steve57

The muscle soreness that you are experiencing is quite normal. The cause of your discomfort is a result of lactic acid. It is a compound that forms in the cells as the end-product of glucose metabolism in the absence of oxygen. The amount of soreness that you experience is a good guide to how hard you have worked during your workout. However,eventually as your body develops a tolerance towards lactic acid, this soreness will subside even after the most intense workouts. Hope this helps you.

I predominantly study karate and I am not at all familiar with wing chun. Are there any similarities or major differences between these two arts?

I have trained exclusively alone for about the last ten years. I think that for you to benefit from training alone it is perhaps advisable to gain a comprehensive fundamental grounding of your chosen art. Ultimately, martial arts are a personal journey of enlightenment. It is possible with the right mental insight and motivation to reach your aspirations either by training alone or in a group environment.

You might like to try my friend Terry. He teaches goju. https://www.kgka.co.uk

This morning I was teaching one of my karate students the basic goju jodan uke. After about ten repetitions he exclaimed that he was fed up with all of this repetition and when could we move on to something else! I thought how things have changed nowadays. I can remember when I began training, I used to absolutely thrive on repetition. I knew that ultimately it was this repetition that would improve (hopefully) my overall martial arts. This repetition of techniques has ingrained in me even today. I regularly go down to my dojo and perform a couple of hundred gyaku tzukis or mae geris. Does anybody else put a great emphasis towards repetition or do you think that once techniques are learnt it is not necessary to train in this way?

I regularly train the first katas, and have done so consistantly throughout my entire training. A beginning kata may appear relatively simple when compared to a more advanced kata. However, this does not suggest that it is in any way inferior or less effective. Only this morning whilst practising the first goju gekasai kata I discovered a new application. Consistanty training on ALL of your styles katas allows you to discover your art in its entirety.

I karate train every day for about an hour. I am able to do this because I have my own dojo facility at my home.

In your opinion what do you think that the minimum amount of training sessions in a week should be in order to achieve a good standard of progression? Also, how long do you think that each session should be?

That is a very pertinent analogy Ventrix, 'stricking before the war has begun'. This demonstrates the fine line in deciding whether to strike first. If you get it wrong you could be faced with an assault charge, and depending on the ferocity that you administer you may even lose your liberty...well, you could here in the UK.

I regularly perform my katas at a very slow tempo. One of my old senseis used to say that if you can perform your katas and techniques slow it will perfect your fast movements. I think that he had a valid point.

I think that you are right cathal, it does depend on your philosophy towards the martial arts. I suppose ultimately it will come down to your inherent instincts when facing a dangerous threat, whether you strike first or not.

In a potentially high risk gratuitous assault, would you seize the initiative by executing a pre--emptive strike? Or, would you favour the famous quote by Gichin Funakoshi, 'karate ne sente nashi'? (There is no first attack in karate) and respond first with a defence strategy?

Oh gawd! Sorry Ventrix, my apologies!!

Some great reasons. It's interesting that you see the self defence aspect as nice, but minor. As a point of interest, my experience as an instructor indicated that most of my potential students were predominantly interested in the self defence aspect of the martial arts.

My apologies Shorin Ryuu. I agree with you traditional styles were designed for defence on the street

What are your main reasons for participating in the martial arts? Is it purely your passion and dedication for the art per se? Is your main reason purely a health and fitness aspect? Maybe self-defence? Or perhaps you feel that it is a way of life for you? Or is there a completely different reason? I would be very interested to hear your comments.

Shorin Ryuu, I don't actually need reminding that '...most street fights involve [two] UNTRAINED fighters...' I am well aware of this. You are of course correct in your assumptions regarding '...most schools only train to fight another trained fighter...' However, I think that this is changing, and more and more schools are realizing the necessity to include adapted techniques for use in the street.

That is a very interesting and consise response Master Jules, I can't really add to it. Within the goju katas there are indeed many blocks that serve multiple functions, and the learning of these ultimately comes with experience. Goju tends to take a slow track approach towards progression through the katas. In most cases this subsequently means that you take longer reaching the advance katas, thus possibly not learning multi-functional blocks until later in your career.

How do you reach this assumption dingyuan?

So have we established then that a block and counter wouldn't work in most cases on the street?

With all due respect ovine king, I think that you are complicating a relatively simple question-perhaps you are reading too much into it. I am PURPOSELY refering to a singular block in my question.

Ditto!

Yeah, what we do need in learning the martial arts is massive doses of patience!!! Sorry I can't help you there I have none! Good luck with your training.

How can blocks be effective if people forget to use them? Surely a large part of martial arts training is to develop NLP (Neuro-linguistic programming). The concept of level that we should aim to reach is: Unconscious competence this is where you have the martial arts skills and no longer have to think about applying them.

What surprises you about blocking and striking-I'm mystified!