Ueshirokarate

Heh, challenge accepted, and already failed (by that I mean it did not work.) I have PCOS, and it is far, far, FAR more complicated for me than that, believe you me. For someone who has a body that is not prone to easily gaining weight and not taking weight off, and that has no medical conditions, it probably works fine. Most of those people, however, only become overweight (if the ever do) from eating a terrible diet in the first place. You can lose weight on twinkies: http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/index.html Sorry to hear about your PCOS. Obviously things that screw up your hormones are outside of the discussion at hand. That said, even with hormonal issues, the majority of people (not saying you) will lie to themselves about how many calories they are actually eating or get their maintenance numbers wrong by such things as overestimating their caloric expenditure through exercise, etc.

Generally speaking, I would be very careful deploying any Judo throw in a street fight. You may also go down and falling onto concrete is not quite the same as a mat. Some of these throws have the potential to kill both your opponent or you.

By thigh kicks he's referring to gedan mawashi geri, kicking to either the outside of the thigh or the inside of the thigh. Striking surface is usually the shin or the instep/ankle area (right where the ankle bends). The shin block is misleading in its name as you really don't want to block with the shin if you can help it. It's mostly used as a defense against low kicks. You basically just raise your knee and try to catch your shin against the front of the thigh (best case scenario) or use it to block their lower leg before it builds up a lot of momentum. See 1:25 for quick examples of both. Thanks. Thought they were talking about kick checking: Matsubayashi's kicks are usually kept pretty low, but I feel we have big enough repertoire of kicks as karate styles go. We aren't Tae Kwon Do after all and most of our kicks are focused on the general area of the lower stomach to the feet. We also have the toe-tip kick which is a signature kick to our style. It was developed by Ankichi Arakaki who was one of Shoshin Nagamine's teachers. It takes much work to be able to kick with it barerfoot, but is pretty easy for most with dress shoes on. Most likely, I would target the inner thigh over the groin. Every hit to that area I have seen brings down a person instantly.

In today's day and age, I think it is important to never be in a room alone with students. It is also a good idea to encourage students to have their parents stay and watch class and if you can afford it, install cameras to videotape everything that happens. There was a local martial artist in my area just sent to jail for a very long time for molestation. Makes me very concerned about false accusations. If anyone does do this for real, they should be castrated and sent to jail.

You guys mind linking a video to illustrate what you are talking about?

Personally I feel the biggest issue is simple carbs and excess level of fat in food. There are theories that artificial sweeteners can create weight gain and I am sure there may be other chemical compounds that could potentially cause weight gain. But at the end of the day, it is most important to make sure you are running at a caloric deficit when trying to lose weight and a caloric surplus when you are trying to put it on. I challenge anyone to go 500 calories below their maintenance number for a month and not lose weight. This should bring you down 4lbs. Now think of how long it is going to take to lose that beer gut.

Was wondering if any of you have websites for your dojo or have a page on Facebook and how many of you have profiles on linkedin exclusively for your martial arts instruction.

Yes, kind of the point of the joke. I must say that one of the most dangerous chemicals out there is DHMO or Dihydrogen Monoxide. Pure poison: http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html#FACTS And it can be found in many, many foods.

Sorry but why do you say that? They're just the proper chemical names for vitamin B6 and vitamin E. They naturally occur in loads of things: grains, oils, nuts, meat and fish etc. If you didn't consume them you'd become ill. Yes, I know. It was a joke.

I agree with this to an extent but don't disregard everything because it has a chemical name on the ingredients. Know what the additive actually is as often it is something that naturally occurs in your food anyway. For example, one of the one's that irritates me is people staying well away from vanillin yet happily eating something which declares it uses real vanilla extract... well er they're exactly the same thing! Well stay away from pyridoxine and tocopherol, that's dangerous stuff.

Or ask the instructor to provide you with a video so you can sharpen your skills. Perhaps there is one on Youtube. Not knowing which style of Kobudo or actual kata you are learning, there is no way of knowing how to help you find such.

Your dollar is pretty close to parity with the US dollar. My dojo is incredibly inexpensive and even more so given the location as it is around $50.00 per month unlimited classes/ or $10 per class if you pay by class. If people only understood what a bargain traditional martial arts training is. You are in many cases getting close to a personal trainer with your gym membership if you will.

I am not a dietician, but this is my view. Cutting calories far enough below what you need to maintain, but not far enough to freak out your body. Figure out what your maintenance calories are and eat 500 calories less per day. You should loose on average a pound a week. http://www.freedieting.com/tools/calorie_calculator.htm I shredded about 60lbs of fat this way. It is all about food intake vs. calories burned. You can get fat on broccoli and bananas. Exercise, especially weight training will help increase the calories you burn, but if you are eating more than you are burning...

First off, with an ACL reconstruction you are probably safe to do squats. Check with your ortho to make sure, but there is no reason in my opinion you shouldn't be able to. Heck, you didn't even get the patella tendon graft. Isolation work refers to weight training moves that isolate a muscle such as bicep curls. These are contrasted with compound movements such as the bench press which works your primarily pecs, tris and shoulders. Getting bulky and slow from weight training is a myth. I would add though, that more muscular men do have a more challenging time with muscular endurance, as they have more muscle tissues to feed through the various energy systems. Hence, when I roll in BJJ with some of the bigger guys they will get winded and tired out quicker. This is why you need to really look at your training from a holistic view and why I periodize my training. I will have hypertrophy cycles where I primarily focus on eating a lot and lifting heavy. I also have intensive cycles of training focused more on my martial arts and cutting fat. You can get pretty complex with this stuff if you want. That said, I stand by my prior post and think you would be much better off building a program composed of the big compound lifts; squats, deadlifts, bench press, pull ups and dips. Lastly, the fact that you are a woman has no bearing on the type of weight training you employ. It is much harder for a woman to put on muscle mass without artificial enhancement.

I am not a big believer in isolation work, as we are not bodybuilders. If it were me, I would be focusing only on bench press and pull ups, perhaps dips. All the curling and tricep work in your program seems a bit ridiculous. Are you getting stalled with basic compound movements? Are your arms seriously lagging behind? Or are you looking to make muscles at the beach? There is nothing wrong with having the goal of huge beach muscles on your arms, but is that your goal, or is it to build strength for your martial art?

This annoys me somewhat, an Instructor has a "DUTY" to work through the grades as if he is a lower Yudansha, he in fact is getting the way of his own student's progression! Most gradings are usually till 3rd or 4th Dan then time served afterwards, I am fortunate to be at this level but it was a very had slog to get there. As I've always said, there are 2 main paths a Karateka can follow, that as an Instructor where one sacrifices his own fight career to teach others or as a fighter where one has to have full discipline to ones OWN preparation for each fight. I really like the way you are graded in BJJ. There is no formality in it, your instructor just bumps you up when they know you are at the next level. There is no testing, as you are testing on the mat each time you train, as you should be on the deck in karate or any martial art in my opinion. I can understand if you are the head instructor at your school and needing to travel to be tested, but if you train with someone a few ranks higher than you... I don't think a fighting career and the "the instructor path" should be mutually exclusive. I also don't think either is relevant to grading. IMHO, grading should depend solely on your martial ability. Hence if this person who focused on self-training and competition has trained themselves to the level of 8th Dan, they should be graded as such.

Way to go, congrats. I was just thinking about rank yesterday at BJJ class. There is very little subjectivity in BJJ ranks. You prove every-time you roll where you stand. While a purple belt in one school may be a two stripe white in another, usually there is no doubt they are more skilled than lower ranks within their school. Rank differences stand out like a sore thumb where I train and it is truly inspiring to see my instructor at work, who is every bit his belt grade.

Yeah, I think we are all kinda saying the same thing here. It doesn't have to be done with anything fancy, but it should be done religiously.

Thought provoking. Thanks for posting this.

For the record, I think it is vital to take at least one day off from all training each week. I often take 2-3 days off a week. To me, this is also training.

You can make a makiwara from wood or a tire. There are plenty of plans on the web and its worth doing.

They both have the same origins, so there should be a lot of similarity. Of course this can vary greatly from school to school. My advice would be to start as a white belt and get your feet wet, get comfortable and then worry about putting on another belt.

Totally agree with that, a no-brainer if you will. Hard to leave a group of good folks you train with, but that's life. Good thing is that you will inject new things in to the new group and get the same in return. Good luck!

Both excellent exercises. If you are doing curls, push-downs, etc, you aren't training your muscles to work together in balance like Kuma is with these.

I am all over the map, but usually will take a day or two off each week. I believe your body needs down time as much as it needs training.