CheekyMusician

Sounds like a good place. I was going to sign up but I don't have a paid for email addie

I used to post on ShotokanPlanet forums, but stopped after I found these. I post on the https://www.therfs.com forums (if you're visiting and want to skip straight to the forums then the address is https://www.therfs.com/forums/index.php ) I'm Stratocaster on those forums and post mainly in general discussion.

I've got a rubbish Jim Deacon electric that I think is in the attic (I don't actually know..I never play it). I've got a quite an alright Jim Deacon semi-acoustic, but my real baby is my spanish/classical guitar. Its mainly spanish/classical style pieces I play, so I need a good guitar for that. I actually got this guitar when I was 9 (used one of my mum's old steel string guitars when I started to learn at 7 and got to pick a guitar for my Christmas when I was 9). I must have spent about 4 hours in the shop trying to pick my perfect guitar, and almost 9 years on I still love it, so I guess I made a good choice

Balance comes with experience. I'm sure everyone has lost their balance when trying to do a kick. I've only been doing martial arts for a year, but I've found my balance has improved significantly. When I first started even my low kicks were wobbly. When I started to get a bit more adventurous and tried high kicks, I sometimes toppled over. Yeah, it is embarrassing, but everyone else will probably have done it at some stage. Just keep practicing, and without even thinking about it, you'll find your balance has improved.

I made my loft into a training space for me to use, but its quite small so there's not room for much up there. I've only got some random excercise equipment and a punch bag. I've heard that wall-mounted makiwaras aren't much good, but I wouldn't know from experience. I think it'd probably be best to make a proper makiwara if you wanted to use one, but I wouldn't advise starting to condition your hands using makiwara while you're only 15. As for sit-ups and squats, sit-ups wont be very effective if you are overweight. If you aren't overweight, then they will tone up your abs, but I think its the kind of thing that you'll have to experiment with yourself to find out what is the best number to do. Even doing a few sit-ups and squats everyday without fail is better than doing a huge number once in a blue moon.

I think your club sounds like they're raising money for a good reason. They wont to get you to Greece and they need money to do that, so no, I don't think they sound like a McDojo. Lots of clubs (not just martial arts clubs) do bag packs to raise money. I used to do them with a band I was in. Don't be embarrassed...be proud of the club your raising money for!

We had two kids like that in the karate club I go to too. Our sensei is quite a big, intimidating guy and he lost his temper with these kids quite a few times. It would've scared me if he'd yelled at me like that, but the kids didn't seem to care too much. He did make them sit out a few times and watch the class from the side and wouldn't let them stand up or participate. He had two adults from the class take a break and one stand with one kid over one end of the hall, and one stand with the other kid at the opposite end of the hall. The kids soon got bored and frustrated when they weren't able to take part and they didn't have each other to carry on with, and when they were allowed to participate again, they behaved a little bit better. You could always speak to their parents as a last resort too. Maybe say something like, "Your child isn't behaving in class, and we're worried he is going to get injured or another child is going to get injured. If he doesn't start to behave in the next few weeks we'll have to ask you to take him out of the class." Or maybe even have some kind of 'behaviour time-table'. Each day mark on a sheet of paper how well they behaved or how badly they behaved and get their parents to read and sign it every week. Maybe stop them from participating in a certain part of the class if their behaviour isn't up to scratch eg. if their favourite activity is hitting pads, ban them from hitting pads if they've behaved badly that lesson. Maybe you could work it on a point system eg. every lesson the kids start with 5 points and everytime they misbehave, they get a point taken off, and if they lose all 5 points then they don't get to participate in the class/participate in their favourite activity.

Well I didn't start karate 'cause my friend joined (although when I decided to start I managed to convince some friends to come along with me 'cause I was too much of a wimp to go myself...they all only lasted a few weeks each, though, so I ended up just having to tough it out on my own). If your friend has joined and is enjoying it, it wont do you any harm to go along and see what the class is like. You have an advantage to another beginner student in that you have a friend who will be there with you and can prepare you for that class before you go. Good luck!

I think to really excel at anything you have to be able to put aside that amount of time towards it. Unfortunately, in this day of age, it never happens. We're all too busy with school or work, and our culture expects us all to be a jack of all trades, able to put our hand to anything. But as they say, a jack of all trades is master of none. One of my ex-music teachers was an orchestral musician and he was ALWAYS practicing. He carried his instrument around with him everywhere and whenever he got a spare few minutes, he practiced. And I really mean a spare few minutes. If you were talking to him, and went into the next room to find a book or get your jacket etc., he would take his instrument out of the case and practice for the whole 30 seconds you were away. He once watched him during a lunch break. I've never seen a man wolf down a lunch so quickly in my life...he just wanted to get lunch over so he could get back to practicing. I wish I had that dedication and commitment to my music or to my martial arts. Unfortunately, I don't.

Thanks people!

I pay £2.50 per class. I quite like it that way. We just train in a sports hall, so we're just paying to cover the costs of that mainly. I doubt that my sensei will be building an extension on his house with any profits I went to Aikido for a while, and the class there was a monthly payment type of thing. It was cheap, but it was annoying, 'cause I felt that if you were ever going to miss the first week of the month (through illness or whatever) that everyone in the club would think you were trying to get out of paying for that month.

Well you probably wouldn't be expected to face the grading if you weren't ready for it, so keep that in mind and don't get too nervous. In my class we usually get walked through our grading a few times in the weeks coming up to the grading and I got walked through mine before I actually done it too last time (but that might have just been because the assistant instructor had some spare time before my sensei graded me and just took pity on me ) If you're uncertain of what'll be in it, ask your instructor. They shouldn't tell you you're going to sit a test without telling you what will be in it, and they'll probably be more than happy to talk you through it all before the grading.

I seen a picture of Kanazawa Sensei performing mawashi geri. He had has toes splayed out in the picture (all his toes were pulled apart from one another with gaps in between the toes). Does anyone else do mawashi geri this way? I've never seen it being performed like this before, but I'm still a beginner, so any advice on this would be appreciated.

Unluckilly I don't get the opportunity to take it at school or anywhere The only place I could have studied it was at Uni after the summer, but the only uni that did it was quite far away, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to come out of Uni with a Japanese degree. I use websites for my kanji, but I'm going to try and go to a good bookshop and have a look for a kanji book.

Personally the minute I was asked for an £80 sign-up fee without seeing a class I would have started to doubt this guy. My karate club only charges £2.50 a lesson, and club membership is low too (if I remember right its about £7 per year). We do have to pay for insurance cover (I think its about £25/£30, but I can't remember for sure), but we certainly don't have to pay for our insurance cover or club membership until we've been attending the club for quite a few months and are sure we want to continue with it. This guy sounds like a bit of a cowboy, and if the classes look messy and students who are having difficulty are being ignored, then I think you should take your son out of there before he gets hurt, regardless of what style the club trains in.

Same here. I've started to teach myself, but pronunciation's hard. I wish I knew a Japanese native to tell me if my pronunciation's all wrong or not.

You're on the same boat as me, except mine is a Ficus Retusa.

Well I'm not sure, but I imagine it could do you some damage. Especially doing Muay Thai at such a young age. Maybe you should ask your doctor or martial arts instructors what they think.

Oh yeah, that happens!

My side kicks are terrible! I'd to practice them with one of my instructors the other week and every time I kicked him he ended up standing just where he was and I fell over! I don't think its supposed to work that way I think that was probably 'cause I didn't want to hurt him, though, 'cause I kept thinking that if I actually whacked him in the stomach that I would squash his intestines or something and do him damage. And he's an awful nice man...I don't want to squash his internal organs!!

Well I doubt that your sensei would be testing you if you weren't prepared for it, so he must have watched you and thought you knew enough. I think I'd actually prefer it if my test was sprung on me like that. That sort of happened with my last test. I talked myself out of going to the actual official test (too scared....I'm such a wimp), and the next week one of my instructors said that he was quite angry that I hadn't tested because I knew the stuff and was just chickening out. He said he was going to have a word with my sensei and arrange the test for another day, but I didn't think that he would. I reckoned he'd just forget. Anyway, the next week my sensei was at the class, but this instructor wasn't, and the week after that the instructor was there but the sensei wasn't, so I was pretty sure that after a month of classes with my test not being done, they'd just leave it. Nope. The next week they were both there, but I wasn't really expecting it when one of them just grabbed me and made me go into a space on my own and prepare for my test. It was better that way....a bit more painless. I didn't have to sit and get all nervous and worked up before class. It was just sprung on me, and was over before I knew it. Even if the worst comes to the worst and you fail, it is by no means the end of the world. You can retest some other time. If you really don't feel comfortable doing surprize tests, its maybe best that you just tell your Sensei this and see what he says.

I've heard some dojos don't allow their male students to wear T-shirts, so as someone else already said, check that with your Sensei. If you are allowed to, wear it if that's what you feel comfortable with. I wear a T-shirt under my gi, but it does make you sweat buckets and you feel like your training in a sauna, but I'd rather that than show off my chest to all the guys (my gi has a habit of falling semi-open all the time even though I tie it shut at both sides and have my belt wrapped round it ) Maybe one day I'll lose a tonne of weight and be the perfect supermodel figure and then I wont care if I show off my chest! I'd definately advise the cup, though. As everyone else has said, its just too easy to get whacked down there. I mean I'm sure you don't want to walk around like John Wayne for the rest of your life.

*Goes all girly* Awwwwww!! You were a very cute kiddiewink!

Well my martial arts ambition is just to keep on training, and maybe go to Japan one day to train (if I could ever afford it). But as for life in general...I'm hoping to leave Uni and fall into a decent job (considering I'm studying archaeology at Uni, this might never happen, but I can dream ), and I'm seriously considering pursuing ministry in one way or other later on in life. I was actually going to try and train for the ministry straight after leaving school, but decided on studying archaeology instead and giving myself some more time to grow spiritually before I devote my life to a career like that.

Oh yes, I agree! lol.