Snowbat

I had a stomach flu last weekend. Even though I seem to be cured now, I still feel pretty weak. Probably from my body still recovering not to mention that I ate nothing but toast, cooked fish and rice for a whole week. I suppose it wouldn't be a good idea to go to karate class as long as I feel weak right? Especially since our trainings are pretty intense. Better let my body rest for another week. What do you guys do when you got a stomach bug? To me, it's one of the most annoying "minor" illnesses you can get.

There is no reason to think you're too old for it. 29 isn't old. Dead is old. Go for it

I usually will when I'm faced up against someone who is much bulkier and heavier than me. Like my sensei. I'll keep defenses up, attack, pull back and put my defenses up again. It's one of my only advantages over this huge black belt grizzly bear: I have longer arms and legs since I'm tall and I can sometimes outspeed him (but that's infrequent)

This reminds me of the one and only time where I've caused a lot of pain to my sensei, accidently of course. See my sensei is a huge bear. Very friendly man, but he's a bulldozer. So one day I was doing kumite with him and the tactic is usualkly to just keep defenses up as good as you can and only hit when you think you see a little hole in his defense. Sometimes though, friendly as he is, he seems to hit a little too hard. So he aims this mawashi-geri towards my face. I see this huge leg coming up full speed and strength and I didn't have time to raise my arm since he mislead me the second before into doing gedan-barai. This mawashi would have been straight to my jaw if I hadn't had the awesome reflex to turn my head and "absorb" the mawashi with my forehead. The forehead bone is thick and very solid as you may know and even if I was a little dizzy from taking a hit there, my sensei was dancing on one foot because well... my forehead did hurt his other foot But I digress.

There have been mixed reports to practicing kicks with more resistance, being water or weights doesn't matter. I would say it's indeed useful for speed, but others say it's not. Never understood why. One thing I seemt o have difficulties with, is quickly jumping backwards after attacking to avoid the counter attack. I seem to be too slow when doing this, probably because my legs are not strong enough. My arms are no problem, but my legs need some work. That's why my Sensei has adviced to practice the explosive jump thing: crouch till your upper and lower leg do approx 90° then fiercly jump up. Also I'm as supple as an icepick... when doing Low-Kicks, Mawashi's or Yoko's I usually aim for the upper legs of my opponents since I simply can't go higher. I stay away from their knees since I don't want to damage them obviously.

This is what I do: Keep in mind though that I'm a naturally hard-gaining person. Meaning I have a very fast metabolism, I'm hyperkinetic and hconstantly have an abundance of energy and I have to workout twice as hard to gain some muscle mass. I don't build muscle easily. Monday - 3 sets of 7-12 pull ups. As soon as I can do 3 sets of 12, I'll add weight - 3 sets of 10-15 push ups. I elevate my feet and wear 10 kilo extra. As soon as I can do 3x15, I'll add more weight - 3 sets of 15-20 one-legged squats: here too I wear extra weight and will add as soon as I can do 3x20 - 3 sets of 10-15 one-legged calf raises: same deal. Wearing weight, adding more once I hit 3x15 - 3 sets of 8-12 reps of standard dumbell curls: still same deal: I'll increase weight once I do 3x12 - 3 sets of 10-15 reverse curls (you know the ones that work the triceps) - 2 sets of static holds: I wrap a piece of cloth around a dumbel's bar to make it thicker (and thus, harder to grab) and hold it for as long as I can. This is a great excercice if you enjoy pouring gasoline on your forearms and lighting them on fire - Thorough stretching Tuesday Plank excercice for the core. 2x as long as I can Wednesday: - Same workout as monday Thursday: - Karate class -Friday: Plank excercice for the core. 2x as long as I can Saturday: - Same workout as mondays and wednesday Sunday: Plank excercice for the core. 2x as long as I can That's it. Helps fairly well. It's a full body workout. And you just have to be sure to balance things out: if you workout your back, make sure you workout the front too. If you workout your triceps for harder punches, make sure to workout the biceps too in order not to cause a disbalance. It feels much better to finally have an normal weight instead of being a scrawny dude like I used to be. I'm certainly not a huge tank now nor do I intend on becoming one, but I wanted to look "normal" and being able to stand my ground better during karate class. I'm more stable, I can take more punishment and I'm able to hit harder than I used to. And it helps self-esteem.

Yeah it's pretty scary. My sensei is this huge grizzly bear of a guy and back then, I was skinny. So you can imagine the effect of his fist on my poor scrawny chest. I was choking. He had to stand behind me, grab my arms and spread them to break up my automatic cramped closed position. Now that I think of it, it's pretty crazy that I never broke anything back then. I barely had muscle to protect my bones. Luckily now though, I gained some weight and I can take more of a bruising, but a direct blow to the chestbone is still freaky.

The most painful thing I ever experienced was burning something off my skin with liquid nitrogen when I was a kid. But I digress. I've never suffered one to the throat because I have the habit to keep my arms raised close to my head all the time. But I've suffered a blow to the chestbone once... and that cut me off air supply for a few seconds too.

Yeah I often get bruises on my arms or legs where I notice only afterwards and go "Ah look! a bruise. Where did that come from?" But the ones I took in my ribs are much more annoying as they hurt longer and usually just hinder my training. I don't mind the bruises on my arms or legs as these are my primary shields and even somewhat prove that I can take a beating and go away very quickly. These don't hinder my training at all. But the ribs... are frustrating. I think I need to learn to protect that area better. I can take a tremendous amount of punishment in my arms without problems, but my rib area seems to be more frail. I should talk to my sensei about this perhaps.

Yeah I thought it was indeed just my body adapting. And I should just learn to deflect attacks better since you're not supposed to take hits in the ribs anyway. It's just so frustrating... when my previous injury finally gets better, I get another one. I don't get any injuries anywhere else, except for a bruise or scratch here and there but those are nothing. It's always my ribs who get the worst ones and rib injuries take a long time to heal. Unless I stop breathing, laughing, talking, sneezing and coughing.

Hey guys and girls. So in a few months time, I got 3 contusions. One to the left on one of the ribs, a few weeks later, my pec got it and now a rib on the right side... each time it happened after getting a blow during MA class and it happens just as the previous one started to get better. Needless to say this is frustrating. I get the occasional bruise on my arm which is usually gone in a few days and isn't very debilitating, but the ones on my rib/pec are much more annoying. I only restarted doing MMA in August after having been out for 5 years and in November and December I've been out due to illness so can I assume that this is simply the fact that my body is still adapting to being able to take hits more without getting injured every time?

It's odd. I have trainings on thursday evenings which are pretty intense and every friday morning I weight a kilo less than normally, even if the day before I drank Aquarius after the training. Anyone else having this? Wonder what causes it.

yeah they left him alone after that. Well basically, I think the main bully got the message and realized that bullying a handicapped boy is really low.

I'd like to hear your opinions on this. A bunch of years ago, I was still at school. I was in a boarding school and at our dining table there was a handicapped kid. About a year or two younger than me and the rest of the people at my table. He wasn't severely handicapped. Mentally he was perfectly fine but he had some congenital muscle disease which made his leg and arm muscles very twitchy and pretty weak. Needless to say, he was an easy target to pick on. So the other guys at my table bullied him with really mean stuff about his handicap. I kept telling them to stop it and to leave him alone. They didn't listen. I had the reputation of being hyperkinetic, but not agressive at all. The teachers also knew that I was a good kid that would never start a fight so the bullies didn't really expect me to actually take any physical action. This went on for weeks, the bullied boy never dared to go to the teachers out of fear for retaliation from the bullies I guess. Or maybe it was shame. I dunno. One day, the main bully made me snap. He took the boy's lunch sandwich and just started eating it. The boy told him to give it back but the bully replied something like "well, what are you gonna do about it". This angered me so much. I hate this kind of cowardice. So I told him to give it back. Of course the bully didn't comply and just said how good the sandwich was. This enraged me. I stood up, grabbed the bully and punched him in the face, full strength. He fell down the ground and I could suddenly see *everyone* in the lunch room looking at me in shock. I was really not known for being someone who picks fights at all. I was shocked at myself for actually doing this. I had never punched anyone so hard in my whole life, except during martial arts class, but that's obviously a different thing. My rage had literally made me explode. I got sent to the principal's office. He was too very shocked to hear I had just punched someone right in the face. I explained why I did it but said it was no excuse. And berated me for doing it and (using his exact words more or less) "it's even worse because when you practice martial arts, you know better not to use it for this!" Basically, I had fought fire with fire. Needless to say, the bully left the boy alone from that day on because after that, he actually told me he realizes he went too far. But do I regret doing it? Hell no. I don't. I know I should regret it but I just can't. I could have gone to the teacher and tell everything and stuff... but I dunno I still feel I did something that actually helped. I absolutely despise bullies. It's the best way to make me really angry. I was talking about this with a friend a while ago. And he tends to say I shouldn't have done it since violence is usually not the right answer. I find it hard to agree with that.

Exactly. it just makes you more "stable" if you see what I mean; it's not just a question of being able to hit harder, it's also a point of having stronger muscles that keep you in place and allow you to endure more punishment