JazzKicker

i seem to remember you were at a WTSDA school, but I don't know what rank. Certainly having friends there and feeling like you fit in counts for a lot, but whether that's enough when you feel like you are not developing in some ways is a good question. I would say, at least get you black belt, or next dan, whatever it is. In the mean time, take a few trial sessions at the MMA place, see if you like it. Hey, it may blow your mind and you'll make up your mind quickly to quit TSD. I may have shared this before, I got to 3rd dan in TSD, over 20 years ago. I was in shape, could do all the crazy kicks, forms, etc. After that I got into JKD and MMA- and realized I was finally learning how to fight. I had a lot of rigidity and useless stuff to unlearn.

When I first started out years ago, long before MMA, my dojo had both judo and karate classes. Almost no one cross trained. I tried for a little while, but our sensei (who was an Olympic judo coach) advised it was best to stick to one (if I wanted to get good). As far as practical self-defense, the thinking was a judoka just needed to have a good punch and kick, too. Made sense, but I got banged up a lot more in judo, so I concentrated on karate. Fast forward 10+ years and dan ranks later, it was time not to be a purist. I had to unlearn some things, and over time, added JKD, Hapkido, Tai Chi, boxing, wrestling. Each added something to round out my skills, though I'm by no means a master of any of them. It's good to branch out, but it's still a trade-off that you will not master any one thing that way.

The human body is very capable of adapting through conditioning. We're inherently capable of running short distances (like to escape a saber toothed tiger) and walking long distances (to migrate for better climate, etc.) But to run long distances, that you have to train for. Combat is a bit different because we've made it a learned skill, and the primary means of learning has been mimicking and repetition. Conditioning occurs in the repetition. Too much repetition causes injury, though. They've even seen seen disfigured shoulders in the skeletons of medieval English longbowmen, from pulling 100+# war bows. It's only in recent decades, with the advent of sports science, that training methods have advanced to maximize performance and minimize injury. Now it's a lot more possible to train in martial arts without injury, but there's no getting around the primary purpose is to do injury onto someone else!

Ha! He just couldn't afford the rent with fewer students. I've been reading a book about karate on Okinawa, pre WWII and before. There are stories about some instructors being selective about students because of safety, and a few stories of impetuous men getting killed in fights. One story was a master who was provoked into a fight, kicked his assailant with his big toe on a vital point under his nipple- the guy died a couple of days later. It may have actually happened, who knows. But I believe most fights result in bumps, bruises, maybe a concussion or broken bone. But fatalities are rare and just as likely to be unintentional.

Yin-Yang symbols, dragons, tigers, eagles, association logos and such. Do you wear or display them in "civilian" life, like on a T-shirt, etc? Do they affirm your identity as a martial artist, or are they pretentious or likely to get you in trouble?

A long time ago a master I knew said "your flexibility is your youth". As we age, we lose flexibility unless we stretch, maintain range of motion. If your style requires kicking much above waist level, stretching is a must. If you're into grappling, joint locks, then flexibility is defensive, too- it doesn't hurt as much or as quickly. Strength training is great, especially for judo, wrestling, jujitsu, but it's not either/or with flexibility. It prevents injury differently, by developing smaller muscles (like rotator cuff) and your core, so they are not strained when used dynamically.

Great question! I can think of several, though it's questionable whether they changed the game for the better. I would agree with Bruce Lee being a game changer. The TV series, "Kung Fu" (based on Bruce Lee's story idea), despite it's flaws, brought a mainstream US appeal to martial arts, paving the way for Lee's and so many other Kung Fu movies. I admit it influenced me towards taking up karate. More recently, Dana White, Gracie JiuJitsu, and the UFC upended the martial arts world. They certainly made traditional martial arts look useless and obsolete. In Okinawan karate, I think GM George Dillman was a game changer, though now many think he's a charlatan. He was a pioneer in instructional videos, teaching seminars, and interpreting the classic forms as hidden road maps to pressure point strikes (tuite).

I honestly never thought of trying to be as good as, or better than, a teacher. When you're first starting out, or you're learning something new, the teacher is giving you a new skill to learn. Eventually the instructor's job is to be more of a coach, giving you pointers or corrections to improve your performance. What's most important is their knowledge and ability to convey it, not whether they are more physically capable than you. The best teachers I have known or had, their martial art was their life's work, their profession. Both their ability and knowledge reflected this level of dedication.

I figured out how to make the tails on my belt longer. So far I've lost about 4 pounds.

Flexibility training for karate is necessary, for sure. Every sport benefits from it, but martial arts more so because of the variety and range of motion. Old school was a brief warm up, then deep static stretching like splits, etc. Sports science has learned that warming up and doing dynamic stretching within the normal range of motion for the activity is best. I would stop short of ballistic stretching, things like throwing axe kicks, before you're really warmed up. Then, to improve range of motion, do static stretching at the end of the workout. Gizmoes like racks and pulleys do work, but they have to be used carefully to avoid injury. Some people will always struggle to kick high because of the structure of their hips- the joints simply won't allow it. I would also caution that relying on leg flexibility to kick high, and maintaining a vertical spine,erect posture, will put a lot of strain on your low back and potentially damage the discs in your sacrum.

I recently read Peter Urban's book, "Karate Dojo". There's a bunch of mystical, apocryphal stories, which he admits are tall tales. Maybe they're good for inspiring children, like fairy tales. There was probably a time when karate was new and exotic to Americans that people believed those stories. I think parables are good ways of getting across an underlying message.

I think Van's school has a good way of handling it, not making a big deal about rank and giving people a chance to fit in and train. Last fall I visited a club that had JKD classes, no problem for me to walk on and train. No belts, no problem. The times it was a problem, it never got past the "Hey, can I come and train here? question." Certainly not a confrontation like the previous question. But it does remind me of a story from about 10 years ago. The club I was training at was folding up, so I visited a TKD school that also offered, they said, Hapkido, with Korean masters. I talked to the GM, he told me it was $1300/yr, but we could "work something out", that he had a Hapkido master coming in a few weeks and I was welcome to come train. So I came back in a few weeks, when they had a class scheduled, and a young black belt and the new Korean Hapkido guy were there, though not the GM. The young one said, sure, you can train, so I put on my uniform. Then they had me come in the office. They wanted me to pay 6 months in advance, plus $20 for the night, and $75 for the month. This, they said, was to "prove my commitment" . I said, well, I'm already committed, I've been doing this for years. And most schools offer a trial, and certainly don't ask you to pay for 6 months before you've even seen a class. I was ready to leave, but they caved, and said, since you're already here and dressed, the master would like to train with you a bit. So we worked out, and I realized (and they admitted later) they were testing me. Needless to say I never went back.

OneKick, I think you're being too kind to simply call it incompatibility. In the example you gave, one instructor black belt had effective technique, the other did not. Worse, the second one wasn't just fooling himself. Your fellow students got into complaining about the first one because they had been led to believe they could practice effectively without it being at all rough or painful. This is the kind of group suggestibility that leads to the phony demos you see so often in aikido (and, to be fair, some of the pressure point/ no-touch knockout things).

Once again my experience was confirmed. Last week I visited a school that was part of my old organization, I talked briefly with the master instructor before a class. I just asked if he had a schedule for adult classes, and he asked about my experience. I told him, and we chatted about the people we knew, etc. He said he'd have to talk to his master (the owner of the chain), took my name & information- and I never heard back. Then I went to my old JKD/MMA coaches new facility. He was happy to see me, showed me around, said I was welcome to come in and use the place after work if I just wanted to work out, told me he'd reinstituted JKD and CQC classes now that he had more space- so yeah, I'll go where I'm welcome and leave the politics and belts behind.

Hey, that's 3 things, not the single most annoying one thing! I would have to say the single biggest thing is the "Nonsense", whether it's the marketing hype, fakers, or posers, and the lack of respect for martial arts that stems from it. People in the martial arts fight amongst themselves about it, and people on the outside just think it's all a joke.

Oh, he sucker punched him on purpose, but the victim fell and hit his head.

As the saying goes, Better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6. As a practical matter, it depends on how much damage you do. A few years ago I was a juror for an assault & battery case. It was 2 young men who worked at a pizza joint. One, the aggressor, considered himself in charge (though he wasn't the boss), and the other was kind of a slacker. So the bossy kid bullied and hassled the other until it came to blows, and as you might expect, the bully "won" the fight but ended up in trouble. We concluded the defendant was guilty, but it didn't meet the standard of assault & battery. If I remember correctly the charge was reduced to simple assault, and he got a slap on the wrist. On the other hand, there was a case in NJ last year of a bar fight where a guy was killed by a single punch, and the guy who unintentionally did it was charged with manslaughter

When I've had this experience at a traditional school, it was (with one exception) in the same style. I think some of the points you made are valid, though. I also think in the traditional environment there's concerns about hierarchy, loyalty, and organizational politics.

How do you treat someone with prior experience who visits your school to ask about training? I've been in both traditional and non-traditional martial arts for many years, and from time to time I've looked around for a new school. What I've found is, the non-traditional clubs- JKD, boxing, MMA, combatives, are happy to show me around, have me come train. No attitude or suspicion. But visiting commercial, traditional clubs (like my old TSD org, or TKD), once they ask about my experience, it becomes clear I'm not welcome, it's not the place for me.

I'd have to refer to my old manual on the shelf at home for the specifics, but it (and Shin's later book) played up the 3 kingdoms, Hwa Rang, etc. but glossed over the 50's, other than there were multiple styles who's masters agreed to combine into Tae Kwon Do, while Hwang Kee wanted to stay traditional and independent. The chartering of WTSDA was just before my time, but Shin's original organization was the US Tang Soo Do Moo Duk Kwan Federation. Yes, his school was called Shin Karate, but the style was indeed called Tang Soo Do. I think the original one in Burlington is still run by In K. Yu. The later one, in Trenton, moved long ago and is run by one of the senior masters, John Godwin. I trained with many of the Trenton area masters. Early on he had several Korean masters, too, but they all left and formed their own organizations.

I first got involved with World Tang Soo Do back in the mid 80's, after 3 years and a brown belt in Shito-Ryu (which is also pretty close to Shotokan). The forms were practically the same, kicking was the big difference. That, and TSD was less rigid and linear in movement. I was at a college club, and the local Shotokan club was much different in terms of training, more traditional Japanese in structure. At the time I didn't give much thought to the origins or commonality. GM Shin and their black belt manual barely acknowledged Hwang Kee, let alone Shotokan. The book said Tang Soo Do was a 2000 year old Korean martial art! I understand late in life Hwang Kee finally admitted he'd taken the forms from Funakoshi's book.

It's one of the ironies of traditional martial arts, spending lots of time learning stances, drilling them in forms- and in free sparring, not really using them. Worse, if you want to learn to fight, against a (kick)boxer, wrestler, MMA guy, you have to unlearn standing there like a dummy. That said, I've trained with a lot of non-traditional fighters, and they tend to be weak with kicking and balance because they don't have the base of having good stances (even if it's not a deep horse stance!)

Reading the responses I notice that there's a much different perspective from the people who are still reaching for the goal vs. those that made it and been around for a while. I feel bad for the people with the comments about it being stressful, not fun, still not knowing how to fight, exhausting, etc. It doesn't have to be like that. Thinking back, I had a few of those feelings at times, too, and not training for 1rst dan, but 3rd! I'm glad I did it, but when I went on to train in other arts that didn't have belts, or didn't bother much with rank, it was quite freeing. I also saw, in MMA training, people develop into very proficient fighters in 6-12 months training. What I'm getting at is, the meaning of a black belt is more about what you get out of the process of attaining it.

Arguably, overtraining contributed to his death. It's great to be passionate about training and work hard. Just realize martial arts can put a lot of wear and tear on your body, and it has to last the rest of your life. In my 20's and 30's I overdid it with kicking, and was prone to back pain. Eventually I wised up. In my 40's, it was MMA, and we wailed on each other. One day I wondered, are we still going to be doing this on our 50's? Now I'm in my 50's, and dialed back the training before I got hurt. Some of my old (but younger than me!) buddies weren't so lucky. I know guys who've had to get knees surgery, had pins put in bones, etc. So train smart, don't beat yourself up!

I'd forgotten I weighed in early on, but re-reading this thread and subsequent posts, what struck me is that the OP is trying TOO hard, and self-evaluating from one day to the next. Well, this is bound to get you tense and frustrated. Change and improvement come gradually, not linearly- then one day you notice the thing that used to be so difficult, you're doing without thinking. Part of it is, you have to rest and relax, to come back to it fresh.