monkeygirl

Wow! What a predicament. Your sensei may think you're a dojo jackrabbit I'm going to move this to Instructor Central. As for my input: good luck, hope it all works out. I salute your integrity; your girlfriend is lucky to have such a loyal guy One thing I would recommend: make sure your girlfriend knows what's going on. It's best that she hears the truth from you, rather catching a false rumor. Good luck! P.S.: you might want to wear your cup when confronting your Sensei

Welcome to the forums, Yoshimitsu! This forum came as quite a pleasant surprise to me too when I happily stumbled upon it over a year ago Once again, welcome!

To put it simply: we rock

That game is awesome. I love playing as Ayame and then sneaking around. It's pretty gory, but that doesn't really bother me. I got a Grand Master rating on the first level, my first time I'm stuck on the level where you have to break the 5 magical seals and kill those demon things. Can't find the magic sword thingy By the way, the Game Thread forum is for threads that are games themselves, like Word Association. Threads about videogames go into General Chat, so I'm moving this one there

Don't forget to give yourself some healing time. Pushing yourself TOO HARD can cause ripping of muscles, overly tender joints, etc. Listen to your body. If you're doing 20 pushups and start to feel pain, don't go on and do 20 more. 5 more maybe just to push yourself, but don't go overboard with it. That's a quick way to give yourself shoulder problems. I don't know if that's what you're doing or not, but you should know. Also, too much soreness kind of defeats the purpose! Once you start training in martial arts, if your arms, legs and stomach are very sore, it's going to make MA training pretty difficult and uncomfortable. Keep that in mind.

This thread has given a lot of good information and viewpoints. However, it's going in circles, and getting pretty heated as it goes. So it's a nice read, but the thread is closed.

Yoshimitsu (by the way, nice name!) You may want to tell us a little bit about your training. While the history of a martial art may be interesting, it's not everything. When it comes right down to the bottom line, the training is what matters, what decides whether or not your art is legitimate. So, if you tell us a bit about your training, some of our ninjutsu practitioners may be able to evaluate you. While you're at it, take the time to formally introduce yourself at the Introductions forum!

Good luck everyone!

Congratulations!!! 3rd dan is a huge achievement!!

Welcome to the forums! My mom started martial arts at my dojo at age 40. And no, I won't get in trouble for saying that

Thanks everyone for your advice! This actually happened to me last week. I was point sparring a blue belt lady from a different class. I threw a sidekick to her exposed ribs, and she charged right into it. She ended up not finishing the match. As it turned out, I cracked two of her ribs. The sidekick wasn't very hard, but she had fallen from a horse (she trains them) not too long ago and injured the same ribs, so when I hit her they were already tender. I still feel really bad about it

Well, BKJ I'm 15 and only 5'1", but that's because I'm a shrimpy. Most others are at least 5'8", about the height of most of the adults in the area, too. I am a "younger" black belt. I'm 15 (will be 16 this month), and hold a 1st degree. I have two friends who are 15 years old and 2nd degree black belts. Sure, they aren't the most mature creatures on earth, but they're not irresponsible, either. They are both Instructors at my school. Do they deserve their belts? Absolutely. Our test (I tested for my 1st degree at the same time they tested for 2nd) was brutal, and they stuck through it. They show the level of technique and fighting that is expected of a black belt. Even though they are fairly typical teenagers, they are more mature than some adults. Let's think about this for a second: there are such things as child prodigies. Kids who graduate from college at age 13. Think of the Doogie Howser-types. Compared to that, putting a black belt around a kid's waist doesn't seem that radical. Would anyone?

Congrats!

Good link HachiKyu

Welcome to the forums!

Kaju, that's exactly how I'm working up to a back handspring...except it hurts my back a bit. I started with a standing bridge, after discovering I could do that matrix-dodging-the-bullets move quite well. After that, I worked on kicking my feet up and over, continuing the backwards motion. Now I'm working on building up the speed of this motion, trying to eliminate the hesitation from standing to bridge, and from bridge to flip over. Once I have that down (which may take awhile), I'm going to try putting it in a combination: roundoff to back handspring. Probably going to take me a long time, though. I still can't get a front handspring. I'm acrobatically challenged.

Welcome back Krystyn! If your dojo has a class that's meant for adults only, you might want to see if you can take it. My dojo has a class that's the same way, and the youngest student is 22. Most of the students are at least 30 and have kids. They work really hard, but they do tend to move a little slower then the other classes, just because of "old bodies and old aches and pains" they tell me. If your dojo has a class like that, with a speed like that, it may be what you're looking for right now. Eventually, you'll want to get back up to your old class, but that might help you get there. Good luck! It's good to see you back

Any time judges are involved, things get tricky and complicated. I'm not saying that the judges are corrupt, just human. Sometimes errors are made, even by the experts. A lot of times, there are so many sets of rules from dojo to dojo, gym to gym, who can keep them straight? Certainly not judges who are from different schools, judging people from yet more different schools. However, there is usually a general idea of what the rules are. It's the details that get confused. Interesting discussion, keep it coming

I don't know if they do or not. I'm in the adult class so I don't think they would do that. Maybe for the youth classes but then again I won't be in them. Even in the adult classes, my dojo gives out Intent to Promote sheets to any student that's still in school. These have to be signed by a parent and a teacher who say the student has good behavior and is allowed to test. Unfortunately, sometimes we get teachers who hate MA and won't sign Also, to be on our leadership team, you have to keep good grades.

I agree: full-contact sparring is very important. You need to know how to hit someone, and how to be hit! You just can't get that from kata alone (and this is coming from someone who loves katas). Most of the schools in my area don't make ANY CONTACT AT ALL in sparring. None whatsoever!! Not even black belts make contact! I'm sorry, but that's just pretending to be a martial artist. Nothing teaches you to guard your head like a good hook kick! Unfortunately, however, from a business perspective, making contact in fighting can scare off customers, and they don't want that. So, they sacrifice practicality and effective training to get a little more dough in the door. This is the case for many a dojo in the area. In fact, my dojo is one of the only schools who makes contact in sparring. I think we get much more effective training, but that is just my very, very biased opinion. (couldn't you just feel my resentment towards the rival dojos? )

Welcome to the forums!

I'll move this to the "Getting Started in the Martial Arts" forum, where it should get some more responses I did a Google search, but came up with nothing. sorry.

Sounds like a topic for the Serious Discussion forum

In my TKD school, this is how we do point sparring: Kicks are two points, punches are one point. Usually, we go until one person gets 5 points, or to the end of two minutes. Blackbelt competitions use a 5-point spread, meaning one has to win by 5 points. So if one fighter has 2 points, the other one has to have 7 before they can win. Or to the end of three minutes, if there's a time limit at all. Personally, I don't like time limits. Sometimes, however, they have to be used because people won't get a move on!!! Scoring areas are: Side and front of head gear, sometimes the back of the head gear. No contact to the face is allowed (although they like to overlook that matter in blackbelt competition), but a good show of control (i.e. punching just barely in front of the face) will sometimes be counted as a point. The other scoring areas are anywhere on the body above the belt. That means stomach, chest and ribs...no back shots. Fighters get a warning if they make face contact, excessive head contact (if the person's head snaps back from being hit so hard), or kicking below the belt. Two warnings in the same match by the same person results in disqualification. If the fighter draws blood, they are automatically disqualified. As far as Olympic rules, I have no idea. Those are just the rules of my dojo and other dojos in the area.

Ahhh martial farts. Monday night in the family class (the one I teach almost entirely), we were warming up with some crunches. It was fairly quiet, the only noise that of breathing and the students counting in Korean. All of a sudden, someone lets out this monstrous gaseous explosion! At first, all went well and everyone was quiet. I was completely ready to ignore it. About ten seconds later, however, the student who was currently counting crunches started busting up laughing!! Soon the whole room erupted, and I couldn't help but join in, too. I still don't really know who did it, but I have my suspicions I tried to quiet them down by making some sort of mention about control or something.