returning_wave

Im genuinely surprised by the number of you carrying guns. Being a strogn opponent of civilian guns generally I would never carry one (besides here in england youd be arrested pretty sharpish and it can carry 10 years). As a rule I dont tend to carry actual weapons (as strictly speaking any kind of offensive weapon is illegal in public, right down to a ballpoint pen if they felt like pushing it) and instead have trained to defend myself with my keys i always have on me, and objects you would find in the real world. In some situations of increased risk though, a real weapon has gone with me. I do tech for a band who palyed in a very notorious venue and i took my M7 bayonet in my techie bag. Im going to uni this year in bristol which is a little bit more dodgy than my current area so i may add a small flick knife or a kobutan to my carry-everywhere-pile

this is a great post, if i may say so Many people see many points to kata and use them for differnt things. Two conflicitng examples: I have a friend with whom I used to do shotokan-esque karate and left because it was increasingly poor in terms of a martial art. I found the answers I was looknig for in kata, performing each move as in the kata but with realitic strength and power and applied in realistic situations at realsitc ranges. My friend found answers elsewhere in the art and his kata is more an exercise in precision of movement. Both views are equally effective and produce startalingly different kata from the same moves.

'If someone insults you agree with him. If there is no disagreement there can be no conflict.' - Funakoshi

Id echo everything Karateka_latino said with the added point that once you pick aclub, go along for a lesson and watch, or if they'll let you, take part before you committ yourself to a term or whatever. a lot of dojos sound great but are full of flaws in reality. some danger signs: 1. fast indechiperable Japanese - often can be a sign of a teacher more concerned with look adn procedure than practice 2. A noisy class - teacher cannot keep control, leadign to an unsafe environment. This also applies to other safety measures, especially if you are training with weapons (ive been clonked on the head more than once with a sai and I dont reccommend it) 3. A skewed abundance of the highest grades. this can (altohugh by no means definately) mean that gradigns are very speedy with low standards (gradigns usually cost more so the instructor makes more the faster they're done.) 4. A lack of application - if the class do moves to the air or n katas but spend no time on the uses of those moves be warey. You mentioned that you want to defend yourself, so you need somewhere which teaches realistic applications. When you see an application you should think 'coool I could do that.' If 20 flaws spring immedately into your mind you may want to look elsewhere. Cost-wise most places Ive seen in britain are between 4 and 8 pounds a lesson so thats... errm carry the one... between 8 and 15 dollars. much more than this is a rip off nd probably indicates the in-it-for-the-money instructors to be avoided. Man that got quite negative didnt it!? anyway despite all that you are meant to enjoy learnign karate so the most important element of a new club is that its fun!

Rock music of many many descriptions. Acoustic guitar solos to alanis morrissette to feeder to linkin park

i was referrign to fightign away from the rule bound Olympic arena. kicks to the head will very quickly get you flipped on your head in a real situation which i have seen people learn the very hard and painful way.

coool i liek the sai video that rocks thanks for that

the rules are part of my problem really. the rules of the art encourage poor fighting, (as they do in sport karate tournaments, tyo be fair, but not quite to that extent) but anyway with their hands down by their sides either one could have got about a million body hits in so easily compensated for the head kicks.

I know im gonna get shouted at frot this but please udnerstand it is no my intention to troll. but what the hell was going on in Athens?? It was the first time Ive ever really seen TKD in action, and my god it was poor! Is that really how TKD is taught and practised? I always considered it to be a reasonably highly ranked art in terms of beign a decent martial art but the olympic fighters were appalling! They were bouncing for apparently no reason at all on the spot with their hands limp by their sides, and teh only moves they seemed to know were inapplicable kicks to the head which gave their opponent ample (although ignored) oportunity to flip them on their head. so i guess Im basically asking is that how everyone practises TKD or is it a sport-afied version for the olympics?

Im a huge fan of Bill Bryson and next summer im retracing part of his route from Lost Continent at the moment im readign Living and Working in America by Steve Mills as prep for a year of uni. in the US, and The Cell, a book on the growth of international terrorism (cheery )

mine are a varied mix, mostly based around sci-fi and fantasy: Interview with the Vampire Apollo 13 The Matrix & reloaded Equilibrium Stargate Star Trek First Contact of the lot i would chose the matrix as my all time favourite. unoriginal, ill grant you, but still a brilliant movie.

mine comes from a favourite move of mine from Tekki/Naihanchi where the leg is snapped up in front of teh other leg in horse stance. and i thoguht its name was cool: the returning wave kick. quite simplistic really

my choice would be the flinch response from the start of kanku-dai folowed by a knife hand or forearm strike counterattack

thats pretty harsh, GrrrArg. When I did the english version i got english 8 maths 8 science 8 One of my friends got two EP levels (exceptional performance). Ours stand for 'Standardised Achievement Tests and are taken at ages 6, 11 and 14. They count for nothing and are a waste of time not that im bitter congrats on your high US-SATs scores! (Ive watched enough Buffy to know they're high )

well i just looekd up th charges for an 18 year old rentign a car from new yourk for 4 weeks and it comes to 4 and a half thousad dollars. maybe tme to think bout that ebay option

Thanks for your replies, guys (and your stories! I think ill avoid the buses if possible!). I will look into hiring in Ontario. A deaf Enterprise employee told me over the phone that NY state allows hire to 18 year olds but ill have to check surcharges, ability to cross state lines etc. thanks again, r_w upddated with a tohught: i suppose i could jsut not tell the hire company ill be taking it out of state. risky if i get stopped/break down, but still...

OK heres my dilemma: I am plannign a road trip aroudn north eastern USA and Ontario next year, at which point I will be 18. Does anyone know ho I can get a car company to hire me a car at that age? or any in the general area which specialise in student hire or anythign like that? and my other option is buyign a chapo car on eBay ( ) and flogging it at the end. But I know nothign about buyign American cars. what laws exist about cars in the states? for example, in Britain a car must have insurance in the drivers name and display a paper disk called a road tax disk, availalbe in 6-month or annual installments. what expenditures are manditory for a US car? thanks, r_w

in England carryign anythign in public that can be classed as an offensive weapon can get you prosecuted. The law is much stricter than most people realsie: they can get you for a ballpoint pen technically. I was told this by a policeman because I had tonfas in my car boot (trunk) and stopped when I witnessed an accident. He warned me not to carry them around unless I could prove i was going straight to the dojo or straight back home, and even then they should be in a padlocked proper carrying case.

a good piece o gear fro sparrign is a pair of grappling gloves. They are padded for punching (and so can save your poor knuckles ) but allow the hand free movement for open-hand techniques. I have a pair from Playwell, http://www.playwell.co.uk, which have proven very useful.

That's it, isn't it though? IF you practice fighting skills, and not merely a series of actions that 'mimic' fighting. Amen. And to the original poster, I spot your style is TKD. At the risk of being shot I'm gonna say this: along with sport-style karate, TKD is probably the hardest style to adapt to the street. an emphasis on high kicks in particular make it, in the form it is taught, impractical. However, any style of martial arts can be street applicable if you train properly. the best way I have found is to start fights from a street-realistic scenario, eg a mugging instead of startign as if it were a sport match. Someone above me recommended Geoff Thompson as a street-fighting guide. I would like to second that, and also point to older works such as the Bubishi and the Art of War for the tehniques and principals of rule-free fighting.

here here no move in kata is just a block, they are all designed either to end the fight there and then or put the opponent in a very vulnerable poisition. I strongly believe that the 'knife hand' part of knife hand "block" (for example) is almost exclusively a strike. The parry comes in the hand to the ear at the move's beginning. On the subject of Bassai-Dai, one of my favourite applications in tha kata is the 'round' grab followed by the low kick jsut before a turn to facing the back. The 'grab' changes a wrist grab on you to a wrist grab on your opponent, also grabbed with your other hand (preventing him usign teh same counterattack on you) and pulling his arm in while executign a side kick to his knee. manifique

Hardly ever and when we did it was pathetic "This blocks a chudan maegari, followed by three stepping-backwards punches, then you turn away without any kind of counterattack" style bunkai. hence my recent departure. bunkai is vital and the most important aspect of karate.

Im becoming quite a fan of rand master chew-toy, especally his words of wisdom, which are, in their entirety: To Climb Mount Fuji - you must first find a Path" Master Chusan Somewhat obvious, i would have thought. Also i assume the redicuosly high hikite's demonstrated in the photos are about to be corrected when the shots were taken. For further 'mystical martial arts' nonsense, check out: http://www.yellowbamboo.com

Amen to all of that. same experience, same realisation.

I would agree that shotokan is only as 'stiff' as you make it. It can appear that way because, as a vey wide-ranging karate style, there are a lot of bad dojos which stress long immoveable stances and on-the-mark discipline and actually teach nothing. Therefore their practioners can be stiff. But the style in itself is not be defualt stiff.