JusticeZero

The discussion seems to indicate it's from Undisputed 3 rather than X-men.. Very impressive flashy kicks to maximize visual appeal. I keep noticing all the 'Physics do not work that way' bits though. Partly because I have to work through them myself to avoid using techniques that would come apart halfway through.

How far away is it? My family hasn't owned a car for years, with some gaps (that I generally regretted). The teenage daughter was able to get around to whatever she needed to on her own just fine with her bicycle and bus pass and shoes. People just get locked into the idea that they have to drive everywhere. Which is sad, really; as I have told people here, I study transportation and as a result know more about cars and gas than most people out there - and as a result, I ride a bicycle, walk, and take buses everywhere. The places I get with those absolutely boggles many people who are used to driving everywhere. Ten miles between two towns? That's 45 minutes of mild cardio that I don't have to hit a gym for, is all. I used to use an Xtracycle mounted on my bike to load a full grocery cart of shopping around; now i'm getting a different kind of cargo bike to do exactly the same thing but be able to load it on a bus too. The X could carry a passenger, but made the wheelbase longer than a bike carrier on a bus. People would think that it is 'too far to walk' across a parking lot to a building where they walk twice that distance indoors several times going from one section to another. I've seen people, rather than walk to a restaurant down the street, walk to their car, PARKED FARTHER AWAY THAN THE RESTAURANT, drive to the restaurant, circle the block for 10 minutes looking for a parking space, find one FURTHER THAN THE ORIGINAL TRIP WOULD HAVE BEEN, walk to the restaurant, then sneer at the idea of walking to the restaurant in the first place because "it's too far to walk". Finally, people will turn up their noses saying that they have to drive to get to the store because it is 20 miles away. At which point you can sometimes look on a map, point at a slightly smaller store, and say "What's wrong with that one six blocks away?" This is often coupled with "I can get things $0.15 cheaper at the other place." Really? But you just burned up $5 in gas to get there...? Anyways, the upshot of this is that you might be able to remove the "But I don't want to drive you" part of the argument on your own. There might be a great school close in, or you can possibly get there and back without help if you look into it.

Because it is rather substantial whether or not someone is angry at you and/or taking action against you because of something. It's the sort of thing you need to be clear on, and which are generally very clear. Not knowing where you stand on that has been sort've like seeing someone run by screaming because their house is burning down, then saying "Oh, I don't know what ever gave me that idea, my house is fine.." You were born with only one mouth, but two ears. Be clear, know where you stand, work hard, be honest, be kind, listen twice and speak once then listen again.

Start. People say they have no time. If they start trying to make time for things, suddenly huge amounts of time come available.Often times, huge stretches of the 'busy' was busiwork at best.

It's at an intensive seminar. You hobnob and have all sorts of conversations on things, play lots of people, and have a lot of classes with the guest instructors and such who came up to help put on the event. The night before the big event, your instructor has a meeting with the other guest instructors and his seniors and such who came to the event, and they evaluate everyone to decide what cord to give them. Then they are presented at the big public event on the last day. As such, they can be a bit far between at times, since it's not something that gets thrown together in isolation.

Ahh.. You have communication issues too?

Right. Capoeira seems to have an ancestor in.. some unknown martial art or arts local to the Angola region of southeast Africa during that time. A number of other arts also seem to share that same ancestry - knocking and kicking, a couple of very rare, possibly now extinct kicking arts in the islands whose name escapes me and really shouldn't be in the Atlantic, the N'golo in Angola, etc. The exact details are lost to time, unfortunately; Brazil destroyed all their records from slave times, Africa wasn't keeping them, and the verbal history was consistantly being battered and embellished. That said, Africa is actually quite full of martial arts, along with music and other such things that we never hear about because they really just don't get highlighted by the media here.

Bags of, say, frozen vegetables works. So does soaking a small towel, folding it, and putting it in the freezer.

Capoeira does have roots in Africa. It is known that slave ships progressed along the coast of Africa over time for distance concerns, which dates most of the slave trade, in addition to the records of the time. In the Americas, there are a few places in which Capoeira-like martial arts popped up to varying degrees. All of those places have the commonality that they received a lot of slaves from the area now known as Angola. Mestre Pastinha travelled to Angola at one time, I believe, looking for Capoeira in Africa. He returned emptyhanded, but there are arts in that area that have some passing similarities. I presume there is a broken line there and a lack of historical information to reconstruct what happened. Dambe is, as I recall, Nigerian. which, while still being West Africa, is on the other side of the equator and are not neighbors.

Don't see why it wouldn't be the same as usual for the situation - core, cardio, legs/knees, flexibility. That said, forget the embarrasment and just start training. Anything worth doing is worth doing badly! If you want to do it, it's worth waddling around awkwardly and flailing gracelessly for awhile while you move toward your goal. Don't think "oh, I don't want to look like an out of shape newbie.." You ARE an out of shape newbie. EVERYONE THERE was an out of shape newbie. They see out of shape newbies every week. The whole reason they are there is to facilitate the process by which out of shape newbies work through their OOSN-ness on their way to becoming in shape awesome looking experts. So don't think you need to do all this side stuff before you come in just so you won't look like an Out Of Shape Newbie, it's silly and not productive.

Yeah, that seems like a very odd way to train. Maybe the instructor has a good plan with it, but.. if they did I doubt it would take the form of it like that. Color me dubious.

I cook for me and my wife - it's easier than when I was alone, but still very hard at times. I try making large batches of things, but sometimes it's hard to sell the dishes to the wife two months down the road.

For cold: Cotton Kills! I can't say that enough. Cotton Kills! Remove it from your wardrobe. Wear synthetics or wool instead. Do NOT go out and get a heavy duty super cold weather coat. Repeat, do NOT go out and buy the SuperPolar -40 Arctic Coat. Instead, get a lightweight wicking undershirt. Put it on. Now put on another shirt, maybe a t-shirt or a longsleeved polo or something. Now put on something else, maybe a light sweater. Now put on a light, windproof jacket. Get a hat, nothing too heavy. If (horrors of horrors) that isn't enough, add more shirts. Get some ear covers too. Carry both, wear one. Do something similar with your pants - some sort of wicking tights or similar, then some pants, then if need be light snow pants. Get boots, big boots. Or big shoes, even. Put on a thick pair of socks and put the boots on. If one pair of socks and boots don't cut it, add more socks - but never to the point of making the boots feel tight. If the socks compress, their insulation ability goes DOWN. If you're really somewhere cold, get a scarf, wrap it around your neck, put the ends in front of you and put the jacket on over it. Now get mittens. Not gloves, mittens. If you can't feel your fingers touch each other all the way to the fingertips with the glove on, your ability to deal with the cold will drop by about forty or fifty degrees. If it's not all that cold, gloves are okay, but recognize the limits, and i'm describing a worst case prep setup. You are now prepared to be outside and active in the middle of winter in Fairbanks, if need be. Do not let yourself get HOT. Do not let yourself stay shiveringly cold either. If you feel chilled, ramp up your exertion. If you feel hot, ramp it down, or remove layers. As an aside, recognize that if you are cold in this many layers, if you enter a hot place, the layers will protect you from getting warm, too. Do not let yourself get exhausted. First aid question: Which is better to give someone with hypothermia - steaming hot tea, or an ice cold soda? Answer: The soda. Shivering is cardio exercize. If you run out of energy, you have problems. I commuted seven miles each way by bicycle through a winter in southcentral Alaska. It's not at all hard to do, just make sure you are well lit up with safety flashers and reflectors, and have carbide studded tires. I had far better traction than any of the cars around. I also went outside to do some training on a big frozen puddle in a parking lot a couple times. Which teaches you a lot about stance integrity and how your footwork functions, very quickly. More advisable for those who's art has at least some floor motion work, like Capoeira, because you WILL end up needing to go to the ground a few times during training, not necessarily very hard.

Karate has just as much or little "real world tactics" as other martial arts schools. Which is to say, it varies based on the instructor. I've seen Yang Tai Chi classes that do reality based adrenaline drills, firearms training, and grappling defense; i've seen MMA classes dropped down to no-contact kiddie classes and cardio workouts with no application and dubious form. It's not enough to say 'Style X does/does not do X!'.

Skype conference calls can hold up to 5 people. I don't know how bandwidth intensive that might get.

My main health habit was to give my car away, years ago. Every time I have to use a car for a few days, my health goes downhill fast. My main problem is amount cooked. I have a hard time forcing myself to throw half or more of the food I cooked into the garbage, and I try hard not to make too much. However, recipes are typically made around creating a 4 serving meal, with larger portions than before, and all the ingredients in the 4 portion dish read "Use the smallest can you can buy of this, good, now use one of a vegetable you are lucky to find sold in a bundle of less than a dozen.." Cut it down to two servings and i'm using half-cans, third-cans, half-fruits, and so on.

It's one of a number of voice over internet software packages. Skype's particular advantage is that it is connected with a telephone service, and can make and receive calls from telephones. It will do group calls up to 5 people, and can use a webcam if you are so inclined, if I recall correctly. It is in a similar category as Mumble or Ventrilo, often used by computer gamers to coordinate, though those are designed more for large gatherings and require a host system to be set up.

Holley, I hate to say this, because it really isn't my place, and I feel like i'm out of line in saying it but.. I haven't really gotten a good impression of your school from your posts. I'm sorry, I just haven't. I don't know if you are representing it poorly, or if you are representing it well. Something just feels slightly askew enough to put me on edge without having the warning bells actually go off. I hope it's the former, or that it's just some oddness in your writing style that catches on me somehow. It might be just me reading things in that aren't there. I don't know if anyone else is seeing anything like that. Still, I would keep a critical eye out.

Really? So you think you might have been more comfortable if Patrick did not have video feed of himself?

Well, that's always the case. I think part of it is also that we're never ready for the questions, even though they're really basic. I think it's because they're really basic, core things in part; things we no longer really think about because we've been working within it for a long time. I'm never ready for questions about the roda for instance.. it's a bit like asking "Why do you do kata?" Well? Why DO asian stylists do forms/kata? It's really a very foreign ideology that we've just become accustomed to. Plus, the answers are always uncomfortably oversimplified; they always end up being really simple things that have adjusted and changed and shifted a lot in so many ways that the answers never feel satisfying because they're no longer really totally correct. At the stage where a punch is no longer a punch, the explanations are horrendous, and at the stage when a punch is once again just a punch, it's still no easier to describe in a satisfying way. it goes from "Uhh, i'm not sure" to "That's really complicated to describe and explain, but here's the theory.." to "Because that's just.. how we do it, you know?" At no stage can we give a crisp answer that is enlightening and correct. Well, maybe at that new student stage when we think we understand, but really don't yet.

It used to have a wrestling component, but the wrestling component has separated out into a pure wrestling art, apparently. I presume there were what amounts to rules changes that spurred that development.

I've done it, mostly went for precision instead of power. Does not remove the fact that someone who will not listen to and obey directions given for safety reasons is a danger to everyone in the club and should not be there. Get with the program or get out.

They're mostly open, so no reason you couldn't..

It's not rare in Africa. It just hasn't left Africa yet..

Mmhm. Still, the core structure isn't the same as boxing, most likely because of the fence/wrapped asymmetry. Boxers may be bladed at an angle in a similar way, but their hands do double duty, rather than being divided into roles like that. There's also the fact that they fight to a knockDOWN instead of a knockOUT to change their game up.