baronbvp

We made them give us an allowance for window treatments, but they said lamps were good enough and overhead lights were our choice. After a point, it wasn't worth arguing because we already had moved in under lease, and didn't notice until we moved in and it got dark. He said I could always take the lights with me. Yeah. That'll happen.

Unless you can write books.

When we moved into this brand new rental house, we literally had no light except in the kitchen and bathrooms. The second day here I had to install seven overhead light fixtures, wire them in and everything. THAT sucked. This isn't even my house.

Avoid or deescalate confrontation if you can like all the remarks in this thread say. Then, punch 'em quickly in the solar plexus where they will feel it and it won't show. Then it's their word against yours about what happened. Chances are they'll find someone else who's not so feisty. Ace2021 hit the nail on the head.

We had a sensei who'd grown pretty heavy as he got older. He must have been in his mid-fifties. As a result of his weight, he was no longer very agile and fought from basically one general area on the floor and made the opponents come to him. But, man, could that guy punch from a solid base. He had modified his technique to being "fat man who hits hard." He was demoing a technique on me once and didn't mean to really hit me, but the force he just naturally applied when he punched my chest was surprising. I continued with the drill, but in my head the whole time I was thinking, "Damn! I'll feel that one inside for awhile."

Boy, if she teaches submission grappling in Gig Harbor, I missed out. I used to live 20 miles from there! Too bad.

You can buy a sledgehammer at any home improvement store and most hardware stores. Andy Hug looks pretty amazing in that video. I wish I could get my legs that high. How did he die, and at what age?

I just found my videos of the Shorin-Ryu kata made by the renshi at my old dojo. After all my kata bashing, I have surprised myself by being excited to practice them again. A point several have made is that it is a great way to train alone, with a spiritual breath pushing you along.

Very good point. I couldn't find anything on Cindy Hale; that website is for some realtor in Texas. Lucia Rijker played opposite Hillary Swank in Million Dollar Baby. I haven't seen it, but she looks very formidable. In fact, I'm not sure she's even lost?

I think you did the right thing, particularly if it happened where you work. Unless you were prepared to "start" something you would have had to finish - likely including discussions with police afterward that would pull you away from working the bar on New Year's Eve - you weren't in a position to do much other than tell them where to go. The only other thing you might have done is call your security guys about them loitering and make them leave. Like you said, it was a weird situation.

I still own the home but had to move. The basement's pretty nice, all finished and about half the square footage of the house. I had to redo the entire floor after some water seepage on the slab in the great PACNORWEST rain forest. I built a 12x20 gym as part of the floor plan and I really like it. I even put two 6x4 ft sheets of mirror glass on one wall, which is great for kata or mirror boxing. Like you said, it was cheaper to do a gym at home than buy a gym membership fee and certainly easier to use. In the house I am renting now in VA, I had to fashion one out of a small unfinished bedroom in the basement. It works but is kind of spooky. Good lighting and good music help.

Here's a topic of great interest to me. Like Bill "Superfoot" Wallace, many of us have injury, age, or body style issues that affect or restrict our motion or mobility. As a result, we can't do all the moves of our style or have modified them in some way. For instance, my hips are not limber for sideways motions of lifting my thighs and never have been. I am 45 and no matter how much I stretch or warm up, it's just the way my hip joints are constructed. I also sleep on my sides, so any pain in my hips from trying to tough it out makes it difficult to sleep. While I can agilely shuffle from side to side such as in racquetball, I cannot lift my legs for side kicks very high at all. As a result, I rarely use side kicks for strikes above the knee or at best the lower thigh. I love front and back kicks instead. Others have had knee, shoulder, or other injuries; are overweight or very petite; have trick joints; have had amputations; or have asymmetric bodies or other birth issues that cause them to adjust their technique accordingly. Many of us older martial artists - I mean Masters - cannot do deep stances because of pain and pressure in the knees. How have you modified your fighting, sparring, or training style to compensate for restricted motion or mobility due to injury, aging, or other body issues? How effective is your modification?

Impressive. How do you get the leverage if the kick is anywhere but low? And how do you keep from bruising your forearms?

Now THAT's a nice move. Grabbing the shirt with the toes and pulling your opponent closer.

Watching football, drinking Starbucks, hugging my kids. I'm also learning German, so I have books open to that. Or I'll read MA books. I have just started to get into kickboxing again, this time in a class. One of the books I bought is by Christoph Delp, a German. I had no idea it was so huge there. Froehliche Neu Jahr!

Way to go, Bushido! I am a hardcore Seahawks fan and season ticket holder. I grew up in San Diego during the Fouts era, so AFC West is my old haunt. Now that the Hawks are in the NFC West, maybe we'll see the Chiefs in the show. I think it will be San Diego versus Philly, though.

That's my problem. I have had to fit in MA through the years when I could. In the military, I've moved around a lot and been gone on many deployments flying off aircraft carriers, so I've never been able to stick with one dojo or even style. But I always seek out MA somewhere as I have recently done. Good luck with whatever you choose.

Welcome to my recently past nightmare. Maybe a better question is, "what home improvement projects HAVEN'T you done?" And this on a 5 year old house. The hardest thing was cutting up the concrete and tile floor of my shower with a saw. Most dust I've ever seen!

The new year promises lots of exciting things coming. I hope it is the same for everyone on the forums! It's 2007, baby.

Thanks Cross, that's good stuff. I guess I've been using it without knowing that's what it was. It looks to me that the primary difference between a tiip kick and standard front kick is that the tiip is more of a push to the opponent's abdomen with the thigh extended, and a standard front kick is a snap of the lower leg from a chambered thigh for the purpose of striking. Tiip is a long-distance push kick or block using the quads and hamstrings, whereas a regular front kick is more of a close-in strike to a variety of targets. The line looks pretty blurry, though. Does this sound correct?

So what is the difference between tiip and other types of front kicks allowed in the US? Is it that you push more instead of striking, perhaps to push away the opponent to increase distance or knock him off balance to the rear? I watched some Muay Thai match videos and couldn't really see. Of course, in the heat of a match very little looks standard.

No, I don't mind it. In fact, Bushido, I would be lying if I said I wasn't excited to get a new belt. What I am not a fan of is belt systems that are revenue generators instead of marks of progress. At my old dojo, belt progression was primarily based on doing more advanced kata than before. There was never a sparring match to see how good a fighter you were against some other color belt. The instructors wouldn't let you test if they didn't think you were ready from regularly watching you and letting the right amount of time go by, but I felt some who were better at kata advanced faster than those who were better fighters but not as clean with kata. I found this to be true by sparring some of their black belts. I never got above yellow, but was well-matched with some of the young black belts. Others would have destroyed me. It didn't seem very equal. I have also found that some get caught up in belt progression to the exclusion of learning their art.

I think I may have been under a misconception about exactly how a tiip kick is executed and its advantages/disadvantages over the front or side kick. Can't find anything on the web. Can anyone help? Thanks!

What I love about Oregon is that the schools hate each other - until someone else attacks one of them. Then they're just all Oregonians and thick as thieves. Especially true when the Huskies come to town. By the way, I'm a Trojan. Go PAC-10.