Canadian77

That's great advice ... I wanna concentrate and develop my foot work more , any advice regarding this ?!!! Hydration is a new info for me ... sure I will take it in to consideration Hydration 1/2 way through an intense workout will give a large energy boost...the opposite applies if you do not stay hydrated. As to footwork: It is a MASSIVE subject. People have given you footwork tips in this thread that I'll second (or third) 1. Do not take more than 2 steps backwards. A person retreating straight back WILL get hit by an aggressive opponent. I can prove it to you now. Who runs faster? Guy A who is running backwards...or guy B who is running the normal forwards way? B of course. It's not close. You cannot run backwards to avoid attacks. SO WHAT CAN YOU DO? 2. Move left or right. This is best as you do not need to take a lot of steps left or right...just one good one at the right time. You will then still be close...close enough to counter attack. 3. Circular movement. Not as good as #2...but pretty safe. If you get up in a fight...circle around an opponent in the direction of their back. That is the side/angle that they will have the fewest offensive options on. Also useful if you just need a bit of time to collect your thoughts...to slow down an opponent...etc. You can attack off of this movement...if for example they do not keep up and you see a good slice of their back...blitz it. (the side of the head...not the back as that is illegal in most dojos from what I know) There is way too much to cover or to even be useful to yourself to type here. You would not remember it all...footwork takes time. I agree, some great advice in your two posts, AdamKralic. I will take this to heart as well. I can use all the advice I can get! The first part is very helpful to hear too, about not worrying about anything and just doing more. Perhaps that's what I need to focus on. I tend to overthink it, and with no idea what to think OF, I just go blank. I'm trying to hard to get a technique in, not listening to any instincts - - do I even have any sparring instincts?? Lol. Hopefully you're right, pain will be a motivator to teach me. I'll definitely keep your other ideas in mind as well.

I wanted to clarify. We have occasional family classes, but mostly my son and I are not in the same class - - the classes are generally quite separated between youth and adult, as well as levels - - groups of close belts together, etc. The family classes are a fun way for family members to take in a class together, and are only offered twice a week. But just to be clear, we do not really train together. We each attend 3-4 classes per week, and only one, if any, is a family class. Even within the family class, we separate to work on various things. Basically just the warm up is together.

This is a very helpful post. I knew I would get inspiration here after my not so great class, and this post gives just that. Thank you!

you are my best friend in this forum as we have started our journey nearly at the same time and we are very close in many things in our practice ... nice to have someone sharing with me nearly the same experiences, feelings and thoughts from the other side of the world It IS great having someone at the same point in training. And very cool that you're on the other side of the world! I look forward to sharing more experiences.

Safroot I completely know what you mean - I felt totally lost (at my first time sparring last night) too. It was overwhelming. There is so much to think about - protecting yourself, finding an opening, trying a technique (and I'm still working on those techniques in the first place), blocking...it was too much and I couldn't do more than one at a time - obviously that doesn't work in sparring. I also felt unprepared in that I didn't understand any of the rules. One of te black belts I sparred with said you aren't supposed to hit the back. I had no idea. My reaction time is slow and my moves are slower. I felt like an elementary student in a university class. So it sounds like you are already doing much better than me! Hopefully we can look back on this thread at some point in the future and see how far we've come! For myself I don think I could do much worse!

Ugh it was not fun. I felt like I knew absolutely nothing and was starting from square one. I wish I had read this thread beforehand. I see lots of great advice here so hopefully it will get better. I felt it was a whole different world from the rest of my karate, and I have zero skills. I don't think the guy teaching realized that it was my first time. I would have preferred to just spar with the other girl who just started, just to try to get the feel of it a little bit. But maybe throwing you right in is the usual way to learn this? Anyway I wasn't hurt at all, so I know they went easy on me. And boy, was something I read on another thread here so true - the lower belts are the scary ones. The orange belt guy just wailed on me flailing. Oh joy lol. But the black brown and purple belts gave me pointers and were trying to help. All in all not really fun, but hopefully it will get better with time and skill improvement!

Any advice for a newbie at sparring? Tonight will be my first time ever sparring, and I'm not really sure what to expect. I trust my sensei but I know my reflexes aren't the greatest. Mostly I'm just worried I'll look ridiculous, lol. Any last minute advice for starting out?

Why do you think you don't do the kiai? I'm still fairly new to karate so not sure how much help, but I wonder - do you not do it because you feel silly? Sometimes I find that a little bit. But I've found that if I really focus on using the kiai to give you that extra energy and oomph, it comes naturally. I find it works better if I get into 'character', so to speak - - really putting my heart into my kata. Practice helps too - - when I'm too focused on a fairly new technical aspect I tend to forget sometimes, but when I know the kata and really give it my all, the kiai just comes.

Arrg. How frustrating. Sounds like a Homer Simpson "Doh!-gi" situation...lol. I hope the bigger one shrinks properly for you. I've been lucky with fit so far. Hopefully the bigger one shrinks as much as the other one did, so it fits you well!

Well put.

Was participating in a family class with my four-year-old son last week. They separate into level/size groups for various parts of the class, but for the warm ups we work with our family member. Often it's two siblings, but there are some parent and child too. My little guy was the littlest by far the other day. We do a lot of exercises where one of the two family members will have to do whatever the exercise is (say, run to the end, jumping jacks, push ups, run back, high five and the other person goes). One of the exercises they had us do was for one of the family members to go in horse stance, the other crawl under their legs, stand up in front and go in horse stance for the other person to go. They had a good laugh at me attempting to crawl underneath my son's legs, lol. One of the black belts came over and picked him up when it was my turn to crawl, and I went under both. Good times. Lots of laughs, along with hard work, at my dojo as well.

I'm just starting out, so no regrets yet. I'm very happy with my choice of dojo. This thread is great though, hopefully I can learn from it and have no regrets in the long run!

Not quite there with the whole family, but we are getting close - - my young son and I both currently take karate, and my daughter is hoping to start in the summer. Now we just have to get my husband on board and we would all be in! We have a number of families that train together at our dojo, but not sure if any entire families train. I'll see what I can find out. But there are quite a number of one parent with one or all kids. There are enough family members that train together that we have a few family classes a week - - classes where family members can all train together despite belt level. They're great fun, my son loves them.

Thanks everyone. It was a great experience, and I'm pumped in my new belt. My classes will now be a little bit longer, and I'll get to try some new things, like sparring.

So I graded, and I got my yellow belt! It was intense but fun. My elbows are killing me from all the push-ups though, lol.

Well, he said it is important to really understand your body, and how it works. That makes the technique easier in martial arts, but it is important in life as well. He goes back to the basic necessities of life - - air, food/drink, sleep, etc. - - and says to take care of yourself with relation to these (get enough sleep, but good food in your body, etc.) Each morning he awakens his senses, focusing for example on the sounds of birds, the smell of his breakfast, etc. He also says to maintain the martial arts attitude outside of the dojo - - not to be lazy at home, etc. It sounds simple, and I know I'm not explaining it very well, but in general it does seem like a good re-focus for life, especially for someone stressed out with day to day things, like I find myself as a mother of two young kids.

At our dojo the kids keep the belts they earn - no need to start over. It does take longer for them to earn the belt though, which makes sense to me.

Me too! That's definitely a bonus.

I agree 100% with this. My instructor is 63 and still makes things look so effortless. He is of the mind if he has to use others to demonstrate for him then that should be the day he hangs up his Gi and packs it all in. The guy is a machine, it's awesome to watch sometimes. If he catches you skimping or not doing it right then you have to do it all again until you do it properly. M. Our instructors all get down and do this with us as well. It's particularly poignant when we're doing a series of core exercises that feel pretty close to impossible for me, and the sensei is there, doing it well and talking (telling us what to do next)! If definitely both pushes you (he's doing it, so I ought to be) and inspires (wow, he's doing it, I can achieve it!).

I've seen a little debate about starting at the hip or not. I am still a white belt and don't have enough experience to say why something does or doesn't work. But I will say that our director has said that one reason for bringing our reverse punches right to the hip is to get our body used to the motion of the hips helping the punch. I'm not saying it very articulately here, but I think that makes sense to me - - practice the basics with accurate technique helps so that when sparring (and keeping the hands in guard position) you have the motion of the hips giving power to the punch as second nature. Does that make sense?

So we had the Goshindo workshop. It was a lot of fun! The guest instructor had a great sense of humour. We were flipping eachother all over the place, lol. He worked on proper break-falls first, and then worked on techniques that added a little more each time until we had a full routine. My karate classes are generally quite varied and I am always learning something new, but I hadn't done anything like this before (other than the break-falls), and we have done a fair bit of self-defense techniques. I quite enjoyed watching one of the routines he taught the younger advanced students. They had a routine of getting someone down on the ground that finished with tucking their feet into the shirt of their gi. Honestly though, as much fun as the class was, and even though I did learn many new techniques, all of which were great, my favourite part was the end where he answered questions and told us a bit about his philosophy for life. I really like his attitude toward life, and found it inspiring. If anyone has the opportunity to train with Hanshi Alain Sailly, I highly recommend it!

I agree. I've been in karate for nearly three months now, three times a week, and we have never had the same warm up / conditioning twice. The way that the various elements are mixed up, the number we do, etc. is different every single time, and I love it.

Not sure that this will help, as it likely differs dojo to dojo, but I know that another person who recently graded for yellow belt at my dojo didn't have to spar. However, we don't even start sparring until yellow. Not sure what happens after that though. Update once you've spoken to your sensei. I'm curious to hear what you're told.

Lol, I've done that!

Ours is shotokan, but our sensei will give us flavours of other styles here and there for variety in our training. But mainly shotokan.