 year old boy at our school who transferred from a local TKD school. He started at 6 and was given his bb at 8. He’s been at our school for a few months now. He can’t tie his own bb. He gets severely beaten by much lower belts in sparring, and does not pay attention in class. But he does have his bb. When I watch him I often wonder where the blame is: on him, on his old TKD school, on his parents? I’m rambling here, but the point is to make sure you watch carefully if he is learning something and getting better. My boy started at a little before 4 years old and is now almost 11 and is still going strong at his school. It has been a great journey to watch as he grows and develops. To watch him help the little ones tie their new belts at belt grad or to see him help an underbelt with a kata or sparring technique is always an amazing experience for me. Heck, even once when we had a large turnout at adult class when I had just started taking my own classes he ran his old dad through basic kicks and punches. Truly humbling. If your kid sticks with it you as a parent are in for a great ride. Sorry for the long post. Couldn’t stop typing.

Have any of you heard of or have experience with ChunJiDo? I ask because a friend of mine may be taking his son to a ChunJiDo dojo which is very near to their house. He asked me if know anythign about it. I've done a little research on it. The art looks fine. I can't put my finger on why, but for some reason I'm a bit skeptical about the founder of this art, Grandmaster Robert Cutrell. Any guidance is appreciated.

Does your sensei know of your foot problems? Perhaps he/she can help. My son has a very mild case of cerebral palsy. He started karate at 3.5 years old and is now almost 11 and still doing it. His sensei knows his condition and knows that he just not as flexible and strong as the other kids. She's given him specific stretches to do at home to help with his problem areas. I'm saying don't give up if this is something you love. Talk to your instructor and see if he/she can help.

Well I survived my first tournament. I am 39 just started a few months ago and am an orange belt. I competed in forms and point sparring and placed 4th out of 5 in each. Sparring was a blast. The division was 18 and older beginner to intermediate men. I ended up fighting 3 times. I won the first, got the crap beat out of me the second, and lost in a close one in the third. Plus it helped out my son seeing me do well. He normally walks out of these with a couple of trophies, but the poor kid had an off day. Some observations: 1. The near constant yelling during forms and weapons is out of hand. One kid in my son’s division yelled as he entered the ring, as he approached the judges, before he introduced himself, after he introduced himself, all through his form, as left the ring, and as he reentered for scoring. It was more annoying and less intimidating. 2. I see a lot of comments about pitty-pat scoring in the point sparring. Not on this day. Of course we were all padded, but from the kids all the way up to the adults people were throwing some blows. I unfortunately caught one of those blows to my ribs which are still hurting. Even though my boy lost, he snapped his opponents’ head back a couple of times with some stiff punches. Saw a couple of mouthpieces get knocked out and several folks getting knocked to the floor. Good stuff 3. The lack of weapon variety is disappointing. When my boy started this about 7 years ago, I was amazed at all of the different weapons people competed with. I loved watching them all. Now granted, our numbers were a bit down this year. We had 150-175 competitors and were expecting in the 250 range. One person had an oar, but all other weapons were bo, chuks, or kama. Is this a trend or just an odd day?

We've added MMA classes (and XMA too) for those that want to do it. We've not changed our traditional classes. It's not a huge change for us since often in the past we've had guest instructors from other arts (judo, kung-fu, and some others).

I'm doing Taikyoku Shodan and Taikyoku Nidan, our first 2 beginner katas.

Thanks for all the replies folks. Some very useful info. I'd never considered the hammer/kama connection. I really enjoy watching the weapons divisions at our open tournaments so now I'll be watching for everyday things that knowledge of the weapons can be used for.

From some posts here and other sites there seems to be alot of dislike for the XMA style that is creeping into alot of martial arts weapon forms, particularly at open tournaments. I'm not really wanting to debate that, but my question is what should traditional weapons training be used for? I'm talking things like bo, kama, chuks, sai, etc. Is there a practical use for many of these? I can see where knowing bo may come in handy if there's a stick or something on hand, but how often are you going to be carrying your kama or say? I guess I can see where adding some flash to the weapon form is OK since I can't really see a good practical purpose for knowing a traditional bo form Now my son does bo and he keeps it very traditional. He has no interest in the XMA style. He's had a running "feud" with another kid on our circuit for the last couple of years. This boy does kama and adds a backflip, some twirls, etc. My son likes to point out that if the two ever battled kama vs bo that the kama kid would be getting a rather hard jab with a bo during his flashy backflips. I see his point, BUT when is that matchup ever going to occur in a real world situation?

So a young kid has transferred to our karate school from an ATA school. Our school sponsored open tournament is coming up Tonight I overhear his mom and our school's owner discussing our tournament. I hear our owner say that there will be some taekwondo practioners in the tourney but not ATA. This struck me as odd. Is ATA not taekwondo?

After two classes, I’m sore but enjoying it. I’m way out of shape so sensei is easing me into things (dead men pay no fees haha). It will be a few weeks before I am doing the full blown class and a couple of months before she’ll let me fight. It seems that I did pick up on some things from watching my son’s classes for many years. I think what I am going to really enjoy is the camaraderie of working out with a group of people. I’ve been really impressed so far about how willing everyone is to help each other.

Well after 7 years of watching my son take karate classes, I've decided to join his school. I start tomorrow. I'm almost 40 so I'm sure I'll be sore for a good while, but it will be a good sore.

My son practices kata all over the house...kitchen, hallway, even the shower. I did have to insist on him taking the bo and sword outside for practice tough.

My son is finishing his 6th year at his school. We have a nice viewing area for parents to watch the classes. I am constanyl amazed at how little attention most of the parents pay to the class. It turns into social hour, or internet browsing on the cell phone, etc. To me we (parents) should have our eyes and ears on the class to see what our kids are doing and what they need to focus on at home.

I'm also a dad of a young martial artist. The first thing that jumps out me is the $100 a week for a lesson. That seems very high. Our school does give the black belt out to kids which I know can be a touchy subject sometimes and personally I'm still not sold on the idea even though my son did earn his. I'd suggest that the belts not be your main focus. When my son started the black belt was probably his 3rd priority. We focused first on physical and mental conditioning, second on confidence, and then on belt progression. Maybe I'm not wording all this correctly, but we just didn't worry all that much over the black belt. The requirements too are different from school to school and disciplne to discipline. Kids also will progress at different rates. My boy is starting year 6 of karate and frequently talks of his future in karate. He wants to teach. He wants to master bo. He wants to learn sword. Talk to him about his other sports (baseball, football, and basketball) and he's not even sure he will play next year. Maybe a good test for you kids is this. Give them a week or 2 away from karate. See if they miss it. If not, then maybe they are just are not into it.

Our school has mixed sparring from the youngest kids all the way up to the oldest adults. The owner is a woman and she will not accept the boys taking it easy on the girls during sparring for the very reason of you never what gender an attacker will be. That was a hard hurdle for my son when he started, because we always taught him to teach women with respect. Took him a while before he was comfortable with hitting or kicking a girl in class. Same with the possible "inapprorpriate" touching. The instructors were working on self defense with the kids and he was to grab her in the chest/neck area. He was so unsure about doing it. Finally the girl he was paired up with just grabbed his hand and put it where it was supposed to be. There is a lot of culture to overcome with the sparring and touching.

I don't think this is a fair arguement to make for children not earning black belts. Its true that children are easily overpowered by adults. What you have to look at is what the child knows and can do as compared to other children his/her same age. The child vs. adult agrument isn't much different than making a professional MMA fighter vs. average adult black belt argument. The two are just too different to try to compare. But, does the inability for an average adult black belt to beat a professional MMA fighter mean that person isn't deserving of his/her rank? I don't believe so. Thoughts? I'm 38 and a pretty nice sized guy. I was sparring with my 9 year old son a couple of weeks ago and he caught me in the eye with a ridgehand. Now he didn't drop me or knock me out, but he did cause me to step back some and slow me down. This can make all the difference in the world if someone is trying to take him. Plus I have to believe he was holding back a little on old dad too.