aefibird

Good luck in whatever you decide to do!

I trained in Aikido, and that's the system we used - whitebelts for mudansha and blackbelts for yudansha. BTW, the "funny black pants" are called a Hakama. Generally, students from the karate club I attends don't fail or get temporary gradings. My Sensei tries to make sure that everyone is as ready as possible before they test. My club tests with other clubs from our association and I've seen students from other schools in the organisation fail, even those who are taking their first grade.

We train a lot in kumite in my dojo...but we also train a lot in kihon and kata too. My Sensei always says that you have to get a balance between these three. He's trained with Japanese sensei (his instructors were Japanese) and also trained extensively in Japan, so he's still of the "old school" - makiwara, traditional wooden floor, kumite without padding, conditioning exercises etc etc etc. I'm sure that you know the type of dojo I mean. We tend to mostly train without padding, especially the adults. If anyone wants to wear kumite protection equipment then that's up to them, but Sensei never does. I tend to wear a mouthguard when I spar, but that's 'cos I happen to like my teeth... Nah, I have weak teeth and I've had to have quite a bit of dental work on them in the past. Our kumite is a mix of light contact, one- three- and five-step sparring, semi contact points sparring, heavy contact point spar and all-out full contact NHB type of stuff.

You may enjoy training in HFY WC - why not ask if you can have a 'trial' set of lessons at a 'discount'? It might be better for them to reduce their prices just so that you will train, rather than for them to keep with the same price but for you to train elsewhere because it is too expensive. the best thing for you to do would be to have a chat with the Sifu and see what he says. Also, check out other WC schools in the area. You may find that the HFY WC school is the best available to you. Good luck in your search.

We have grades (levels) at my Wing Chun school, but students only wear sashes on special occasions. The colours are red, yellow, green, brown and black. Within each sash colour, apart from black, there are two levels. I'm currently red sash 2 (level 2). When I grade next I will be going for yellow sash 1 (level 3). It's "the best of both worlds", really. We have grades so that students get a sense of achievement out of moving up through the ranks, but we don't wear sashes to denote rank, so everyone just gets "stuck in " together.

Funny you should mention it.. I came second in a tournament using those 2 kata a couple of days ago! Congratualtions! I usually tend to perform Jion, Jitte or Ji'in (there's a pattern in there somewhere... ). I always seem to do well with those three. I like to use Rohai too.

Hello OneTwoStep and Mmads - welcome to Karate Forums! OneTwoStep, you will find lots of tips about training and fitness in the Health, Training and Fitness forum of this site. The best person to ask about what you'd need to do to get ready for the championships would be your Sensei/Instructor. He/She would be able to give you specific advice about what you should work on. Good luck for the championships!

Quit??? You can quit??? No-one told me that!! Nah, I can't ever see myself (bad word coming up) quitting martial arts. I love it too much and it's in my blood. I don't know what the future will hold (although I've heard from a reliable source that death and taxes are a certainty...) but I should think that martial arts will play a part in my life somewhere. Eventually, I'd like to open up my own dojo and train and teach full time, but whether anything will come of that... who knows? I'm happy enough at the moment just teaching classes in my instructor's dojo and training in karate and other arts.

...along with "Ouch Sensei, that really hurt!" and "Owwww, please don't do that again!" Before you go, make sure that you've read up as much information about living and training in Japan as possible. That way, it won't be (hopefully) as much of a culture shock to you as it could be when you get there. Good luck!

I'm moving this to the karate forum, as that's where all the other Kempo threads are.

A beltated Happy Easter to all! Now, let me go to the gym to work off all those chocolate eggs!

From Webmaster to Martial Arts Master in just one step! Patrick, if you buy your GrandMaster certificates from me I'll throw in a blackbelt for free! Beat that! It'll even have stripes on it if you like...

Being on KF has helped my MA study. I've found out a lot of information from people on here about other martial arts (some of which I'd never heard of before visiting KF!). Although there will always be views presented here that I do not agree with, the reason that I like this site so much is that people can share their views and information about martial arts with other of similar interest. We may not all always agree with one another... but it is always interesting to hear what other people have to say and to learn from one another.

I love Aikido and I really enjoyed my time that I spent training in it (I'm currently without dojo). IMO it's a great martial art and can be very practical and effective. It also incorporates beautiful and spiritual techniques/aspects, so there's a bit of something in there for everyone.

Chocolate Easter bunnies and Cadbury's Creme Eggs. I also love Creme Egg McFlurries (but not the gazillion sit-ups that you need to do in order to burn them off! ).

I know that this is a little off topic... ..but when you're home-schooled in the USA do your parents teach you or do you have to get a special private tutor in to do it? Anyway, I had a great Easter break weekend - it ws one long whirl of cleaning, cooking, training and looking after the pets. Seriously, I had a great time and I hope you all did/do too.

really? I thought episode II was much much worse. Ah, they were both bad IMO. Still, I'll watch Episode III because, like you say, it's Star Wars.

My karate instructor keeps chickens. I think he musta tried showing them a few techniques once, because they keep attacking him lately. Hmm, maybe they've been reading about pre-emptive striking?? When I lived in Ghana for a while we had a running joke that whatever was in the food was "chicken". By saying that, it meant that my friend could eat the food (if she thought it was 'chicken' then she would eat it) and the rest of us could try food that was a little more...ahem...adventurous.

ninjanurse and karatekid - don't have too much coffee when you meet up - it could have some very interesting effects on your TKD techniques in the training session afterwards! I'd hate to see you have to explain that one to an instructor... ShotokanKid - I'm a tea addict too. Heck, I just love hot drinks!

I must be a "catchy song" magnet, as before I had (Is This The Way To) Amarillo" stuck in my head, I couldn't stop humming Maroon 5's "This Love". To be honest, it's the really annoying songs like those that I'm immune to. I work with kids and they seem to love winding adults up with those sort of songs. I know - I was once a child like that... The songs that seem to get stuck in my head are actual 'proper' songs, such as something that I hear on the radio in a morning and then can't stop humming for the rest of the day...

I prefer hanging bags to freestanding. I was torn between getting a standing bag for home use or a hanging one, but I went for the hanging one after using a freestanding bag at a dojo I visited. I don't know whether their bag wasn't weighted down enough, but it seemed to move about a lot everytime someone did a technique on it.

Yeah, but I'll undercut them.

The scary thing is, I know of a school that actually has that system in operation... I have a friend that I know through the internet (not this site, another) who attends a karate school in Canada. They have either 5 or 6 different belt colours (I can't remember which off the top of my head) and for each belt colour they have to have a gi/uniform that is the same colour. She says that the instruction at that school is great, or else she would move to another because it works out expensive for her and her children to each get another gi whenever they move up a grade colour.

Poor dog! One day I'm gonna invent a range of gi that will be a perfect fit for all martial artists... then I'll make pots of £££ out of you all! lol, j/k... I think...

Tokaido, Akh-Tek, Fairtex, Kamikaze, Cracked Finger and Karate Kid.