aurik

Uechi-Ryu tends to prefer effectiveness over aesthetics. Whenever I ask my CI a question about "Why do it this way", any answer he has is almost always based on biomechanics. We were discussing the mechanism for the knee strikes in one of our kata last night, and his explanation went straight to the applications of that technique - how if you do the technique incorrectly, you're liable to lose your balance and fall to the ground, possibly with your opponent on top of you. Likewise, in our two-person drills, we stress proper form not because it's pretty, but because it's what works. When I notice students overextending on their attacks, I'll demonstrate WHY you don't do that; generally I'll have them perform their technique, have them stay where they are, and then tug on their extended arm. If I notice that my partner isn't doing a block correctly in a drill, I'll be sure to set up my attack to expose that flaw in their defense. Proper form for us isn't proper because it's pretty. It's proper form because it's effective.

Given that they've been playing at ASU's arena, I'm surprised they are still even financially viable.

The Blues are still in this thing. They just whomped the Blackhawks 5-2 last night -- 4 goals scored in the first 5 minues of the game, no less.

My Blues are being danged inconsistent when they need to be playing lights-out for their season. Case in point: last Saturday they play the Sharks, who have been losing left and right -- and get shut out 4-0. They get booed off the ice. Come back 2 nights later and beat the red-hot Oilers in overtime. They're now only 3 points out of a playoff spot... so let's see if they can finish the season strong and make the playoffs.

Heck, on casual Fridays I might not even wear pants! (I work from home, so I can get away with this).

Teaching kids and adults tend to be very different experiences, in my experience; the challenges you'll face when teaching kids can be very different from the challenges you'll face teaching adults. If you aren't excited to teach kids and see it as a chore or something you feel you HAVE to do, then... just don't. I have attended several different schools -- some have been run as for-profit businesses, others have been run as a non-profit club where the instructor has another full-time job. I will say that the for-profit businesses always taught kids, and younger students (under 16) were a vast majority of their students (at least 75%). Now IF you choose to teach students AND you do it well AND you can build a reputation for yourself, THEN you can certainly build a foundation of your business with teaching kids. Note: there are a lot of IFs there. In the end, it is your dojo/school. You decide what you want it to look like, and you'll need to figure out what student base you want to gear towards. If you don't genuinely enjoy teaching kids, then just don't. You can make your school work without them, whether you want to be a non-profit club or a for-profit business.

The game on Monday in St. Louis is a big one, then they play in Minnesota on Saturday. Important week for Vegas, a real opportunity to increase separation from teams chasing them. Sorry guys. I'm thinking the Knights are going to be on the outside looking in when the playoffs start, because my Blues are going to pull things together and get that last wildcard spot. LET'S GO BLUES!!!

While I wholeheartedly agree that instructors should generally not berate students, intimidate students, or attempt to/injure students, there is also a very fine line the instructor needs to tread with certain students. As an instructor for advanced youth students (generally 4th kyu and up), I see this frequently. Specifically, we have a number of students who do not have what I would call "the appropriate martial attitude" when it comes to training. For example, in a two-person drill, students get into the habit of kicking to the air next to their partner, or just lazily putting their arm out there for a punch, or just "going through the motions". I see this all the time in bunkai, kotekitae (arm/leg conditioning), and yakusoku kumite. Whenever I train with someone (depending on their rank), I'll give them coaching that this is a bad habit to get into, and encourage them to get into the habit of striking at their opponent. If a student ends up approaching his/her brown belt test and still is having these issues, they end up having a "come to Jesus" meeting with our CI, usually on the dojo floor while doing their dan-level yakusoku kumite, and at this point it's usually a "sink or swim" test. He'll run the drill at the intensity he thinks it should be run at, and he'll add some verbal pressure to the mix. He won't say anything abusive or derogatory to the student, but he will tell them "You have to attack harder", or tell them what they're doing isn't correct, and he'll say it at an elevated voice. His philosophy (which I wholeheartedly agree with) s that a) it's better for the students to learn to deal with pressure in a controlled environment than on the streets, and b) when one of his students is a brown belt (and moreso a black belt), they represent him, and he wants to make sure they've really earned it. For some students it's a hard test to pass. He has made students cry before, and a few have quit over it. However, from my perspective I think he stays well on the "constructive criticism" side of that line.

The (colored) belt ranks are an easily identifiable way of indicating what a student knows, is expected to know, and is expected to be ready to learn. This makes it easy to group students together to work on their rank-appropriate kata and drills. It also makes it easy for a higher-ranked student to determine at what level to train with the student. For example, when I'm training with a white belt, I'll take things much slower and more relaxed than I would with a brown belt. This is especially important in larger schools where you may not know all of the students by name and ability.

Welcome to the forums, Dennis! We're glad to have you here, and I look forward to hearing your insights.

As the saying goes, the only thing harder than winning a Stanley Cup is defending a Stanley Cup -- for multiple reasons: - Winning the Cup means that your team had a much longer playoffs than the rest of the League. This means more time to accumulate all those nagging injuries that can only be healed by rest and recuperation. - Likewise, winning the Cup means you have a shorter offseason to heal those injuries - Finally, with the salary cap, you're going to have players who are coming off contracts, and with a Stanley Cup under their belt, those players are going to be due a raise. Which makes the 3 Cup Finals appearance by the Lightning a few years' back an even more amazing feat.

Holy moly, that's a LOT of posts! If I posted 10 posts per day for a year it would still take me a REALLY long time to get that many posts. And as others have said, they're not just fluff or "me-too" posts. Thank you for all of your contributions!

I've read the original book, and I saw the mini-series many moons ago. In short, I'm liking it quite a bit. I noticed that they didn't tone down the language at all. I'm looking forward to the remaining episodes.

Congratulations!

Congratulations on the unexpected double promotion, and huge props on the Shogo title!

Definitely lots of red flags here. I can only speak of Uechi-Ryu, so take what I say with a grain of salt. In Uechi-Ryu, 10th dans aren't exceedingly rare, but the number of 10th dans in the USA is very small -- 4 that I can think of. In Uechi-Ryu, once a teacher gets above a certain grade, they are somewhat expected to travel and teach at seminars. So a quick google search of their names should give you an idea whether they actually do this. Another resource you should try -- your current instructor. My CI has pretty good relationships with many of the other martial arts schools in our area. (Funny story, the heads of one of the other local schools asked to come along on one of his trips to Okinawa, because they don't speak Japanese and our CI does). So your current instructor should have a pretty good idea whether these guys are 'legitimate' or not. And as DP has said, if you don't know what a "kyu" grade is but claim to teach Shotokan, then you definitely don't teach Shotokan.

Uechi Ryu doesn't have an explicit "front" or "reverse" punch per se. We only specify the weapon to use, whether a seiken tsuki (flat-first punch), hiraken tsuki (leopard-fist punch), shoken-tsuki (one-knuckle punch), etc. If necessary, we specify the hand (right/left), but oftimes it's implicit.

I'll be honest -- most of the times I watch the super bowl for the commercials. Granted, the game is fun and everything, but I rarely have much invested in either team. Now my wife and I do have an agreement -- if the Steelers are ever in the Super Bowl, I have to cheer for them. Likewise, anytime the Blues play (NHL hockey), she has to cheer for them. This year I ended up going to Costco a few weeks ago and picked up a few packs of chicken wings and will be making those along with some sides. 2 years ago we tried (pre-ordering) from Buffalo Wild Wings, and that was an utter disaster. They had no concept of how many orders their kitchen could handle, and I ended up just cancelling my order after waiting an entire hour past my pickup time. FYI, Alton Brown has an awesome Chicken Wing recipe that's really easy to make:

Another couple weeks have gone by, and things are finding their new normal. I'm now making a regular appearance to the Thursday evening classes, and there's a somewhat different group of people that come that evening. Over the last few months I've been having to juggle other commitments (my son's Scouting for one), so making the Tuesday evening class is sometimes difficult. The good news is that I've got the basics of my new kata (Kanchin) memorized reasonably well, so now I can work on the nuances of it. Last night we had enough time at the end of class that we were able to do the entire gamut of our kata (6, not including Sanchin). I'll say that there is one disadvantage to being of high rank in our school -- you'll end up working your own kata AFTER you've worked every other kata in the system. When I was a white/yellow belt, I would think that working my one kata was hard after an hour workout. Now as I work the color belt katas, I need to make sure to budget my energy to work the dan-grade katas. Which is why last night I made a few glaring mistakes on my newest kata -- it's not that I don't have the kata memorized, but when you're already tired, it amplifies your mistakes. The good news is that I got a few kudos on my Kanchin form in some of the more nuanced portions, and my CI also showed me where I'm making a few common "beginner mistakes" in the form, so I can be cognizant of them when I work the kata on my own. I'm dealing with some nagging back and hip tightness again, but that tends to go away after the warmups and hojo undo. I Another fun experience at last night's class is that I got to work with Devon in our kotekitae session -- he is a 5th degree in TKD and a shodan in kobudo, so he already has great power and technique, but one of the things he's not quite used to is actually hitting people (relatively) hard. One of the things we work on is gauging how hard to hit your partner to get the proper conditioning response. Too soft, and they get little to no benefit, too hard and they can bruise and that can take a long time to heal. I'd have to ask him to go harder 2 or 3 times to get the right intensity. Afterwards he told me that he's not used to hitting people hard -- he has one partner who he could go pretty hard with, but mainly he is used to hitting/kicking bags. I also had a chance to teach him some of the other conditioning drills we do, so that was pretty fun as well. So on the whole, I'm getting back to where I was back in November before things went completely sideways. And after that I plan to keep moving forward. Until next time!

For my 50th birthday, my wife rented out our HOA's clubhouse, and she brought in Steve's Retro Arcade. The guy basically has a air-conditioned trailer that he loads up with a dozen or so retro arcade games -- you get to pick and choose which ones you want. It was a complete blast. Some games I did quite well with, but I hadn't played Dragon's Lair in a LOOOONG time, and I sucked royally at it. But it was a blast! My only disappointment was the "pinball" games were digital pinball emulators, not actual honest to goodness pinball games.

I agree 100%. Since I've been teaching, my understanding has increased significantly -- in the process of explaining things to students, I regularly have "a-ha" moments and insights. The version I prefer to say though is "The best way to learn something is to teach it so someone else".

One of the benefits of Uechi-Ryu is that there isn't that much new material to learn for each kyu grade. For example, we only have eight kata in our system (with their associated bunkai), three different yakusoku kumite drills, and a few other pieces of required material. What students are graded on is the quality of their techniques, not necessarily how many techniques/kata/drills they know. Our kyu levels are broken down into groups of 3, based upon what kata they are tested on: Kanshiwa (for 9th, 8th, 7th kyu), Kanshu (for 6/5/4), and Seichin (3/2/1). Within each grouping they are expected to memorize the kata, then be able to demonstrate the kata with appropriate power, and at the third level, they are expected to demonstrate the kata with proper timing, power, and technique. What makes things hard in our style is that when you learn a new concept in your new kata, you're expected to propagate that concept all the way through your karate, from the first kata / bunkai / yakusoku kumite you've learned all the way up to your current material. Back to the original issue though, the CI definitely needs to find a balance between "bonus material" and "making sure students can progress through the curriculum at an appropriate rate". My CI tends to do 1 in 4 classes with "bonus material", and that seems to work pretty well for us. For advanced students, that balance tends to shift somewhat -- our brown/black belt class has bonus material more frequently -- more like 1/3 to 1/2 of the time. Of course, if your style requires new material at every kyu grade, then that calculus changes.

I agree. I've been involved in two very successful traditional MA schools, and they both had the following things in common: - Had a lot of kids' classes, with a few dedicated adults classes and some all-ages classes. - Made a point to "mix things up" on a regular basis. For example, they both had a set curriculum that would be tested on, but every so often, they'd have a class on "cool stuff that isn't going to be tested on, but it's fun and useful" - Made a point of retaining a fair number of advanced students - Hosted seminars with outside instructors to bring in a fresh perspective from time to time. Yes, Martial Arts is hard. If it were easy, everyone would walk in the door and be guaranteed a black belt in X months. Advancement in the MA is predicated on practicing the same techniques over and over again, and not only practicing them, but practicing them with the focused intent on improving something with every repetition. So yes, it's boring. But that doesn't mean you can't (and shouldn't) sprinkle in some new material now and then to keep things interesting. Also, by having advanced students in the class that can be role models for new students, it gives them something visible and attainable to strive for. A brand new white belt might not be able to see himself as good as his CI someday, but they can easily see themselves being as good as the yellow belt, or green belt that they are training next to, and the green belt can see themselves as being as good as the brown belt or new black belt.

I'm glad to hear that you and your mini-me were able to decide on continuing with your current club. Honestly, when I was a low-rank (white/yellow belt), I would always enjoy training with the right black belts, because they would always give me pointers and help me improve my technique. So hopefully your fellow advanced students will give your daughter the same treatment. Good luck on your training this semester, both of you!

It's been a little while since I posted in here. The last month or so has been pretty rough, both life-wise and training-wise. After Zach and I tested for our dan gradings, I spent a week in Dallas (which was fun -- I had the opportunity to train with a Uechi-Ryu Kenyukai group out there. As Mr Miyagi once put it, "different, yet same". It was a good experience. Then the week of Thanksgiving, we went on a cruise from San Diego to Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan, Cabo San Lucas, and back to San Diego. And then my dad died the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Since then, I've spent the last week of November at his place going through all of his things and cleaning his house -- I've also been working with my sister trying to manage his estate. There was a fair bit of friction there as well -- my sister and I haven't been on the best of terms for a long time. And then the last night as we were getting ready to head back to Denver, the darned hotel bed messed up my back again so I've been dealing with that. Couple that with all of the things that go on during the holidays, and I didn't get much training in. So over the past week I have done my Thursday evening class, taught Friday evening's advanced youth class, attended Saturday morning's class, taught Tuesday evening, and attended my first advanced adult (Tuesday evening) class since my testing. Friday evening's class was pretty fun. One of the things our CI had me do was work with the shodan-sho's on their new kumite drills and work with them on their new kata, Seiryu. Zach has also had to miss a lot of classes (due to travel, holidays, etc), so he's still struggling with the new kumite drills. But he's getting the hang of them. Personally my favorite segment of this drill is the last one -- basically the attacker comes in with two low front kicks, followed by a right lunge punch. The defender raises up the legs to block with the shins, and then steps forward into a low stance (shiko-dachi) with a circle block, strikes the attacker in the solar plexus with an elbow strike, applies a backfist to the upper mandible, and then does an o-soto-gari (major outer leg reap) takedown. The takedown is the hardest part for a lot of people to get -- mainly because most students will just give the takedown to the defender. Personally, that really irritates me, because it doesn't make the defender learn the proper technique. And the throw here is all about the kuzushi (off-balancing). So I demonstrated how if the defender still has his balance, he can just lift up the leg to avoid the throw. So I had one of the students lift up their leg as I tried to sweep. Then as their leg was up, I just gave them a tug and push, and down they went. I then had them try on me a few times. Still, none of them were trying to off-balance me. They would just try to step in and sweep the leg. So I showed them the other reason you wanted to have your opponent off-balance... if you're stepping in to do this throw, you're by definition not in a stable stance, so all your opponent needs to do is drop his hand to your waist, tug on the arm, and twist... and you end up getting thrown instead of your opponent. So that was a lot of fun. Last night was my first trip back to the advanced adult class since my testing, and I learned a fair bit. For one thing, I had the chance to work on my new kata quite a bit to the point where I have it fairly well memorized. I definitely won't say that I "have it down", but I know which moves are supposed to go where, so that's a plus. In each of our kata, they introduce a new sequence or two, and this one is no exception. This particular kata is rather difficult, especially for a large person, since you spend quite a bit of time in a shiko-dachi, and there's one sequence where you end up having to do a 180 degree pivot from a shiko-dachi to another shiko-dachi. If done right, it looks really cool, but I'm far from doing it "right" or "well". The good news is I do have a couple of years to work on this before I have to test on it. In any case, practicing this kata will definitely help with my quad strength! So the important thing is after rough month and a half or so, I'm trying to get back into a normal routine. I expect that there will be more bumps in the road in the upcoming months, but I'll be doing my best to keep moving forward in my journey.