The Saint

there's a 6 pack hidding in my keg too...

When you drink the alcohol acts as a depressant causing muscles to relax. Thats why, most drunks walk away from car recks that sober people die in. Your muscles are loose and relaxed because your brain is opperating differently from the booze. Think about it like this, at a dam on a river, when the dam is wide open the water flows through at regular speeds, when you drop the gate, the water speed increase and flows differently. Eventually when the gate is closed the water stops flowing. The gate symbolizes the depressent in the brain from the booze, too much and it stops. However I love beer, so a couple of cold beers or drinks isn't bad for you, so they say.

glucosamine is crap,I've tried it and it didn't work well. Change you diet for more energy. You body uses energy to digest food. The more complex foods you eat the more energy your body wull need to digest it. That is why you feel sleepy after a large meal on the holidays. Refined sugar is the worst thing for you body to digest. The only way for our body to break refined sugar down is to use calcium. Hmm what has calcium in it in your body (bones and teeth) the two things that you need. You need teeth to eat and bones to support muscle tissues, cells, etc. Another big no, no is anything SOY. It's a freakin' bean, it's a manufactured item that is filled with traces of aluminum. (do a bit of reserch and you'll find it) If you eat foods that can be digested easy then you body will use energy in other areas, such as tissue and cell growth. You lose weight because your body has excess energy to burn fat and you sleep better and don't feel as achy. Man to be a teenager again would be awesome, but can't magically reverse time. I am not saying to abandon steak and other meats, just to eat better meats. Hotdogsa are an example, they are bits and parts that your dog shouldn't even eat. Eat your meats with salads as the green letuce is easy to digest and will help ease the digesting process of the meat. There's a lot of people that swear by supplements. Do we even know the long term effects of the supplements, not yet, give it another 10 years The natural vitamins from fish, fruit and other animals is good for us. Natural erbs and plants are also good for us. Bottom line is to stop all the ahes and pain you suffer from could be as easy as eating better.

I can agree with you on that however, most top ITF fighters use 3 to 5 kicks, side, round, axe, hook. All these kicks are functional and are very effective. I have seen so amazing flashy kicks, weather they landed is a different story. I train as an ITF fighter so my opinion that way. ITF and ATA both use hand techniques (to the head) in Competition with semi contact. WTF has no head punches but body punches are allowed- full contact to the body and head with kicks though.

SPARRING, we train mostly sparring, patterns are nice and I'll finish top 3 in tourneys, I finsh 1st in sparring most of the time. My instructor finds patterns boring but we do them nonetheless. I use my patterns to get all the butterflys out, before sparring, it works too.

MENJO WHERE DO YOU TRAIN AT?

I herad of a new study that said that running barefoot was healthier for your feet. The sceintist were saying the muscles and range of motion improved in the patients that trained & ran bare foot. It indicated the foot could grip better and move more effectively. It also indicated that running shoes are the cause of most running injuries. Shoe companies have tried to fix this problem but have had to study the problem to determine how the make the shoe more effective so all the muscles are working. If any one has any more information on this topic please post it. I am very interested in improving range of motion and knetics in the foot and the topic is interesting to me.

Gatorade has sugar in it, watered down juice in my opinion. I'd pick water.

If the mind is at ease the body will follow. Mentally if you aren't there your reaction time is slower causing the physical side to suffer. Your brain is the computer that runs the show without it, you can't function. You can have a fast race car, but with no gas in it, it is a useless machine. To answer the question: both are intertwined with each other when practicing MA.

sidekick or hook kick, I'm 6' so a hook kick (with heel) to the head is more than enough.

I've tried other kinds of MA and come back to the one I originally started. Crosstraining in between ars can be useful and teach you lots of new things. Learning new styles and technics could improve your art. No one style is perfect, stick with it thou. I'd suggest finding small details within your style to polish the overall aspect of the art. An example would be possibly moving a stance to generate more power or tweeking a pattern/kata to make the form more polished. Just think of it as tearing it apart to figure out why it was craeted that way (rational behind it). I have seen people that were burnt out discover more passion within their art when making a simple change.

I'd do Abs too, because it is considered your core. Dips pushups and pull ups i'd do. I'd suggest working all the muscles around your pecs and your pecks. Just working one group of muscles will cause an unbalance in all muscle and may cause future problems.

try an eliptical trainer your knees will thank you. If you want to lose weight change your diet, eliminate refined sugars (fruit sugars are okay) I lost 30 lbs just by eating right. Fruit for breakfast, salad for lunch, Meat/chicken w br. rice for supper. It gave me the runs for a couple of weeks but it also detoxified my system. I feel way better and have lots more energy. If you do go on the treadmill I would do it as soon as you get up. I've found I lost more weight by exercising first thing when I got up. It has something to do with the body going from a state of rest/recovery (sleeping) to a high energy activity. Plus I've found that it wakes you up because of the blood flow through out the body. (way better than any cup of coffee will do) Goodluck

Hi and Welcome

Hi and Welcome