tommarker

aes, imho, making it that far is impressive in itself. most people quit long before that. congratulations. in terms of kicking higher, the key is relaxation. people who start at a later age (no offense, bro!) are often a lot more rigid (strength in western culture is synonymous with rigidity) and it takes awhile to overcome this. You might be a lot more flexible than your mind is letting you believe. next thing you know, i'll be telling yuo tha tthere is no spoon.

mixed feelings... a show about the science of martial arts turned out to be little more than the story of a guy trying to be a sport karate champion. don't get me wrong... sport karate is not my cup of tea, unathletic white boy that i am, but if they just told us that's what the plot was.. i'd have still tuned in. i just feel like they pulled a bait and switch on us. in terms of traditional martial arts, that mullins guy couldn't find his * with a map, flashlight, compass and group of Eagle scouts. His bunkai was pathetic. His sport karate was pretty tame too. How long has Chat been out of the game? He still looked light years ahead of this guy. It really bugged me to hear about this "22 year old master" who could just no longer be the best in martial arts and hand to hand his legacy to some kid who hadn't even grown out of his orthodontic work. i guess guys like fumio demura, jae chul shin, jhoon rhee, are just way out of their league because they can no longer do a 720 back kick. I find sport karate and wushu fascinating in that they are constantly on the edge, proving what can and can't be done with the human body. And it's just great to watch, especially a competitor who knows that what their doing is NOT traditional martial arts. It seems like Mullins hadn't learned that lesson yet. Or maybe that's how it was edited... I dunno.

sometimes, if you hit "reply" instead of "new topic" you make a whole lot more sense. of course, i AM drunk... but either i'm not the only one or...

the timing, rhythm, weight distribution, and the flexibility (both physical and mental) needed to play capoeira are incredible. you know how we say in karate you could spend 20 years studying low block? the same is with jenga. i've done a few seminars over the years, and we always start with jenga and i see something that i didn't see 2 years before...it's amazing the flash, with a black belt in a korean art, I can do some funky kicks, but it's so not the true point of capoeira.

LOL!

Ow... Sang H Kim (you see him in a lot of Turtle Press publications) appears to strike the roundhouse kick with his toes. I could be wrong. But what I'm not wrong about is that on his kicking video, his toes look like crumpled little stumps. They might hurt to get kicked by, but they are still crumpled little stumps I experimented with this kick in class one night, and found a lot of students couldn't make their toes even cross in the manner shown.

Congratulations! I have Sensei Trimble's book on kata application, sounds like you had a good test. Tom

In Nagamine's "Tales of Great Okinawan Masters" he credits a special toe kick (tsumasaki-geri) to Arakaki Ankichi. (chapter 10.) In the picture, the kick is performed with the second toe crossed on top of the big toe. I would imagine you press the toes hard against each other to keep them from collapsing.

capoeira is HARD to get the nuances of. you see a lot of people lifting some moves from it, but that's only 20% of the art.

i meant to use the tag actually... but anyhoo. i did just a little foil fencing, and i thought it had some great lessons wrt timing an distance... but yeah, it didn't work for me either... now rowing, yeah you could get on that team with little experience at many schools

kempocos, I refuse to go there, sorry.

360, Not too different from point sparring really

Isshinryu has great staff and sai work from what I've seen. I think a shotokan performer is often more visually appealing than someone who performs isshin-ryu, but don't let that completely bias your decision.

The Korean is enough at times At one point, I tried to read as much as I could about Sip Soo, because I just didn't get it. Oh yeah... still don't completely get it!

so when do the fencing lessons begin?

http://www.donrearic.com/ http://www.realfighting.com/ http://www.jamesakeating.com/

shuai chiao has some good belt cracking forms that are pretty good hand workouts wrapping your belt around a pullup bar, and doing pullups with your belt is a good one too.

I doubt it. I don't think any of the martial arts are official NCAA sanctioned sports. Now if you were to become an outstanding fencer in the next 2 years

I have to ask if you're being a little melodramatic... Are you saying that: 1. You don't feel ready to test. 2. Your instructor tells you to test anyways. 3. Your instructor tells you (using these exact words) that "you suck" If this was truly the case, I'd be advising you to leave rather than wait longer between tests.

EC, I pulled out an old Kubota book titled "Official Kubaton Techniques" (ISBN 0-923401-01-6) Copyright 1983 (Kubota, Takayuki and Peters, John.) This text, much like the classic manual linked above is geared towards law enforcement, using pain compliance to assist in an arrest, extracting someone from a vehicle, or escorting someone from a building (unwillingly ) Most of the locks involve the wrist. Placing the kubaton across the top of the wrist along the radial bone, with the thumbs supporting the underside of the wrist. From here, just jam the stick into the ground, and your friend will follow Another mean tip from this book: Using the kubaton, grab the person by the earlobe, and squeeze the earlobe between your thumb and the kubaton. If applied correctly, your partner should burn up on re-entry I'll try to scan some pictures of the more interesting techniques if I get a chance. A really interesting one looks like you're lined up for a rear naked choke, but you instead press the kubaton into the cluster of nerves below the shoulder.

If you were to bash your fingers while conditioning, you might end up typing even worse

There are two basic theories with regards to using the yawara stick. Most of it is just enhancing normal strikes found in karate. The yawara makes the punch stronger, by adding weight to the punch, and by making the fist more solid. The ends protruding from both sides of your fist take all the power from a hammerfist or ridge hand strike and focus it into a very small surface area. Obviously these techniques are very effective and can be extremely damaging. This could also be a downside if you're not really in a position to cause great bodily harm. The second tends to get more into the use of pressure points, joint locks, and general pain compliance techniques. These are more for restraint than incapacitation and popular with police and security type folks who have to deal with a very clear "use of force" proceedure. The downside to these is that many people do NOT respond to pain compliance, and joint locks on the unwilling are not easy to accomplish.

EC, I'd like to ask you to have another go with the site. Pay special attention to the koppo-stick and yawara techniques. It's true that Mr. Rearic doesn't exactly show a lot of "techniques" but is aimed a little more at conceptual knowledge of using the weapon. Keep in mind, that no matter what Kubota says, a kubaton is a yawara stick It doesn't matter if his happens to be a plastic trademarked version. (No disrespect meant towards Kubota, who could whoop me, stick or no) http://www.yawara.com/Yawast1.html is a ollllld text, but it has more "techniques" that you might be looking for.

He has/had some interesting techniques. There's another site out there that is very similar in content. Both sites suffer from a lack of bandwidth. I like his site for the sole reason that it shows some interesting combos.