JusticeZero

lots of water, excessive amounts of sleep, take it very easy, no stress. While I train, I train DIFFERENTLY. instead of a bunch of strenuous movements, i go into taiji mode. Sloooow, slow movements, going through every fraction of an inch carefully to perfect form. Soft movements, feeling my way through everything, minimizing my energy burn. I never break a slight sweat on these days, but I learn a lot about structure and form.

I mentioned that Capoeira has similarities to other African arts during the chat.. I mentioned Dambe specifically, since that was the one I remembered. lo and behold there is actually a little bit of information on it online.. As you can see, it too uses a musical accompaniment, and there are some other cultural similarities. Not all; Dambe is from some distance away from where Capoeira probably hails from. This isn't that surprising; it is not a particularly American idea to take a bunch of techniques and build them into a ritual pattern, maybe with things like the footwork spelling out a letter; practitioners of Asian arts do forms and kata all the time, though. In Africa, things tend to be incorporated into musical accompaniment and the like. It is my belief that after MMA has crystallized a bit more, that the next exotic martial art to burst onto the scene as trendy might very well come out of Africa. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/08/africa_traditional_boxing_in_nigeria/html/1.stm http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUp1D81kLW8

So i'm in this new city, where it's freaking hot and muggy - New Orleans. And I meet with some of the people in the group i'm switching to and we meet in the park in the shade. I'm hydrated, I bought bottles of cold water, i'm training and suddenly I realize - i'm.. really.. really hot..., and I feel dizzy... So I end up sitting out through an exercize or two. Other than light clothes and 'keep hydrated' is there any tips for dealing with this??

As explained before, it was not intended to kick the kid, it was intended to kick the pad. Which the kid would repeatedly decide "You're not the boss of me! I march to my own drummer!" and move out of the way. At that point, the kick would not hit the pad, but instead hit the person not following instructions in the head. Really, the first time that happened I would stop and go over the instruction to hold the pad properly. The second time I would give a reminder. The third time I would comment to the teacher. If I was still stuck with the guy, the fourth time I would go for a KO, and the fifth time, I would add more power. If the student were to get upset at me for hitting him when he explicitly ignored safety instructions, it is not really my concern, since someone ignoring safety instructions endangers everyone at the school. One of the people I once trained with recounted the following story: They were training at their large studio. They had a new student. (Several actually, but one in particular.) The new student was randomly throwing techniques and not following directions. She asked the new student to follow instructions, as spinning kicks in an enclosed space can be a bit risky. Said student ignored her. She went and got the senior who was running that segment of the class. Said senior was pregnant at the time. The senior came to talk to the new guy and see what was up, tell him to stick with the routine. At this point, the new student, as part of his random technique throwing, stepped forward and threw a spinning kick which was very likely to connect with the senior's midsection on the last third of it's arc. So the student I spoke to stepped into the kick and took it instead. This earned her a trip to the hospital, and the spaz earned an ejection from the club. What was his problem? We don't know, and frankly, we don't care. If someone can't follow safety instructions and insists on 'doing their own thing', it is only a matter of time before they 'do their own thing' in a way that will get someone hurt.. and if you're lucky, it will only be themself.

And what, pray tell, did the TV show advise doing instead? Say, in cases where the attacker is trying to force you to move to a second location which you should always assume will result in a torturous and utterly certain death? Personally, I tried to teach the people who listened to me that if a criminal tried to get you to go to another place, that they were to immediately go to "lethal force encouraged" and feel free to use low percentage techniques if necessary, with failure being completely off the table. Since honestly, if they tried an escape and were shot in the process, they would still be in a better situation than if they had gone with them.

The word of thumb is that each class, students will learn three things. If you hit them with 30 different things, they will come back having forgotten 90% of what you did last class. In my experience, unless required to keep, update, and review a notebook (and they will forget every time, so you have to be on them every class), they will forget some of the things they know steadily.

Yeah, it means I have to throw myself at the floor more.

I used to. Then it was noted that both me and my father snored a lot, and got tested for sleep apnea. Now both of us wear a quiet and inobtrusive air mask at night, no drugs, sleep soundly, wake up refreshed, and have a lot more energy in the morning.

If they're out of range, what are they going to counter? Fence up and retreat. If they move toward you to attack, you can destroy them as they move into range. But if they insist on hanging out in spearfighting range baiting you, they're a non-combatant. I'm not saying 'Never strike first'. I'm saying that if the guy isn't in range, and isn't advancing into range, then they are not doing anything that you will be able to explain that you are defending against. Likely they're just showing dominance and don't actually have any real plans to attack. If you attack them, you are the one starting the fight, not them. If the other guy is moving into range, by all means let him have it, and you would be justified stepping forward to meet them in the middle closer than they expect. But if you have to do some sort of rushing technique to get that range because they aren't closing, it has most likely left the realm of a self defense situation, on your side at least.

I'd think you should stick to the rubber gun, myself. My suspicion is that the issue with the disarm is in getting the setup for it, not with the actual disarm itself. A lot of disarms i've seen rely on the attacker to be doing things that are a bit silly for them to be doing... like sitting in unarmed combat range holding a gun out, and often holding the gun wrong on top of that. I mean, how many hands is the gun user holding the gun with when you do your disarm, for one thing? Are they using proper stance? Or just holding it out in one hand?

Maybe. There are freak accidents that turn safety equipment against people. Nonetheless, they are just that - FREAK accidents. A bit like saying "My grandfather's skin cancer was cured by the radiation exposure from the Nagasaki nuclear blast! Therefore, we should drop lots more nuclear bombs!" Seat belts save a lot of lives, and worsen a vanishingly small number of crashes. On the average, they're a huge help. Not enough to pull cars from their crowning position as number one killer of children and adults, though.

Holley! Do not hate yourself! You have, in your terminology, sinned. The origin of the term comes from Roman target practice; it means "to miss the mark". You know how you should act, and I would hope you try to achieve that ideal. You fell short this time, and you are paying the price for it. You have attempted to do things and failed before! You stand back up, you debrief and work out what you did wrong, you plan out how you will avoid making that error in future, nurse your bumps and bruises, and set out to try again next time and not repeat your mistake. Look back and examine your idea of what the person you want to be is like. Who do you want to be? What do you want to be? What do you need to do to make yourself more like the person you want to be? What do you need to look into to make that target more clear? What are you doing that is contrary to who you want to be? And what are you going to do to change that?

Well, if you are at home, you are subject to your parents' rules. And lying is, well, not your best behavior, and not behavior befitting a purple belt. YOUR WORD IS IMPORTANT. Your trustworthiness is one of those few things that you carry with you everywhere. If you cannot be trusted, you truly have nothing. It is not meritorious to be a scoundrel, it is not a thing to emulate, it is something to understand so that it can be avoided. It is a sin; like most such things, it may be forgiven, but it will not soon be forgotten. It pollutes your relationship with the people you interact with, and the consequences linger and poison your interactions for some time to come. The only cure is to genuinely do things in an honest and forthright way, and let that new reputation slowly purge the taint of your past actions. Consider this a learning experience, like your karate lessons, like a bruised face after dropping your guard in practice.

Hello hello. =) Look forward to reading more from you!

For charity? Ask around to see if you can get a place to host your event, with the understanding that it is for charity, for free or on the cheap. Make fliers and get volunteers to spread the word. Sell tickets plus a donation box, 'part of the cost of this overpriced ticket goes to help starving wombats in antarctica'. Get peeps to do the event. Talk to the press about it. Hold the event. Send the profits to the wombats in Africa.

Coming from a people whose neighbors spent generations living on a plant-free diet with no ill effects, I find the vegetarian claims to be somewhat one-sided. That said, American meat is generally garbage; McDonalds is responsible for a dramatic raise in the quality of most American meat up to the standards that they require, and those standards are not particularly inspiring. We eat corn-fed beef all the time - from cows that cannot digest corn. We eat chickens that are raised under ridiculous conditions, again, fed massively adulterated things they can't eat in order to fatten them more quickly. We don't really know exactly what that does to the meat, but it seems to make it less healthy to eat, and it has some rather strange properties compared to more normal meats. Also, there is the energy crisis argument. That's the one I generally lean toward - essentially, meat requires 27 times the energy to produce an equal amount of nutrition than plant foods do. As the third world lifts itself out of poverty, they are demanding more meat in their diet, which ratchets up the energy demands in the food sector. This energy is created with a blend of geographical surface area for sunlight and oil. People are driving their cars out and putting houses with big pointless yards on our prime farmland, and we're running short on oil production. That much can be seen by fuel prices - though it's going to get a LOT worse, and it's unlikely to get any better! Most people are unaware that most of the fertilizers that we use, and other huge parts of our farming process, are made from petroleum though. We're eating our oil and driving our food. Without some changes, we are going to lose the ability to feed everyone steak without creating some big wars first. We might be able to ease off on that if we can convince people that eating bugs is trendy and cool, and find some different ways to produce produce in quantity. Certainly most people in America eat more meat than they need to, along with far too much sugar and salt. Always interesting watching people reflexively sprinkle salt on a dish, then complain that it's too salty, especially when a lot of the ingredients had lots of salt in it to start with. Then they brag about their food being "Low-Fat" - which is code for "We replaced the fat with sugar".

The usual complaint, as written, is that when they felt threatened, they would retaliate verbally by attacking the "threat" directly and relentlessly, until the other person was cowed into conceding. They found that to be a poor tactic to use against their family and colleagues, and switched to other arts.

IMO? You know it's happening because you know it is going to happen. In fact, having it happen is a GOOD thing. It's a part of making your techniques your own. Record the techniques the way you learned them somehow. Take note of the adjustments you made. When you teach, teach the way you learned, and explicitly tell them "I do it a bit more like this because I have a ______. You? Don't. You'll probably adjust it more in THIS direction instead." Just keep checking to make sure that you aren't letting your technique slop in ways that become less functional.

There's an event in October near here. The master in my lineage nearest me, whom my previous teacher has asked to take me as his student, has asked that I be ready to test for my next cord at that time. I'm out of condition, haven't had people to practice with, haven't had a space to train in in quite some time, will not be able to get to his class regularly, was below par on songs in any case, have had no-one to speak Portuguese with in years, and am recovering from an injured ankle. Don't let me slack off.

We have eight. Four are teaching and accomplishment belts; that means that there are four 'skill' ranks to strive for. We don't have a "white belt". (One of the belts is white, but it is a high dan-equivalent rank achievement belt.) We don't actually wear the 'belts'. We only rarely have events that we earn new rank, and they're a bit of a big deal, with a week long intensive, visiting instructors and other such luminaries, guest instructors, visiting players from other groups, and the like. While we may have "testing fees" it's pretty apparent what it's paying for. Large venues and airfare and food and such aren't free.

I've heard a few things that indicate that the strategies and tactics of one's martial art of choice have some bleedthrough into one's personality and vice versa.. not sure how true it might be. I heard this most often written by ex-Wing Chun (and variants thereof) practitioners. These people wrote that their training taught them to respond to threats by attacking down the centerline, and that they eventually found themselves in relationships and conversation responding to perceived threats by attacking the other person 'down the centerline'. As to myself, I note that I find it very difficult to force myself to resist verbal aggression directly, much in the way that my art goes to great lengths not to oppose or even to contact an opposing force. Any thoughts on the matter?

Well yeah. They're all practical, really, within various parameters. =) I'm more curious as to what aspects of personality and temperament might lead to the particular choices given, but likely I will never know,

You seem to have narrowed your search down to "Some form of Karate". Great! You've done some homework. I suggest that the next step is not to obsess over which ryu is perfect, but rather to start researching the Karate instructors and schools in your area. No matter how perfect "Rare-exotic-ryu-jutsu" might be for you, if the only instructor around has all the teaching skills of a narcoleptic ferret and charges $300 a month, you won't get nearly as far as you would finding a really good teacher of a slightly less than ideal style within walking distance.

Other than the stuff that we can't not do? As we are forbidden from using a fixed stance? Usually kickstepping, for me. The usual drills we use for it involve folding chairs, which we use all the time.

Hello there! What sort of things have you done on your training journey, then?