Wastelander

I saw that one a couple weeks ago on my Facebook, as well, and I thought it was very cool! I also saw this version, with is the Bushi Tachimura version, uploaded a few days ago, and it is very unique:

From my own training, I have definitely utilized low stances while grappling in order to lower my center of gravity and stabilize my base in order to defend against throws. That is something that has already been mentioned by others, as it is a fairly common use for low stances. I have also used them in my striking-only sparring to re-establish my base if I have stumbled or been knocked off balance, which is a similar concept. In regards to mobility in low stances, I have had success with covering long distances quickly in low stances, but it is very difficult (at least, for me) to change directions quickly because you have to be committed to your movements over a larger distance. The higher stances that I use in Shorin-Ryu allow me to change directions more quickly/frequently, while I can utilize the longer stances to cover greater distances, faster. It isn't that the long, low stances aren't mobile, just that they are not mobile in the same way that higher, more "natural" stances are mobile. I will admit that I am not very knowledgeable about Capoeira, but in regards to the video that JZ posted, Capoeiristas do not seem use stances the way that most martial artist use stances, so while they are certainly very mobile they are moving in a completely different way--if you are going to use the ground to pivot on and push your body off of in the way that they do, then of course being lower to the ground is going to benefit your speed and mobility.

Going to the dojo 3 days a week, in addition to practicing on your own every day, will be enough for you to see improvement over time. If you want to improve faster, then you will need to do additional work. For conditioning your shins and forearms, you should start with hitting a heavy bag--the more you hit it, the more your limbs will become accustomed to it. Over time you can also work kote kitae (forearm smashing partner drills) and use a maki-stick or dowel rod to tap or roll on your shins. For strength, I tend to stick with pushups (there are a lot of variations you can do), squats, and situps (again, lots of variations), but there are many other ones that are effective and useful. For cardiovascular fitness, sparring more, running your kata with high intensity, shadowboxing are great, and practicing your techniques underwater is a fantastic supplemental exercise as well.

I would say either Seiunchin or Naihanchi Shodan for me, but I hadn't really thought about it too much. I am used to the idea of tokui waza from judo (mine is harai goshi) but never thought to really apply that to kata until I read Mr. Redmond's book a while back. Seiunchin I thoroughly enjoy simply by performing it, and it is one I have only just scratched the surface of in regards to bunkai, while Naihanchi Shodan is something that I perform without thinking of the movements because I am constantly focused on the applications.

I heard about this story on the radio this morning, and I was glad to hear some good news. From what I heard, she did exactly what she should have done--get the gun, hide, call the police and shoot the intruder if necessary. I agree completely that she will need counseling, but I suspect she will be okay. From what I understand she shot him through the closet door as he was opening it, so she may not have been face-to-face with what she did.

Glad to hear your daughter is getting back on the mat! I definitely hope that her reintroduction to karate is beneficial to her, and helps her cope with the past, the present and the future in the best ways possible!

I use both--it depends on what the technique is being used for. As an example, I would use the "hips off" method if applying gedan uke/barrai as an arm lock, but I would use the "hips on" method if using it to strike the groin.

It depends who you consider a "grandmaster", really--in Shorin-Ryu we don't actually call anyone in our lineage by that title. If I had to pick, I suppose I would say that it was Chibana Chosin since he officially founded Shorin-Ryu, but he always said that Itosu, his sensei, was the founder of his style, so you could argue that Itosu would be the grandmaster. Itosu Yasutsune-->Chibana Chosin-->Nakazato Shuguro-->Eddie Bethea-->Richard Poage-->Me In Shuri-Ryu, we did have someone we called by that title because he founded the style, and I would be three steps from him: Robert Trias-->Joseph Walker-->Joseph Johnston-->Me

If you want to get yourself very confused by conflicting body mechanics, movements, methodologies and standards then yes, you can train in two styles of karate. It is one thing to develop a base in one style and then cross train with other styles, but to try to conform to the curriculum of two separate karate styles is going to severely hamper your ability to learn and grow.

I think Shizentai is referring to more circular strikes, such as shuto-uchi and tetsui-uchi. When executing those techniques you can either torque the hips into the technique as you describe, causing a whipping action, or you can torque the other way to pull the technique across in more of a swinging action. The difference is sort of like cracking a whip and swinging a bat (but not really) and I can understand where Shizentai is coming from on that. I actually do both, depending on the application I am looking for in my kata at any given moment. I have also had to relearn simple things like my neko-ashi-dachi and shuto-uke, but I switched from one style to another so that is to be expected.

Honestly, I can't even find evidence that such a book was ever written--I only ever see references to one book that he wrote and its later re-print. I do know that this site has photos and snippets of Egami's writings, but I don't think it's what you're looking for: http://www.shotokai.com/ingles/gallery/index.html There are also several pages of Shotokan-related images on this page, including several of Egami:

What is more important than your rank is how long and how often you have been training. I am guessing you have probably been training for about a year, which would mean you have likely built up some muscle memory that will take time to change in order to modify your techniques to fit Kyokushin. You may be able to understand concepts more quickly than other white belts that are just starting, but it will most likely take you longer to get your form correct because you have to override what you have already learned. Karate is a life-long journey, so don't worry about the grade. The bottom line is this; if you want to train in a style that utilizes full contact sparring and you feel that Kyokushin is a good fit, then just start training in Kyokushin and enjoy it.

In addition to everything else that has been said so far, I like these drills: Basically, anything that allows you to work combinations of blocks/deflections/checks, grabbing/controlling and strikes on a moving target. Your pad holder should move like they are sparring you--if you are working sparring combinations--or they should move like they are attacking you--if you are working self defense combinations.

The prices of the promotions ($30) aren't outrageous, and neither is the yearly cost ($105/month) for most martial arts schools in America. The $400 cost of the black belt exam IS very high, and charging for stripes is ridiculous. This school is obviously a commercial school, doing everything they can to get as much money as possible out of people--following what Fang provided, it will cost you a total of $5860 to earn your black belt, provided you pass every exam. FangPwnsAll7--does anyone ever fail those exams, and do they still pay for the exams if they do fail? I am also curious as to the level of skill of the instructors at your school and how effective the style is as they teach it. It is entirely possible to have a commercial school that is NOT a McDojo--if they do fail people for not meeting their standards and if they do teach effective martial arts then they do not really qualify as a McDojo, just a commercial school.

When I practice on my own I am typically in my living room and if I use any power it scares our rabbits and gets our dog excited because he thinks I am playing, therefor I tend to not use power and work on relaxing and letting my techniques flow without speed or kime. When I train at the dojo, I do power and speed if I want a workout, and if I am working for technique/applications I do power with a mixed rate of speed.

Offensive: Right jab, stepping left jab, right cross, right thigh kick, step out left roundhouse kick to the stomach. Defensive: Retreating spinning backfist, reverse punch to the body.

As far as I can tell, there are three schools of thought on this: 1 - If you aren't teaching some combination of Muay Thai, BJJ, boxing and wrestling you aren't teaching MMA 2 - If you are teaching both striking and grappling of any type and helping students put it together, you are teaching MMA 3 - If you have never competed in MMA, you aren't teaching MMA. I feel that the people in group 1 can be convinced what you are teaching is okay as long as you qualify for 2 and have competed in MMA (3) with success. In a way, what my dojo teaches is MMA--in addition to our Shorin-Ryu (which includes some locks and takedowns to begin with) my instructor has some eclectic jujutsu he has trained in and teaches, and we often incorporate MMA-style sparring with full striking and grappling. With that said, we don't teach MMA, at least by most people's definitions, because we don't teach Muay Thai, boxing, wrestling or BJJ and we have never competed in MMA. Personally, I believe if you are training in two different arts (typically a striking-focused art and a grappling-focused art) and blending them together in your training and sparring, you are doing MMA.

A one-hit kill (or KO) is so unlikely to occur that no one should expect to achieve it. The idea of ikken hissatsu is to promote intensity, focus and technique, because you should be trying to make EVERY strike capable of ending the fight, but you should not be intending to only throw ONE strike with that intent. That is how I see it, in any case. As far as Isshinryu, specifically, is concerned, I have actually been reading Victor Smith's blog on his Isshinryu training and from what I can tell it tends to be a very structured system. What you are learning right now is most likely only a building block to the next step. Give it another year and you should have a much better idea of how the system is structured, but even then you probably won't be able to fit everything into the "big picture". If you think of that big picture as a mural done in pointilism, you will understand that you are still just seeing random dots. The further along you get you will be able to see colors, patterns and shapes, but it will take a long time for you to make out what the big picture really is.

As I understand it, Sho and Dai variants of kata are typically just different versions of the same kata as taught by different people. As an example, in his Butoku essay, Chibana Chosin (founder of Shorin-Ryu) wrote the following:

Jamming is, basically, moving into an attacker while they are preparing to launch an attack so that they are unable to actually complete it. This applies to kicks (moving in as the chamber is occurring, or when they step into the kick) as well as strikes with the hands (trapping or blocking the hands as they chamber, draw back, or return to guard from a previous strike) but beyond that I'm afraid you would need to be a little more specific on what you would like to know. And then that is just my way of defining it, while others will have their own definitions and methods.

It is not essential--martial artists trained without pads for hundreds of years, after all--but padwork is very useful and valuable, and I think it should be included in training for anyone practicing an art that strikes. I cannot put it any better than Tallgeese did in that article, but essentially it allows you to practice a wide variety of strikes and trapping against moving targets, and the value of that is high.

Haha, yeah, welcome to getting hit in the face--noses are almost entirely cartilage and are prone to making rather nasty, scary noises when they get hit. As long as it isn't crooked or clicking when you push on it you're probably fine.

"Strong" is a very subjective term, and how much you lift in comparison to how much you weigh means very little. What bushido_man96 says is correct--if you want to bench more weight, focus simply on improving your bench press. There are many weight training sites online that can provide you with information on how to do this, and you already know your 1 repetition maximum weight, which is what they will rely on.

I do have one kyusho/pressure point experience I will share: My sensei, before he joined the Shorin-Ryu system we currently train, learned much of what he knows about kyusho and tuite while training in Taika Oyata's system. Taika Oyata's group is pretty much the only one I have heard of that can consistently demonstrate their kyusho and tuite effectively on people who don't know what is about to happen. He was once demonstrating an application for a technique from kata and grasped my right wrist with his left hand and applied pressure to a nerve in the underside of my wrist with his fingers then struck a nerve in my upper forearm with his other hand and my legs completely failed underneath me and I dropped to my knees, and he bounced the strike off my arm to my neck where it would have struck the carotid sinus if he hadn't stopped it, which could have made me pass out due to the change in blood pressure (I have not seen this done personally, but have read about surgeons using something like it to make patients pass out for a few seconds in addition to martial artists saying they have seen it). This was with no warning as to what was going to happen and with me being a major skeptic of pressure points and anything associated with ki/chi/qi/energy. Outside of that one demonstration, my experience with kyusho has been that some of the points hurt and some of them do nothing or very little to me, and when working to apply them to other people I get the same results--some hurt, some do nothing or very little. Typically, I will use pressure points in sparring to make arms or legs hurt or cramp up--typically hammerfists or one-knuckle strikes to the nerves of the forearms during deflections/blocks, or simple leg kicks--or I will use them in grappling to help make space. They are certainly not something I rely on but I will use them if the opportunity presents itself, and if they work then I will continue to utilize them as they become available but if they do not work I don't pursue them.

Women and men alike ask this question on grappling forums all over the internet, and the overwhelming majority of people think that more women should take up grappling! There will, inevitably, be one or two guys in the gym that don't want to work with you because you are a woman, but that just means that they aren't worth your time. If the instructors and some of the more experienced students are willing to work with you then you will be just fine, and if you stick to it then anyone who is hesitant will eventually come around. Just remember that you aren't SUPPOSED to be a challenge for them when you start--you'll be a brand new white belt, just like everyone else who starts a new martial art, and they will expect to work with you and let you practice on them when you roll until you start getting better and they can increase the difficulty level. Just like sparring, rolling isn't a competition, it is a learning tool. As far as "awkward touching" issues go, martial arts are contact sports and if you are training with sufficient focus and intensity you don't even notice.