hawkfish

I think I could find some uses for the laser watch.

Trans Am's and GTO's are my favorites.

I remember playing that both at the arcade and on Atari. I wonder how old Asteroids is now? I used to play it more than Space Invaders.

That guy is either a daredevil or just crazy. You couldn't pay me enough to fly 200 feet on that thing.

Hey! Welcome back.

I can do it. I have a FlipVideo device.

My blog doesn't have everything you are looking for but it covers some of them. http://www.shotokanplanet.org

We do this every once in a while and I really enjoy it. We work all the way to our current rank kata and then we keep doing our own kata until the highest rank in the class is finished with their kata. My technique starts to fail too but I just keep on going.

Congrats!!! Great work!!!

Where exactly does it hurt? Is it the heal itself or more in the arch? Did it just start to hurt or have you always had the pain?

Keep up the good work Kez! You will not regret giving up up the smokes!

That's too funny. I hope that I won't be telling that story myself one day.

Good luck!

Congrats! That's excellent news!!!

I feel that training with different ranks is a huge advantage. Not only can you see how the higher ranks perform, you can also see how you have improved against the lower ranks. One of the senior Sensei's at our club once said, when you are training, try to get next to the people in your class that are better than you. If you train against them in your mind and start to do things the way that they do them, you will become better than those that just train with everyone else. One of my good friends is a rank higher than me but when he goes to the tournaments he smoked everyone. I always try to train next to him in class and because of that, we always work harder and try to beat each other. If we are doing kihon, we will try to get in lower stances than each other. If we are sparring, we push each other even harder than if we were working with people of the same rank or lower. It has really helped me push myself more than if I was working with only people at the same level as myself. On the other end, working with people at lower ranks gives you the experience of working with someone who is not as polished or experienced as you. Their punches might be sloppy or kicks too low but it gives you the ability to defend yourself against someone who is not as good as you. I also feel that it helps you if you might have forgotten some of the basic moves that you might not have done for a while.

I agree that visualization is good for many things, including sparring, but I am not sure if anger is the really key to aggressiveness. I do not have to be angry to be aggressive. I can stay pretty calm and cool when sparring and still be aggressive. If anything, anger makes me very sloppy when sparring. I would much rather have my mind clear and able to analyze things, such as looking for weaknesses and openings, instead of seeing red and working off an adrenaline surge.

I agree with you. I don't feel that all instructors are the same and that they need to teach everything. If I did just kata and kihon, I don't think that I would figure out how to apply them in "real life" or sparring without my Sensei showing me what to do.

That sounds really cool. Is he in his late 50's?

I would think that the fortune tellers are only good if you believe in them, which I don't. I also think some of the things that they tell people come true more because of power of suggestion and not because they can see the future with their special powers. I always think of the Oracle in the Matrix move. She tells Neo don't worry about the vase and when he turns to ask her about it, he knocks it on the floor. The thing she said is "would you still have broken the vase if I didn't say anything."

I don't really know of any way to make someone more aggressive. I would guess that using violence would be one way but I sure wouldn't do that. If you are quiet and shy, that is not a bad thing and I would think that your instructor would understand that you just aren't an aggressive person. I feel that you don't have to be an animal to be a good martial artist. Just from my own experience, when I spar my wife, she is hardly aggressive but what she lacks in aggression, she makes up for in technique. Even though I can move much faster, have much more power and can throw 3 to 5 attacks for her one, she will normally always score on me because of her technique.

I thought I was reading something I wrote myself when I read what you typed above. I get discouraged at times and start to think that I am getting worse instead of better but then, out of nowhere, something just goes the right way. It can be a concept that I finally understand or a move that I finally do perfect. I have found, after training for a little over two years myself, I need to break things down in to smaller pieces. When I first started training, there were so many new things that I was learning, I could do nothing but improve all the time but now that I am not learning as many new things, I need to break down my improvements. Just as an example, when I do my kata, I would always turn on the ball of my foot but in order to do it the right way, I need to turn on my heal. I spent a lot of time working on turning on my heal and finally, just recently, it has become second nature. Even though it is a tiny improvement, it is still an improvement and keeps me motivated. With all the time you have in now, it might be helpful for you to look at things on the micro level and maybe you will find out that not only are you improving, you are moving closer to perfection.

I agree with you about it being the parents job to lay down morals and ethics but I also think a good MA should reinforce those values too.

Congrats!

I liked all the Rocky movies, with Rocky III being my favorite, but this one looks like it could be one of the best yet. It gives old guys like me hope.

There is so much truth in what you wrote. I am starting to believe that I will never have a day where some body part isn't sore, hurt or aching.