jmy77

you should be more worried about working your back, shoulders legs and abs. your back, legs and abs are your core and are by far the most essential areas to work out. Big biceps are for the beach.... Soreness is a fact of exercising. This is the third thread (that i have seen) that you have started about exercising and pain and is it worth it... If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.

to add two more cents. I drink b/t 2 and 3 liters of water a day at work, drink a few pints of water while i exercise and keep a glass by my bed at night. Water is also beenficial because it is a natural cleasner for your system....

If I can push my self to teh point where I am about to puke in a work out I call it a successful workout. I view it as pushing your limits, challenging yourself. I workout for fitness and when I push so hard i feel sick then i hit my limit - take a few deep breathes - suck it up and keep going - if you puke so what! wipe your mouth and try and go a little further. Of course everyone in my family (except my dad) thinks I am nuts. But hey if it were asy everyone wold do it. And check your facts - we did not adapt to water - water is a necessity to life - everything needs water - our bodies are have a very high water content. Water was around looooong before we were here and it will be here looong after we are gone... There is no drink on the market that can replace water. Again - this is a test of your mettle BK - you made thread similar to this about soreness - you gotta ask "what am I made of? am i quitter? or will i get past this?" Which is it?

WOW! Are you serious... I'm with hobz and hobbit and everyone else who gives people the benefit of the doubt... Why couldn't he be a brown belt? Why do you all automatically assume A) he is F.O.S. and B) you could beat him down.... Have you ever seen him fight? As far as him a being fat and unathletic are you using his MTV Fartman appearence? How old is that clip of video? Is it because he is a celebrity? Honestly what if it were Mel Gibson? Or Brad Pitt? or Ed Norton or Jamie Fox? Would you believe them?

No need to repeat yourself. I wasn't reffering to whether or not you said you would try to diffuse it. The statement you highlighted was in responce to your confidence that you could block any strike (as it seems you have.) I was agreeing the best way is to try to diffuse it. If there are that many people around and you are backing off the whole time - trying to talk your way out of the situation and this punk won't let it go, you he forces you into a situation that you feel you have no other recourse, that you have to strike - then do it. It will hold up in court as long as you don't go to far and you did truely try to walk away from the situation. Also, from my experience most people don't want to go to sit on the stand for someone they don't know - the majority of people won't even give a statement to the police. Also you don't have to hospitalize someone when you fight. Unless you do serious damage it may not even make it to court.

fungku - your confidence may get you in trouble... everyone gets caught once in a while - and if the person who catches you is a trained fighter you are in a lot of trouble... I am with David Wells on this. Try to diffuse the situation without fighting by any and all means ( i have walked away from many a guy calling my every name in the book trying to provoke a fight)... but if the guy won't let it go and won't let you walk away - why would you let them strike? why even give them the chance to "get lucky" and catch you with a strike? Hit'em fast - hit hard and that will most likely be the end of it... no one likes to get hit.

Silva fights Vale Tudo which from what i understand translates into anything goes. Not specifically Muay Thai.

I don't take shotokan but if the guy in video is a good representation of it I am glad i don't. Can any of you shotokan stylists defend/critique that piece of film? He threw one or 2 punches with nothing behind them and no direction, he walked right into that takedown - didn't even revert into a natural defense, seemed like he tried to just punch his way out.... just observations....

I think any MA can be considered a "combat" Martial Art. I think the discipline is a tool, there for you to use how ever you wish. You can take any system and use it to compete in tourneys or street fights or just for fun... whether or not it is combative is up to how the practioner applies it. And trophies in the window doesn't mean anythin

BKJ- There are many styles of Kempo. Some are: American Kempo, Nick Cerio's Kempo, Shaolin Kempo Karate (A.K.A. Villari's Kempo), I take White Tiger Kempo. Have you decided on a style? If so which and why? Also you had said there is a Kempo school by you - what did you think of it? I don't know much about shotokan, and it is good that you feel so strongly and passionate about your style, but if it truely is the greatest style then the tehniques should enable an inferior fighter to defeat a superior fight. Why? Because it is so far advanced that the techniques make up for the lack of ability. I think we all can agree that there is no style that is that good.

I agree with kensai also, but you also should hit a heavy bag - the heavier the better. you muscles will developed and power increase from the resistance the bag generates. Working bags (havey and speed) is also a great work out!

Chin ups (palms facing you) vary grip: regular narrow, wide very reps: pyramid, ie. do 1 rest for 30 seconds, do 2, rest for 30 second, do 3 rest for a minute, do 3 rest for 30sec.... all tha way back to one rep do a negative at the end of each set ie. if you are doing sets of 6, do 5 normal then a negative rep for #6. you can do the same for pull ups- palms facing away from you.

Personally I prefer to sweat as much as possible. Sign of a good workout and you (or atleast I) feel better after a good heavy sweat. If you want there is a company out there that makes shirts which will keep the sweat off your body (and out of your Gi) - it's called Underarmor. I have a couple of these shirts as I enjoy sweating but most people do not like engaging a sweaty mess when sparring... Also because the shirt takes the sweat off of you you stay cooler. here is a website: http://www.underarmour.com/ua2/default.asp Look under heat gear. try it out - I love it.

How about - NorthBound... Only cause I had an meeting with a supplier today and had to take a northbound train!

It's Kenpo Karate. Master Rich Fescina (7th degree) is a Nick Cerio black belt and the system he teaches is based on Cerio Kenpo. We are taught JJ at higher ranks. It is primarily a karate system. Here is the website (It hasn't been updated in a few years but the esssentials are there. ) http://www.kempomartialarts.net/home.asp

That depends on the style of karate. The kenpo i take does teach take down defense and jj.

I don't believe there are "cheap tatics" in a street fight. I said take on the biggest guy. Either way what you did worked and that was the point i was tryng to make. Usually the person yelling about unfair fighting and cheap shots - is the guy who lost. Now if it were a competitive match with rules that's a completely different story...

I had a similar problem in high school. There was a kid who was an inch taller and about 50lbs heavier than me. We both liked the same girl, she chose me, so in this neanderthal's head the next logical step was to pound me - however unlike you I was a horrible wrestler and my stand up was mediocre at best. Back to the point, he threatened, and told stories of the damage he was going to do to me at first I was nervous but, afetr a while i found it funny! He had ample opportunity to fight me - never did. This kid must know you are a champion wrestler, he may know you are a brown belt in karate, he must know you will demolish him, my point is he may be trying to save face or make you look like a coward for avoiding the fight and him the bad ass for pushing it, either way if wanted to fight you it most likely would have happened. My advice - Ignore him. Ignore his taunts. Just plain act like he doesn't exist - but always be aware of where he is when he around you because eventually his mouth is going to make him look like a chump -then he may act. Example: If people say Hey man, Johnny Toughnuts said he is going beat you into dust at lunch - a simple responce is no responce or just say okay- and shrug it off - don't worry about it until it happens.

First - you handled it perfectly - always better not to fight, even though you say certain weapons are illegal, it does not mean that no one has/carries them and unfortunately you probably wouldn't find out until too late. If talking was going no where and you had to fight; well, how good is your BJJ, I would recommend taking on the biggest SOB in their group. Few reasons - A) they will most likely want to watch the big guy take you out, B) it seems to be a general belief that a person willingly to take on a bigger person is slightly nuts (Advantage You) and C) if you beat him - no one is going to challenge you. So you say your BJJ is good (I don't doubt it is) but how good? Could you rely on it? That's just my philosophy.

Ninja and AGKK, Correct me if i am wrong - your belief is that if you do not dedicate your life to learning karate then it is not worth it to you?

White Tiger Kempo white yellow orange blue blue stripe green green stripe brown brown stripe brown 2 stripes (black candidate) black

Its not meant to change the mind of the tyrant but to undermine his regime by taking away "the great satan."

Maybe so, but he makes a good point...

Titled: Why not Kill Dictators with Kindness? Mar. 10, 2003 Why Not Kill Dictators with Kindness? BY JOE KLEIN A year ago in Tehran, I noticed a defiantly goofy graffito inscribed on the wall of the old U.S. embassy building, the compound where the American hostages were held in 1979: ON THE DAY THE U.S. WILL PRAISE US, WE WILL MOURN. This was an official slogan — in Iran, as in America, graffiti are the work of miscreants, but in Iran the miscreants run the country — and it was an unintentionally revealing one: the mullahs are terrified of better relations with the U.S. Without the Great Satan, they have no excuse for, and no way to divert attention from, the dreadful brutality of their rule. A wicked thought occurred to me at the time, and recurred last week, as the Bush Administration continued its foolish refusal to meet with the North Koreans: Why not do the one thing that would most discomfort, and perhaps even destabilize, the precarious regimes of the Ayatollah Khamenei, Kim Jong Il and — for that matter — Fidel Castro and Muammar Gaddafi? Why not just say, "We hereby grant you diplomatic recognition, whether you like it or not. We're naming an ambassador. We're lifting the embargo. We're going to let our companies sell you all sorts of cool American things like Big Macs and Hummers. This doesn't mean we approve of the way you run your country, but it's silly for us to deny that you're in charge...for now"? Diplomacy is rarely so rash. And yet, "It would certainly catch the mullahs by surprise," says Azar Nafisi, an Iranian dissident who is a fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. "It would drive them crazy," she adds, laughing, "the thought of having an American embassy in Tehran again, with lines of people around the block, trying to get green cards. There is a theory that American cultural and economic power is so insidiously attractive that opening up to the U.S. would be the death of these regimes. I've heard it called the Fatal Hug." The arguments against Fatal Huggery are obvious. Why encourage and legitimize evildoers? Why allow Kim Jong Il — the Michael Jackson of world leaders — to succeed with nuclear blackmail? Why reward the Iranians for their support of Hizballah? Fair points, all. But there is a problem: the current American policy of nonrecognition isn't working, and it may well be counterproductive. "What's the hardest job for a tin-pot dictator in the information age?" asks Joseph Nye, dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. "Keeping his people isolated from the world. Why should we be making life easier for Fidel Castro or Kim Jong Il?" The U.S. is the only major country that indulges in diplomatic ostracism (although most Arab states don't recognize Israel). This policy was invented, appropriately enough, by the arch-idealist Woodrow Wilson, who said that diplomatic recognition should depend on the "existence of a just government...resting upon the consent of the governed." Wilson refused to recognize the Soviet Union in 1917. That ban was lifted in 1933, but Wilson's policy was resurrected in 1949 when the communists conquered China. America's nonrecognition of China, which lasted nearly 30 years, was an unmitigated disaster. "If we had not ostracized the Chinese, we might have avoided the war in Vietnam," says a prominent Republican foreign policy expert, referring to the American misreading of China's control over the Vietnamese communists (China and Vietnam proved to be mortal enemies). "But when has it ever helped to refuse to talk? Why voluntarily reduce your influence over an adversary?" The China policy was just the start. By the time Jimmy Carter became President, the U.S. refused to recognize 17 countries. Conservatives took a hard line in most cases; liberals acquiesced, for fear of being called softies. The hard-liners were reinforced by ethnic lobbyists for China, Cuba and Israel, who worked to pass economic embargoes that can't be undone without further legislative action. In the past two decades, human-rights groups have also joined the coalition of the unwilling-to-recognize. In most cases, the motivation is honorable — all of these regimes are terrible — but the overall pattern is hypocritical: Why shun Iran and yet recognize Saudi Arabia, which also funds terrorism and denies human rights? Why recognize Pakistan, which produces nuclear weapons and helped create the Taliban, and not recognize Libya, which has been trying to cultivate our approval for almost a decade? Does anyone actually believe we would be in worse shape now on the Korean peninsula if we were talking to the North Koreans? Talking to evildoers is the essence of realpolitik, and realpolitik seems in bad odor these days. Last week George W. Bush announced himself as the most exuberantly idealistic foreign policy President since Woodrow Wilson. Bush's vision of a sudden flowering of post-Saddam Middle Eastern democracy has no historical precedent. If issued from the mouth of, say, Ted Kennedy, it would have been denounced by conservatives as fantasy. Is Fatal Hug diplomacy any more improbable than what the President has already proposed?

This is war about Saddam not complying with the acccords set by the UN after the gulf war, though I am not blind to the many other implications. In 1998/9 Saddam did not allow UN inspectors into Iraq and nothing was done. The UN passed legislation against Iraq and does not enforce it, America sees this and gets a president willing to enforce it - He goes before the UN and they still won't enforce their own rules. France leads the way againts the US. (and has interest in Iraq as is) http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/20/opinion/20SAFI.html?th http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/2757797.stm http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/sanction/iraq1/iraq013.htm