aefibird

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday!

Congratulations ialwaysgethit and Chado! Good luck Chado for the National competition.

Hello Faust! Welcome to Karate Forums. There are plety of CMA practitioners on here, so I'm sure that you'll be able to have plenty of conversation with Southern Mantis stylists.

Hello Apobiosis! Welcome to Karate Forums! Good to have you here.

Hi Daniel! Welcome to Karate Forums. Good to have you aboard.

Good luck!

Congratulations Cmon! Keep up the good work.

Happy birthday for Saturday monkeygirl! Hope you have a great day.

Me too! I love old musicals.

Yay, glad everything is OK now! I thought that it was my PC acting up at first when I couldn't get onto the site.

Thank you Kicks and slydermv for your answers. How did you do??

Good kata. Suggestions? Make sure that you have someone else wathcing you when you're practicing together - it's easier than try to practice on your own. A metronome can help you to keep time with one another to begin with too, as can practicing in front of a mirror. Also, if you can, try and videotape your practices - then you can watch the tape and spot what areas you neeed to work on. Good luck for the tournament!

Good story P.A.L.!

Happy Birthday monkeyking! Hope you have/had a great day! What prezzies did you get???

Laughing is good for you. It reduces stress and creates positive feelings. Children smile and laugh more than adults do and they have higher 'happy' hormone levels (seratonin) and lower stress rates than adults. laughing has also been linked with lowering cancer rates and cutting heart problems in those suceptible. So, keep on laughing, it'll do you good!

See if your isntructor will let you wear ordinary trainers (sneakers) instead of MA shoes - they'll probably have a wider sole and will be better for you to put your inserts in. Welcome to Karate Forums!

Getting together with your friends and training or having light sparring bouts is good, but you need to make sure that you know what you're doing. If you are all minors then make sure that there's at least one adult there. Also, I'd suggest that you let your instructor know what you're planning - he may offer to supervise. It might be wise to lighten up on the contact, make sure that you all wear sparring gear and that there's a competent adult with a first aid kit on standby.

One of my co-workers once sked me if I could karate chop a table in half. I tend to let comments like that wash over me. If other people aren't into martial arts then that's ok. They don't have to like my hobby (hobby?? Obsession, more like!) just as I don't have to like theirs.

Remember, it's better to do 20 great pushups with good technique than it is to do 100 poor-quality pushups with bad technique. Try just adding one to your reps each time and build up slowly.

Good luck domac as you start Martial Arts! No, TKD does not suck. Every style has it's good points and it's weaknesses. However, TKD is very popular around the world so it is therefore more well-known than other MAs and therefore it attracts more criticism. I agree with what fate/hollow.ataraxia wrote - stretching is very important in Martial Arts, especially for an art that involves kicking (as TKD does). Try and do a little stretching every day and make sure that you set aside a little time every day or most days to practice what you learned in the class before. You'll progress much faster and it will 'sink in' a lot quicker if you try and train at home, even if it is only 10-15 mins a day.

Hello nickel, welcome to Karate Forums! Don't worry about feeling 'silly' or being self-concious - just go for it! As soon as you start training you'll be into it so much that you'll stop worrying about what you look like and will just be concetrating on karate. There's no need to learn anything before your first class - your Sensei is there to instruct and guide you and he will show you everything you need to learn. Just relax and have fun.

No problems.

Thank you very much.

We have some mixed (all grades together) classes and some that are divided up according to grade. As we are only a small club we wouldn't have enough students to warrant splitting higher grades classes into children and adults, so they work out together but we divide beginners/lower grades classes into ones for adults and children.