monkeygirl

My knowledge of cars: I push pedal, it go VROOM VROOM not too fast or it go BOOM BOOM.

Please just call it chicken and don't avoid the censor, and we can all be happy and avoid any innuendos.

While you probably wouldn't use such fancy kicks in a fight, they do build valuable skills that can help improve other areas of your martial art. For example, the leg strength you gain from jumping so high improves the power of your kicks. You also gain speed and agility (usually in your hips from having to twist around so many times in a limited amount of time). And of course, mastering such kicks gives a great confidence boost.

The key to executing these fancy jump kicks is to have good jumping skills, which comes from having powerful legs, namely quads. Good balance will help you successfully land the technique, but your balance is usually determined by the angles at which you leave the ground, and how your upper body is positioned "mid-flight".

So much for studying for finals...looks like I'll have "ring ring ring ring ring ring ring bananaphoooone" stuck in my head the whole time.

Woohoo!! I'm eating cheesecake to celebrate

Thanks for the responses! Unfortunately it's not so simple as finding another dojo. I'm now enrolled in a boarding school (although I don't live there this year, I commute) which I once figured takes up about 80 hours a week. Next year I will live up there, so it's becoming increasingly difficult to fit MA into my life. So different from a few years ago, when life had to fit into my MA... I'm now trying to negotiate with some school athletic officials to get better facilities for martial artists. We have state-of-the-art gym equipment, but we can't even have a decent hanging bag in a low-traffic area. (we have a 30lb-ish bag that's about 6 feet away from a major door and at the junction of three major pathways in a gym that facilitates about 500 people nearly every day) So, I'm trying to get it to where we can have a dedicated room (there are a few empty rooms in the gym that are waiting to be filled, but there's competition among teams for the rooms) where we can have some nice equipment like a decent heavy bag, some hand targets, and even some padded weapons that would stay in the room so we can practice weapons forms and still comply with school rules regarding weapons. There are quite a few martial arts on campus, so the room would be in high demand. If we can get those arrangements made, my MA life would be a little easier, at least until I get to college. Once I get into college, I think I'll have more time to find a new dojo/style, and that time is getting closer and closer...this fall I start my senior year of high school!

Welcome to the forums!

Remember guys, we want to stay away from any "which is best" arguments about styles, etc. Please try to compare and contrast in a respectful manner.

Welcome to the forums!

Welcome to the forums!

Well...I asked another Japanese friend of mine (we have a lot of international students at my school). After a little giggling, she explained to me what it meant. Apparently, I named my fish "The Incredible Joe Suppository."

This post was originally published as an article in a dedicated KarateForums.com Articles section, which is no longer online. After the section was closed, this article was most to the most appropriate forum in our community. Many people would consider my biggest accomplishment to date - earning the rank of first degree black belt in the art of Tae Kwon Do - an enormous success. After three years of dedicated training, two years of teaching others and one life-threatening injury, I had finally earned my black belt. I had finally become the envied role model, instead of the student who envies others. Undoubtedly, this constitutes a major personal achievement, but can I honestly consider it a success? Most people would quickly answer yes, but I find myself curiously torn. If we lived in a perfect world where nothing unfortunate ever happened, I could consider my martial arts career to be a wonderful success. But, our world is far from perfection, obviously. Thanks to this imperfection, greed and controversy were foolishly allowed to destroy my happy, successful life. At the age of 12 years, I decided to join the most popular martial arts school in my area. My brother Sean also joined, so I would not feel alone or unsupported. After my first class, however, I realized that I did not need my family to give me confidence; I discovered that I possessed a natural talent for Tae Kwon Do and my self-confidence instantly skyrocketed. My brother and I soon became hopelessly addicted to the martial arts. Before Tae Kwon Do came into my life, I had little self-esteem and often felt like my life was void of any clear purpose, any driving aim. Training, however, made my life feel worthwhile; every class left me thirsting for more. Between classes, Sean and I practiced techniques whenever and wherever possible... we found it difficult to stand still without throwing a restless kick or two. After our first week of classes, the school held a test and we earned the rank of yellow belt—my first taste of sweet, gratifying promotion. The following week, I participated in my first-ever tournament and won first place in the beginner’s forms division. With every class, belt promotion and tournament, my confidence grew. At the end of the year, I received an enormous honor: I was awarded the title of Adult Student of the Year. When Sean and I earned our blue belts (over a year after we had joined), we were promoted to the Leadership Team. This meant that the head instructor believed we had earned the privilege of teaching the lower classes. After this promotion, the martial arts encompassed our lives and became my sole driving passion. We spent three hours a night, five nights a week at the dojo, teaching others and developing our own skills. Something about the intricate techniques and fighting skills of the art fascinated me. Only teaching Tae Kwon Do classes could rival my passion for learning and performing it. I formed friendships with the other teenage instructors, which soon developed into the strongest relationships of my life thus far. For two long, happy years, we were inseparable. Earl*, the head instructor/owner was like a second father to me, especially when my real father and I started arguing. My life and the dojo were irreversibly intertwined... life seemed unlivable without the school and my friends, but it did not seem to be an issue. I did not see myself leaving them anytime soon. The dependence went both ways: the owners of the dojo completely relied on my brother and I to teach about 36 classes a month (due to Earl’s full-time job), although we usually ended up teaching about 80 classes. Sean, being five years older, held more responsibility than I did and received a small paycheck each month. This money helped him to pay for his college textbooks, since attending college and teaching martial arts left very little time for even a part-time job. Over the next two years, my brother and I received several important rank promotions (in both belts and teaching status), and I remained undefeated in the tournament circuit. Not all events were positive, however. In May of 2002, a 17-year-old student tested for his brown belt. As a brown belt myself (and Assistant Instructor), he had to spar me before he could pass. We fought each other with speed, intensity and power... unfortunately, he did not fight with control. About a minute into our match, a badly placed sidekick of his connected painfully with my right eye. The force of the very powerful blow broke the orbital bone of the eye and gave me terrible double vision. My optometrist informed me of a risky surgery to correct my double vision, but he did not recommend it since he could not guarantee results. My double vision became better with time, but never fully healed... and never will. To make matters worse, I could not risk another eye injury in the future, for fear of permanent blindness or death. Rather than giving up on my training, I decided to purchase a protective face mask, which would hopefully provide sufficient protection during sparring matches. Many people questioned my decision, but my love of Tae Kwon Do and loyalty to the dojo were too strong. I absolutely refused to let a physical handicap prevent me from earning my black belt. So, I continued to train hard, and finally achieved my goal on September 21, 2002. Sean tested at the same time, and passed with flying colors. Earl and his wife Linda* threw a party for us, a “Black Belt Extravaganza” - our mother created a PowerPoint presentation of our lives, showing how far Sean and I had come. All of my friends attended the celebration, people were laughing and crying... I cannot remember a time when I felt a greater sense of accomplishment. It all went downhill from there. Suddenly, Linda decided to have a bigger part in managing the dojo, which could only mean trouble. Linda, the horrifying mother who could not control her children; Linda, the woman who screamed at customers when they did not pay on time, yet had no problem with paying her own employees several weeks late. She can be described as hostile, hypocritical, paranoid and often unintelligent. This woman wanted more involvement in the dojo and very few students looked forward to her coming. After she came, things started to change for the worse, slowly but surely. Instructors became required to swab the toilets and sweep the floors every night (tasks that should have belonged to Linda), even though we rarely had the proper equipment for the job. Students’ equipment orders often took three weeks longer to arrive than usual; when the orders finally did arrive, they had a tendency to be very wrong and had to be re-ordered... another long wait for the customer. Linda raised the monthly tuition prices by $10, even though many customers found it difficult to pay the previous tuition of $80 per month. Meanwhile, Earl combined several of the classes so he could leave an hour earlier, and worked a full-time job so that his advanced students rarely ever saw him. Earl made promise after promise to the students, none of which he could keep. In essence, the customers paid more and got less. Then, Earl and Linda suddenly decided to stop paying Sean his monthly salary, without even telling him first. When Sean asked why he had not been paid for the last two months (thinking that they could not come up with the money, as was often the case), Earl tried to cover up by claiming: "We told you in the meeting a few months ago, we are not paying instructors anymore." Even supposing this were true, Pennsylvania labor laws state that an employer must give written notice before discontinuing an employee’s salary. Sean informed him of this, but Earl still refused to pay for the last two months of work. Laws aside, consider the sheer immorality of the situation: Earl and Linda expected Sean to work for free! Linda eventually came into the situation and started an argument. Sean tried to resolve the fight diplomatically, but to no avail. He eventually decided to resign his rank of Assistant Instructor and started looking for a job. Sean and I stayed at the dojo for several months longer, but Earl began to treat us differently. He did not treat us like black belts, he treated us like strangers: overly nice and unfamiliar. I kept my rank of Assistant Instructor, but Earl shut me out of my best friend’s black belt test, even though I had participated heavily in the judging of another friend’s black belt test. Finally, Sean and I could not take any more and left the dojo entirely. I never even got to say good bye to my friends and have not seen many of them in several months. It hurts too much to even think about telling them why Sean and I left. I lost over 100 students, my surrogate family. I miss everything about the dojo, even the people and activities I used to dislike. Just when I think I have moved on and gotten over my grief, the smallest thing triggers a fond memory of the school and I fall apart. Life has never been the same and I doubt that it ever will be. When I think back to the things I have sacrificed out of loyalty to my dojo - such as my eye injury - I wonder: was it worth it? If God gave me another chance, would I make the same decisions? To this day, my eye causes headaches, sinus pains and prevents me from playing many sports. I earned my black belt, but from who... a lying cheat of an instructor? Losing your friends and way of life can make any success feel like a massive failure. So was I successful? If we lived in a perfect world where nothing unfortunate ever happened, I could consider my martial arts career to be a wonderful success. But, our world is far from perfection. *Names changed.

It's okay, Greg...I don't blame you for it or anything. I'm just worried that I've been calling my fishy something bad Of course, there is a possibility that my friend is pulling my leg, but I'm not sure. His reaction to my question was pretty quick and genuine.

Well, it's been nearly a year since I got my fish (the Incredible Joe Kansho, as I eventually named him). However, I have a Japanese friend at school, and he doesn't seem to think that Kansho can be short for fish. In fact, he says that "kansho" is something bad... The worst part of it all is that my friend won't tell me what it really means! He doesn't know how to say it in English, and he refuses to describe it to me. "Maybe later," he says. "I don't want to tell you." So, I'm stuck with a fish that's named something kind of bad.

Oops, just realized there is already a thread on this in General Martial Arts. Please direct all further direction to that one (link below). http://www.karateforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=13019&start=0

I haven't paid much attention to the news, so I didn't know who you were talking about, but I googled. After reading a news article, all I could think was "Wow." That's true patriotism.

I'd also go with GMO's over chemically blasted. Might as well start on a genetic level rather than modifying them after the fact and causing pollution.

My experience with "going organic" sounds completely opposite.... One of our local grocery-store chains decided to go organic, no more preservatives, etc. Before, I would have trusted the veggies. They looked fresh and healthy, unbruised, etc. Ever since they went "organic", however, I don't dare buy things from there. They look half-rotten, colorless, and disgusting. I come from a very large farming area, and most of the big farms use preservatives, so the supermarket would have to transport these vegetables from far away, which is why they look so bad. I'm all for science improving our foods and our lives...after all, we have modern medicine and computers, and so many things that science has brought us. However, I'd like to see science advance to the point where we start using "smart chemicals" that aren't harmful to the environment. Most of the pesticides we use are harmful because of run-off, etc. Then again, I don't really trust veggies that haven't had the pesticides on them (such as the kind sold by the local Amish fruit stands), because there are so many bad pests and nasty things that can happen to crops these days. So, I guess I'm just waiting for that "perfect produce": safe, healthy, and healthful to the environment. Until then, me=carnivore! j/k

Oh my... God/Goddess type: Celebrity (for no good reason) Worshippers: Hackers They show devotion by: Sacrificing Infants

I believe that everyone has at least one soul mate, but that we may not always find ours. Sometimes in the course of our lives, we "settle" for a "good match", instead of true love. I think that's where the problems occur. There's plenty of people you could spend your life with semi-happily, but very very few with which you could stay in love forever. I think most of us miss out on that. I'm not sure if I believe there's only one person, "the one". Ideally, yes I'd like to believe that. Realistically, it's too fairy-tale and I'm too cynical.

Who was "playing" Trinity? It went by too fast for me to tell.

I'm liking the flying-sidekick/rolling/screaming/barechested guy thing Girls should probably go with a Chun-Li look a la Street Fighter. http://cps2burn.emuunlim.com/rips/pfchunanim.gif

Yeah, but even then it's pretty long. I loved the Mario sound-effects that were thrown in, and the occasional "80000".

If you're willing to spend some cash... A nice sign on the road, with a letterboard where you can advertise specials and have your phone number. This is great if you have a high-traffic location.