granmasterchen

very good advise. If you ever have a doubt that you will not break the object, then you wont, or you won't break it nicely, you have to know that you are going to and be very confident, there is a lot of mental aspects to breaking.

yeah, we haven't been taught grammar yet, we just try to make some catchy rhymes so that we can have a great slogan that sticks in people's minds so that we can take all their money and own the world's greatest McDojo, or McDojang or McSchool of Non-Traditional Tae Kwon Do

i have had a successful breaking history for several years now....can't even remember how long,....but the worst i have ever done was bruise the skin and bust some blood vessels ....nothing severe ....nothing bad at all actually.....just good luck so far....luck, skill or combination, which ever you prefer

well like i said i'm not a traditional taekwondoist, you must have me confused with someone else, i am from the school of "dont care what we wear taekwondo" yep, thats my school and for today we call our uniform a gi, tomorrow it may be a dobok or the next day it may be a toga, not sure yet, brand new style.....but i think i will definitely invest in tae bo videos and then all my students will be true masters of all forms of martial arts.....(no offense to Billy Banks)

i teach because i like to see people learning something that is useful in life in one form or another, i like to see them grow, and when i teach i also get to learn from my students as well

well i shall make sure to call myself something other than a traditional taekwondoist.....i will be ....the taekwondoist that doesnt care about the color of his gi school.....yep i think that has a good ring to it......

so i have an ugly mind because i dont wear a white uniform? ok...just want to make sure i understand this correctly..... i wear a black uniform. it doesn't make me want to pursue the purity of my mind and soul any less because the uniform is black....its just fabric and dyes....material things can't be compared to ideals and thoughts....two different views of philosophy there, I think you are just taking this to extremes by stereo typing all people....you just can't do that....

curls, pushups, pull ups, dips, bench press, and similar activities

i am a strong practicioner of the martial arts and taekwondo as a core , the old school versions of the style, not sport based, i could care less what color my gi, uniform, belt, hair color or anything, these are material items and they mean nothing to the martial arts, the thing we should all think about is not the material things, but what we learn and how we can apply our understandings to better society in whole.....my uniform isn't white, shame on me, i must be a terrible person with no respect for my art....come on, think about this, seriously.....

Do you Practice breaking ? yes i do Do you agree that it is apart of martial arts? i believe that it is a nice part that every true martial artist should be aware of, not necessarily to practice all the time but to understanding the power that one can generate and the mind set involved, i think that is the important part that is beneficial to the higher understanding of the martial arts What type of objects are used to break in your style? did the wood thing, coconuts (closest thing to a human skull) , ice, and concrete, concrete is my favorite.... What style do you do? I have studied many styles... Do you like or dislike this part of Martial arts? I like it very much.. Is it Benificial? I believe that the mind set during breaking is important....

yeah keith pascal is a pretty cool guy....he sends out lots of information if you are interested i will get the email addresses and stuff if you want the daily and weekly updates and such

you are young and still learning grasshopper I was similar to you in my younger days, i would get in fights all the time due to pride issues , i would never let any one challenge me in any way and get away with it. The tougher and stronger i got the worse i became, until one day in meditation i learned the inner meaning.....humility.....you have to let these small inconveniences slide by...true control doesn't mean that i can throw a fist so close to your face that i can move your nose hair or to know when to only break an arm or to kill, true control is to ignore the taunts of simpletons that are not wise enought to chose a path toward a higher perpose like true martial artists. In martial arts we struggle to reach the higher level of balance we have power but if we exploit that power we give into tyranny, we must be humble not prideful, you can have pride but dont start things, have pride in yourself and your control, and keep it in your head, beeing humble is not flaunting your skill to everyone and their cousins....we must stay back and observe, and hope for the best yet expect the worse . Be aware and ready yet dont act unless it is truely necessary. The only thing that you are proving now is that you may be stronger or tougher physically, but in the martial arts that is only the start of our training, the start of our long path to enlightenment. When you ignore and blow off the fool that is trash talking you raise above the level of the barbaric tendancies that live in all of us, we become more civilized and can evolve our mind and awareness our understandings of life and truely win these battles, if we keep fighting when it is not necessary we just prove that we are primitive barbarians who are stronger....which is nothing, what is something however is the power of our patience and mind, the ability to conquer our normal human limitations....sorry if i am getting too deep philosophically here, but that is my two cents my friend. I hope that something that i have wrote sticks with all that read it and that we can all truelly grow together as martial artists not just fighters.

aikido is a style that uses opponents own momentum against them, lots of manipulation and the concept of ki, japanese taekwondo has large amounts of kicking in general, some schools may differ but in the states it has become more of a sport than the original idea of the art....yet there are schools that still teach well rounded material....korean, the true original art is considered a hard style, where today mostly we see only the sport side sadly jui jitsu is one of your ground based martial arts lots of grappling and submissions holds and locks kung fu is considered a soft style and is very flowing and smooth a nice addition to many who have only practiced hard styles, chinese also called chinese boxing, there are many variations from different animal styles and so forth, so there is much diversity kendo is the art of sword fighting known to japan, one of many, you generally where armor and beat each other, also a famous sport muay thai is a form of kick boxing that incorporates elbows, knees and head butts a very hard style where you are generally fighting in a boxer stance, also known as thai boxing judo is a japanese art where you do lots of throws and such some styles are similar to jui jitsu kenpo is a chinese art that is somewhat karate and somewhat kung fu a new combination to the arts kaju kenbo is a hawaiian style that combines karate, judo/jui jitsu, kenpo and chinese boxing(kung fu) a well rounded street fighting art tang soo do is another korean art and some schools are very similar to taekwondo depending on instructors, but is generally a well rounded fighting art with punches and kicks and such, considered a hard style Kuk sool won is another korean style that can be well rounded as well depending on instructors, ninpo budo taijutsu is a japanese style of the classic ninja and has adapted to be effective in our modern day society... jeet koon do is a style created by bruce lee and is a rather useful street art where he took the best aspects of his wing chun kung fu and added his own personal aspects, this art has trapping capoera is a style that relies on exotic moves and very flashy kicks that are meant to evade the opponent and have them distracted. hmmmm i hope that is a good start.....i apologize for any spelling errors or any misconceptions, these are based on my experiences with many styles....

thats a good idea! lol

if i kicked someone in the head full force they wouldnt be able to come back to class, there is no sense going full force on fellow students, save that for the streets. Unless you want to kill each other before you ever get a chance to use it in the street. Just my two cents.

well i live in japan at the moment, well for another year and half at least, and the popular ones here are judo, karate, kendo and some other arts but those are the most famous in the area over all others would be aikido, shorinji kenpo, naginata, and jujitsu, along with ninpo budo taijutsu here on the base the most popular that the military and their families study would be tang soo do and kaju kenbo,,,then a taekwon do class....then a small group that studies kuk sool won and ninpo budo taijutsu along with an okinawan karate....but that is the basis here in misawa japan

nothing can fully train you for a real fight. the best you can do is create situations that are as close as possible and train over and over, or look for fights , but that isn't too wise or humble....

finger tip pushups

I had a unique way of making master.....and if you are just looking at my screen name, no, i am not a grandmaster, that was a nick name from highschool.

I am sorry to all trees. I have changed my evil ways. Thank you Topic, you make a good point, I seem to always punch things that have little to no give, like walls.....oh well. I may regret it someday, but as for now, I have no problems, some day I will probably not be able to use my arms properly, but being as stubborn as I am ....I will probably wait till that day to stop.... But then again, I am not too serious about that stuff anymore, I dont train all day to harden my fists....I will stop rambling now....

I apologize for my harshness, I was out of line. I am just tired of seeing kids that want to learn how to fight and have no desire to learn the art itself. I find that wrong and that is how you came across to me my friend. If I am wrong in my judgement I apologize again for stereotyping. I may have read you wrong. I never meant to give off the impression that I have mastered the arts. I think we can first start moving along our path once someone tells us the truth though. I will not pollute someones mind and get them all hyped up about learning martial arts so they can fight someone over a highschool dispute about girlfriends. I will help someone and tell them about the arts, if they truely want to learn the arts not just how to beat a guy up. So the bottom line here is why do you want to learn martial arts? Is it just to defend yourself or are you actually disciplined and ready of mind to dedicate yourself to an art that takes years and years just to begin to understand the finer aspects. Again I apologize for how I came across to the creator of this thread and to all the viewers, I hope with this last response you can get the idea of where I was coming from and what I was getting at.

I have noticed there isn't much talk about the actual politics at hand. Sadly the majority of responses here are talking about how they care not for the politics of the art being discussed. So if it is ok with everyone can we try getting back on subject and try to learn here, thank you MichiganTKD also thanks for starting this thread, I feel that it can be very beneficial if we all take the time to listen and learn. We may then be able to apply it to our day to day lives. Thank you again.

Oops my bad, as long as my point made it across. I don't worry about my GRAMMAR and such too much anymore, I did that once. I did my time and now I work on the mastery of the arts not my grammar and spelling anymore, but that's just me, I'm an old timer. Lol.

if i were you i would invest my time and money in spelling and grammer lessons, if you cant get these down dont waste time trying to learn something as delicate as martial arts, this is something where you need mental discipline, if you arent prepaired for this dont waste your time.

in my school (old school style) we are required to break a concrete slab with our heads for our black belt test. My instructor does demos and competitions every now and then, he does 9 concrete slabs with his head. We train to break objects with every hard part of our bodies. I see nothing wrong with it. As long as you are prepared for that level. I wouldnt ask a newbe to do it! lol