Evil Dave

Welcome to Karate Forums, and good luck with your new endeavors. You are doing a much needed service, and any way you can keep kids {of any age...} active and focused the better.

I almost always steer people away from ankle and wrist weights, due to the issues they may cause up the kinetic chain. IE knees, hips, elbows and shoulders. There is a big difference between holding onto weights and punching verse having the weights around your wrist. It's all about control. I always find it funny to watch guys {it's usually the guys...} wearing a weighted vest while doing seated bicep curls! About the only time I prescribe weighted vest is for advanced athletes {as already mentioned, if you are already doing a lot of body weight exercises} that are involved in combative sports {ie MA, hockey, basketball, football, etc} or police, fire, military. Even then I don't recommend running the roads with a weighted vest as your body already takes a pounding while running on hard surfaces. Keep it for body weight exercises, plyometrics, and sprint work {not on hard surfaces}.

I like my cake and eat it too. Being an avid baker does not help....

There is a lot to be said about portion control and snacking. Limit the amount you eat at any one sitting, and eat often. To avoid the 'hungry' feeling, drink plenty of water and have food going into your mouth every two hours. The water will keep something in your stomach, and eating every two hours will stabilize your blood sugar levels. Eating this way does not necessarily mean a meal every two hours, but a snack. A snack is not a Twinkie! There should be a bit of all three macro nutrients in your snack {protein, carb and fat}. Plan your snacks ahead of time, especially for the working day, and have them prepackaged {by you} and easily within reach. Also, use your smart phone, computer, etc to tell you when to snack as most people 'forget' about their snacks. A little planning with your meal plan {I hate the term 'dieting'} goes a long way.

As mentioned, calories in vs calories out! Slightly reduce the calories in, and watch for the bad foods. We all know what they are and still eat them... A couple of web sites have already been mentinoed, check them out. Also, increase your calories out, increase your workout regime. Be it cardio or weight training, you need a good mix of both. Remember weight training has more long lasting effects on weight management, so do a little more weight training then cardio. Ab exercises are good, but have no direct bearing on your belly fat, a good all around program that hits the complete body with a variety of exercises including compound exercise and since your into MA add come plyo's as well.

It's not the tools you use that make an exercise an isolation move, it's the exercise itself. Don't get me wrong, I like powerlifting myself. What I'm not fond of is the old school isolation exercises that still surround the sport.

As noted above, there is a lot of isolation / body building work in your plan. What are you doing to aid your knee's recovery? If your also looking for stamina / endurance with your knee and back issues the pool is a good idea. What are you doing in the pool? Work your legs in the pool, hang on to the knee board, etc. This is all depending upon the knee injury and where your at in the healing process ~ talk with your phsyo about increasing the knee's work load.

I moved a few times, an the last one was as a 2nd Dan. When I got to my new city I went around to all the MA clubs in my area, not just Karate either. My first visit was to sound the school / instructors out and I did not bring my gi. I sat, observed and chatted with students, owner and instructors. I told them my intentions, just stopping by to say hi, introduce myself and check out my options for a new school. In all but one school {I really didn't like the owner anyway... or his business practice} I was asked to get my gi on and join the class. Even in the clubs that were a different MA then my Karate. I ended up spending time at most of the clubs for three months and then moving to the next one. Usually I ended up taking a class or two myself. I was up front with all owners / instructors about my plans to check around and nobody had any issues with this and did not ask for money, even when I offered to pay for my time. I ended up staying at the club a couple of blocks from my home. When I go to tournaments or events I know instructors from around town and have made some friends with this process. I would say it comes down to how the visiting individual approaches the owner / instructor. Open honesty and no 'agenda'.

With flexibility, everybody's different, and you can never get enough stretching IMHO. It all depends upon your starting point, genetics, age, lifestyle, training time, etc. Also, what is significantly high? It's a relative term, and you haven't been training for a complete year as of yet. What does your instructor say about your kicks? Let him/her judge. Do not rush speed and height, they will come with time and practice. As to stretching, if there's time right after class work on those hips, legs and shoulders. If you have to wait until you get home, or do your stretching on a non-training day then ensure you are warmed-up. Never do any static stretches on cold muscles. To warm-up you can do some light work {kata practice} or a hot shower to get you started. As well, look into dynamic stretching as this is something you can work on before class and use as a warm-up for home static stretching.

Welcome to both KarateForums and more importantly the world of Martial Arts. Don't worry about your age, there is not wrong time to start training and looking our for yourself. I know your excited, but you have a lifetime ahead of you to learn about your art. Don't rush it, enjoy your new passion and dive into your training. Talk with your instructor, he probably has some good information for you. When you find out your styles name, there are plenty of resources out thereto aid you. There are also other resources that will provide you with good information. Under the General Martial Arts section of this forum there is a recommended library list, some good books / articles there. Take a look through and you should be able to find something to peak your interest. Be it history, philosophical, technical, etc. Enjoy.

Sorry, here you go. http://ottawa.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20111230/ott-athlete-of-the-week-2012/

This young lady recently promoted to black belt, a huge accomplishment for her. Here's a little public recognition. ottawa.ctc.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20111230/ott-athlete-of-the-week-2012

It is your school and your rules... The one issue that comes up with university and military based clubs/schools {this could include the schools in the surrounding areas} is that you can get a number of visiting students. These are people that are there for anywhere from a month to a year and are looking for a place to train. They are not going to be advancing through your system, they are going to be coming in, working out with you, learning with you and then going back home. How you treat these people is different then someone moving into town and going to be training up through your ranks. I had seen this when I was young and still in the army. On our base at the time the Karate club was run by ...... well lets not go there. I hear now it's a good club, congrats. I ended up training at the Aikido club and had a great experience there. We always had visiting students from various MA and parts of the world, so the instructor had an interesting way of welcoming everybody. Once a week, any individual with a black belt in their art was asked to put it on regardless of the art. For the last hour they were all asked to demonstrate their art and put it into context of the class. In doing so, I not only learned Aikido, but had healthy introduction into different arts and their approaches.

It goes with the cycle of life. I used to train 3 days a week plus one day at a different school working on self-defence. Then there was my conditioning work on top of that. When I was training up for my Dan tests it reached 6 days a week. Now with my schedule, family and the schools schedule I train in school once a week and on my own once a week, and I still have my conditioning workouts. It'll change again and I'll pick up more training, when the time is right.

In the system where I came up you only failed a test if you completely boomed it. But the 'formal' exam was done in front of family and friends and was actually more of a demonstration and formal promotion to your next rank. Before a grading individuals had a pre-test and this was the actual test, and this is what you could fail. Interesting to note, more people were nervous of the grading then the pre-test. I've seen many people fail the pre-test, even for Dan ranks, and only one person fail for their black belt. Come grading night one young lady completely refused to spare. She had a mental block, as she was good at sparing and loved it. Next year she nailed it, but had I moved on by then. In the school I am at now they have had tournament requirements for a few years. Basically you need to attend 4 tournaments before you test for Brown Belt. There is no tournament performance attached to the requirement, it is there because we are a small town at the end of a single road. The tournament requirement is intended to get people out and see that there is more to Karate and MA then provided in our little town. There was great excitement a couple of years ago when they added a third stop light... One thing I would like to see with my new school is a requirement to attend a MA seminar, unfortunately that would require a travel expense and some people can not afford that.

Pick up a exercise band, a rubber band on steroids with handles, to work on your shoulder. The exercise bands are a great tool for increasing range of motion and stability in the shoulder girdle. Google / Youtube exercise bands and shoulder exercises.

Deleting your account does not work in the long run. Patrick has already gone through some of the negative points. Your boss will find your new account, it may take a while, but it is bound to happen. One thing that has worked for a couple of other people that I know is that they let the person in and use FB's security settings to restrict their movement as Patrick mentioned. Then after a couple of weeks, and your sure that they have taken a look around, you unfriend them. Generally, but not always, once they know you are a friend, they move on. As they generally have to many FB friends to track them all. In a year or so down the road your boss may actually discover you dropped him from FB. When he asks why, you tell them that you cleaned up all your 'Friends' that you had no interaction with and that he wasn't alone. Good luck with this.

I use a cheap daytime planner. If your into the smart phone's there are plenty of apps you can use as well.

Hollywood style, grabbing the hand right before the it would hit the face.

Nobody I currently work with has access to my Facebook page. It's mine, old colleges, friends and family only. The problem is that I am also self employed as a personal trainer, a very personal profession and Facebook is a good communication tool For this I have an other Facebook site, and I keep them both active. Once I explain this to new clients, for those who ask, they don't seem to have any issue with it. Don't be rude to your boss, but you should be able to send him a note or talk with him telling him that your Facebook is for personal use, not company use.

The problem I see with 'sport' karate, is that some schools focus solely on the 'sport'. You see them coming into the tournament with special tournament dry cleaned Gi's, hair is perfect and the practitioners from white to black belt are only doing one or two katas. Their point sparing looks great, as long as it's done in the ring. Aside from that, I think the 'sport' side of Martial Arts helps us in many ways. We are reaching out to the community, marketing..., and some people do need some sort of competition/award for their work. I know, not the ethos of karate, but some people do need this. As long as the 'sport' part of karate is only part of the system then I do not see anything wrong with it. It can be another tool to challenge your body and mind. Don't get me started on what I have seen as self-defence ~ I saw one club where the owner/instructor was showing their students how to catch a punch.

Ueshirokarate, One of the reasons I like Crossfit for this instance, is programing. It will be done for him and a good coach will be able to modify the program to fit his goals. Like you mentioned, concentrate on the MA, more time can be spent on this by not having to create his own lifting program and make the same mistakes other keep making. Although he is asking questions, this is good. Liver Punch, the meatheads only start listening to us trainers after they get hurt. They really don't like it when I give them an "I told you so" about when, where and by how much it would hurt. Unfortunately most human males need to be taken down, gently, once in a while. I know I did when I was young.

As mentioned, both! There is no one training system or piece of equipment that will give you what you need. Plus the human body adapts quickly, so you need to give it some variation in your workout to keep the body challenged.

I think there are a few more questions you need to ask before making your mind up. What was the offense? What are the details surrounding the offense? When did this happen? Did he/she pay their dues to society? Does he/she have any legal restrictions placed upon them? Does the offense actual have any bearing on his/her teaching MA's? There maybe other questions to be asked, I'll let other post them. This is not a cut and dry questions, even hypothetically. Before making the quick and easy decisions, we should step back and take a look at the complete picture. That being said, there are some offenses where I do not want any person of authority to have in their past.

I think our views are the same, but we differ in our approach, but if you ask three trainers the same question, you are likely to get five different answers. Which one is right?