aurik

"Old man tricks" - I like the sound of that -- that's a lot of what I do when I spar. For example, if someone does a roundhouse kick to my midsection, I'll eat it, grab it, and then step in, give them (what would be) a good solid punch to the midsection, grab them by the gi, step in again and take them down to the mat (again, with good control). I also keep an eye on my opponent's feet - when they step in to deliver a jab, I'll do a quick sweep of their front foot -- like a kouchi gari in Judo. The idea is to land this right BEFORE their foot hits the ground, but they've already committed to the step. If done right, it won't necessarily take them down, but it'll off-balance them enough that you can step in and land a few strikes on them. Also, in our sparring legs are a valid target, so I like going after the front thigh with a low roundhouse kick. The usual defense to that is to lift up the leg in a crane block. Do that once or twice, then step in a bit deeper, and when they raise up for the crane block, follow that roundhouse kick through to take out the back of their opposing thigh. Again, it may or may not take them down, but it'll distract/unbalance them long enough to let you land a few strikes. Do I do these in such a way to hurt my partner, absolutely not. I make sure to never strike at a joint, or put my partner in a position to get injured (bad fall, etc), and I don't strike hard enough to injure. But you know what they say, "old age and treachery wins everytime"

In Colorado, the use or possession of nunchaku and throwing stars are specifically banned in public places unless being used in a public demonstration or a class. And they must be stored in an "unaccessible" container. Now to my knowledge, I've never known someone to be prosecuted over this law, but it is on the books. Now I do know that my CI and his wife were once traveling to Okinawa with a layover in Canada. Their bags went through security screening, and the authorities siezed and destroyed their brand new set of purpleheart nunchaku. Even though they were only in Canada for a layover.

My instructor's philiosophy on belts and ranking is, "the colored belts aren't for you (the student), they're for me (the instructor) - they give the instructor an easily identified reminder as to what part of the curriculum you're at and what is appropriate to be teaching you". So with that mindset, I have absolutely zero problems with TIG requirements. At our school, junior kyu ranks (up to 5th kyu or so) have a 3 month TIG requirement and senior kyu ranks (4th kyu and up) have a 6 month TIG requirement. This is for your average student who attends a minimum of twice per week. Students that only attend once per week will test less frequently. These TIG requirements are set by our organization, and are fairly standard across Uechi-Ryu styles. Kyu gradings are done purely at the local dojo, so technically my CI can adjust TIG requirements slightly depending on the student's circumstances. However, when a student tests for shodan, their entire packet gets sent to our organization, since they will be awarding the dan grading. As such, any discrepancies in TIG requirements will need to be justified. As I mentioned, the belt is a guideline to the instructor to let him/her know what the student is ready to learn. So if a student shows above-average aptitude, then the instructors will recognize this and introduce him/her to more advanced techniques earlier than other students. For Dan-level gradings, the TIG requirement is generally 2 years to test for nidan, 3 years for sandan, etc. If you are an instructor, they can reduce that TIG requirement by 6 months at the discretion of the CI, since instructors are required to teach at least once per week in addition to their normal training. Again, these are guidelines and minimums. Any and all test candidates need to be invited by their supervising instructor to test. Generally the instructor in question will run a "pre-test" evaluation in class the week prior to the testing board to make sure the eligible candidates are ready to test.

Our CI is very open and welcoming of us attending seminars both by our organization and others. In fact, he frequently brings in outside instructors to our dojo and hosts seminars to give us outside perspectives. He also leads a trip to Okinawa once or twice a year so we have the opportunity to train with senior instructors there. He is a firm believer in the value of learning different ways of doing things, and letting us incorporate that into our own karate. Now as far as testing at such an event goes -- it just wouldn't happen in Uechi-Ryu without the knowledge and/or consent of that student's CI. One organization's senior instructors simply would not test students from another organization, and they would not perform dan gradings of students within their organization without the consent and recommendation of that student's CI. In any case, beyond a certain level (6th dan or so), Uechi-Ryu, at least in the USA, gets to be a really small fellowship, so everyone basically knows (or at least knows of) everyone. Everytime I've visited another school and mentioned who my CI is, they either know him or his dad. Maybe it's because my CI tends to attend (and teach at) a couple seminars every year himself. Now if you had a situation where the CI of the school didn't feel like he had sufficient instructors of grade to run a testing panel for a student (for example, a sandan instructor had a student testing for nidan), I can certainly see how that CI would either invite another senior instructor to visit and run the testing board, or send that student to another instructor to test. In fact, we had a very similar situation at my school a couple years ago. We had a student from Nebraska whose instructor was not senior enough to promote him, so he came to our school to participate in our testing cycle. Now, as others have said, if a student earns rank in another style that's another story entirely. We have a couple students who have dan level ranks in other styles. However, when they attend classes at our dojo, they wear the ranks that they've earned at our school.

My wife and I were discussing the procedure yesterday evening. It's a 2-3 hour outpatient procedure, you have significant activity restrictions for 5 days afterwards (no strenuous activity, no driving, careful going up and down stairs), and then you can begin resuming normal activity afterwards. You'll continue to be on blood thinners for about 4-6 weeks afterwards.

That's exactly what I'm on. I technically have atrial flutter (which is a form of afib, but easier to treat). I recently spoke with a cardiac surgeon who suggested a surgery to treat it -- basically go in through the femoral vein with a laser and create a small patch of scar tissue which prevents the signals from going haywire. So I'm most likely going to have that done later this year.

I mainly avoid sparring right now because I'm on blood thinners, so the potential for excessive bruising is pretty high.

Do they have ones to fit a 78” bo?

I generally avoid sparring, but when I do, I go for the MMA style gloves -- I am big on grabbing my opponents.

Tonight is the Blues' season opener against the Kraken. Let's go Blues!!

It's been awhile since I posted in here, and in the meantime I've started taking Matayoshi kobudo classes. It's a different experience, using different muscles, and is taking quite a bit to get used to. However, last month I was fortunate to test for (and pass) my board for kukyu. The only firm requirement was that we be able to perform bo no hojo undo dai ichi (first set of basics with the bo), but he also had us demonstrate the first bo kata, tsushi no kun, to gauge where we were. We got some good feedback after the test (for one thing, I need to re-learn how I have been doing my hand pivots on the bo, that's going to take a bit). But in the end we all passed!

Our dojo does things similarly, but with some key differences. First of all, students have to be invited to test. Meaning: there are time-in-grade and attendance requirements, but our CI (or the student's supervising instructor, if they are at a satellite school) will not invite a student to test unless they are confident that the student will pass. Our school has four groupings of kyu ranks: white, yellow, green, and brown; there are three levels within each grouping (except white belts), for ten kyu grades in total. Students who are testing for a yellow belt grade will be required to know the same material; they will all perform the same kata, the same two-person drills, and the same kotekitae exercises. As a student progresses through the yellow belt grade, they'll have added requirements added in (bunkai / kata interpretation), and they will be expected to show a more nuanced unerstanding of the material. The way our instructor performs testing is he'll bring all of the students for a given grouping up to demonstrate their material. He'll have assistant instructors watching groups of students within that grouping so no one instructor is watching too many students. After the group completes, he'll check with the instructors to see if anyone was struggling with the material or made gross errors. In that case, he'll have those students stay on the floor and re-demonstrate the material to give the student a better chance. If the student still struggles, then he'll have the student perform with an instructor (in the event they were having difficulty with a partner). If they still struggle, he may fail them on that part of the test. So each student gets 3 solid chances to succeed, and there are some parts of the test that you can technically fail, but still pass the test, depending on which kyu grade you are testing into. In the years I've been attending the school, I've only seen three students not pass a test. One of them just couldn't get their rights and lefts together under the stress of testing. One of them just had a terrible attitude on the test day (he had a very complicated family situation, and the CI spoke with the kid's parents before failing him), and I don't remember the third reason. Our CI also stresses to students that even if they don't pass today, they can test the following testing cycle (which he usually runs at least one per month).

And now back to our original programming... This past week I've tried to get back to my original training schedule. Tuesday kobudo followed by Tuesday advanced karate, Thursday kobudo followed by Thursday teaching. Unfortunately, due to some GI issues, I had to skip the Thursday kobudo, but training around health issues is something you have to deal with -- and it's a more often thing the older you get it seems. In our style of kobudo, we start on the bo, followed by sai, then tonfa. I'm starting to get pretty comfortable with the bo (even my massive purpleheart beast). The sai is coming along as well, and the tonkua I'm still having issues with, but improving. In terms of the techniques we learn, I'm feeling really good with the first bo hojo undo, the second one I'm getting familiar with, and the third one I'm still iffy on (I'm not sure when we test on the second or third one, so I'm not worried). I'm also getting pretty comfortable with the sai hojo undo - this is what I'll be tested on in a couple months. The tonkua hojo undo I'm still struggling with, but I won't be tested on that for a long time. I'm also feeling really good about my first 2 kata - tsushi no kun (bo kata) and nicho sai (sai kata). Unlike uechi-ryu, our CI will pretty much teach you anything in kobudo he thinks you're ready for. For example, tsushi no kun isn't a hard requirement until you test for shodan, but he teaches it whenever he thinks you're ready to learn it. The kata itself is mostly the same sequence of hojo undo techniques, with a couple of extra moves sprinkled in for flavor. Likewise, nicho sai follows the same lines. While they're not hard and fast requirements, they are definitely good to know. I also attended our Tuesday advanced class for the first time in awhile -- between stamina issues (the kobudo class tends to wear me out, and I'm still trying to regain my stamina after all of the issues at the beginning of summer). I got to work with David (who recently earned his shihan license) on kotekitae, and this resulted in an "a-ha" moment. One of our fundamental kotekitae sequences is the arm pounding sequence. Partner A steps in with a punch. Partner B steps back performing a chudan barai uke, striking the partner's interior forearm. Partner B then circles underneath the arm with a watari-uke (circle block), maintaining contact with the partner. The drill concludes with Partner B striking Partner A's forearm either with a shuto uchi or a tettsui uchi (chop or hammer fist), depending on preference. Here's the a-ha moment. David is also a 4th or 5th degree in Aikido and has put these two concepts together. If you modify the initial chudan barai uke to "hook" with your wrist at the exact same time Partner A is finishing their extension on their punch, you'll pull Partner A forward, disrupting their balance just enough that they'll have to take a moment to readjust. That little bit of disruption can make all of the difference. That's one of the differences that our CI has mentioned between Okinawan and Japanese styles of karate. In most Japanese styles, you are strongly discouraged from disrupting your partner's techniques. However, in many Okinawan styles, you're expected to disrupt your opponent, especially in 2-person drills, because that disruption makes your techniques more effective if you ever need to actually use them.

I attended a kobudo seminar a couple weeks ago and had one (of many) a-ha moments during one of our hojo undo sessions. In our style, if we are performing a sequence of hojo undo (aka kihon/basic) techniques, we are expected to kiai on the final technique. Well, the instructor who was teaching said, "You kiai on ALL of them, but you only vocalize the last one". I had to think about that a bit, but I interpreted it as "you have focus/kime on every technique, but we only need to hear it on the last one".

Welcome to the forum!

Right now I'm re-reading "Oathbringer" by Brandon Sanderson (book 3 of the Stormlight Archive). He will be releasing book 5 this December, and I'm doing a re-read so everything is fresh in my memory when book 5 hits the streets.

One of the things I love about my CI is that every year he makes a point to bring in outside instructors to run seminars. He just finished his second seminar this year, in fact. Earlier this year, he brought 3 instructors from Uechi-Ryu Kenseikai (one of our sister organizations) to teach us tournament kata and their ways of doing things. Last weekend, he brought in Raymundo Veliz from the Matayoshi Kobudo Kodokan Nishinomiya Shibu to run a 2-day kobudo seminar and also help run dan-level gradings. I personally find these seminars valuable because you both get to see new material, and you also get different perspectives on the material you may already know. For example, in the Kenseikai seminar, Shoko Akamine (one of the instructors) is a multi-time world champion in kata and the other two instructors perform judging at the international level, so they were able to give us perspectives on how competitive tournament kata differ from the ways we run kata day-to-day. With these extra perspectives, you can figure out what works for you and then incorporate that into your own karate. At least in our school, we are taught the fundamental way of doing things, then as we get to advanced kyu and dan grades, we are expected to show advanced level understanding of all of our techniques. However, at some point past shodan, we are also allowed and even encouraged to find our own expression for our techniques (within a certain accepted framework, of course).

Last week was a really good week. As I've previously mentioned, I started training in Matayoshi Kobudo this June. Having a foundation in Uechi-Ryu definitely helps in some ways. Some of the body mechanics are the same, but some of the others are waaay different. For example, in Uechi-Ryu, you generally want to keep your shoulders square at all times, to keep an opponent from pulling you off-balance -- once you're off-balance, you're vulnerable. However, in kobudo, you have a weapon, and that weapon is more effective when you can get reach on an opponent. So you'll often lead with your weapon shoulder, and the hip rotations in kobudo are far more pronounced than in Uechi-Ryu. So it's "different, yet same". (I actually have the converse of this conversation with the students who have started doing Uechi-Ryu after spending a lot of time in kobudo). So I'm starting to get the hang of the bo and the sai. With the bo, we have 3 sets of hojo undo (basic techniques) followed by a number of kata (5, I think?). While you'll start learning the bo kata as soon as you're ready for it, it's not a firm requirement until shodan. Likewise the sai consists of a set of hojo undo along with 3 kata (and the kata aren't tested until shodan). I'm still struggling mightily with the tonfa (we call them the tonkua), but I won't be tested on those for quite awhile. Well, this past week, our CI brought in Raymundo Veliz from the Matayoshi kodokan. He ran mini-sessions (30 mins each) on Thursday, then ran additional sessions through the weekend. There were 2x 2-hour sessions on both Saturday and Sunday. Session 1 was bo, session 2 was sai, session 3 was tuonkua, and session 4 was nunchaku. In each session, Raymundo sensei started out with the fundamentals, and for each fundamental he showed the movement, we'd practice it a few times, and then he'd bring a partner up to at as an opponent with a rattan/bamboo bo, and then explain WHY we did the movements the way we did. In many cases the move as written was drastically different than the move as applied. For example, with the sai, all of the hojo undo combinations start with a chudan tsuki (mid-level punch). But per Raymundo, it's not "really" a punch, but you're switching stance to get in a more advantageous position. It just "looks" like a punch. He also has a sharp sense of humor (in 3 languages no less) -- he grew up in Mexico and has lived and taught in Japan for the past 18 years. Every so often his English would fail him, so he'd fall back to Spanish or Japanese and wait for someone in the audience to give him the right English word. But as an instructor, he is energetic and has a real passion for teaching. The sheer amount of information I learned over this seminar is astounding. We worked on fundamentals, bunkai (which you usually don't even start on until green belt or above), kata (including tonkua no kata dai ichi and nunchaku no kata, which I'd never tried before), and a LOT of discussions about the why and how, including generous amounts of body mechanical explanations. The good news is that for the past 2 months I've been training with the massive purpleheart bo that I made. It's about 6 1/2 feet long, octagonal, and untapered. It's extremely heavy to wield and wears me out using it. So this past weekend I used my old oak (untapered) 6' bo. Which is heavy and stout, but not nearly as big as the purpleheart bo. After using the purpleheart bo for 2 months, that oaken bo felt super light. Which is what I was going for. I think from now on I'll test with the oaken bo and train with the purpleheart one. It was one of those weekends that "levels up" your understanding of everything, especially if you can remember it all. I'm just not sure if I can, and I'm not sure where to begin writing it down. Now I'll be spending the next day or two recovering. My traps and lats are shot, and my lower back is exhausted too. But it was definitely worth it.

Preseason starts this month!!

I've been quite remiss in updating this thread. A lot of things have happened over the past few months. I've been keeping up with all of my doctor's appointments related to my incident in May. I had a nuclear stress test in July, which showed that my heart is still pumping blood how it needs to so that isn't an issue I need to worry about right now. I spoke with the cardiologist last week, and she suggested that since what I had was atrial flutter (different than atrial fibrillation), there is a surgical way of correcting it. From what I understand, the surgeon would go in through my femoral vein with a laser and essentially zap away the set of neurons that can go haywire and trigger the atrial flutter. I'm nervous about it, but it would mean I wouldn't need to be on blood thinners anymore. I have an appointment to speak with the surgeon in October, so we'll see what he says. I'm very concerned with complications, but I'll at least see what the surgeon says. The weight is down by 20 lbs since I had my episode. It's not coming off as fast as I'd like, but it IS coming off, which is the important thing. I've had to trim my belt twice, and I'm going to have to start buying smaller pants here soon, so that's a good thing. In terms of martial arts, I'm continuing to teach my weekly Thursday class, and we just got a new batch of white belts in the class so that's fun. My Thursday night now consists of an hour of kobudo followed by teaching my karate class. Saturdays is usually an hour of karate followed by an hour of kobudo, with last Saturday I did an hour of karate, an hour of kobudo, and then a kobudo test. Our instructors tend to give feedback after the test, and one of the pieces of feedback I got will basically mean I'll need to relearn the way I handle the bo (specifically with the grip changes that are involved). I did finish my purpleheart bo, and it's a beast. I intentionally made it long and heavy with the intention that if I can wield this effortlessly, I can pretty much pick up any bo in the dojo and it'll feel like a toothpick. I'll get some pics of it shortly. In the next couple weeks I plan on taking that purpleheart (I"ve still got plenty of it) and making a set of nunchaku. We have a guy in our dojo who has made quite a few weapons and is willing to help me out on that. It also turns out that I've got some pretty unique tools that should help with that. More on that later. I spent the first 2 weeks of August in Colorado Springs taking an "Introduction to Bladesmithing" class. I have to say that in those 2 weeks, my forging and grinding techniques improved by leaps and bounds. I'm now able to take a piece of steel and forge it efficiently into the shape I want, so that there's a lot less time required on the grinder afterwards. I'm also getting to the point where I can draw something on a sheet of paper and forge within an eighth of an inch or so to that shape. (That's about 3mm for you metric folks). There's a LOT left to learn, but I feel like I'm at a point where I'm comfortable making something and giving it and/or selling it to someone else. So this coming weekend I'll be heading down to Colorado Springs again and starting on a few projects: - A set of Japanese scabbard chisels (https://www.waltersorrellsblades.com/product-page/saya-nomi-japanese-scabbard-chisel). It turns out these are also EXTREMELY useful for cutting in the side grooves on a set of nunchaku. I checked with my friend, and it looks like a 5/16" width is just about the right width for it. And it so happens I've got 1/4" stock that will forge out to just about the size I need - Two test blades for the ABS Journeyman test. I made a couple in my class, but these won't qualify since they were made during a test. These are blades only for the purpose of passing the ABS Journeyman performance test: They have to be no longer than 15" with a 10" blade, the blade can't be any wider than 2", and they have to pass the performance test: Slice through a 1" rope in one swing, Cut a wooden 2x4 in half, twice, Shave hair off your arm (to show it's still sharp), and then put it in a vise and bend it to 90 degrees without breaking. It's okay if it doesn't straighten back to true. - We have a few kids in my son's Scout troop who will be completing their requirements for Eagle Scout in the next few months. I plan on making them custom knives to commemorate the event. I've found a really cool idea for a pommel that I should be able to cast out of bronze, and we'll see about other things as well. And I'm going to start making the commitment to work as much on fit and finish as I do forging. For the longest time I'd forge something out and never finish it. From here on out I'm going to finish them.

In both of the arts we teach, Uechi-Ryu and Matayoshi Kobudo, kiais are usually short and from the gut. Each of our katas usually has a couple moves in which you are expected to do a kiai, usually 2-3 per kata. Additionally, when performing hojo undo techniques in Matayoshi Kobudo, we are expected to kiai on the last technique of a set. For example, if you are doing a set of 3 techniques forwards and backwards you would kiai on the third and sixth technique. Every so often our CI will discuss the different philosophies/reasonings behind the kiai -- it can be used to focus your energy at the kime point of the technique, or it can be used before delivering the technique to distract your opponent. I don't think he's ever really corrected students on which way he prefers. What's really funny is the kids and beginners when told to kiai will often shout "KIAI!". Our CI sometimes tells them that what they're doing is essentially yelling "YELL!".

Curtis Joseph, Roberto Luongo, and Adam Oates come to mind. After all, what Blues fan doesn't recall one of the best center/winger pairs of Hull and Oates? And you can't leave CuJo off the list either.

I enjoyed Elantris, but you can tell it's one of his earlier (published) works. His writing has definitely evolved and improved over the years. I've only read the four Earthsea books by Le Guin; how is The Language of the Night?

In preparation for his new book, Wind and Truth, I just started rereading Brandon Sanderon's The Way of Kings

On its surface, that just sounds all kinds of wrong. But I'll definitely need to check it out!