Lupin1

That's a good point, but I think if I haven't stopped training yet I'm not going to. I moved over 2,000 miles away from my dojo but I'm still training on my own and when I'm home on school breaks. I think it'll take me a little longer to advance this way, but I already have gone up one belt using this method and if I keep training with the intensity I have been, I think I'll definitely make brown within a year. And my instructor told me he did have one other people get all the way up to black belt training the way I am-- it just took awhile. So we'll see.

Now I'm curious, BDPulver. I'm part of an Isshinryu class that's not affiliated with any association but my instructor studied with Tom Lewis and Charles Murray, both of whom studied with Tatsuo Shimabuku in Okinawa. Would your school recognize my rank? I mean, I guess it's a little easier with our style than it would be with Taekwondo or Shotokan or something like that because our lineages still tend to be very short (for example, I'm only two instructors removed from Shimabuku-- my instructor's instructors studied directly with him), but do we tend to recoqnize eachother's ranks more because of that?

Pretty much every style has its own group of kata. There's a lot of overlap, especially in the Okinawan styles (several styles have a version of Seiunchin, for example), but I'm not sure how much overlap there'd be between Taekwondo and Shotokan. I doubt there would be much.

I left for 10 years. I didn't get that high (I was a 6th kyu when I left when I was 12-- that's about four years of training), so I didn't have as much to work back up to. I rejoined in the same club but in the adult class (which is pretty different) when I was 22 and it took me only about three months to get back up to 6th kyu. I too remembered most of the kata, so it was just a matter of fixing everything I'd remembered wrong and polishing up my technique back to 6th kyu level. It wasn't that bad going back into it from a social standpoint mostly because I was going back to the same club and I knew all be two or three people from when I was little (of course it was a little weird training with the people who used to be my teachers. I still can't break the habit of calling them "Mr. Soandso" while everyone else calls them by their first name). So it's a little different for me, but you'll make friends and fit right in after a month or two. So, anyway. It's about a year and a month after restarting for me and I've continued moving ahead again and have worked my way up to 4th kyu. And that's my story.

I don't think it really has anything to do with the government. It's more the MMA associations who make up the rules.

I've seen a lot of posts on the internet lately (not necessarily on this forum) where people talk about buying their black belt a few years before they actually get it and keeping it where they can see it (in a training room in their house, for instance) as motivation. What do you guys think of this practice? I'm not even considering buying myself a black belt because I'm a little too far off for that, plus I think our instructor buys us our first black belt as a gift, but I am considering buying myself a brown belt, which is my next belt. I want to get a good quality one since I'll likely be a brown belt for several, or maybe more than several, years, so I was thinking of buying a nice quality eosin belt to display in my practice room in my house as motivation but I'm not sure how proper it is to buy a belt before you earn it. I wouldn't be wearing it around or anything (although I have to admit, I'll probably try it on in front of a mirror just to see how it looks. Even more motivation, right? ), but I'm not sure if some people would consider that presumptuous or anything. Thoughts?

Congraaaaaaatulations!

There were a lot of people moving their hands around while kicking, but the instructor was calling them out on it and telling them to stop "trying to fly away" and keep their hands in position, so they're good on that one. Their black belts were ok. There weren't too many of them and no ridiculously young ones. They weren't flapping all over the place, although I have to say I'm not all that impressed with their kata (there was no strength to the movements or any sense of purpose to them-- they looked like they were just dancing from position to position). Pretty much they're not amazing but not as horrible as some black belts I've seen. Pretty good for a McDojo (and I am convinced this school is a McDojo. But it's the only martial arts school in a two hour drive, so I'm willing to put up with it while remembering to take everything with a grain of salt). I haven't noticed anything with that yet. I've been doing the roudhouse kick the way I've been taught (which is rotating the front foot) and no one's said anything to me about it. I'll try to watch what everyone else is doing more closely tomorrow. So yeah, like I said, I'm convinced this school is a McDojo and I'm not expecting to learn much effective martial arts from it. We were doing partner work the other day and we were doing monkey techniques where the attacker would just stick a punch out there six inches from their partner and the partner would practice blocks against it while the other people just moved their arm back into position after each block for the person to do the next one. How you learn effect blocks that way, I have no idea. I didn't say anything about it, but when the instructor was teaching me the sequence her exact words were "Doesn't that look cool?". So, yeah. I'm not too impressed with the school, but I'm doing it mainly for the exercise and I'm sure I will get at least something out of it-- I'm hoping to get better at kicking (they are fairly decent at that) and hopefully I'll learn some sparring (my Isshinryu school doesn't spar and I've always wanted to try it).

I voted "no" although I'm leaning a bit closer to maybe. I like being able to tell almost exactly where someone is just by looking at their waist and at my old class the ranking process is slow enough that we didn't have the annoyance of having to shell out money for a new belt every three months. I think I might also get a little frustrated staying the same for so long (I've been training Isshinryu for 5 years and I'm still one shy of brown belt, and I think 5 years at white belt would be frustrating), but that might just be because I'm not used to it. I think White, Green, Brown, Black would be a lot more attractive to me.

That's a very good point. I hope I don't get like that. I do find myself questioning some of their techniques, but I haven't said anything aloud about it. My main problem right now seems to be almost the opposite-- remembering I'm NOT like a normal white belt. Being in an unfamilar place doing unfamiliar techniques or using unfamiliar terms for techniques I already know certainly makes me feel like a white belt. But then we were doing some partner work and they put me with a yellow belt. I'm used to being the lowest ranking in my class at home even though I'm a 4th kyu, so I'm used to working entirely with brown and black belts, so I think I was going a little hard on the yellow belt without realizing it. I sort of assumed he should be better than me because he's a yellow belt while I was only on my second TKD lesson while I should have realized he's JUST a yellow belt and not the brown and black belts I'm use to working with. That's going to take some getting used to. There are a lot of low ranking students in the class (completely different than my class at home which has no one who's been training for less than five years) and I'm going to have to realize that while they're a lot better than me at TKD, they're still just getting started in the martial arts while I've got 5 years experience and so I can't go too hard on them at partner work or get frustrated if they're not able to go hard enough with me. It'll be a tricky balance.

Well, at the aikido class I went to on Thursday (which was only my 3rd class) the teacher talked a lot about being fluid. It reminded me almost of water bending on Avatar: The Last Airbender. Pretty much when the person punched us, we used their energy to guide them forward more until they were off balance before pulling them back the other direction and taking them down. We we were doing this "forward/backward" thing we didn't step at all after the initial stepping to the side of the person-- we just sort of leaned our bodies with their momentum and then opposite of it until at the last second where we stepped backwards for the take down. So it was very fluid.

My friend is teaching me some Aikido and she's pointed out several times that I step too much. We concentrate a lot on stepping at my Isshinryu school and so for me stepping to move someone seems natural, whereas the move she wanted me to do at the time I wasn't supposed to step as much. But then I've noticed the same thing in TaekwonDo-- I want to step into attacks and to line up kicks and stuff whereas they just want to stand there and fire them off rapid fire. So idk. I guess it depends on the style.

I put "other". I was 7 when my mom put me on the waiting list to get into the class (8 when I actually got in) and I was absolutely convinced that if I learned karate Zordon would pick me to be the next Power Ranger (the orange ranger).

So I know this is a complete 180 from what most people on here usually talk about when starting at a new school, but the TKD school I just signed up for tonight (I decided to go for it for at least a month) actually wants me to wear my green belt I got in Isshinryu until I work my way up to their green belt (which, thankfully, is about half the rank ours is). I'll do it, of course-- it's what they want and it'll save me money not having to buy any belts for the first year or so, but there are a few reasons I'm disappointed. -- I'm a little nervous of what the others in the class will think. All the people with belts less than green might be upset that someone coming in off the street is wearing a higher belt than them and the fact that I'm currently horrible at kicking and TKD is mostly about the kicks might make my green belt a joke. -- I kind of wish I could go up the ranks again. It's fun to get a new belt and I think it would be fun to start from white and go up the ladder again. Plus then at least I'd know where I stand. I've been in "belt limbo" before where I wore a belt that didn't match my skill (when I restarted Isshinryu I had to wear a white belt until I got back up to 6th kyu, so I had a white belt on even though my skills were a bit higher than that) and it's annoying to not really know which level you're at (and yes, I know the orignial karate system didn't even have belts and many still have only three or four and so that it's common, but I have a bad habit of labeling myself as much as I can, and the belt around my waist helps feed that probably harmful addiction. -- The most important reason (jk)-- They have black uniforms and the light colored belts (white, yellow and orange) look so super awesomely cool with black uniforms but I don't get to wear those cool brightly colored belts.

Haha. My instructor had us try that once just for us to see exactly how poorly we knew the kata. I thought it was funny that I, the lowest ranking in the class, was the best at it-- probably because the others have gotten so used to the kata they don't think about them much while I still need to think about each move. It is very hard. And for the more advanced (my instructor wouldn't even let me try this)-- try doing the kata backwards.

The class I'm looking at joining (I'm definitely signing up for the first month, we'll see after that) has pretty much all those bullet points and also says "improved self-defense skills". I'm not sure how much actual self-defense I'll learn in it, though. I'm mostly just taking it for the exercise... I think I'll relay on my Isshinryu class to teach me actual martial arts and the Taekwondo class for getting me into shape.

I find the kitchen has a lot of room, too, although I have a spare room in my house that is completely empty that I've sort of turned into my personal "dojo". It's a little small, so I still need to motify some of the kata with lots of huge stepping, but for most of them it's perfect. Other than that, I usually do different kata in different rooms depending on what kind of space I need for the way the kata moves.

So I know I told all of you this past summer that the only martial arts schools out here were TKD and I wasn't sure about it, but I finally got up the motivation to drive the 40 minutes each way over to check out the school tonight. It was.... interesting... My first impression was that it wasn't a very quality school. All we did for the entire 45 minutes was cardio stuff. There wasn't much attention paid to the technique as long as you did it fast. It was an amazing workout and being out of shape the way I am, part of me wants to join for the work out alone and I miss having people to train with regularly. But I'm still not sure. They said they mix it up between cardio workouts, kata, sparring, and technique practice, so maybe I shouldn't judge it yet and they have a good enough spread among the belts that I can tell it's not a belt factory, but some things still set off the alarms in my head-- the head instructor had a black belt with pink embroidering, they actually yelled the word "kiai" when they kiai-ed and did it for every technique, they had a little store that had everything you could want with their logo on it, etc. So I'm torn. I'll definitely go back Wednesday and Friday since I have a week "free trial" before I have to commit to anything and even if I do decide to go further, there's no contracts, so I can pay my $60 a month and quit whenever, but it's just completely different from what I'm used to and I can see a lot of flaws in it. I guess my biggest question I have to answer is if it's worth driving the 40 miles each way three times a week. Edit-- Oh, and they also wore gis instead of doboks, which I thought was a little funny, but I don't know enough about TKD to be able to make any judgments from it. Maybe it's normal...

I thought it'd be interesting to see how many of us stuck to these goals and see if anyone has any for 2011. This was mine: So it's a year later and I am still sticking with it, although where I'm living right now means I only get to go to classes in the summer and I got in one training session while home for Christmas, but I practice my butt off on my own. And I actually exceeded my goal for my belt. Not only did I get to blue belt, but I got my green belt last week-- one higher. For 2011-- Again, I want to still be sticking with it this time next year, even if it is mostly practice by myself with classes only when I'm home. I also want to learn a bit more Aikido. I'm joining in with the middle school elective class once a week and hopefully I can keep that up, but I'd like to work with my friend, who teaches that class, a few times on our own without the 12 year olds. My main goal with that is to learn to be a good uke. It's fun to learn how to put someone on the ground, but I really need to learn to not be afraid of being put on the ground myself. As for my belt-- it would be nice to be a brown belt by 2012, but with the low frequency of my attending class, I can't really see it happening, so I won't make a hard and fast goal out of it, it'll just be my moon to shoot for (you know the cliche-- even if I miss, hopefully I'll land among the stars).

We don't have tests. We get promoted when the instructor thinks we're ready. Usually we can tell we're getting close when he starts teaching us the first form for the next belt. After that he waits for a class when you put everything you've got into it and go above and beyond and he chooses that class to promote you, so you sort of have to realize yourself that you're ready and start making that outstanding effort during class (same way you'd put forth a bit of extra effort during a formal test) so that he realizes you really want it. Our school is completely free, so we don't have any fees or anything. Most of the time we don't even have to pay for our own colored belts as long as we don't mind giving them back when we're done with them (and they have our size, of course, which is usually no problem for the kids but a big problem for the adults. Right now I'm wearing a belt a size too small because they didn't have my size, but it's a beautiful, well broken in belt and though part of me wants to order one that fits online, the other part of me wants to put up with a slightly short belt for the awesome feeling of wearing one that's dirty and worn out and even starting to show white in some parts even though I've only been this rank for a week. It's cool).

I still don't know. My life has been pretty bad a few times and even years later I'm having trouble finding any good in several things that have affected my life. And when you think about children living in poverty or being abused or anyone being abused and alone, which many people are, life really can be bad sometimes. I agree that the bad times are necessary to appreciate the good times (one of my new favorite sayings is "if you want rainbows, you're going to have to put up with the rain"), but that doesn't change the fact that they are bad times and for some people, life is mostly rain with very few rainbows.

Idk. I don't think there's anything wrong with acknowledging the fact that sometimes life stinks. Even if you do keep a positive attitude, sometimes life will be very hard and not good at all. But you can get through it if you realize that nothing lasts forever and no matter how bad things are, they can get better with hard work, intelligent actions, and persistance.

Idk. Ignorance and arrogance are two very different things. Usually one is ignorant through no fault of their own and ignorance does not always or even usually go along with arrogance. Ignorance is just a lack of knowledge.

Oh yeah! Congratulations!

It has to do with how many posts you have. If it reflected one's actual belt, I would have a pretty interesting one right now.