Nidan Melbourne

Well done!! Well deserved! Our chief instructor has "secretly" assessed several karateka at my dojo since I moved to his dojo.

I still stick by good old goju ryu

Thanks all for your support. she is getting better now. Well the student that I cracked on about finally got what came to him. He was barred from grading for the next year due to his actions against certain members of the school.

Wooo go the redsox!!

Forward rolls - get them to crouch down, and if they want to roll over their right shoulder tell them to tilt their head to their left shoulder. So they can go over their shoulder. And similar going backwards. Unless someone more experienced can tell me otherwise

Exactly!!! You get hit one too many times in a spot you learn to go "no not going to get hit there again"

It is frustrating by the sounds of it to have no contact. where I train we have varying amounts of contact that is allowable. such as is awase kumite where we a good flow of techniques but is light contact (best for our juniors). Then point sparring for our competition students. Light sparring which is a lot of contact but you still need control (sweeps takedowns throws and leg kicks allowed) And lastely full contact which our black belts and certain brown belts are allowed to do

Just my current grade and location

Congrats well deserved my friend

As is the title what is your favorite style of karate? and why is it?

There is some potential for some students who train in the GKR system BUT from what i've seen is that the techniques they learn are dodgy at best. I went to watch a class last night because i bored out of my mind and i didn't have my class on (i don't train in gkr but another school completely). And the techniques they were doing were off and wouldn't really help. They did sparring at the end and it was poor. It was along the lines of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKNtAkRDarg There were 4 students there: 2 white belts, 1 red belt and 1 blue belt. 1 of the white belts had a bad case of lordosis (excessive curvature of the lumbar region of the spine) and the instructor was getting him to do techniques that he clearly couldn't/struggle to do. As we all know for a back hand punch you step forward, have plenty of hip rotation, front hand goes up to protect your head whilst punching. They weren't doing that at all. And this was during a kumite drill. And I am NOT criticizing GKR because of this. But IMHO they really do need to overhaul the style to make it an effective one

i agree with you on that front ps1 as some students wouldn't feel comfortable teaching others, which is a legit reason not to. It is completely up to the student to decide if they want to teach to help teach lower ranked students and to improve their own technique

Its good to hear that it got resolved so quickly. I hate it when the people you expect to lead you and the student body do that to the president and the student body. I am happy you took affirmative action against the board. I would have done the exact same thing!

I agree with Patrick on that point. What would you use them for? As i feel that any post with 10 points can go either way for it.

I'm not surprised parents are complaining about their kids being tired and sore. We get it all the time from our parents. Most of them who complain actually don't stay and watch to see what we do. We work them hard and stretch their brains with a bit harder stuff (really good for your brain when you work yourself harder - neuroplasticity my friends) We tell parents that it is expected that they may be sore and tired afterwards from working hard. As the kids are young their bodies adapt to physical training to become stronger.

John kreese from the karate kid

It does make things difficult for that to occur. We have 1 kid who is 12 that trains with the adults but it is purely because he can't get into the advanced juniors class because his parents can't get off work to drop him off. But he does goof off and doesn't do what he is supposed to. And us black belts often get paired with him to make him realize that he can't act like that. So we work him really hard

Sounds extremely shady to me. The grading fees at my dojo are included into the training prices. And we have no grading requirements outside of the dojo. We don't get told we have to attend any camps or anything like that. so we don't have to worry about like your describing. Although we do have people coming from schools that we have close ties with, and we do charge them for the grading. The only reason we charge them is for insurance purposes and also for a grading fee. So it usually works out to be about $AU50-100. But will be more for a higher ranking grading and less for the lower rank grading. We don't refuse to tell them how much it will cost.

For me personally i prefer having titles for the head of schools. My sensei is a head of style, BUT he doesn't tell everyone to call him kaicho or anything like that. But he informs everyone to call him sensei.

Baaaaad idea to date in dojo. The only time I think it is ok if your dating someone who trains with you is if your dating someone outside of the school then they join your dojo. Then if you break up with them when they're training at your dojo then it will become extremely awkward

Yes it is a mix of Goju and Shotokan. I was bored the other day and looked up their site

It greatly varies at my dojo. For our juniors we have classes 4 days a week and adults 3 days a week. If they train every of those sessions (so either 4 days/week or 3 days/week) you'll get tested every couple of weeks for a 'tag' and you need 5 to grade. so it will take just above a month to grade. As the required minimum of lessons before you can grade is 30. No one grades before that. We have probably a good 40 students who do that, and are very skillful (even our white belts who train 4 days/week with us and extra at their other karate school - but aren't counted towards their tally of lessons to be considered for a grading). So it will take just over 3 1/2 years to get, as all our students once they get past green belt (inclusive) they will take much longer to get their 'tags' It took me about 6-7 years to get my black belt, i trained 2-3 times a week but took a few months off due to knee surgery.

haha as much that is funny that you had your finger on the microphone. But then again it is unfortunate that it was the case.

People should earn every single belt that they grade for. So they should know their curriculum and be quite proficient at it as well. There is more leniency on a couple of the lower ranks as they are generally less experienced, but orange/red belts should be able to do the basics well. Not because they paid their tuition fees but because they earned those belts.

good job on not only looking after your own family but other people too! You are one of the reasons why i am proud to be a martial artist. I respect and and am humbled when i see people do that