Lupin1

5 years (non-consecutive) Isshinryu-- 5th kyu Blue Belt

I don't think anyone was saying it's important to progress up as many dan levels as possible. I think you missed the part where I said my school only offers three levels of dan (with an "instructor" level optional for people who want to teach once they reach 3rd dan). It's more that we don't agree with your argument that the higher levels are meaningless and pointless. We're saying they do have meaning, not that it's important to get as many of them as possible. As a teaching professional, I have to say that someone who isn't committed to his or her own learning will not make a very good teacher. The best teachers love learning for the sake of learning-- a love of the pursuit of knowledge is a necessity for the skilled and passionate passing down of knowledge to others. Also, it doesn't matter whether you're focusing on learning a bunch of new black belt kata or just working on perfecting the kyu kata, you're progressing with every minute of work you put in. You won't gain a huge breadth of knowledge, but you will gain more knowledge and skill and continue to learn every day after reaching black belt. If you practice your basic movements and kata every day, no matter what belt you wear around your waist, you will be a much more experienced and skilled black belt ten years from now than you are today. And no matter what belt you wear, people will look at you and say "that guy's got x years experience, so I expect _____ of him". There's no avoiding it.

Agree. Disagree. To the nth degree. Black belt just means you're ready to start to seriously studying your art. Everything else is just getting you ready for that. What you're saying is kinda like saying "everything I want to learn about life I will have learned by the time I graduate elementary school". This is a reason for not advancing? Sounds like you're keeping yourself back to make yourself look good... Holding yourself back for fear of failure is very common. But it's not good. Again, this is sort of like saying that anything after elementary school is the same-- a middle school student is the same as a high school student is the same as a PhD. Sure, there may not all that much difference between a 1st and 2nd degree just like there isn't much difference between a yellow belt and an orange belt, but I know for a fact that our instructor level blackbelts with 30 years of experience know a heck of a lot more than our 1st degrees with 10. And if the 1st degrees could beat them at sparring (which they can't) it'd probably because the first degrees tend not to be in their late 40s and 50s like the advanced blackbelts. Higher degrees CAN be given to people to keep them happy within the organization and cater to their egos, or they can be given to signify the advancement that most certainly does occur after one reaches black belt. My school only awards up to 3rd degree, so there's no ego catering, but there most certainly is a difference in the breadth of knowledge and level of performance between our first and second degrees and our 3rd degrees, especially the instructors.

Well, in some ways the person has to adapt to the art-- you can't just show up at a Judo class and insist that Judo needs to adapt to you wanting to throw kicks and punches. But I chose that the art needs to adapt to the person because on the little things it does. If someone wanted to take karate but only had one arm, the instructor would have to adapt things for them. If someone was 80 years old, the moves would have to be adaptd for them into something that would be effective for their physial state. If someone had a bad knee, forms and kicks and things would need to be adapted for them. So I think there needs to be flexibility on both sides, but in the end, the art can't force a person to do what they're incapable of.

GeoGiant get disqualified and keelhauled for aiming a punch to the head at the last tournament he was in. Good luck, better. Keep your cool!

Oh yeah, getting my black belt in something would be a good one, too. It's kinda crazy since I started karate when I was 8 and got my 6th kyu, quit when I was 11, started again when I was 13 got back up to 6th kyu before quitting again when I was 14, started again when I was 22 finally got up to 5th kyu and now I'm going to have to leave again in a few months to do AmeriCorps. To actually get a black belt in something after all that would be AWESOME but seeing as how I don't plan on staying in one place for more than a few years at a time for the foreseeable future, I don't see it happening.

I want to fight someone MMA style. Huah!

Mmmmm licking up those tasty morsels of kata. Yum.

We use the black belt with a white and red side for renshi, but that's the only marking we use and the two instructors who wear their renshi belt wear black side out.

I'm missing something with that analogy.

Well, I grew up in the Harry Potter generation, so I still have a special place in my heart for those books and I have to admit I did get into the Twilight craze. And being a teacher I love a lot of kid's novels, particularly Where the Red Fern Grows and My Side of the Mountain. My favorite adult novels tend to be war stories-- All Quiet on the Western Front, The Expendables, and The Lords of Discipline are some of my favorites.

When I first started reading I thought you meant something completely different by "the proof is on the floor". I had this image in my head of some guy being disrespectful and you dropping him and turning to everyone else and saying "I don't tolerate X in my dojo-- the proof is on the floor" pointing to the guy laying on the floor.

Haha. When I was Germany for three weeks with an exchange program (so living with a German family and going to a German school and stuff) everyone in our group found ourselves speaking English with a German accent just because it seemed to help the older Germans understand it better if we didn't know the German for something (since they knew better English thn we knew German). It's funny how that works.

Yeah, I used to have those ideas when I was little. At my school we have two white instructors and an instructor of Korean descent (but born and raised American) and when I was little I was always so excited when the Korean instructor taught me things just because I thought he was the best since he was asian even though he'd been training the least amount of time of the three instructors. I think it was movies and tv that gave me that idea. Now that I'm older and look at the world a little differently, he's the instructor I least like working with because he doesn't have the patience and good way of explaining things of our senior instructor and he doesn't have the subtle way of treating me like "one of the guys" (which I LOVE) that our 2nd instructor has. So I think for it was mostly youthful ignorance, but I blame Hollywood.

Yeah, you gotta be careful with that one. There's this one black belt in our class who likes to ask that question a lot, even when it's something tha would work and he's just trying to sound smarter than the sensei by asking it. And he gets a free, personal demonstration as an answer to his question. But then we've got a green belt who was a Marine with all their combat training who asks the same question but is more careful with it, and he usually gets an actual answer because usually he's right that the move as practiced is just a drill and probably wouldn't work in real life.

Well we're not doing any throwing or sweeping legs or anything. It's more "twist your arm or your body until you have to go down backwards and roll out of it", so really I control the speed of the fall, but I just can't make myself go down backwards.

Well that's the thing-- technically we're not supposed to start uki training (which includes the breakfalls) until green belt, and I'm only a blue belt (one below green). It's just our class is so small and some people are old and can't go down, so in order for everyone to get to practice, I have to be used as uki sometimes even though I'm technically not there yet. Lately he's been modifying moves so that we don't actually take the person down, but he's still trying every so often to get me to go down and telling me to just "tuck my chin and go for the ride" but for some reason it's just starting to scare me more and more. I think I may suggest to him for me to learn the breakfalls if he wants me to be uki for takedowns and I REALLY want to learn on the mats first (one of the things that scares me is that we practice takedowns on the hard floor instead of on the mats). I guess I just need to talk to him about it. Or maybe I'll just go out in the backyard and fall on the grass until I get used to it...

idk... one of our instructors wears his belt with "tae kwon do" embroidered on it all the time. No one really thinks much of it. But he never wears a dobok or any tae kwon do patches on his uniform or anything. That would be disrespectful. But the belt thing, for some reason, isn't seen as disrespectful-- it's just a black belt.

I think it would be disrespectful. Could you take the patch off?

I wouldn't use one until you're done growing (which for guys is around 20-22). But if you're just going off websites, you shouldn't use one anyway. You need someone to show you in person how to use it properly or else you'll hurt yourself no matter what age you are.

So we've been working on a lot of take down things at my school, and although I'm still not up to the level where they generally expect people to start being a good uki, they're still starting to expect be to be able to just tuck my chin and go down when people are practicing take downs with me. The problem is, I can't make myself do it. I always get really scared for some reason and I try to dance my way out of going down or I move my foot to try to soften the impact (which makes me land on my foot, which could hurt it). I just can't seem to make myself just go down, especially on my back. Any advice?

Yeah. I would LOVE to build a makiwara to work with while I'm out away from my school, but I have no one to teach me how to work with one and I'd probably hurt myself. I'm considering just getting one of those Bob punching dummy things, but it's not the same.

That's what my sensei tells us-- that the makiwara is only dangerous when people do it wrong.

Yes well, I don't believe anyone should use the title Grand Master unless they've been dead 50 years. Just proves everyone has different opinions.

Done.