bouncing monkey

http://www.ancientmuaythai.com/styles/muay_thai.htm This site has a whole lot of info on some various older styles. Keep in mind though, that the history of Muay Thai is somewhat cloudy and a lot of things should be taken with a grain of salt. Worth a look though. cheers

not really. they offer much, much less wrist support and knuckle padding. they do go on quicker than wraps but in most cases aren't worth it.

http://www.boxinggyms.com/tips/handwraps.htm this site has a few different ways of doing it, to give you some options. cheers

i relocated to sydney a few days ago and wanted to find a martial arts school to train at while im here. i currently train in seven star and taiji praying mantis, with some eagle claw thrown in there. i certainly wouldnt mind finding a good pm school but im not married to those styles. im looking in the other forms of kung fu, jkd, muay thai or some sort of mma-type gym direction at the moment, so if anyone wants to recommend their school, im all ears. thanks!

when thought of/used as such, yeah. a lot of the flowery "ornamental" openers of kung fu forms have practical applications

in my school the salute is open left hand and right closed fist. according to my sifu, the story behind this (be sure to add in the usual grain of salt for kung fu "origin" stories) was that some rich guy wanted to train with skilled monk, who of course refused him. so the guy cut off the monks right hand. he felt bad and asked to be trained again. the monk again refused, but let him do housework, which of course was training in disguise. eventually when the rich guy figured out what was going on and the monk agreed to formally train him, he cut off his own hand as a gesture of respect and grattitude. i think the monk kicked the crap out of somebody one-handed at some point in there but i might be mixing my apocryphal stories.

There's no reason not to learn something that interests you, even if it isn't necessarily traditionally part of the system you study. From my (very) limited training in sai, I can tell you that your wrists will get quite a nice workout. Sais are quite fun, with a few techniques that can translate over to/from stick fighting. And as an added bonus you could be a ninja turtle for Halloween.