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Any tips/tricks to keeping a heavyweight gi reasonably wrinkle-free? For some reason my 12 oz Satori comes out of the dryer almost completely smooth, but the other two I have (12 & 16 oz) are hopeless. Do any of you iron your gi after every washing?? I think we might have an iron in the house, but having made it almost 30 years without learning to use one I really hate to break down now...

Nobody's squeamish about sweat in my dojo (although I don't believe it's actually my feet producing most of my puddles?), but we have one particularly profuse guy who sometimes keeps a towel by the training floor. He just grabs it and wipes up when things get slippery. No reason to be embarrassed about it, but nice to watch out for yourself and others who might slip in it.

Hey 360, you've probably seen that Navy Seals training page that several people have posted here? After finding out how many pushups I'm supposed to be able to do for my next rank, I decided to give this a try, and it's really kind of amazing. I'm only doing the physical training section (pushups, situps and pullups) of Category 1, takes less than 20 minutes three times a week. When I started, I could barely get all the pushups done with pathetic form, and I could only do one pullup. I'm just finishing up Week 4 here, and have made HUGE gains in upper body strength. I can already do the number of pushups I was hoping to acheive by the end of this summer, with decent form even. Pullups are still hard as hell, but I see improvement every time. And--of course this is completely unimportant to me --there's definitely more definition in my arm and shoulder muscles now. Anyway, just wanted to suggest it, at least it's cheaper option than buying weights (and personally I hate lifting weights, just don't have the attention span). Sounds like I'm almost exactly your size and, depending on how much of your strength you've gotten back, probably started out weaker than you, I'm really impressed by how much I've gotten out of it. If you do try it, one other suggestion is to have somebody spot you on the pullups. If you're like me and can't do them all, going through the whole range of motion with a little boost as necessary is much better than only doing as many as you can unassisted. http://www.thesealteams.com/SEAL_workouts/

Hey, does anybody know if a jammed or broken thumb is treated any different from an injured finger? I jammed it up pretty good a few weeks ago, and naturally keep giving it a good follow-up bash at least a couple times a week. Tonight was the worst and it's a bit swollen, considerably more painful than before. I'm assuming a doc would just tell me to immobilize it and stop abusing it for a while, is it worth the trip? I guess I should probably start taping it up or something. Thanks!

I love ridgebacks, aren't they gorgeous? I've only known one, he was in a puppy class my boyfriend took his shiba to. It was for 12-16 week old pups, the ridgeback was about the size of a grown (incredibly clumsy) lab. They finally bumped him up to the regular obedience class, he loved playing but was trompling all the regular-sized babies with his giant feet Hey, after I read your last post about what you're looking for, the border collie popped into my head. I usually wouldn't recommend the breed to the average person because of how much excercise they need (I've heard of people purchasing sheep just to keep these guys busy), you'd need to be sure you're serious about that, a couple of walks a day would not even scratch the surface of what they need. They are as smart as they come, border collie folks say behavior problems are usually due to you not offering the dog enough stuff to occupy his mind! They love learning games, tricks, most of them make great flyball and agility dogs. They don't look as imposing as some of the other breeds you're talking about, but they sure have all the other qualities that are important to you. If this interests you keep watching that Breed all About It show, I know for sure they've done one on border collies. Then you could get the bumper sticker I saw the other day: "My border collie is smarter than your honors student"

Ugh...icky breeder! Deliberately emphasizing aggression in her bloodlines, then letting pups go to families. Makes you wonder what all she tried before giving up on that puppy. If I was ruler of the world you'd need a license to breed dogs, and that license would be darn hard to get! My guess is people imagine that cool dog who is the perfect and gentle companion but transforms into an invincible manly beast when the master wishes it. So they look for an aggressive dog and assume the "perfect and gentle" part comes as part of the package...unfortunately it's more likely that a family member or friend will end up getting bitten. I've lived with a dog who was very aggressive towards strangers. The bit of comfort I had knowing that a mugger would be in trouble for attacking me didn't come close to outweighing how much it sucked when I wanted to invite a new friend over. That perfect yet aggressive dog (I guess the ultimate example might be the Schutzhund trained GSD) takes a LOT of work and training that your average dog owner is not prepared for.

I'd hope you re-think the desire for a ferocious dog, it's really not a desireable trait in any companion animal. You already said you don't need/want a guard dog, so the traits you should be looking for are really the opposite of any kind of aggression. Pit bulls, rotties, dobies etc can make wonderful companion animals, but because of the stupidity of people that want these breeds to be mean and aggressive, undesireable traits have been established in their bloodlines. Believe me that there are plenty of enthusiasts of all blacklisted breeds working successfully to eliminate these traits, but many of them do need to be carefully socialized and trained early. Karate_woman, I'm sorry to hear about your mom's kitten but I wouldn't judge all rotties based on that one incident. I've known several sweet, friendly family rotts. I can honestly say I've never met a mean pit bull, all the ones I've met have been very sweet. I know it shows up in the bloodlines, and even worse than that idiots go out of their way to make them mean. You know on pet forums I've often seen questions like "I have an 8 week old pit bull who's not mean enough, will putting hot sauce on his food help?"...or starving him, or keeping him in a dark closet, or hitting him with a stick...all of these are actual methods people use to get that mean "fighting" dog they think it so cool. Then everybody blames the breed when it bites somebody. I could go on all day about this, the bad rep that pit bulls and rotts and dobies and other great breeds are stuck with drives me crazy. For the original poster...I agree that shelters are a good place to find dogs--and not just mutts, my walker coonhound found me at a shelter--but even if you decide to go that route, it's still worth researching breeds. Even if you decide to look for a mutt, you might want to narrow it to a collie-type mix, or lab-type mix, or whatever. If you get your heart set on a purebred, you might consider looking into a breed rescue org. I also have a shiba inu, which is kind of like a 30 pound Akita. The two share some of the same temperament tendencies, so from my experience, if you get an Akita socialize him to other dogs EARLY! Dog aggression is a big problem for our guy, and really a pain in the butt. As a last note to my bloated 2 cents worth, you should expect to have to train and socialize ANY dog you end up getting. But, with some breeds (say, the lab) you have a better chance of getting an easy to train, friendly buddy-dog who wants nothing more from life than to please you....or you can be like me and get a fancy Shiba (or Akita or ___) who's much more likely to have his own ideas about who's in charge and need to be convinced otherwise. You can get a wonderful dog either way, one way might just be more work. I'll get off my soapbox now.

You might want to save a search on ebay for it, that way you can have them email you if somebody puts one up for sale. Right now there's an auction for another book by the same author printed in 1976, 8 hours left if you want it.

The side kick is called sokuto geri, in my dojo anyway! I know the side kick uses the knife edge of the foot, but it can also be focused more on the heel, so I thought "sokuto" referred to "side." If that holds true, then I would guess sokuto dashi is a side stance, presumably feet parallel, face & guard turned to the side. Regardless, I think it would make more sense to direct these questions at your sensei or sempai. If you find out it's not just terminology confusion and you've never practiced these stances before, you'll want them to help you go over them before your grading.

Jogging/running is probably the most straightforward option, yes. I've found it to be the most effective for fast improvement in myself, and boy I hate it. You could also get a jump rope, do stuff like jumping jacks and star jumps, swim laps, get on a bike, take a cardio class at a health club, play racquetball or tennis or soccer or _____...there are always other options if you look for them!

We have two in our dojo. There are quite a few traditional karateka here, and I suspect most people at least know what a makiwara is even if they don't use one.

Pretty high standards! My dojo certainly didn't hold any fascination for me. I liked the people, I liked the way it was run, and the training looked about what I expected, that was pretty much it. What are you really looking for?

I'd expect the majority of them work just fine, if you actually use em. Most people I know who have bought into that sort of thing are still sitting on the couch watching informercials about exercise equipment, while whatever they bought gathers dust However, my boyfriend did buy an As Seen On TV vegetable chopper and it was just junk, didn't work anything what they show on TV. So maybe I'm wrong.

Ashi barai. FYI, there's a "sticky" terminology post in the General Martial Arts section, might be easier to use that instead of typing all this stuff here. http://www.karateforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=6381

I've only been to one tournament, I didn't compete but went to watch. I didn't much like it or the way it was run. One of the kids from my dojo sparred another guy from my dojo (actually a teen from our adult class, but nobody else from his age group was competing so they dumped him in with the kids). The kid lost, and that was it, he didn't get to spar again. Long way to go and lots of $$ to spar somebody from your own school! There were a couple of schools that clearly trained only for tournaments, their instructors (coaches?) and families were everywhere (matching jackets), questioning the judges' decisions and being generally annoying. Our dojo doesn't put any emphasis on tournaments and it definitely showed. We didn't score well at all and seemed to get lots of warnings (apparently hand strikes to the face/head are non-scoring no-nos, even when clean and controlled?), but seeing some of the attitudes there made me really appreciate the approach and general philosophy at my dojo. I'm sure other competitions are run better, and it was interesting to watch, but if I had any subconscious interest in competing it's gone now!

Uh oh. What's wrong with white socks??!

I should note, the part about having screwed up miserably is my words, my sensei never said that I agree with what a few people have said about not waiting for an attack. We always say "in karate there is no first strike," but I've been taught that the "first strike" thing should not be taken literally. If a guy is up in your face, invading your personal space, ignoring you asking him to back off and his intent to harm you is clear...well, NO, you should not wait for him to hit or grab you, at this point you should be consider yourself under attack and do whatever you need to do to get out of danger.

Or jam one into his eye. Women's shoes look pretty frightening to me, you could probably kill someone with the pointy toe part, never mind the heel.

yes, that's obvious...there's no one action that can be applied to every situation.

My sensei always says the best self defense is to not be in a situation where you need to defend yourself. And #2 is to be wearing running shoes. So if you get attacked in a dark alley wearing spike heels, no matter what happens next you've already screwed up miserably.

I do...we have a couple standing ones at the dojo, and I have one of those wall mounted ones at home (although that one doesn't get much use because the noise upsets my dog).

Sorry, but SOMEBODY'S gotta do it: The proper spelling would be "grammar."

That's quite a response to 20+ thoughtful replies from folks who have all been there and genuinely want to help...

I think maybe there's some terminology confusion here. Generally to a martial artist, crunches and push-ups aren't called "conditioning." Conditioning usually refers to some activity that toughens your body, like punching a makiwara, kicking a heavy bag (or tree, or whatever) repeatedly with your shins, etc. If you're talking about basic abs work, push-ups, perhaps some cardio (are you still running?) and stuff like that...well, learning a martial art does involve exercise, if you really don't want to do that sort of thing....?

I don't think you're going to make it past the first week in your new dojo if you don't reconsider the hydration issue. Even now that my body is in good shape and my endurance is decent, I make a habit of keeping a glass of water on my desk and fill it up regularly throughout the day. If I don't do this, my performance in practice suffers. If I didn't do it back when I first started, I'd spend a good portion of practice sitting in the corner waiting for the nausea and dizziness to go away. (Not to say that never happened if I did drink enough water, but if I didn't drink enough it was a sure thing!) It would be very wise to use the last week before your training starts to get your body thoroughly hydrated, and now would be a good time to figure out how to get past your water hang-up. You're going to have plenty of challenges to overcome when you start training, with the amount of time you're spending planning for it there's no excuse for dehydration being one of them!