isshinryu5toforever

I'd say the numbers don't really depend on quality of instruction, they depend on time in rank. The longer you have to wait, the more likely you are to relocate because of a job, family, have your health fail, etc. If it takes you 10 years to reach 1st dan, and another 5 years to reach 2nd dan, that's 15 years. A lot can happen in 15 years. If it takes you 2 years to reach 1st dan and an additional year to reach 2nd dan, well you just reached 2nd dan in 3 years. It's a lot more likely that you'll be in the same place. Is there anything inherently wrong with either system? No. It is something to consider when trying to compile statistics though.

The western idea of Karma is that things come and go in your single lifetime. The original idea of Karma is that it's a never-ending stream of life force. Your karma affects your punishments in future lives. One example that sticks in my mind is when a Boddhisatva (excuse my spelling please) tipped over a rock to show a monk a toad being eaten alive by maggots or something of the like. The monk asked why such a thing would happen. The Boddhisatva explained that the toad had once been a general who killed thousands. The thousands of things eating the fat toad alive were the souls of the people he killed. If I'm remembering the story wrong, which is completely possible, I'm sure someone can correct me. But that's the point of more classical Buddhism. And as far as Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism are concerned, they may not work hand in hand, but they are ever-present in East Asian society. They're forced to work together in a very strange way. It's hard to explain. I'll think about it more, and try later.

The yin-yang theory is that they co-exist. They must both exist equally to keep balance in the universe. You completely saw the point of that question. We tend to see things in complete truths, while things like Taoism and Confucianism leave more gray areas. I don't think that seeing things in opposite relationships is simply a western thing though. Many Eastern philosophers, Confucius, Mencius, Xuanxi, etc. had their own views on whether people were inherently good or evil. They also had their own philosophies on how men could either become good or stay good. Evil, as we see it has more to do with evil acts, murder, acts of random violence, things with no base, no measure. From my study of Eastern Philosophy, it would seem that some evils are viewed as necessary. While it was evil for the Emperor Qin to destroy the armies of his rivals, it did allow him to unite China for the first time. This unity brought peace. I don't think Confucius would have labeled Emperor Qin a junzi or Confucian gentleman, but Qin's reforms did help China in the long run. This would be good coming from acts of evil. That makes it difficult to determine who is a good person and who is a bad person, or if there are good and bad people. Trying to reconcile this with the, at times popular, Buddhism makes it even more of a mess.

This is a good quote, but I guess my real question was, how would you reconcile the ideas of Taoism with the ideas of Buddhism. The idea of balance and co-relation is a long standing one, but Taoism seemed to take that to another level. Buddhism started as a philosophy on how you should live life as a good person, not really a religion. How do you reconcile these two sides? Buddhism tells you that as long as your intentions are good, the result doesn't matter. This is why there are legends of Bodisatvas killing people who were destined for greater evil, and not having their karma affected. Taoism demands co-existence between good and evil, right and wrong. So, how do the two sides stay even? I guess the question here is, when it comes to evil, what should carry more weight? The intention? or the result? And, if there has to be a co-existence between the two entities are people every really good or bad?

This seems to be the fundamental truth at the heart of all Chinese philosophy. It's a lot to reconcile, because it extends far past the normal realms of light and dark, attack and defense, etc. You really get into the philosophy of evil. It really is the philosophy of evil, because with all the good we think we do, what are we actually doing? If everything must remain in balance, then are our acts that are carried out with good intention sometimes acts of evil? You can pull in several other themes and philosophies, like the Buddhist philosophy of intentionality. If all your intentions are good, then where is the balance we discuss in Taoism? Reconciling all these things, when put down to comparison, especially within a rigidly structured Confucian environment gets tricky. Anyone else have ideas on that?

On my Karate do-gi, I have only the Isshinryu Karate patch, which is standard. On the Taekwondo dobok that I have, my school's symbol is on the back. I've found that sport Taekwondo schools are a lot more willing to have their school name emblazoned on the back. Not sure why. I suspect it might have to do with identification at big tournaments. Collegiate tournaments especially. At those, your team gets points for forms and sparring both colored belt and black belt levels based on your school. If you have you school's name on the back of your dobok, or on the apron, there won't be much confusion as to which school you belong to, and if you win, which school gets points. This is especially true in forms divisions.

Yeah, it does become a big speed game at the higher levels, but you can negate someone's speed by using angles and movement. Cut kicks work too. Flexibility can be your biggest asset. It doesn't matter how fast you kick, most of the time, people won't see a kick to the head coming from well inside their punching range. If you watch clips of Kyokushin, or any knockdown karate really, most knockouts using a high level round kick happen inside punching range, directly after a punch, or using a heavy fake.

I think, as long as it's done slowly, not suddenly, and things are explained to the students it will be ok. That only applies if you're a good teacher, which sensei8 most definitely appears to be. To continue with the student as a consumer dichotomy we have been creating applies here. If the product is good, they recognize its value. There may be some grumbles at first, but as long as the reasons for the price raise (back to the normal level) are reasonable (this is assuming that they have a short memory, which most people do when it comes to generosity) things will be fine. There will be people who oppose it, and there will be people who defend it. It's kind of the 10-80-10 rule. 10% of all people will always love it, 10% will always hate it, and 80% will see what your reaction is, and make a decision off of that. 10% may see the return to the previous prices as completely and totally reasonable, 10% will have forgotten the generosity and staunchly oppose it, and 80% will wait to see how both sides are dealt with. As long as there is nothing done to escalate tension between the 10% who oppose the price raise and the teacher, ie "You're so ungrateful, I lowered my prices to ease the financial burden when people had trouble, and now that you have more money, and I want to make a living, you get upset." there should be no problems at all.

I actually think it was an asset. I was a much better fighter inside than any of the other guys. I was also very good at crashing, and much more resilient. I was also a very good puncher, which allowed me to throw off the timing of the other person. At black belt level, it's a lot of wait and react, or twitch and see the reaction and move. When you punch someone really hard in the middle of the hogu, and they stumble back and get a bit confused, it throws their game off a lot. I ended my collegiate career with only three or four losses total, one due to a severely sprained knee that I fought on anyways. I lost by one point. The other, I don't remember. I won something like 30 matches, 5 or 6 by knockout. The aggressiveness inherent in the style of fighting I came from helped tons. I was never afraid to be inside someone else's kicking distance, and I didn't worry about points until the very end of the match. I was going in there to knock them around a lot harder than they knocked me around. I never lost a fight, just lost the points match up a couple times.

Thank you. After having done knockdown for a long time, I did WTF rules sparring while I was in university. The differences led to a lot of real discussion on the philosophy of fighting with my coach. Not discussions as in, I hurt a teammate, but actual friendly discourse between two trained people. It was fun.

The WKF did do that, but I don't think they're currently active int he United States. If they are, they aren't very well established. Most of the Karate associations in existence are the ones pushing XMA and such forward. As far as the difficulty of the form, Wankan is a difficult kata. It's intermediate to advanced if I remember right. It's just not a very pretty kata. It's technically difficult. Technical difficulty just doesn't seem to be rewarded these days. Also, in both ITF and WTF competition don't competitors have to perform the form appropriate for their belt level? They don't have to, but it is strongly encouraged. I've only competed in WTF tournaments, but I thought the same was true of ITF as well.

AAU tournaments just aren't popular though. I grew up doing Karate, and I never knew when the AAU tournaments were. I knew every time the AKA Nationals or the Diamond Nationals (the Diamonds especially, I grew up an hour and a half from Minneapolis) were coming up. I think another reason the traditional division is quickly dying is because we don't have a governing body for traditional Karate in the United States. I'm not talking about the many political organizations that exist in every single style. I'm talking about an organization that can act as an umbrella for these styles. One that can standardize rules for kumite and kata. I'm not talking about changing any kata at all, just standardizing tournaments. Like I said in the other post, a traditional karate association would be the way to go. If you could get enough important people to sign on, it could change the face of traditional competitions in the United States. It needs someone with a little more political clout than myself however haha.

This is going to be more of an in conjunction experiment. I feel like after 18 years, it'd be hard for me to give up Karate haha. Judo will be an additional thing for me to study. I always like a new challenge. I'm going to be starting in late August, because I will be returning to the US for a quick break in a week. I'll be sure to keep you posted on how the training goes. Still looking for people who have trained in Judo in Korea before. If you have, any comments are welcome.

Ok, first off, yes, I know they use the word Yudo, but that's not generally known (yes I was the one who started the semantics thread), but Judo and Yudo are the same martial art exactly. Same curriculum and everything. Anyways, I will be living in Korea for another 2 years or so. After 18 years doing Karate, I want to branch out into throwing, and I want to take Judo here. I know they use different terminology for techniques and throws, but I can deal with that later, and look it up online. Does anyone have experience training in Korea? Is it worth it to train here? Any suggestions or advice?

Makes a lot of sense. I forget, because I've been without a car for about 5 years, that people can and will drive to different dojos haha. I'm sure he could find a JKA Shotokan place, or one that will recognize the ranking, just about anywhere. Aikido, not so sure.

Try asking for the Japanese word for the kick. That would immediately clear all of this up. A stomp kick, which is what I think you're referring to when you say a step over kick is called a fumikomi or kake geri if memory serves, and a round house kick is called a mawashi geri.

Yeah, Olympic sparring does have that problem. It's more a showmanship thing though. They're saying, "HEY!! I scored! Did you see that?! I scored!" It's the same thing when they celebrate after a point, which I think is ridiculous. I fought at the collegiate level. This all goes back to Taekwondo being accessible, and the sparring becoming a point sport rather than a knockout one. I call it the de-evolution of Taekwondo sparring. You saw it in 2004 when a player got kicked in the head while celebrating a standard one point roundhouse kick to the chest protector AT THE OLYMPICS. You see it when kids start doing it, trying to be someone like Steven Lopez. You see it in the terminology used these days to describe someone that does WTF sparring at any level. They're a player, not a student. Big difference there.

haha, that's quite a nice observation. The overuse of kiai's started right around the same time XMA started becoming truly popular. I never understood it either. As far as the traditional division. It's such a loose term these days. You can do forms that you created as long as they don't cross certain boundaries. You don't have to do a truly traditional kata anymore. I can't imagine what some judges would do if they saw someone do Naihanchi or even Koryo in the black belt division (I'm assuming we're talking open tournaments with traditional divisions where you'll get a good mix of Japanese, Korean, and Chinese arts). I really do think a move back to simplicity would be a nice thing. It'd have to start with people hosting truly traditional tournaments though with rules denoting that forms must be traditional in origin, and cannot be created. Taekwondo has this, because the AAU and USTU run all their tournaments that way, but Karate is somehow missing out. Maybe we should start a Traditional Karate Association of America?

Seriously. I think we should try to video ourselves doing the different sidekicks we're talking about. All the text can be difficult to get through, and youtube can be a pain haha.

They at least kind of attempt to explain Bison's rebirth, and they do explain that Gouken was basically comatose for a long long time. As far as the others, well there's never been a decisive lore for the Street Fighter universe anyways haha.

I think the biggest difference between the two is the focus, the end goal. In taekwondo of today, the goal is to score more points than your opponent. In the taekwondo of yesteryear, like the 1960s, the goal was to end the fight, much like Kyokushin. Kyokushin still holds the tradition of trying to end the fight as quickly as possible, taekwondo lost this somewhere along the way. The sparring rules do differ, but they also show some similarity (a focus on kicks, no punches to the face, etc.). I think the largest blame for taekwondo becoming a sport of points rather than knockouts stems from the desire of the kukkiwon to appeal to everyone. They wanted the sport to be an Olympic one, and they wanted to make it seem like anyone in the world could do it. That's not the goal of Kyokushin.

My guess would be that there are too few kicks for most people, it's short, and judges these days seem to respect flash over power. It's a bit like the problem with sanchin and naihanchi. Performing either one of these kata in competition probably wouldn't place you well, unless you got permission to perform sanchin with someone there as an assistant to "test" you. Both kata are difficult to perform correctly, to show intent in, and to make look good, which is precisely the reason you won't see them in competition. I suspect that is the problem with Wankan as well.

Well, from what I know about Oyama, which honestly probably isn't as much as the Kyokushin members here, he did things like this to test himself. He always wanted to find the strongest opponents to test his abilities. The goal he had in mind with his style of Karate was to make it the strongest Karate in the world. Things like the 300 man Kumite and fighting the bull were done to bolster the reputation of his style of Karate. It was a great marketing tool, as well as a test of skill. We may make comments like Bruce Lee's, "Boards don't hit back." when we talk about someone breaking a lot of boards or a lot of bricks, but we do tend to admit that breaking boards and bricks is a test of focus and skill. So is fighting 100, 200, or 300 people over a 1-3 day period. Those boards do hit back though.

There's been talk of Deejay and T-Hawk as DLC, but i kind of doubt it'll happen. The game is pretty well rounded as it is, and once you unlock all the characters (took me a while, but I did it), you have a lot of unique characters. There is also a lot of balance in this game, which is good.

If you feel like you can effectively practice both styles at the same time, then by all means do so. However, it is difficult to keep up the schedule, and push yourself to go to both in one week. If you're a beginner in both, which is sounds like isn't quite the case, but almost. Personally, I would stick to one until you have a fairly solid foundation, and then cross train with the other. It is true though, that some people can very easily handle training at two different places in one week, but not all can. If you want to do things this way see how you handle going to one school for a while, and then go to the other if you feel like you can fully commit yourself to both schools. If you think your training at one or both is starting to suffer, then choose the one that gives you the greatest benefit mentally and physically.