Meguro

Let me guess. You suffer from seasonal allergies. When the allergies get real bad, the mucus doesn't drain away quickly enough and you end up with sinusitis or ear infections. Close? Pour boiling water into a cup. Add some salt. When the water has cooled a little, inhale it one nostril at a time. Use a tablespoon so that you don't end up spilling water all over your shirt. 2 or 3 tablespoons of warm saline solution per nostril does the trick. Have some tissue handy so that you can soak up any saline solution or mucus that dribbles from your nose. The saline solution will shrink the swollen membranes inside your nasal passages, kill some bacteria and give you relief. I haven't had a cold or sinus infection for years since doing this.

So now this becomes an argument about semantics?

This works especially well if you hold the "down" position with your elbows bent instead of locked.

Don't limit yourself to kendo. Iado, kenjutsu and also aikido teach you different aspects of using a Japanese sword. BTW, katana refers to a live blade, which is rarely used in training because 1) it's dangerous to train with live blades 2) they're quite expensive and the edges are easily knicked. An iato, on the other hand, is unsharpened, less expensive and quite sturdy. It is used in iado. Google these different arts and see what's in your area.

Interesting, but largely misinformed. "Osu" means push, and is the root form of the verb. A polite conjugation would be "oshimasu." So to say "osu" in polite company when you should be saying "oshimasu," would be a break in protocol. It would also be wrong to say "osu" in polite company, when what you really want to say is "good morning," or some other greeting. "Osu" in some karate dojo, notably Kyokushinkai, is entirely appropriate. It is, as some have pointed out a contraction of Oshi shinobu- which loosley translated means to perservere, to never give up. This is a common concept in Japanese society and not at all rude. In a kyokushin karate dojo, and some others, it is jargon, for yes, I understand, I'll try harder,hello, good-bye, cheers, aloha. It's part of the Kyokushinkai karate culture. You either get it, or you don't. If you don't get it don't use it. "Hai" is Japanese for yes and works in all contexts.

It's unfortunate, but a fact of life. Big karate organizations always seem to splinter apart into groups that don't speak to each other. If you expect your son to travel and train around the world, including Japan, and have his rank recognized, you might want to stick with IKO. Note that there is more than one IKO orgnization in Japan. AKKA might have established a relationship with one IKO organization as it severed its relationship with another.

From what little I know of this injury, it is quite serious. The scaphoid bone, since it's nested inside the wrist is very hard to break. When it does break, it's usually do to a major traumatic event-car crashes for example. Hard to believe you got this kind of break from focus mitts. Good luck with your recovery. Before you start hitting things again, strangthen your hand and forearm muscles. Do knuckle push-ups. Get a gripper or squeeze ball. Go slow.

Another way to up the intensity of your basic sit-up is to work the negative, ie. count to ten as you slowly lower your shoulders to the floor without letting them touch. You can also do this when you work your obliques.

You misread my posts. I never said Kyokushin doesn't have these techniques, just that there are other arts that focus on these skills exclusively and in greater detail.

It's an isometric exercise. Your upright torso and both legs held out at 90 deg to form an L shape. Support yourself on your finger-tips or on the handles of a dip stand, parallel bars,push-up handles, etc.

Crunches are an isolation exercise which work wonders for making your abs look nice. Why not engage the hip flexors too, since you'll be needing them for martial arts anyway? How about weighted sit-ups, incline sit-ups, hanging leg lifts, L-sits and V-sits?

Precise numbers aren't necessarry. A rule of thumb is if you've got a six pack, then you're around 8-10% body fat or less. This is just a ball park estimate. By trying to lose more weight at this point, you may end up losing muscle mass instead. On the other hand, if you're lugging around a spare tire around your middle. . .

For a typical 90 min class, it goes like this: Warm-up & stretching 10-15 min Basics & combinations 10-15 min Kata 10-15 min Kick pads, heavy bag 10-15 min Sparring (start out light progressively increasing in intensity) 30 min Depending on the day, extra time might be allocated to self-defense, boxing skills, kata, conditioning, etc. For tournment fighting workouts, they're virtually all about conditioning and fighting. Not for the average karate guy.

How much body fat do you have to slough off? Are you at 10% body fat or 25%?

I once lost 5 pounds over night after eating a bad burger from McD's. Thought I was gonna die. After that, there was no way I would have been in shape for any kind of competition, much less a walk around the block. Good luck on the comp.

It makes you take a position (pro-kata). Should enough arguments ensue, whereby you had to physically defend your opinion, your fighting skills will have improved without having practiced any kata.

Give your knees a rest. Get access to a swimming pool and swim. Swim a lot.

If you must get a free-standing bag, the wavemaster would be a better choice. Frankly, both are so poor in comparison to a good heavy-bag that I wouldn't want to clutter up my home with either of them. If you have a training partner, you might want to consider air shileds, thai kick pads or focus mits.

If you must perform this stunt for kata purposes, you can start by doing it on the floor. Lay on your side, with your bottom leg bent (for balance) and prop yourself op on your elbow. Throw your kick and hold, aim for a minute. Keep on increasing the time and angle. Then you can move on to standing, repeating the process all over again.

Isn't the Shotokan claim to fame pulling the punch and kick at the last minute so as not to make contact and thus demonstrate control? If so, isn't the lack of pads a recognition of this control?. I've trained with a lot of guys, many from Eastern Europe, who never trained with pads and practice knockdown karate (Kyokushin). What I've discovered is that rather than the ranks being decimated by injury you have a student body of very tough fighters inured to the bumps and bruises inherent to knockdown. Generally Kyokushin karate uses pads in day to day training. The pads come off for the elite competitors and for blackbelt testing.

Sounds like your work-outs are targeted more at building beach muscle than in improving your fighting ability. My recommendation would be to improve your aerobic/anaerobic fitness. Pay special attention to intervals. I would cut out the isolation type weight training and instead focus on whole-body exercises. Dead lifts are good for strengthening your core and will add speed and power to your technique. This is just a general observation about older karateka. If you're slower than your adversary, you won't be able to be a successful counter-puncher. What you can do is take away their ability to range and time their techniques against you. Control the distance and the timing. NB, distance control is not about backpedaling.

It's all relative. The minimum requirement for a blackbelt is the knowledge of some basics and whatever other skills your style requires. That's it. Havng a black belt doesn't automatically make you king of the concrete jungle, no matter how old or how good you are. Its only significance is within the dojo or organization. If I ran my own dojo, I'd be tempted to make it next to impossible to obtain a black belt, but common sense would prevail, especially if you have bills to pay. Most dojo operate this way. On the other hand, say you practiced Muay Thai. They don't even bother with the superficiality of belts and rank. What matters is who's still standing after the final bell. It's pretty easy to figure out the pecking order under these conditions, not that these guys care about such things.

Please explain what you find to be so incredible about multi-man kumite? Perhaps you don't understand the format or the conditioning of the karateka? I will say this, they are not easy. It is for this reason that Kyokushin karate does not suffer from the black belt inflation you might find in some other styles. For the Kyokushin yudansha, black belts are not about putting in your time and knowing x number of kata.

What do you mean by "need"? Do you mean that if you knock out your opponent fast enough, you won't need grappling skills? If so, I can agree with your statement. If you mean that the bunkai of the Kyokushin kata contain some grappling and joint lock techniques, and that by simply knowing the kata you are somehow a grappling fiend, I disagree. There are other arts that better prepare you for grappling than Kyokushin karate, for example jiujistu and Daido Juku (I forget what they like to call themselves these days). Aikido and Judo would also be complementary. If your aim is to be a mma competitor, bjj might be the thing to go with your Kyokushin training.

Is karate somethig you'd like to continue even after your brief stay in Japan? If so, find a dojo near your hometown that might have a relationship with a headquarters organization in Japan. If you're primarily a TKDist and see this short trip as a chance for experiencing something "exotic", look beyong karate and consider things like kendo, Kyudo, iado. You can find these arts outside Japan, but your chances will be slim. One of the aikido associations offers a one year black belt program. Before many of you snicker, it is an intense program intended for the police force but open to everyone. You pretty much train everyday. It may not fit in with your travel plans but is something else to consider.