granmasterchen

you can always invest in body armor...

well like stated here and there I will stress on a few areas that others have too 1. Tae kwon do is not always a sport and competition based art with flashy kicks only good for point sparring. There are more than one version of TKD, one, a style that I studied for over 13 yrs was very combat and street oriented. This I have wrote a professional research paper that has been viewed and published numerous times, if you would like to see it send me a private message. It is about 9 pages total and consists of a very interesting history. 2. There are some schools that teach the same TKD as another school teaches TSD. I studied a school over here in Japan, a fellow instructor that teaches on the military base with myself that has the exact same katas as the TKD that I grew up with. 3. My version of TKD was taught by my instructor who trained with Chuck Norris, yet Mr. Norris teaches TSD instead of TKD. 4. I will make this my final point. It all depends on the instructor on how the class is taught. Some like to have the students more sport oriented while others want them to be able to defend theirselves on the street. It all depends overall on the instructor and his/her intent on an instructor as how they would like their students to turn out as either efficient street fighters, self defense, a sport or a combination of these. Think about it all and keep what you learn in your mind and then think about that as it applies to all other things around you. By the way I have a black belt in two styles of TKD and a black belt in TSD. So feel free to ask me if you have more questions.

let me tell you, when ever you go into a field that is based on education you wont make much money, The true reward is to see your students learn. So that is something that you have to live with. It may not be the thing for you but think about it, you go time. Also if you are making lots of money by teaching, you are probably setting yourself up for a McDojo.

what can i say , the trees usually just look at me wrong and then start talking alot of smack so just have to let them have it! hahahahaha, believe me, these trees arent getting hurt by my strikes, i dont beat on small trees, i work out on large old trees that are at least a foot in diameter, so i take more of a beating than the tree does, so dont worry, its ok and the trees are ok too, there wont be any tree funerals....

i would probably suggest (with least amount of punishment) yet still not looking like a wimp, side step, stick your foot out and trip them, push them with the momentum that they already have and watch them fall, continue your walk to the bar and get a drink, but that is just one of many things, be prepared no matter what for the very worst, you will most likely just get this person really mad and have to cause some more pain, physical and not just to their ego.

my instructor used it for his knees I have considered using it, but i will wait, i dont want to spend the money yet, maybe when i am older , but as for now i havent had to go that route yet.

yes, the skin on my hands have become calloused very well and are very tough, but it didn't happen over night and suddenly punching a tree or some other hard surface make it that way. I had to train hard for years to get to the level that i am at today.

i agree with hitting hard objects

do not lift your arm straight up, that is painful and doesn't help the cuff.....it took me about a year to get mine completely healed....

I have been in fights too, many over the years, and I have never hurt my hands. This is due to the training that i put them through, I can punch concrete and steel and not hurt them. But i have conditioned them for many years and i break concrete and such all the time. Before i conditioned my hands and before i was seriously into the martial arts, i too hurt my hands and got them cut open in fights, but not any more.

well if you live in japan, its not too hard to find.

i agree with you on the testing for black belts, i hate seeing little kids with blackbelts, in my opinion it is a mcdojo....but hey thats me..

i wouldn't spray the heavy bag with sand either. i am a big guru on the hand training thing but i do it for myself and dont require any of my students to do it. knuckle push ups are good, doing punches into the sand is also very effective, one of the first things that i started to do was get a burlap sack and fill it with sand and use it as a punching bag, eventually i just started punching everything. Concrete slabs are good once you get used to it along with trees, the rougher the bark the higher level of conditioning you need first, metal poles and so on. But the key is to start with a simple thing to do your punches against. beginning: knuckle push ups, do punches into a bowl or rice, then move up to small metal ball bearings, then sand, then small stones like gravel, and so on, you get the idea.

Kirves: I originally trained and worked in the military. Today and for the past year i have been working as a civilian training martial arts. It is not a requirement for any of the services what i offer or any of the other instructors here on the base. I do not honestly see the need as being great for the modern soldier. We fight with mostly guns from far away, and that is after we drop lots of bombs and shoot cruise missiles. We very rarely see hand to hand combat in todays modernized military. Yet there are several individuals that study the arts just for the same reason that we all do., i dont think that any one expects to use their arts in the middle of a war.

if the student is mentally prepared to actually learn the art with out goofing of in class he/she should be fine. I have seen one 5 yr old in my time that was just phenomenal, he had the mind set of a grown man at peace with himself, very very rare yet even some 4 yr olds can be disciplined enough to join, i tell the parents of my students what is expected and if they feel their child is prepared. But i have seen several students at the age of 5 With my children i will teach them at that age as well. I personnally wont teach to anyone 3 or lower. Yet the older you get usually the more disciplined you are, yet some students are ready at that young age, and they should not be stereotyped or discriminated on due solely to their age. That is my two cents.

training is training no matter where you go, if you want to go to another country go there for the culture, not the training. There are bad and good instructors here just like any other country. So keep that in mind.

when my school has a demonstration coming we tell the students, if they want to show up and show off some of their skills then they should talk to us and let us know what they would like to do. Train after class on the particular area that you and your instructor have agreed on. During class we train on the regular things that we normally do. Demos are a good way to advertise and depending on the situation, raise money for certain events, i always throw a demo for the cancer run and similar medical events to raise money for them, it draws a crowd and the students get a water bottle or shirt and they feel good that they can show off in front of some people, it makes everyone happy and is not a required thing, takes no time away from class, and helps people that are not familiar with martial arts to learn and experience some of the things that my school has to offer. Normally for a demo we have some students do katas simultaneously with each move done in harmony with the other at full speed, this takes time to practice after class, also we show off our accuracey by throwing controlled kicks and puches and such at individiuals, do a little sparrings, lots of breaking, and give some lectures, we also do some self defenses, letting some smaller students toss around some of the big guys, or show that women can easily throw a guy twice her size on the ground if she had too. So it is a very good experience for the community and such, just dont let an ego build or any of it to go to your head it is for fun and hopefully for the betterment of mankind in the future by training a younger generation some of the finer points of the way we can be patient and humble.

i personally believe that if you train your hands and knuckles correctly it will be ok for you. Do to a study on the discovery channel, every time the bone receives impact and trauma it rebuilds itself to be more dense and stronger, unless you are one of the individuals that your bones don't heal like that, i have a friend whose bones dont heal and they continue to break in the same spots so she had to get screws and stuff. As for me i have been doing breaking arts for years a long with my instructors with every hard part of our bodies, and we are fine, are bones are even stronger, yet it took lots of training and conditioning of course.

it depends on how much you want to train, i myself will train in class every chance i get and offer as many classes to my students as they want, yet when i go home i still continue to train and live the life of a martial artist. The training does not stop in the dojo, the majority of the training is done on your own or with a friend and not a master, so those long hours after class when you want to perfect techniques.......well that may just be some of us gurus but i am the constant trainer. Some just like to train in the dojo....entirely up to that individual

there is more than just tournament based TKD, sorry to burst your bubble, but some schools, and the majority of the TKD schools now adays do solely teach tournament based style, which i would say is more of a sport than an art, yet, there are more things to it over all in the big picture of things, i am a person that used to say boxing was a sport, yet have slowly grown to say that it is a martial art, maybe not in the sense that we are all familiar with but a martial art none the less, yet still a sport. Martial arts in all actuallity is a way of life, and can be applied to all things in life, so keep that in mind. If you go to the core countries you will see that many different arts are tied in to martial arts, not just fighting based things. For example, i am currently living in japan, here they combine flower arranging, tea ceremonies and musical instruments into their martial arts learnings. So please, open the mind and try to encompass the broad picture of life and what martial arts means to us personally not just what or how it is interpretted by society.

yep, i'll agree....

at the moment i think shooting a kamehameha blast or any other ki blast is a myth....or maybe i'm just a sore loser....

sounds normal, you can never over train...what a silly thought!

lol, a mcdojo is a dojo who has an instructor that is just out for the students' money and the students learn little in school, in an essance how mcdonalds wants your money in return for a meager meal.

I'm sorry, my bad, I didn't realize. You can get cheap resistance bands without spending large amounts of money too, simply go to your local physical therapy clinic and ask for some resistant large rubber bands, very cheap maybe free. Ankle and wrist weights are a nice thing to have also. Brands aren't important on these either, you simply need to find weights that stay securely to the wrist and ankle when throwing fast punches and/or kicks, it would suck for you to throw a wicked roundhouse and a 4 lbs weight goes flying across the room to crack a fellow student in the head at 35 mph......