monkeygirl

Most martial arts are fairly complex, and take years of training before you can be considered skilled enough to "begin" (become a black belt). A good self-defense course will teach you what you need to know quickly, with no frills or extra techniques. You'll learn simple, effective techniques for both stand-up and ground fighting...in a good course, that is. With martial arts however, there is usually another aspect to them besides self-defense: whether it's artistic, spiritual, or tournament-based. Krav Maga and CDT are two exceptions, from what I understand. So if your main goal is to learn effective self-defense in a short amount of time, you'll want to go for a specific self-defense course. However, if you want to learn self-defense AND have training in kata or other MA aspects, a good TKD school should work for you if they have a good self-defense program. A good MA will teach you self-defense, but because it isn't their only focus, it'll take a little more time. Basically: 6 months of a self-defense course, and you'll be ready for the streets (that is, until those skills become defunct from lack of practice). 6 months of MA and you will know just enough to hurt yourself.

There is already another (recent) thread on this: http://www.karateforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=7565. Please continue all future discussion in that thread

We're passing many milestones here these days

I'm going to move this to General MA, but that's a temporary move until I can find out what style this is referring to. circa02: Are they forcing you to start back at white belt? I can see how that would be very discouraging. However, try not to feel like you trained for four years in your previous art for "nothing". Try to apply what you were learning at your new dojo. There are many parallels and similarities between different arts. Try to find them, and use them to your advantage at your new dojo. If you're really unhappy with losing your rank, try to find another dojo that will let you keep it (there are many that might)! After all, you're in Vegas...there's got to be tons of dojos over there.

I learned to play on an acoustic, and really acoustics are all I play...so when my buddy (jake on this forum) let me play his electric...well, it was pretty small, but it was so heavy! My acoustic is bigger, but it's got a big hole in it Does anybody write their own music? I'm big into lyric-writing, so playing guitar provides a musical accompaniment for my lyrics. I started out with simple chords, just strumming. Now I'm into some more complicated plucking patterns, and even making some simple riffs. Getting adventurous hehe

You're welcome, tnp I'll go ahead and move this now.

I've never heard of Seipai or Saifa, so hopefully I found the right info: Video of Seipai - http://www.onthekenai.net/karate/ Written Instructions for Seipai - http://www.kyokushinkai.de/html/krte/kaku/seipai.html Google results for search "seipai" - http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=seipai Written instructions for Saifa - http://216.239.53.100/search?q=cache:53_krCPv8dYJ:www.missouri.edu/~gojuwww/Handouts/KATA/Saifa%2520Kata.pdf+saifa+kata&hl=en&ie=UTF-8 More written instructions, plus a brief background to Saifa - http://freespace.virgin.net/mike.clark/sodokan11.htm Nothing for Saifa yet, but will have some in the future when it's updated - http://www.ozwebart.com.au/kua/kata.htm Video clip of Saifa, may not be complete, but at least has a large chunk of the kata - http://www.tenshinryu.com/sifa4.mpg I hope those help! By the way, these are katas for karate, right? I saw some sites linking them to Goju-Ryu and Shotokan. Anyway, if someone could please confirm that, I will move this thread over to the Karate forum.

I have one MAJOR suggestion: get your dad or a person you trust that has been in the military (any branch will do) to come with you to the recruiting office!! The military is great and everything, but military recruiters are notorious for being not-exactly-honest. I have a bunch of family and friends that have been involved in the military, and I've heard so many horror stories about recruiters using methods they aren't allowed to use. They have a tendency to gloss up things and make them seem nice and rosy, make promises they can't keep. (Ever seen "Private Benjamin"? It's kinda like that) Don't let that keep you from enlisting, though! You just need to be a little cautious around the recuiters, that's all (no offense to any recruiters we may have on KF ).

They have advertised other pills, however...such as Bloussant As far as the "bogus" martial arts ads...I don't think they really have any way of confirming the validity of these products. Yes, some are obviously scams, but the ads go to the highest bidder. You should probably take this complaint to Black Belt mag itself, but I'm not sure what good it would do. You'd be better off writing to the companies themselves and asking how they can sleep at night selling services like that.

Don't forget: paperweights make good bludgeoning items. Two rulers make good escrima. For architects: who needs kamas when you've got t-squares? Don't forget the chopsticks that came with the chinese you ordered for lunch Flip the plastic chair mat (that protects the carpet) upside down and leave it in front of your office door/cubicle entrance like a booby trap. You'll also learn how to hide behind small, narrow plants! The proper way to jump through your window and onto the window-washing thingy should also be covered

OK, so what guitars does everybody own? This is the thread to discuss tabs, techniques, anything you wish that is guitar-related. Enjoy.

I own a Takamine G Series acoustic...I love that thing. It's got a nice, rich sound and nylon strings. I think I might upgrade to steel strings the next time I need new ones. My fingertips are tough enough to handle steel now. I think I'll split off these posts into a new thread

$33 a month is pretty cheap! Add in the $50 for testing and that's still not as much as some of the students at my dojo pay. Don't think of it as $50 for testing. Think of it as $83 monthly tuition. Unless you test twice a week.

I haven't been there long, and mostly I hang out in the Lyrics section (I just entered a lyrics writing competition). On the rest of the forum, they talk about equipment like amps and guitars, but not that much. Mostly they share TABs, talk about bands, fingering techniques, the like. It's pretty cool.

This would be even funnier if it were true, but unfortunately it's an urban e-legend: http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/grammygordon.htm It's still hilarious, though. Yet another case proving knitting needles' combat superiority.

Welcome to the forums! Doug said pretty much everything I wanted to say

http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/forum Guitar (duh) http://www.ffwa.org/forums/ Final Fantasy And then there's a message board at my school's website. I don't go there much anymore because most of the discussion ends up being political...I don't want to make the other kids cry

Do you mean for this to apply only to practitioners of Chinese Arts? If you want it to apply to everyone, let me know and I'll move it.

My school doesn't do any "bouncing", but my cousin's TSD school does. It helps them with rhythm a little bit, too.

Welcome to the forums! I'm sure Doug will love your avatar

There is already a Matrix thread on the forums: http://www.karateforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=7682 Check it out

Mine is a picture that I altered to fit me. It's a monkey doing a flying sidekick, wearing a blue gi (what I wore at the time) and a 1st degree brown belt. I really should update it to where the monkey's wearing pants and a black belt, and the background is transparent, but I haven't gotten to it. You can barely tell that it's a brown belt anyway. The image started out as a monkey throwing a flying sidekick, wearing a red belt and white gi. Some quick editing in MSPaint was all it took

Another move similar to this is to rake down the instep of the leg, starting high and close-ish to the knee, and then just dragging down all the way to the floor, hitting the ankle on the way by. Paaaainful

We don't normallyWe don't either, but then again our classes are only 45 minutes to an hour long. If they were 1.5 hours each, I'd want a break too!

Welcome to the forums, Scott! I'm known at FF:WA as Fist_fighta (is it possible that you followed the link from my signature? ) I'm having some problems with their site right now, though. Hopefully it'll get fixed