Bleeding Lion

good answer. you should get high GI carbs and it should be 3/4 of your PWO (post workout) meal, the other 1/4 being protein. preferably whey protein which is rapidly absorbed.

Good points: * Excellent, superior, knowledgable and experienced Sensei!!! * The assistant is just awesome and so ressourceful... you learn so much with him and his demonstrations (katas, board breaking...) makes you wanna get better and better. * Only 10-12 students max per class, so the sensei gets the time to correct people individually. * 6 hours a week (though i'll do 2 this semester) * its a university club so its FREE!!!! Bad points: * not having many students sometimes makes classes a bit boring. * i wish we did some bagwork and sparring * not enough higher belts imo

I know right? it seems so unreal, but i think back at that time there was enough indications to believe that, so my mom just pull me out of there without thinking any further. The owner of the dojo was a very active member in a sect or something like that if i remember correctly. What they did in there other than karate, i dont wanna know.

if the current top MAists cant beat guys like ed parker or bruce lee in their prime, i would really feel bad for MAs in general. These guys where the best 30-40 years ago. The process is called evolution.

Alright back to the topic: Ive been practicing Go Ju Ryu Karate under Sho-Rei-Sobukan for 4 months and i love every minute of practice. When I was 9 going on 10, I di a month or so of shotokan karate, but it turned out the club i was going to was a sect, so my mom kept me out of it...and out of MAs. I felt sad but understood her reasons. I kept practicing what i had learned tho by myself for some months then got out of the MAs World. Here I am 10 years later, im at 9th kyu and hopefully i will be able to stay for much longer. Thats it, i havent been in it for long but im enjoying the ride.

i used to be able to do 100 straight knuckles push ups on hard floor. imo, the key to progress is the last push ups you make. set yourself some goals, i started with 15. the trick is, wether or not you can complete it, always try to do 1-5 push ups extra. Always try hard-ER.

Im talking about push ups on one hand, using one finger and a thumb. For me is just a mental and physical challenge i find interesting.

I am working on doing two finger push ups just like bruce lee did. i found out it is much more mental than physical but so far i managed to get into push up starting position on my two fingers (not bad uh?). Anyway, can anybody here do it and give me some advice?

Very, very interesting. I do goju but i think i will try to adapt parts of a typical muay thai workout to my art, that is, doing the same drills with our techniques.

thanx

Being new in the MA world (4 months), I have a few moments to share even though they're not that significant. in no particular order: 1. as someone said, just starting a martial art at last. it has been on my mind for more than a decade. 2. getting my green stripe on my white belt (9th kyu) 3. beating a 8th kyu student (2 years of practice though) when i had only 2 months of experience. i was much more agressive and i beat him really clearly, 3-0 in point sparring. i won first place at that internal tournament. 4. last but not least, all the confidence i gained and the knowledge about meditation. for example, i can get in push up position with two fingers like bruce lee, which is 70% mental imo. what is amazing is that i can do it, but im not even in the best shape of my life (yet!). this shows how mentally strong i got, and i give all the credit to MAs.

the only gadgets of that type that work are the very expensive ones athletes use for rehab. other stuff are complete garbage.

From what ive learn, the goal is to build reflexes so that you wont have to think when you fight. We do 1000 blocks, punches and kicks every week so that when comes the moment to block, punch or kick, we are ready to do so without too much thinking. Let me use a calculus analogy. The best situation you can be on a test is when you've done so many exercises that you fly through the test without much thinking, doing operations and analysis at ease. You see a function and you already know more or less how it behaves doing a quick derivative in your head. Back to MAs. when you're in a real life situation, you get in that state where it seems like you are watching somebody else take control of your body and fight for you. Many techniques from what ive learn are not practice to use them in a fight but to help us in another way in a fight. Im not too advanced to fully argument this but let me take an example: sanchin dachi in goju ryu. According to Seikichi Toguchi, the sanchin position, a position that feels very weird the first times you do it, was introduced in Go Ju to practice balance. the MAist is not expected to use a perfect sanchin dachi, kick her heels out and get as low as she can in a real fight. However she will perform a perfect sanchin dachi in practice to train her leg muscles and balance which is very valuable in real life confrontation. When you say you would "throw out of the window" the things you've learned, you would still keep the reflexes and the main ideas of combat you've acquired. Your techniques wont be perfect but as you get higher in your ranking system, you will learn to keep your cool and use most of what you've learned.

every morning do a mae geri and a yoko geri when you get up. do every kick very slowly: standing on one leg, bring your knee up, then extend the leg and stay still for 3 seconds, then put your leg back down. do 5-10 reps for each leg and each kick. i love to do it because you not only practice balance but also a lot of technique too. after a week or two i got very neat kicks.

thanks for the replies and the workout

ankle weights can make you jump higher. im also a bball player and i know a lot of people who used/are using them. however, the results highly depend on how you use them, and they are as good as you might think. i know too many people who weakened their joints so i think the possibility of doing so outweights the potential benefits. it seems like you already made up your mind. when you do get them, please be very cautious and ask for assistance from a coach, an fitness trainer or anybody qualified to guide you in your training.

i strongly encourage you to use every calisthenic exercise possible before using ankle weights. if you want to jump higher, do frog jumps at the end of each workout as well as duck walk, jumping above a bench side to side... remember, do this when you are tired, which is when it matters most.

What is their training methods like if thats were the difference with other arts lies? can somebody post a typical muay thai training workout?

I did a lil search on google and i found the following website claiming muay thai boxers are the real deal. http://www.arach.net.au/~burnie/muay.html More, i remember joe lewis saying the best fighters are muay thai boxers and kick boxers. Is Muay thai that much dominant? if so, why is that? I just want to hear (possibly) unbiased opinions.

thanks for the replies. according to the master, his own master studied at shaolin. he only thing he told me is that he teaches "the hard form of wushu". i dont know any other precision. By the way, not all forms of karate are the same and linear. goju ryu -and other okinawan styles- are much more circular. its just that the wushu class i saw relied a lot on quickness and attack, attack and attack.

Im currently doing goju ryu (4 months) but i had the opportunity to go to a wushu (hard form) club. I saw some similarities between the two arts, but i was amazed by the speed of the techniques and the attack mentality. Actually it seemed like they were doing 95% attack and 1 or 2 parry moves here and there to counter attack. However I still liked it very much but I would like to know, what are the differences in general between chinese MAs and karate, style wise or training methods wise? any input is greatly appreciated. PS: when i decided to get into MAs i wanted to do wing chun or a similar MA but there was none in my area. I still like goju ryu anyhow.

fitness is not directly linked to weight. you could be overweight but fit, or have just the right weight but not be feet. nfl linemen is a good example.

I like to think of MAs as a field like mathematics, even though the analogy is not perfect. I think a student must learn something, practice it on his own, then ask questions only when it is beyond his scope. like calculus you cant fully learn techniques if you dont apply them or do so poorly. for instance, i saw to many people doing one or two calculus exercise and think they're ready for a test. give them a slightly different exercise and they're lost. likewise, many students will practice a kick or whatever technique without trying to explore what it actually is. put them in a real fight situation where the circumstances are slighly different and the technique sure wont work for them. the bottom line is, as in calculus, a student learn best if he discover things by himself, so a teacher should always make sure he/she did some sort of personal research before they FULLY answer a question. the basics to get them started, the more advanced stuff after practice and search for more.

hey Jbone1: 9'6" is just sick. btw, the backboard is at 9' but you still got me. i didnt know people where keeping track of such a record, but i found that the record is 12'

Ha! im getting there also LOL. last time my roomate caught me practicing a kick in the kitchen at 3AM. i was just having a drink . sometimes i do a kata in my head in waiting files, and suddenly i a subtle block or punch out of nowhere. i dont know if many people notice it.