Spodo Komodo

Is this the same as circles? I got an email about circles the other day that just didn't make any sense to me, not being a social media savvy bod.

I'm still completely in love with my Sai despite only knowing a couple of kata. I would like to learn some Jo as it is the most commonplace weapon available but I tried Aiki-Jo once and didn't really get on with it (too much flipping and rolling).

When I got my first brown belt it was a very, very dark brown, so dark in fact, that it appeared black under artificial lighting. I was awarded the belt in late november and it was the first daylight session in April when someone noticed that I was "only" a mere brown belt. I think that was when I realised that people have certain expectations which come from the mystique surrounding the black belt which can completely override what they see with their own eyes. Not that I was far off shodan standard, apart from being a bit ropey at Chinto, but that little roughness that remained to be polished was overlooked on account of the colour of my belt. Nowadays I'm quite excited at being a white belt again and looking forward to enjoying the journey rather than wishing I were further along the path.

To the OP - it is always good to have a couple of gis around the place. I like to have a minimum of two to allow for soaking/washing time. One lot of two gis seems to last longer than having one gi and then buying another if you understand what I mean. As for the stat: 1 in 40 I would think has been nearer the mark in some of the clubs I have attended, rising to possibly 1 in 400 for family clubs (kids turn over far faster than adults). Are they allowing for the McDojos promoting 1 in 4?

Fitted with motion sensors it could record the force you use to clock someone upside the noggin in a facebook/iPhone widget. Might be useful in court...

I believe it is used in the sense of the second definition given here I'm down wit da street me

When some idiot tried to wind a shunting chain around the capstan at speed my practice at avoiding leg sweeps by dropping into cat stance probably saved my lower leg being torn off at the knee.

I used to have a habit of putting my tongue between my teeth while concentrating hard. That was until I punched myself in the chin learning a new Karate kata and biting through my tongue. I didn't know I had done it until someone behind me remarked about the blood on the floor. When I trained in Iaido I managed to slip on sweaty feet while drawing my sword and cut into the web between thumb and first finger on my left hand. Not unusual for an Iaidoka you might think until I tell you I was using a bokken at the time. A sliver of wood had broken off the tip during a two-person drill leaving it about as sharp as a butter knife. Practicing forward rolls in an Aikido class I went off to one side and rolled off the mat, emerging from the roll head-first into the doorframe resulting in a bloody scalp and concussion. I should probably stick to plastic round-nosed safety scissors...

The Offspring Gong Ozric Tentacles Motorhead The Levellers The Prodigy Ivor Biggun and the Red Nosed Burglars (don't ask!)

We had a situation in the late 80s early 90s where I was a student. Basically there was some ethnic tension which manifested against students and resulted in a string of "dukings" where several students were stabbed in the thigh or the buttock as a warning to leave the area. I got caught out and suffered a substantial wound to the hip but a friend of mine was carrying a paleontology textbook and managed to use it to shield himself from the stabbing. He also managed to take the knife, still embedded in his textbook along to the Police Station as evidence. I don't know of anywhere that carrying a textbook is illegal or considered threatening and they can be good defence against a knife.

How about: Spiked mace attachment - Mashlight Blade attachment - Slashlight Chain whip attachment - Thrashlight Sharpened spoon attachment - Gashlight

I study for fun, mainly history, classics, physics, astronomy and philosophy with the Open University. I should get my second degree next year (BA in classical studies this time). In what little time there is left over after training and studying I like to fish, hike, paint, play guitar (badly) and write poetry.

Thats the way I used to do it when I was sitting on grading panels. If I had seen someone do all the required elements to the required standard before the grading and during the grading they just had a brain-freeze or something but they showed good spirit* then I would defer a pass. This meant withholding their belt until they could show me that they could perform the techniques flawlessly. If they hadn't done that by the next grading it was counted as a fail. If theyjust came into the grading and didn't really try, showed poor spirit or tried to make lame excuses then they failed outright and had to wait for the next grading to try again. I only graded up to 1st kyu (being a 1st dan at the time), I gather the dan gradings were just pass/fail. *good spirit includes keeping a cool head, civil tongue, observing dojo etiquette, not trying to cheat by hiding or copying and not throwing a tantrum afterwards.

I have used one but I was very "meh" about it. I decided not to buy one for myself but I liked the idea of having an opponent-shaped focus so I got a couple of old white t-shirts, cut them off at the armpits to make two tubes which someone more skilled than I sewed together. This was then slid over my full length heavy bag and a belt (black naturally) gi and face were drawn on. The sleeve slides up and down so that the belt height can be set at the belt height of the user and it cost absolutely nothing over the cost of a bog standard heavy bag.

I had been a Sony Playstation owner since the first console hit the UK and I had two PS2s set up with link cables to play two-player games. However since they launched the PS3 in the UK with a stupidly inflated price tag I have gone over to the Xbox and will probably not buy a PS3 or any of its descendents again.

Found it on Youtube and for your specific ryu as well!

One thing that I have found useful (especially when I lived in a tiny flat in Sheffield) is to go for a run to the local park early of a morning, do a good old kata/kihon session there and then run home before the usual parklife gets out of bed. 6-630am you can very often have the entire park to yourself with no chance of heckling by idiots. If you have to practice indoors it is often best to break things down into manageable chunks to fit the floorspace. Be creative, I used to practice my kicking against a cushion strapped to the sofa with an old karate belt.

Where I used to train (Wado Ryu Karate/Ju-Jitsu/Muso Shinden Ryu Iaido) the syllabus went: Unarmed defence against: tanto jo bokken Offensively and defensively: bo jo nunchaku sai tonfa kama bokken/shinai (iaido/kendo) Kata only: bokken/katana (iaido) naginata I think the club I am hoping to join soon is completely weaponless (Shotokan Karate).

And using the chain linked nunchaku against a sword or using it to dismount a horseman (basically trapping an arm or foot as the rider is passing). Unfortunately all these techniques are short an unspectacular so they rarely get trained compared to the fancy flipping and twirling. Its a bit like a boxer training in pre-fight press conferences and then not bothering to punch a bag or jump a rope. On the other hand there is nothing like playing with nunchaku to help you learn timing and awareness. I'm not so sure that just playing around with foam nunchaku is a bad thing, there is very little damage you can do with the safety versions and while they don't have the same feel as the real thing you do get some training value from just working out twirls and flips. After all, no-one would think of stopping someone from playing with a soccer ball which has similar training value for the feet. Obviously, playing around with a real wooden one that could knock you out, break bones or kill is a very different matter but the widely available safety foam nunchaku are pretty safe.

These probably won't mean much outside the UK but my list would look like... Current-ish: QI Have I Got news For You Mock The Week Question Time Newsnight Time Team The Culture Show All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace American Dad & Family Guy Re-runs from wayback: Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) Father Ted Red Dwarf The Avengers Black Books The IT Crowd

Nunchaku look great but don't forget to wear a cricket box, even with foam chux. A basic nunchaku twirl is pretty easy to learn, even from a book as it becomes fairly obvious after a while that there are only so many ways that you can get the thing to move. Speed and accuracy require a lot of work but the basic movements are really not that hard. Unfortunately as it has a free-swinging part it is very difficult to practice slowly, you need the momentum behind the free end to make the pass or changeover in most cases. Personally, for a fairly experienced karateka or similar I would say that the sai are a pretty easy weapon to learn the basics as they act as extensions to the normal hand movements of striking arts. Good for building forearm strength as well. The bo is a simple weapon (in a mechanical sense) but from teaching quarterstaff I know that many beginners have to stop and thing about the grip and how that limits the strike/sweep paths available. We have had more than one staff fly across the room after an ambitious strike peeled away from an incorrect grip. Tonfa are quite demanding due to the several different ways to hold them, swing them and change from one grip to the other. They are also a menace to sticky-out elbows as I have found to my cost.

Thanks Ashley, that's why I have hired professional help this time. I guess just a general upper body workout to go with my lower body rehab then.

At the moment I am not attending a club but I am hoping to try one of the two local Shotokan clubs when health allows. I have a 1st dan in Wado Ryu and I have trained in Shotokan to about 5th kyu recently but I do about half an hour of Heian Kata practice (slowly learning the Shotokan versions over the Wado ones I know too well) five times a week.

Sorry, I should have explained. The embarrassment is not that of waddling around with a few extra stones under the belt, it is that of not being able to stand up for more than half an hour at a time without my knees buckling. I had an accident which left me in a wheelchair for a short while and walking on sticks for a couple of years and it has been a long haul and many operations to get to the point where I can do any training at all. My physio/trainer has got me into a local gym and is sorting out some exercises to help my legs and back but while I am there I might as well do something about the rest of my body. I have tried to get back into the dojo prematurely on a couple of occasions in the past but without much luck so I'm not going to rush things, I would rather start Karate again in six months with a fighting chance than just put myself in the queue for more surgery.

I have joined a gym in my quest to lose two stones and rehabilitate myself to the point where I can get back to karate without embarrassment. The cardio stuff is fine but my trainer is putting together a weight-training plan for me in the next couple of days and he asked me if there was anything I particularly wanted to include regarding my karate goal. I have asked for a lot of quad/knee-stabilising to alleviate my previous injuries but I have no idea what might be useful to a karateka as I am a complete gym newbie. So for Shotokan/Wado Ryu Karate what gym exercises would you call essential (given a gym with most basic machines, free weights and medicine balls)? Cheers, I'm just off to iron my pump or something...