Wastelander

Kata, to me, is a blueprint. On the surface it teaches you how to perform the techniques of your style--or how to build a house, to follow my analogy. The finer points, however, are something that must be learned along the way or the blueprint makes no sense (bunkai to kata).

Exactly--I said "anything but wine is out" meaning that any alcoholic beverages that aren't wine have very little value to you, health wise, and any alcohol in excess is bad. I also totally agree with the rest of the above post.

The only way to find your limit is to reach it, really. For muscular endurance I would say you can do pushups until your arms won't move anymore and that's the limit of pushups you can do, and you can do situps until your abs won't clench anymore and that's the limit of situps you can do, and you can do squats until your legs give out and that's the limit of squats you can do. How you apply that knowledge to your training is up to you. As far as avoiding injury, your muscles will save you from yourself. Your muscles will seize up and give out when they have reached their safe limit--you can push past this but you are going to be doing more damage to your muscles than is healthy. Stretching of muscles and tendons is a completely different matter. To increase upper body and punching strength, do pushups (fast ones), rotational abdominal exercises, run up stairs and punch a heavy bag. STOP SMOKING, make your diet rich in protein, fruits and veggies (carbs are okay, but don't go overboard), don't drink alcoholic beverages without benefits (basically anything but wine is out) and do not drink more than a glass a day.

This is typically the method I use if anyone catches my kicks (although that doesn't happen too often, thankfully!) and it helps me get into clinching range where I can throw people, so I rather like it when that happens

*Do you find the 270 degree turn easy/difficult for you to learn? --It isn't that it is difficult to learn, but it is certainly difficult to get it right. Controlling your body in such a turn can be difficult and changes depending on how you are using the turn. *Do you consider the 270 degree turn an effective/ineffective tool in the martial arts? --Depends on how you see it being used. I see it, typically, as a way to throw someone, redirect an attack, control an opponent or evade an attack. In those situations I find it useful. *Do you consider the 270 degree turn an effective/ineffective tool only used in Kata? --This question seems to be a combination of the prior question and the following question, so see those answers. *Do you think that the only time you’ll ever use the 270 degree turn is in Kata? --I regularly use 270 degree turns in sparring and self defense drills. When I throw someone I have to turn my body as far as possible--yes, the throw initiates at about 180 degrees, but my head keeps turning at least 270, which forces my body to follow. When I apply a joint lock to control an opponent to the ground, I sometimes do not need to turn 270 but sometimes I do, and sometimes even further, but the idea is the same. I also use a 270 degree turn in conjunction with dropping my body, to break free of striking exchanges in sparring. Certainly there are more uses for the turn but at this point in my training, those are my uses for it.

For working target placement it works fine, but it is nothing like hitting a human body OR a heavy bag--it doesn't move like a human body, despite being shaped like one, and the "skin" on it tends to stick to your skin when you punch it, which gets pretty uncomfortable. Also, the body is much firmer than a human body and the head moves around quite a bit but isn't as hard as a human head.

I honestly think that the question you ask is one that does not have a clear answer. Karate is an empty-handed fighting art of Okinawan origin, but I think that is the closest to a definition that you will find. I think that the name has very little to do with effectiveness, cohesiveness or passed-down curriculum--all of those things are going to be different between different organizations, styles, schools and instructors.

Demonstrating techniques and randori, typically. Many Judo dojo have test curriculum and you can ask what techniques they will focus on for your test, but others focus primarily on randori and shiai--I know my last Judo instructor based promotions almost solely on how you do in competition.

Blue belt is right above white in BJJ, if I remember correctly, and I think it would mean he would have about 3 or 4 years of training, depending on how rigorous his instructor's testing was and how good he is. As long as he is still training with a higher ranked practitioner I don't see any problem with you training with him--do you really think you're going to catch up to his 3 or 4 years of experience before he learns any more from his instructor? You might as well give it a try.

I can get long-winded when discussing martial arts, regardless of how often I've been able to make it to the dojo lately . Out of curiosity, have you checked out this dojo: http://www.ohiomartialarts.com/home.html The head instructor is Sensei Hurtseller, who started in Shuri-Ryu karate and my Sensei back home knew him (and backed him up during a few scuffles, if I remember my stories correctly). As I understand it, he is a good martial artist and instructor but broke away from the official style of Shuri-Ryu because what he does now is more a conglomeration of all of the things he's learned over the years. The basics you've learned in Shorin-Ryu should translate just fine into an open environment such as that, and I suspect that Sensei Hurtseller may have some Shorin-Ryu friends he could put you in contact with. Good luck!

Exactly! I hope you can find a place to train but, if you can't, you can always try to reach out to martial artists in your area to see if you might be able to form a little "club" where you can meet up on weekends or afternoons and practice together, just to keep you going

I trained heavily (14 hours per week in the dojo, plus training on my own) in Shuri-Ryu before moving to Arizona. My Shorin-Ryu Sensei tells me that I still look like a Shuri-Ryu guy practicing Shorin-Ryu kata, but my form is very good . Your experience would indicate that you should not attend that dojo--you will need to adapt to the differences between styles, but the idea of simply "forgetting" it is ludicrous and no martial art is "the best art" so they seem to be propagandists to me. A style should be molded to the practitioner in the same manner that a practitioner is molded to a style--both have to give a little--but I've found that koryu and koryu-esque arts (I'm including Ninjutsu in that simply because, in my opinion, it is simply a specialized form of Jujutsu) do not believe in the idea that the style should mold to the practitioner at all. You would be better off finding another Okinawan style--even if it isn't a branch of Shorin-Ryu you will still find that a lot of the basics will be the same.

I would be interested to see that, actually. That is true, but wrestling, boxing, Muay Thai and MMA all have well-formed competitive circuits. In those styles your goal can be to reach rank of a different sort--the top ranks of your division. People tend to need motivation of some sort to start and, while for some it may just be exercise or self defense, I suspect a lot of people still had the goal of reaching black belt when they started training in a traditional art. We don't have the same competitive circuits to use as goals, with the exception of Taekwondo and Judo, and the schools that focus on competition tend to give rank based on your competitive prowess, anyway.

This isn't the case for all martial arts schools today, though, thankfully. I've been training for 5 years and suspect I won't be testing for black belt for another year or two--and that's if I keep working hard to learn the curriculum, keep helping to teach and keep working to develop my technique and understanding. I also know that my Sensei's girlfriend trains at a dojo under an instructor who believes that no one with less than 15 years of training should test for black belt.

You will notice that almost the only people who have the philosophy of "it's not about the black belt" already have their black belts. I have not tested for black belt yet, although I suspect it will be coming in the next couple of years, but my goal isn't the belt--it's what the belt represents. I don't have a "long term goal" for my training because there is no stopping point, but humans are goal-driven by nature. All of us seek to achieve an end result. Because of that, I set short-term goals. One of those, for me, is to achieve the basic level of proficiency necessary to be a black belt, but it doesn't stop there. Beyond that I have further goals to learn the entire curriculum of my style, to teach my style to others, to develop my own personal style (not in the sense of "I'm now Dai-Soke of Wastelander-Ryu" but in the sense of "This is how I do things"), and to learn things from other arts to help build up my own. Even if I never test for black belt I will still reach the same level if I continue my training, but since the test is there it gives me a baseline to go off of.

Once I get my rent situation straightened out (they billed me for two months instead of one) I'll have a little extra money I'm thinking of putting toward a webcam for this project. I think it would be a really cool idea!

From what you describe, if he isn't doing the testing I don't think he should be charging you testing fees. Then again, I'm still just a kyu-rank assistant and I try not to get involved in politics. It just seems like if you are handling all of the business and all of the training and all of the testing then he isn't doing anything to earn 50% of your testing fees. All he did was train you, which you've already paid for, I assume. One thought would be to slightly increase tuition and stop charging testing fees

I didn't know much of him other than noticing a few of his books being well-reviewed by other karateka. This is a horrible experience for the victim and the families of those involved and I can only hope that he gets what is coming to him. I am also aware that, unfortunately, this type of thing keeps happening in the martial arts community (with karate, in particular, it would seem) and it casts it in a very, very bad light, but my thoughts are first-and-foremost on the well being of the victim. I don't feel there is much to be done but express condolences and righteous anger, unfortunately.

I think the idea would be to plan ahead for when everyone would be online

The problem is that it specifically says "throw it away" and people see that as "this doesn't work for me so I'll just forget it"--you may interpret it as being wary (which is fine--wariness is good, in my opinion) but I think that most people take it for what it says, verbatim.

I have a major problem with this concept. I will grant that Bruce Lee was a fantastic martial artist and the overall concept of JKD--that you should always be advancing your art and learning and building on what you know--is a good one, but this line is always thrown about in discussions about JKD. I hated it the moment I saw it quoted with Bruce Lee's name next to it and I've hated it every time someone has mentioned it since then. I don't want to derail the thread too much, but I will say that just because something doesn't work for you now doesn't mean you should "throw it away", and just because something does work for you now doesn't mean it will always work for you. I feel that the very statement of "throw away what doesn't work" is counter productive to the entire ideal of always working to advance your art and building on what you know.

So they really do cycle it the way you describe. Interesting. It sounds like, to me, they are trying to cash-in on the MMA craze by giving people samplings of everything and getting you to sign up for their MMA class where, in theory, you would put it all together. I don't feel this is conducive to truly learning any of the arts you would be studying, although it might be sufficient to win an amateur fight or two...maybe. I really think you would be better off finding a more regular schedule.

Human beings have an innate desire to name things, so if you aren't part of a "style" now you eventually will be when you or someone else starts calling what you do some name you or they came up with. In regards to Dave's comment, specifically, I think that people want to know if you have a base style because otherwise it seems like you just made your own style up out of nothing. Even if you are working a mixture of equal parts Goju-Ryu, Muay Thai, Taekwondo, Capoeira, Sambo and Catch-as-catch-can they will want to know that those arts are where it came from. If you can't put a name to it then you probably made it up because EVERYTHING has been named or will be named--it's human nature. All that said, I have no problem with people who practice "style-less" martial arts as long as they have credentials, even if those credentials are regarding their training under someone else with credentials.

Well, Skype can give better quality but I think for the purposes of getting larger groups of people together over video chat for training and discussion of martial arts we might be better off with using TinyChat. TinyChat is just a simple chat website where lots of people can join, with or without webcams, and those with webcams and mics can be seen and heard while others can use the chat beneath the webcam window. I don't believe that there is a limit to the number of users. If we did that then we could just schedule days to have conferences, or even have "keynote speakers" through it on occasion. Just my two cents--I don't have a webcam at the moment but I do like the idea.

What JusticeZero has said is all true--even though you are legally an adult you must adhere to the rules of the household in which you live and, regardless of the rules, lying is bad. As an adult you must take responsibility for your actions and take your punishment in stride. That said, I would be practicing karate very hard at home.