AdamKralic

Pride often makes one make rash choices. Lateness is unacceptable period. While I have made many rash choices/displayed immature behavior in my life...the one thing that I've always been master of was punctuality. Why? It's the easiest of them all to take care of. Leave early to get to everything. EXPECT there to be unforeseen delays.

Did your knee catch his chin? Tad hard to see from the angle in the video. Great fight though...CONGRATS!!!

Excellent. Thanks so much to everyone. tallgeese: you had mentioned at one point that we could meet; do you have any kids that fight under you? I ask as the one thing all people need is more opponents. Perhaps you know of a child that needs an opponent to spar in a naska type rule set? Perhaps not. Never does hurt to try.

Excellent. Good job and YES...get some video!

Good luck!

Thanks for all the good advice.

DOTA 2? http://www.ign.com/articles/2011/09/16/the-heroes-of-dota-2 ??? looks cool.

Nobody here plays Diablo 3? That game has SERIOUSLY ate up a metric "boatload" of my time. So simple...so addictive. Though I have sworn off it for the 8th time due to a hardcore character death. (hardcore in Diablo = one life period...go as far as you can...the end)

You do not have the frame to get "huge." IDK...just my two cents...I'd focus on other strengths. Speed. Accuracy. Reaction time. I've seen a smaller fighter beat much larger opponents over n over n over again. They win with speed. You can absolutely increase your speed through exercise. Dramatically at that. Plyometrics is something that you should google the bajeebus out of.

good advice...thanks. I totally agree on the mental front. His bag of tricks gets condensed into the two things he can do in his sleep due to nerves. We are upping the pad work for certain. Not sure how to get more fighters in front of him. He fights at two different schools within the organization but all the fighters are kinda blah. He is also working with the traveling team but due to karate politics (power struggle) they haven't met all summer. They have better fighters for Zach to spar when they are going on. Was supposed to meet with them today as a matter of fact but it got cancelled at last minute.

Thank you for your advice...it is point sparring but the bag idea is a very good one.

My son's first non-closed school tourney was last year in Indiana. He got crushed. Simply had no idea how much harder people fight in ranked tournaments. He got pushed around badly and was visibly upset. He has done other ranked tournaments since and even placed a few times in them. He still however is better in class than in tournament. Confidence is the main reason imo. He believes that he is going to win everything in class...he fights at 100%. In tournaments? The belief seems lower...the skillset becomes much more limited. September 1st marks one year later. So if anyone is going to the 31st annual Northwest Championship in Indiana...well we'll be there! I want to make sure he is better prepared this year...ESPECIALLY mentally. IDK how to help him there other than very typical Dad advice. Mental exercises? Advice? I've been reading in the exercise logs and we are doing light weight/body weight exercises together 3x a week. (good for both of us!) Any "explosive" exercises that you'd squeeze in 4 weeks before a tourney? (We do stretches, box jumps, hopping back and forth over a line, sideways medicine ball tosses to partner, barbell curls, tricep rows, situps, leg lifts (the core working kind), pushups, squats and light bench.) We typically do 2 - 3 sets of each. Reps are low. (5 - 7) We've been doing this for about two months now and it IS helping his speed without a doubt. Would you add suicides to this? (running to a point returning, back but further each time) Thanks so much for any and all help that you can provide.

This is almost the third time I've started a response and not finished...dagnabit I'm posting this one. It's subjective. I like Bruce Lee for deceased and Jet Li for alive. I like action martial artists on film. I can never get enough: martial arts movies or zombie movies. Sue me. Also a huge fan of Tony Jaa.

Zach passed his test yesterday...here is his last fight. (Zach is in white gloves)

In defense of all the karate parents out there...only once did I see a parent act very inappropriately. It was a Mom at a school (closed) tournament. She got up in the judge's faces about a score on a routine. The child was visibly embarrassed about her Mom's behavior.

Wow. Not quite was I was expecting; but it was a very entertaining video for sure.

Here is the 2nd fight that Zach won 3 - 2. I was super nervous for this one as Zach does poorly against girls regularly. Plus she is a higher belt. She also is about 8 inches taller. (this tournament was not supposed to mix boys and girls sparring but they did not have enough fighters to go as they planned) We've "ducked" tournaments previously where it's boy/girl as Zach is really uncomfortable fighting the girls. I'm not going to put up his loss...as well that's private learning fodder.

Your school didn't have any programs that taught nunchaku; would you go to another school to pick up the knowledge? What type/"genre" of schools tend to have quality nunchaku training?

Just curious as to how popular weapon sparring at tournaments is in your area? Foam wrapped nunchaku or sword sparring?

As a parent who is ringside for all of the tournaments...I agree. In order to maximize profits imo organizations frequently have tournaments at hotel lobbies where there just isn't any place to stick all the non-competitors. But the last fight I was at with my son was at a very large facility that was designed for sporting events and still every ring was circled with non-competitors. They tried asking people to sit down in the first hour of the event it seemed...but people largely did not move. No barriers were erected. No enforcement of desire to keep outer circle of rings clear. So if you want to see...you are almost forced to get up and go ringside. I would prefer barriers. Simple rope system like at the movie theater lines. It'd work. You also need one or two volunteers to be "enforcers."

That was a light contact tournament. The official rules even stated that controlled punches that were "pulled" an inch before the target would count...but that is impossible to judge that way in reality imo. We were a bit nervous that hard stuff would not get counted. The very first blitz did not get counted for example yet Zach knocked him over with contact to his opponents' kidney. This is the first tourney outside my son's closed school tourneys that requires a chest protector. Zach hates the protector as he feels restricted with it on. We probably won't go back next year for those reasons and that it seemed more like a forms/weapons tourney where sparring was an afterthought. For kids it can be difficult learning that each tournament is judged differently. Zach fought at a tourney where he got scolded for breaking on his own before. (Zach cracks the guy in the face...backs off...judge does not count kick to face since Zach broke before she said to) For real. So...

There are age brackets...there is no reason why you could not compete. I have frequently seen 35 and over divisions in NASKA. They have grand championships for that division of course. Just think...YOU'D BE THE YOUNG ONE! Until you got to that age division you'd be against 18 - 34 year olds. IMO a perfect set up as you have a few "practice" tournaments until you hit the 35 and up division. All that being said? There are some INCREDIBLE fighters that are older than 35. My son's traveling team teacher was a 10 time CONSECUTIVE national champion. He is 46 and still fights occasionally. He is still winning most of what he attends. I've talked with him a lot...he is still going hard because A)it's in his blood, B) He wants to do a high level bare knuckle tournament before easing into teacher only mode.

So what happened? Any updates?

Zach took 2nd place at the Battle of the Badger State yesterday in Wisconsin. Big division in that it had 7 fighters...so 2nd isn't bad at all but he was a bit "off" imho. Here is the opening fight where Zach was spamming his blitz. This fight he won 5 - 0. Great...but he fell in love with his blitz and each fighter he fought afterwards saw that. Next fight he won 3 - 2. Last fight was actually against imo the worst of the fighters he fought...and he lost that one 6 - 0. (kid just stuck up his leg and Zach ran into it over n over n over again) Uggh. Zach also had two occasions where he hit the opponent after the judge yelled break. Was warned on both...no points deducted but it did cost him imo. (In last fight judge started the fight as he did all the point breaks with a wave and the word "fight!" Zach timed it perfectly and FLEW across to hit the kid. Judge waved it off and said that Zach jumped the call. Zach was very angry about that...but when we got home and watched the videos...I told him that he was NOT on the judge's good side and that was his fault. Zach is mature in that he can understand that kind of criticism. (I generally compare it to adult pro sports...every pro will say..."you want the refs to like you.")

Samurai Jack....from the very cool cartoon Samurai Jack.