evergrey

OSU, thanks!

Haha, I don't remember anymore. How about you tell me how things are going for you these days? :}

OSU, Sosai was quite elderly when photos of him in a folding chair instead of seiza started to appear. With how my knees are already, I sure don't blame him for choosing to do that in the twilight years of his life. I've heard that kata was not Oyama's strong suit at all, but he felt it was important, and still made changes to the bunkai. Of course, everyone's top instructors claim that they train the most true, pure Kyokushin kata. Heh! I know some that my school does are a bit different from what a lot of other schools do, but the bunkai behind them makes sense to me, so... *shrugs* I love kata for a number of reasons, but when it comes to Kyokushin, solid kihon and kumite are more important to me. OSU

OSU! Thank you, Bob! Next step (instructors and knee willing) is green belt. I miss our chats too, did you not get my last e-mail? @Shorikid, I'm honored by the thought! In Kyokushin though, I personally wouldn't feel comfortable selling a shirt with the kanji on it for profit, not unless the Oyamas approved it. @wastelander, thank you! I am proud of that- did it freehand, first time ever, heh! Someone who was close to Sosai said it was well done, so double proud! @Deckerdude, thank you! OSU!

Have never seen a dojo storm, though I've heard of them, and have joked with friends about dojo storming some scammers. Of course I wouldn't do it- my instructors would kill me! I know that a challenge means something different and a lot more serious to my Shihan, who is very old school, than the head instructor at my dojo, though he says instead of having them fight all the way down the line, he will instead ask them to leave, and if they do not, he will defend his students himself, because their safety is his responsibility, and he sure isn't afraid to use weapons to ensure that safety. He's a law enforcement officer, so his approach is going to perhaps be a bit different, heh! I challenged my Sensei, before he was my Sensei. He won. A month later, I became his student. I really didn't realize just what I was doing when I challenged him, though, haha! OSU

OSU! I think there is one other kata my dojo does that doesn't end in the same place as the others... and perhaps some "advanced" kata where one steps forward instead of back at the end, but my dojo's version of Kyokushin katas can be a bit different. It has something to do with when they were taught and worked out with Sosai, which was way way way back in the early years, some before Kyokushin was even founded, heh! The truth is, I always thirst for knowledge, not just "what" and "how" but also "why." This gets me in trouble sometimes, haha! But I am ever true to my nature anyway. If I can't find out one way, I'll endeavor to find out another! I'm really glad my instructors and other Kyokushin friends tolerate my incessant inquisitiveness. My Shihan has called me a thorn in his side. And enjoyable. So one day I said to him, "well, I'm glad I'm an enjoyable thorn in your side!" He paused a moment and said "that's... a pretty accurate way of putting it." LOL! OSU!

Just be certain to drain it and let it cool a bit first.

Salty udon?

There are ignorant people... in every style. There are people who turn their noses up at all other styles... in every style. There are people who claim that only their style is effective on the street, or deadly.... in every style. Sense a pattern? The pattern is that some people don't do their homework, some people get really cocky, and some people forget one important idea- shut up and train. Karate doesn't make you stupid. Neither does Muay Thai or MMA. My dojo is a karate dojo. The serious fighters cross train, usually in BJJ. There is also a lot of talk in our dojo about practical application of technique for self-defense, as well as some demonstration and (carefully controlled) practice of things that could and should never be used in a tournament, but should be used for self-defense. Our dojo is run and owned by a police officer, and we are a full contact knockdown style. Perhaps that makes a difference... but please do not paint all karateka with the same brush.

OSU, Haha, after I asked around all over the place, I told my Shihan that it seemed that he didn't actually tell anyone. Not anyone I could get a hold of, not even his last uchi deshi, not even his translator of many years. My Shihan, at the end of class when we were all lined up, told us that he himself asked Sosai Oyama why he changed the seiza position. Oyama didn't tell him. He said he made the mistake of asking again. He said that the result of asking again was something he didn't like emotionally or physically. So he went to his own instructor, who said "Go ask Oyama." He said that then he got the picture and didn't ask again. His point was to not constantly question one's instructors or babble away, but to keep quiet, train, and learn. Heh. OSU!

OSU, So I have a bit of a problem. See, the dogi is designed for an athletic, fit male. I am a rotund female. As such, my gi top very quickly becomes uhm... untidy. I had been wearing a tank top underneath my gi, but my Shihan was still complaining. http://www.niceboots.org/~evergrey/Kyokushin/0112/giception1.jpg I decided I had to go deeper. I decided I had to go into.... GICEPTION! http://www.niceboots.org/~evergrey/Kyokushin/0112/giception2.jpg In order to do this, I created a gi-shirt. The line work for the wraparound part is not so great, but I'm actually pretty proud of the kanji. Heh. The Kyokushin community had something of a pool going. Would this get a laugh? Would I get push-ups? A lecture in the office? All of the above, with the laugh being a secret one between instructors? Class finally started back up today, and as it turns out, the reactions were as follows: Primary Sensei: laughs and a thumbs up. Head instructor at my dojo: facepalm, mock uraken to my head, quiet chuckle. Shihan: "That's... let me see that kanji. Where did you get that? You made it? I'm bringing in a shirt, make me one." Man, I love my dojo. [/img]

OSU, for me it would be a healthy body, healed of all injuries, and a way to actually safely lose weight with my messed up system. Money galore might be nice too. The training is all up to me to practice anyway, heh!

I use whatever works. That's generally more practical stuff. MAYBE you could get something flashy to work... but in the name of all that's holy, DO NOT try one of those stupid flying wheel kicks where you end up on the ground even if you knock your opponent down, and end up on the ground looking like an idiot, and presenting your back and neck to be stomped if you miss. Honestly I don't think they should be a part of tournaments either, because the landing is so dumb. Anyway, if he's rocked, why not elbow strike him and then knee him in the head? Something like that. Stomp his knee, punch his throat... I wouldn't fight like I would at a Kyokushin tournament, and those tend to not be all that flashy, even.

Heal from my injuries, strengthen my joints so that I have a better chance at not being re-injured, get better at the basics, and hopefully by the end of the year be seriously training for full contact bareknuckle knockdown tournament fighting. OH, and not get in trouble as much. Haha. Not sure if that one is a realistic goal, however.

OSU! Hi there! My name's Ev. I'm seriously overweight, I have several chronic injuries, and I am 32 years old. I started training in Kyokushin at the age of 30. Started training in a dojo at the age of 31. Let me tell you, I felt horribly self-conscious. Occasionally I still do! Being unable to do everything that most of the others can do, that's tough. Believe me, I know. I did my time as the lowest ranked person, with 14 year old kids outranking me in class. I often felt pathetic. Thing is, my journey is my own. Nobody else has walked in my exact shoes. Nobody else is coming from the same place I'm coming from. Same for you. You might think, "other people have more natural talent, so maybe this isn't for me." Thing is, natural talent only gets you so far. There are a lot of people with natural talent who don't put any effort or determination into their training. They eventually get left behind, believe me. Or they don't have the willpower and drive to keep going, so they eventually wash out. If you decide you really, REALLY want this, if you have that fire, that spirit inside of you, that determination, you can get there. You can go farther. Like others have said, everyone is a beginner at some point. Everyone remembers what it's like. Hopefully your dojo has a healthy, supportive atmosphere. In my dojo, we are all friends and family, and we are all there to support one another. I hope that your higher-ranked peers are doing the same? You will be pushed, you will be corrected, and you will sometimes fail. Failing is a great teacher. It can teach you more than constant success. It's better to have a bit of both. Just, when you fail, leave the failure behind you and keep the lesson you learned from it with you. Ask yourself, "how can I overcome that?" If you aren't sure, ask your Sensei. A good Sensei will not resent politely worded questions before or after class, if he or she has time. Remember that it will get better, with practice. It might take more time than some others, or it might take less... but you WILL, if you stick to it, accomplish things. Those accomplishments, those successes, will be yours, and no one else's. No one will be able to take them away from you. You will be able to look at them and take pride in them, knowing that you accomplished those things because YOU did the work and YOU stuck to it. So, do not compare yourself to others, except to learn from them, and to perhaps set some goals for yourself. Here, how about this- give yourself a short-term goal, and a long-term goal. More, if you want. For example, my goals are as follows, from short term to long term. 1. Recover from my ACL replacement (cadaver graft, whoohoo!) 2. Strengthen and condition my body. This is an ongoing goal with no end. 3. Greatly improve my kihon. 4. Greatly improve my kumite. Both 3 and 4 can only be done with long, hard months of practice. 5. Enter and fight in full contact, bare knuckle knockdown tournaments. I might need to do a bit of semi-contact to start. Always fight to win, but accept that it might be some time before I can start winning. Do the best I can, though, always. 6. Become an instructor, and pass along the gift of knowledge that my instructors gave to me. Now these do not have to be your goals, of course, but what you should note is that some are short term, some are long term, and all are about my won journey in the martial arts, my own accomplishments. And remember, you have my respect, and the respect of many others here, for one simple reason- you're stepping out on the mat. It's so much easier for people to just not ever bother to try, or to take a couple classes and give up. When you start your journey doesn't matter. Where you ARE on your journey doesn't matter. What matters is that you are walking the path, and to that, I bow and say, OSU!

Once, my horsemanship mentor was working some cattle (nice big horns on those suckers) and his awesome cutting mare zigged when he expected her to zag. I was sure I was going to have to wade in there and pull his broken body out of the mass of milling bovines, but he hung on like a Cossack, clinging to the horn with one hand, SIDEWAYS alongside the mare, while she ran around bucking. I don't know how he managed it, LOL! He got back up on her, got bucked onto her neck, and then thrown back into the saddle. Really impressive. I got it on video. He made me delete it, haha! Good thing I didn't have to go in there, because I'm pretty sure those cows would've won easily against me. OSU

Here's a trick- take it seriously and practice. Then practice some more. Practice until you work up a really good sweat and realize that you are working the muscles that you use for fighting. Practice until you realize that you're learning how to flow from one stance to the next, since stances are fluid, not frozen in place, when fighting. Practice until it becomes a moving meditation. Break it down into chunks if you need to. See if you can get some videos of the katas done right, watch them, learn from them. Ask an instructor for help after class. Listen to your instructors and do what they say. They know a lot more about this stuff than you do. That's why they are teaching you. OSU

LOLOL! Time for a new signature for me, MasterPain! Thank you all for your guesses!

OSU! Thank you all! *bows* And congrats to everyone. Woot! PS MasterPain I don't know what I just watched but you are living up to your name, man.

OSU! Does anyone actually know for a fact why Sosai changed the way we sit in seiza from this: http://www.oxfordkarateacademy.com/userfiles/Image/articles/SeiichiFujiwaraSeizaBudokan.jpg To this? http://www.connkyokushin.com/content/karate/masoyama/OYAMA1.jpg And if you do not know why for a fact, can you tell me what your theory is? But please let me know if it is just a theory. I'm really curious, and thanks! OSU!

OSU, to be fair, Sensei8, it is sometimes also the instructor who is ineffective, and who passes his flaws on to his unsuspecting students. This is especially prevalent in schools that do not allow their students to train or compete outside of their school or group of schools.

Haha, yesssss! Thanks, I'm honored. :} OSU!

When I was a stupid teen I got in a couple of fights, long before I trained in martial arts. Now that I do, I know better than to get in street fights. I haven't yet had to defend myself on the street since I started training- for one thing, I've grown up a lot, and gotten wiser, so I have more situational awareness and work at not getting myself into dangerous situations in the first place. Watch the people around you and avoid trouble. Don't go down that dark alley alone late at night. For another, I'd rather just apologize and walk away if it's over something stupid. Wounded pride heals faster than a broken nose, or a messed up knee cap that keeps me from training. If I HAVE to fight to defend myself or a loved one, I will not be trying to fight like I do during kumite in my Kyokushin dojo. Oh, I'll hit hard, but I'll go for nasty dirty tricks first and foremost, if I am truly in a situation that cannot be diffused or de-escalated. Like one of my senseis says: "Oh no, if I were fighting you guys out on the street, I'd be taking so many bites out of your flesh that I'd be able to make stew." But really unless you have no other choice, why risk serious injury or jail time, or worse? What if the other person has a knife, or a gun? No, I'm not too keen on street fights. My primary sensei was once attacked by two guys with knives, when he was way younger. He managed to fight one off, the other managed to get him down on the ground and they were struggling with a knife when a guy driving by ran out of the car and chased the other guy off. While his training saved his life, Sensei ended up with a dislocated shoulder that required surgery and still has a lot of problems to this day. It was scary and nasty and ugly and nothing he'd ever want to repeat. He did really start to take his martial arts seriously after that incident, however. The one thing he always says is that being attacked for real on the street is completely different from consensual fighting in a dojo or gym. No matter how alive and full contact you try to make your training, it's just not the same thing. It can still cause panic, you can still freeze up, you can still forget some of your training in the heat of the moment... you might be less likely to, but it can still happen. Just the shock of it happening can really unbalance you, mentally, emotionally, and physically. The moral of the story is- minimum wage plus cruddy tips do not make delivering pizza in the ghetto worth it. There are people who will try to shank you there for a pizza.

So the other day I was called upon to spar with the little kids, because the class had an odd number of students and I happened to get there early. Yeah, I gently tossed them around a bit and gave them a lot to think about, while luckily not quite making any of them cry, but did I feel all big and bad and triumphant, or like I learned a lot about fighting? Nope. There's a point where something is so easy it's just tragic and even when you are trying to be nice, you end up feeling like a bit of a bully. It's kind of the same thing when you ask some random civilian with no training to spar. First of all, the most dangerous opponents are sometimes white belts. They don't know what to do. They have no control. No idea where their hands and feet are. No idea what is too hard. They are masters of spastic-flail-do. They will kick your ACL hard because they just don't know better. They're a risk! Second of all, remember your first time sparring as a brand new white belt? You were terrible! We were all terrible! And now, if you are no longer a brand new white belt, and you go up against one, you'll remember how terrible you were. Why spar with that? That won't teach you anything or prove anything. You want to learn and get more sparring experience in? Work out something with the senior students and the instructors in your dojo. You learn a lot more kissing the mat than you do giving somebody else flying lessons.

Very much like my dojo's Taikyoku Sono Ichi, except ours does not have the upper blocks down the middle- Pinan 1 has those, however. I do my basic katas at least three times a week. I'm in physical therapy at the moment, so I can only really safely do them in the PT pool. I have just started doing them on dry land a bit again, but my stances are HORRIBLE because it isn't safe yet to do them right. When I practice my kata, I do every kata I know... which, I admit, is only currently 5.