DarthPenguin

Yeah, plus the scene at the end of Episode 5 was the most powerful they have shown any force user on screen so far. I was quite excited (i'll admit) to hear them mention Quinlan Vos; he would be an awesome character to base a spin off on

Anyone else following this? If so, what do you think? Myself i have been enjoying it. A few little gripes but on the whole it has been entertaining

Would you recommend it then? The originals were classics but i wasn't sure if the new one would be worth seeing as often when a series is resurrected it drops in quality (they rely on nostalgia to get good viewing figures). If it's good though i'll need to take a watch!

considering the population differences I’d say it’s still generally true statement.And I know Europe generally controls martial arts schools and I believe helps subsidizes them as part of national sports or something, so you’d have to convince national governments to institute such changes I believe. I'd say that it is similar in the UK too for the most part. Most instructors basically charge the price for the hall rental and not much more. Only guys who really seem to do it "for a living" are bjj and mma schools, but even then there aren't too many of either. I’ve heard that in Europe martial arts in many countries martial arts are regulated by the government so there you mighthave to convince the government to approve the changes.Tbh i've never heard of any government regulation for martial arts here in the UK anyway. The most i can think of is if an art is in the Olympics then they will be subject to the UK Olympic Committee and they may report to the government (not 100% on that one). Other than that i can't think of any governmental regulation / interference

Saturday 18th June Grading sat and passed successfully so have now reached 7th kyu. Will look up some videos online tomorrow on next kata and make a start on learning it. Still full of the cold so will take it easy weights wise this weekend. Since the preceding week has been messed up a lot by feeling ill and starting a new job, and it was just week 1 of my current 531 cycle I’ll just start again from the beginning of week 1 workouts this week. Wont hurt and saves messingup the progression

I'd say that it is similar in the UK too for the most part. Most instructors basically charge the price for the hall rental and not much more. Only guys who really seem to do it "for a living" are bjj and mma schools, but even then there aren't too many of either.

Tokaido has long been a standard in Shotokan. Go with the ones made in Japan - there is indeed a difference I can see and feel in the fabric and cut despite what some people will say on the internet. Thanks! I opted for a Ki one as the price seemed quite reasonable (relatively speaking). I've not heard anything other than good things about Tokaido, and can see myself getting one, but i will likely wait a little longer until i have been back at karate for more time. I don't want to be 'that guy' who is pretty junior and turns up wearing a mega expensive gi! Nothing wrong with it. Mindset is important. If a quality uniform inspires one to train more frequently and with greater intensity, no one should find any issue with it. Besides if you use a uniform 2x a week, the cost quickly goes down per use if you take care of them. I have Tokaido I have worn 200 times and more. Fair point. In my head is more of an incentive thing too where i "earn it". same as for bjj i have a no black gi until purple belt rule in my head. No reason for it really but it helps my mentality. Am pretty sure i will likely end up with a Tokaido at some point, but i will make an agreement with myself to "earn" it Odd i know but just how my mind works sometimes

i guess for me that’s never been an issue.When I log into a forum, I scroll the unread posts until I find a title that catches my interest, then I read the first few posts, and add my 2¢ in. Yeah tbh that is my approach too, but everyone is different!

Tokaido has long been a standard in Shotokan. Go with the ones made in Japan - there is indeed a difference I can see and feel in the fabric and cut despite what some people will say on the internet. Thanks! I opted for a Ki one as the price seemed quite reasonable (relatively speaking). I've not heard anything other than good things about Tokaido, and can see myself getting one, but i will likely wait a little longer until i have been back at karate for more time. I don't want to be 'that guy' who is pretty junior and turns up wearing a mega expensive gi!

Wednesday 16th June Karate session I've been full of the cold all week so been trying to be sensible exercise wise, but since i have a grading on Saturday i wanted to get at least one more session in before the grading Class : warm up Kihon lots of Kata practice Grading kumite practice and some free sparring too lots of grading practice and the instructor pointed out a few things to work on before the grading. Thankfully they were things like an adjustment to hand position etc where the prior position was a conscious movement so i can adjust easily enough i think. He also pointed out that i wasn't doing Hikite at a particular point in kata. For some reason i had it in my head that i didn't need to do it there so was deliberately not. Should be a straightforward fix. Working quite a bit on my Yoko Geri Keage as i think it needs a lot of work. Everyone seems to show it differently though - i have had 3 different 3rd dans show me it in totally separate ways. I preferred one of them and have started doing it that way and since then have not really had any comments on issues with it that i had before so it is hopefully slightly less bad now!

One part you have missed from the promotion system here that makes it a little more complex is the lineage aspect. People don't say they are a X Belt; they say they are an X Belt under Person Y who is under Professor Z. This does lead to a divergence in standards a little but it also means people have an idea still of someones level e.g. I always used to hear people talk about Cesar Gracie being notoriously hard to grade under; Saulo Ribeiro used to make a lot of higher grades put a white belt back on unless they had trained under a Gracie directly or a student that had directly trained under them. I'm not sure if it would work with karate nowadays since there are so many people who do train/have trained and claim rank. BJJ system worked since it was a much smaller art and it grew with the system remaining in place. I can't see how you would implement it now : eg a lot of karateka train under one Instructor but have a different Grading Examiner. This is different from the usual BJJ model where the instructor awards the belts (Sometimes they check in with their own instructor for permission when awarding senior belts). You also cannot typically map a BJJ grade to a karate or other style grade as the levels and requirements are totally different. A BJJ BB doesn't really get assessed again once it has been achieved (degrees are time based) and it usually takes a skilled practitioner 10-12 years to achieve. This is closer to the time for someone to get to a 3rd dan or so in karate etc. Personally i think it would be good to see people making a bigger deal about their lineage in karate; it would hopefully help to raise standards etc but i doubt it will happen tbh lineage makes a difference in BJJ largely because competition is baked into the culture of BJJ, and it’s competition where people go 100%, so you can see an instructor’s record, you can see the records of their students, etc.In karate most competition is light contact, and verifying a record for someone who hasn’t competed in a regional or national level competition in karate is pretty difficult. I can give you my lineage, 100% honest and 99% of it is pretty impressive, but my direct instructor has nothing but a belt and time training/teaching to his name that would seem impressive. On the other hand I could give you my lineage and leave out my direct instructor and simply stop at the hombu instructors who I have worked with regularly over the years to inflate myself a little bit. Likewise the level of karate competition I did was state level, but I can’t even find records of my gold medal now, that it’s been well over a decade…and does any one outside the karate community really even care I was a point fighting champion? Probably not. Thats a fair point. Even if someone isn't an active competitor in BJJ people can still look at the record of their instructor and the other people at the gym to get an idea of the overall standard. Wouldn't be viable for karate really

Tbh different academies can be different. My current one no-one cares what people wear as long as they train hard : some guys come in camo gi's etc. Personally i have always had a rule that i won't wear a black gi until i get my purple belt, but that is more as an internal motivator as i think they look great! I think if people are training enough then no-one will make any comments. They might comment on the guy who comes along occasionally once a week in the new Shoyoroll but the guy who is there 4 times a week in the same they won't bother about. If you are considering a Shoyoroll i still use my Americana that i got years ago and it is still probably the most comfortable gi i use. I usually vary between that and an Atam Mundial i got a decade ago. Not sure what the shoyoroll quality is like now though - i always heard that the quality varied batch to batch.

The former UFC stars entering an organisation don't always dominate though - look at PFL. Everyone thought that Pettis and MacDonald would just tear through everyone but it didn't work out like that

One part you have missed from the promotion system here that makes it a little more complex is the lineage aspect. People don't say they are a X Belt; they say they are an X Belt under Person Y who is under Professor Z. This does lead to a divergence in standards a little but it also means people have an idea still of someones level e.g. I always used to hear people talk about Cesar Gracie being notoriously hard to grade under; Saulo Ribeiro used to make a lot of higher grades put a white belt back on unless they had trained under a Gracie directly or a student that had directly trained under them. I'm not sure if it would work with karate nowadays since there are so many people who do train/have trained and claim rank. BJJ system worked since it was a much smaller art and it grew with the system remaining in place. I can't see how you would implement it now : eg a lot of karateka train under one Instructor but have a different Grading Examiner. This is different from the usual BJJ model where the instructor awards the belts (Sometimes they check in with their own instructor for permission when awarding senior belts). You also cannot typically map a BJJ grade to a karate or other style grade as the levels and requirements are totally different. A BJJ BB doesn't really get assessed again once it has been achieved (degrees are time based) and it usually takes a skilled practitioner 10-12 years to achieve. This is closer to the time for someone to get to a 3rd dan or so in karate etc. Personally i think it would be good to see people making a bigger deal about their lineage in karate; it would hopefully help to raise standards etc but i doubt it will happen tbh

This seems sensible. All you can really do is talk about personal experiences and let people draw their own conclusions

I always loved Chris Eubank. For all the prancing about he could really fight and i always enjoyed watching him. I still remember him dropping Nigel Benn in their first fight when everyone else was scared shitless of him. Never the same fighter after the Michael Watson fight (totally understandably) but even then he still did well for a fighter who had lost his killer instinct. Always had a soft spot for Michael Nunn too (mainly after the hilariously dirty fight he had with James Toney)

I can see your point but if he comes in and totally dominates it might encourage someone else to come in and try to do the same. They might view it as "easy money". The dream (in my head) publicity wise would be for Wonderboy (once done with the UFC) to give it a shot. That could be very interesting and would draw a lot of attention

For "self defense or fighting," it depends on how immediate the need is. If it's a kid who is getting physically bullied at school, or anyone else getting physically assaulted on a regular basis for that matter, I'm only going to recommend boxing. No other martial art but boxing. For anyone who wants to learn "self defense or fighting" for "just in case" purposes, then karate actually enters the debate. Actually, i might disagree here from personal experience, though i think things have changed over time. I first started karate at 5 for that very reason (without going into too much detail i was picked on a lot due to being mixed race). Started mid 80s in the UK and trained 4 times a wk almost from the get go. I actually found it very useful self defence wise when a kid: i could throw a punch with a decent amount of power and generally handle myself reasonably. Over time (and a lot of fights) i began to be targeted a lot less. For context, before i started i would always lose - in particular this one kid always stepped in and gave me a kicking. About 3mths after starting karate i broke his nose with a punch and he never tried again. At the time i was also tiny: i didn't grow til my mid teens really so i was always a small kid I do know though that things might have changed a lot now and karate might not be as good self defence art for kids anymore, based on how it is currently taught. Just my 10p worth Yeah, but I didn't see you mention anything about experience with boxing. Walk into you nearest boxing gym, and just watch a whole session. You'll see the difference immediately. IME, karate training hasn't changed. I finally became "fully matriculated" later in life, but did some dojo-hopping as a child and into my teens in the 80's and 90's. If there are differences, I haven't seen any. With boxing, things like speed, accuracy, stamina, power, etc are trained on DAY ONE. Also, maybe with the exceptions of styles like Kyokushin or MMA focused karare, karate is generally all point-matches - nothing where a KO is the main objective. That's why most traditional karateka thought Karate Combat was so innovative - most have never seen anything like it. I don't know your situation, but I imagine that the people for whom karate would have "immediate" benefits would be those who've never thrown a punch before. Because at least they'll come out doing something they've never done before. But for the kids who have thrown their share of punches, with less than desirable results; karate will be of little benefit to them in the short run. Now, the kind of training that the Karate Combat fighters go though: if karate dojos in general adopted that, then we'd probably be looking at something with benefits as immediate as those obtained from boxing. looking at the way local point tournaments were run and rules enforced tells me that things have changed.There might have always been rules against ‘excessive contact’ but how people define excessive contact seems to have really changed over the years. Having relatively recently returned to karate after a LONG time away it is something i have noticed. My second lesson back someone told me to stop throwing high front kicks as it would be a KO and instant disqualification. That kind of thing used to be allowed - just look at some of the old school videos!

For "self defense or fighting," it depends on how immediate the need is. If it's a kid who is getting physically bullied at school, or anyone else getting physically assaulted on a regular basis for that matter, I'm only going to recommend boxing. No other martial art but boxing. For anyone who wants to learn "self defense or fighting" for "just in case" purposes, then karate actually enters the debate. Actually, i might disagree here from personal experience, though i think things have changed over time. I first started karate at 5 for that very reason (without going into too much detail i was picked on a lot due to being mixed race). Started mid 80s in the UK and trained 4 times a wk almost from the get go. I actually found it very useful self defence wise when a kid: i could throw a punch with a decent amount of power and generally handle myself reasonably. Over time (and a lot of fights) i began to be targeted a lot less. For context, before i started i would always lose - in particular this one kid always stepped in and gave me a kicking. About 3mths after starting karate i broke his nose with a punch and he never tried again. At the time i was also tiny: i didn't grow til my mid teens really so i was always a small kid I do know though that things might have changed a lot now and karate might not be as good self defence art for kids anymore, based on how it is currently taught. Just my 10p worth Yeah, but I didn't see you mention anything about experience with boxing. Walk into you nearest boxing gym, and just watch a whole session. You'll see the difference immediately. IME, karate training hasn't changed. I finally became "fully matriculated" later in life, but did some dojo-hopping as a child and into my teens in the 80's and 90's. If there are differences, I haven't seen any. With boxing, things like speed, accuracy, stamina, power, etc are trained on DAY ONE. Also, maybe with the exceptions of styles like Kyokushin or MMA focused karare, karate is generally all point-matches - nothing where a KO is the main objective. That's why most traditional karateka thought Karate Combat was so innovative - most have never seen anything like it. I don't know your situation, but I imagine that the people for whom karate would have "immediate" benefits would be those who've never thrown a punch before. Because at least they'll come out doing something they've never done before. But for the kids who have thrown their share of punches, with less than desirable results; karate will be of little benefit to them in the short run. Now, the kind of training that the Karate Combat fighters go though: if karate dojos in general adopted that, then we'd probably be looking at something with benefits as immediate as those obtained from boxing. I don't disagree, though i have never trained straight boxing so i can't say what was/wasn't taught to kids in that era. If i had to pick styles to teach a kid nowadays to learn to defend themselves i would personally pick Muay Thai (as they are tough as nails) to learn to punch, kick, knee, elbow etc and Sambo (since they would learn the throws of judo with a little more time on groundwork, leg locks specifically). Once they were old enough i would then see if they added in BJJ to flesh out their ground game and add in the submissions not taught in Sambo etc. A kid who has learnt Thai and Sambo for a bit should be ok to defence themselves i think from most situations a kid would get in. For my own son (who is 5) he is attending Judo and karate and has been since he was 4. When he is a little older i'll see if he wants to branch out.

For "self defense or fighting," it depends on how immediate the need is. If it's a kid who is getting physically bullied at school, or anyone else getting physically assaulted on a regular basis for that matter, I'm only going to recommend boxing. No other martial art but boxing. For anyone who wants to learn "self defense or fighting" for "just in case" purposes, then karate actually enters the debate. Actually, i might disagree here from personal experience, though i think things have changed over time. I first started karate at 5 for that very reason (without going into too much detail i was picked on a lot due to being mixed race). Started mid 80s in the UK and trained 4 times a wk almost from the get go. I actually found it very useful self defence wise when a kid: i could throw a punch with a decent amount of power and generally handle myself reasonably. Over time (and a lot of fights) i began to be targeted a lot less. For context, before i started i would always lose - in particular this one kid always stepped in and gave me a kicking. About 3mths after starting karate i broke his nose with a punch and he never tried again. At the time i was also tiny: i didn't grow til my mid teens really so i was always a small kid I do know though that things might have changed a lot now and karate might not be as good self defence art for kids anymore, based on how it is currently taught. Just my 10p worth

Thats a fair point. I think that as long as there is a reasonable quantity of new topics for people to look and and consider then things keep flowing. It's when new topics stop being posted that issues crop up

Thanks!

Good shout! The other series i would love to be made would be the Malazan Book of the Fallen. Would be hard to do it justice but could be amazing if done right

Definitely agree here. Tbh there is no such thing as a 'best' martial art, though there might be a best one for an individual. They should try it and see what they think of the instructor and other students. Most decent schools offer a minimum of one free lesson, so worst case you try it and score something off your list. I'd always prefer to have tried the thing and decided for myself that it was crap! But tbh i have found before that anytime i had to 'convince' someone to try that they generally don't stick it out. Proper MA training is hard. You have to have a desire to do it yourself for the effort to be worth it.

Friday 10th June BJJ session - Lunchtime Nogi warm up Practiced techniques from sitting/butterfly guard. Take deep underhook then a shoulder crush grip. Pull opponent onto you for sweep to trapped side Practiced hipping out to an armbar when the opponent shifts weight to the non trapped side to prevent armbar Drilled technique king of the hill style. start with the shoulder crush grip and have to either sweep or submit. opponent has to try to pass to dominant position Then couple of rounds of rolling Was good session, fit in on lunchtime from work