aefibird

Great, it will be good to see those pics.

Good luck for when you take your yellow belt!

Well done Laurie and Neil! A big to both of you!

I think that would be great!

Thanks for the replies! Yes, the KSW guys that I met were certainly great representatives of their art. They were some of the nicest and politest martial artists that I have had the pleasure to meet and a credit to their instructor and to KSW.

Good luck to both of you!! I hope you both pass and do really well.

Good luck for Saturday!! I hope that you do really well and pass with flying colours (or should that be with flying side kicks? lol)

Here's mine, although I've just signed up so haven't finished editing it yet!

How's the cleanup going Greg? I live in the UK, and New Orleans has dropped off the British media's radar now, so I haven't heard for a while how things are going there. is the city starting to return to some sort of 'normality' or are many people still to return?

I'm a bit of an introvert too. You're not alone.

Hi, I'm Aefibird, I'm 26 and from that cold, wet and miserable place known as the United Kingdom.... My 'party trick' is that I'm so double jointed in my hands I can make my fingers bend right back and touch the back of my hands with the tips of the fingers on the same hand! It's kinda gross but kids seem to like it.

Good luck Warlock! Take care and have fun with whatever you're doing.

Laurie, when do you take your high red test? (good luck for it for when you do take it BTW! )

I've found that karate-kid.co.uk's range of heavyweight kata gi and their kumite gi compare favourably to Tokaido, Kamikaze etc. They're a lot cheaper too!! I do still love my Tokaido kata gi, though....

Practice stretching and loosening up your leg muscles. If you've never done high kicking before (sorry, I dont know what the kicks are like in Shaolin Kung Fu) then start out low and gradually build up higher. Keep on trying to get a little bit higher each time your practice. Don't rush to kick high straight away if you can't, as that may result in injury. Try and do some stretching and other leg work every day. Kicking isn't the be-all and end-all of TKD, but it will most likely feature a lot more heavily than it has done in your previous MA training. Also, if you have decided on a club to go to then find out what patterns/forms you will be learning (e.g. Taeguek set, Palgue set, Songahm set etc) and try and find a site with video clips on it. Watching the clips through a few times, especially of the first pattern in the set will help you to get a better idea of what you have to learn. It's no substitute for a club instructor, though, as I'm sure you know from your previous MA training. This site has video clips with most of the major TKD and TSD patterns on it, such as the Taeguek series and the Pyung Ahn series. Oh, and welcome to the forums! Good to have you aboard.

Well, thankfully, I've never been in a "street" situation (and hope I never will be either!) but I'd like to think that I'd use whatever I could to enable myself to get away from the situation unscathed or with as little damage to me as possible.

Well, there aren't camo belts in any of the styles I study/have studied, but I have learned not to underestimate anyone wearing a camo belt. The first time I ever saw anyone wearing a camo belt was at an Open MA competition. There was a freestyle sport karate school there whose students all wore camo belts (except those of BB rank). The camo belts had little coloured tags on the end to differentiate between grades. The students of this particular club all had on 'flash' uniforms too - lots of satin in evidence and gold stripes down the legs and lots of embroidered sponsership on the back and plenty of patches - usually all warning flags for a typical "cash n flash" but no-substance school. Plenty of people there sniggered a bit and I remember one person saying to me "McDojo alert!" as they entered the room. However, those students were some of the most polite and respectful I have seen. Each competitor went up to the judges after their category and shooke their hands and thanked them. There were no tantrums - unlike other competitors from schools with so-called 'traditional' belt systems - and they were all friendly. They were also some of the toughest martial artists and competitiors I had seen in a long while. Even the students who were clearly novices were skilled and produced some outstanding form displays and excellent fighting as well. Never judge a book by it's cover - maybe we should say never judge a martial artist by their camo belt? I was humbled that day and learned a good lessons, as I suspect many people did who saw the camo belts and made an instant judgement. Yes, this school's uniforms might have been a bit brash and certainly OTT, but the people wearing them were not just products of a belt factory - they were true martial artists.

When do you think you will get the 'official' letter Aodhan?

Catch me on a bad day and make that space 60'....

You need to decide what you want from your martial arts training. If it pure fighting/combat then MT is the way to go. If not, then stick with TSD. However, as has already been correctly stated, you get out of your training what you put in. If you feel your TDS is slow then try training harder and see if you can move it up a level. Chat with your instructor and see how you can improve. If you're not 100% dedicated to constantly improving (not that i'm saying that this is the case - please don't think I'm having a go at you!) then your training and learning will be "slow". Also, you mentioned that you've learned much more in a few months WC than you have in TSD. However, think about your initial days in TSD - your knowledge levels would have shot up and you would have been learning loads. It's the same in WC - you learn a lot of new stuff right at the begining and the amount of "new" stuff that you actually 'learn' decreases over time. i.e. once you've been shown Siu Nim Tao a few times and you can do the movements then you don't need to 'learn' it - you just need to perfect it. There will come a time in WC when the things you are 'learning' are outweighed by the things you already 'know' but just have to work on and keep improving on. However, take a few lessons in MT and see what you think. Make sure that you really think about what you want to do before making a firm decision either way. Finally, make sure that if you leave, you leave on good terms with your TSD instructor - in case you ever want to go back!! Good luck with whatever you decide to do.

That sounds like a fab idea! I hope that someone on here wins! I'm not eligable - I'm from the UK - or ese I'd enter it. It would be good to be able to read people's essays if they submit one - post it on here if you do!

There's a few point sparring tournaments in the UK do cash prizes too. One I know of is run by the EMA. https://www.emanet.co.uk

You got that posted on the net? It's be fun to watch.

Same here! Forms and kata are the best part of training for me. Plus, they're a great way of practising and learning on your own. In TKD I only know the Taeguek forms so far (know 1-5 & am learning 6), so I'm looking forward to being able to learn the Palgue forms too. We learn those after the Taegueks. We often do the "form-a-thon" thing at my karate class too - all the high grades do kata up til the highest level one we all know, then back down again. My karate style teaches 30 kata, so that's a lot in one session!

That is a very cool idea!! I'll have to give that a go sometime. When I train on my own I practice with the heavy bag and my home-made maikwara, as well as doing some weights and general fitness work (like push ups, squats, crunches etc). I also practice my empty hand kata and weapons kata, as well as the TKD patterns I know and other forms that I know, depending on what I'm concentrating on that day. I may also have a 'basics bash' where I run through all the basic techniques, slow then half-speed then speed/power.