JusticeZero

That doesn't mean you shouldn't take care of it and try to keep it in good condition. There's no special honor associated with a shredded and stained uniform piece.

*shrugs* I don't see any trouble with washing a belt, personally. The color thing seems more philosophical than anything, and is a pretty recent tradition in any case. A frayed belt doesn't imply wisdom to me, it implies poor care. Then again, I don't even wear my cord...

Heh. When I see one of our school shirts, it's an open invitation to slip up and toss a kick at them without warning.

I wouldn't know about that; it might be stretching the definition of "favorite" a bit to think that just because you start your stepping on one side more often, that you'll stay put on it. Some of us practice arts which are symmetrical, after all.

Get your uniform nicely cleaned and pressed beforehand, trim your hair, bow respectfully to the judges and the other one in the match, relax, and as soon as you can, spring forward with the first attack.

Hooking in the heel is done with only leg muscle, not the strongest leg muscle at that, is centripetal, and shortening the circumference; it is as such at best perpendicular to the force of the spin. As a result, I am not clear on what you are looking for with the hook portion. Is it just to modify the angle at which the kick strikes at at the accepted cost of actual stopping power of the kick, or are there details I am not correctly picturing from your descriptions?

Hot, hot shower/bath; massage; move the hurt area slowly and unloaded while at rest; drink a gallon of water today. (Not all at once, or you'll hurt yourself.)

Okay; so what type of foot movement is problematic for you? I've been contemplating introducing the wife-to-be to aikido or judo because she has trouble with bending her foot, and those have high stances that seem like they would put less strain on them. I've yet to work out how to avoid maiming her with the stances and footwork in mine.

Ginga, the importance of relaxing, and covering ground on the floor. Remember to REACH when skittering and rolling along the pavement so that you can cover ground! Lots of nitpicking over the basic stance work, basically. I almost got through the whole class without a single kick or strike being thrown, until I had one of them adjust their half-moon kick form as part of adjusting a form issue with their floor footwork. As for the kid.. we had her sweeping the patch of pavement we were holding class on - without being allowed to use her arms to move the broom! Just hip and leg motion.

Go ahead and try - though it might be that the style is harder on your foot than others you might also like. So shop around a bit.

Yeah; it's wrong to think that any two schools are going to rate people the same on an internal arbitrary ranking scale. It's also begging for ruin to expect that standards will be appointed from 'on high', as when that happens, generally the system turns to support the ones with the shoddy curriculum and low standards and expects the good teachers to teach badly to match.

I wouldn't mind something like that - to me it says "I may not know what they're teaching, but as far as we know, their billing is legit."

Specifically what i'd concluded was: Nonetheless, all I had to work with was my own training and some clips. I don't actually know very much about where the Korean styles come from or claim to come from or might have plausibly come from or anything else.

"It's a Ford made by Chevy!" How did it get that particular bit of odd labeling?

Looking at when I can work in my classes in the available space. MTWR evenings are out; the space is in use then. I'd kind've like to keep Sunday for myself so I can be with family. This leaves a few times.. Early Bird: My own classes were weekdays in the 6-8 AM timeslot. Some people really like that because they can get in their training before work. The main catch? The studio I have access to lacks showers. Midday: I'm a bit concerned about this. Aren't many of the people I want to teach at work at this time? I'm not really interested in teaching kids; at some point some parent would probably ask me to explain the inherent morals in my art, and an uneasy silence would fall across the room, with some coughing and embarrassed mumbling. any thoughts? We have to be cleared out by 5 so the TKD class can take over.

What I had heard at one point was that the rear heel should stomp down into the floor at the moment of a punch, much in the same way as the tightening of the fist.

This came out of a different board, but it's one that was startlingly ill-suited to finding expertise on the topic.. Someone there was looking at Taekkyon - traditional Korean martial art/dance/sport - trying to find out about styles, availability, etc. and started asking Capoeiristas about a controversy regarding Dong Yi Taekkyon, which at least one other style of Taekkyon believes to be a fraudulent hybrid based on Capoeira. For my part, I pulled down some Youtube videos and concluded that the style in question looked -less- like Capoeira than the original style making the accusations... the dynamics, footwork, power generation, and throws were done in ways that ignored or contradicted our style-specific principles. People assume that just because they see people moving their feet and doing anything remotely acro that it's us. Humbug. Not our fault this time methinks. Nonetheless, since this popped up on a board frequented exclusively by practitioners of an art that has no ties to Asia whatsoever, I have no clue what anyone is talking about in any depth; has anyone here got a bit of a backgrounder on the subject?

Students were all out and no new students turned up. Alas. I had intended to focus on mobility on the floor, though. This involves line drills, as well as movement improvisation with a chair as partner for orientation. Always use a chair for footwork, to orient on.

My concern mostly is that your attacker will take a moment to evaluate how much damage he is taking, and adjust their tactics accordingly by ignoring your punches completely and taking the time to worsen your situation while you tire yourself out.

Mostly, if you hit the floor, you should be using your striking skills to deal with the guy who hasn't joined you there and intends to capitalize on your position. That mostly means you need to know how to strike from the floor, and for the most part that means kicking. The idea that an attacker will automatically climb on top of anyone who hits the floor is a bit silly. If you get tackled, try to land on them with your elbow or shoulder or something and roll/bounce away. I study how to throw people from there, but that needs a good stance that most people won't have. If you end up in wrestling range, it indicates that you've had several failures in a short span of time, not just the one that let you get knocked down. That, or you're a wrestler who is confident that 100% of people in the vicinity adore you and are willing to back you up. You lost control of your trajectory, you lost control of the one knocking you down, and you failed to space. A good grappler has some ability to force the issue on these, which means that you've also walked into an ambush in a space hostile to you, or the guy taking you down is a fool who's going to be joining you in the hospital.

Personally i'd agree that they seem exceedingly hokey - they remind me of hypnosis things, where the practitioners convince themselves they can be KOed by doing certain things, then lo and behold their training buddies KO them. I don't actively disbelieve meridian and pressure point concepts per se, but I would expect them to be something that you have to actually physically disrupt to have much effect, if they're there. My art doesn't recognize them that i've seen; it follows a completely different worldview as regards vital force.

It's not a matter of 'not as powerful' it's a matter of beating on him with marshmallows. It's a waste of time and energy to just throw punches from the floor imagining they'll work the same. There's a few strikes you can do there, but they all look very different from standing.

Striking on the floor is.. wierd. You think you're throwing powerful swings, but they just aren't. There's a few things to remember.. Hands are for walking, feet are for striking; you're not going to be able to generate enough power to punch effectively. How do you generate power to punch? You shift your weight and drive through with your center. On the floor? That center is bolted down or very close to it, and has potential energy darned near zero. Other than your shoulders, you only have whatever you can get from gross flexing of your torso, rolling, bracing, or twisting - and you're not going to be able to do most of those effectively with your arms as a striking tool. I can eat shoulder punches in my sleep. So can you. That's why people like to revert to headbutts on the floor.. which work okay if you're hitting soft targets, but if they tilt their head down you're going to kick your own behind. If you get into wrestling range, just call it in and grapple. You don't want to be there, but they likely don't either. Shake them off and get back to where things make more sense.

yesterday: 40 minutes ginga (continual low stance transition) nonstop. Some miscellaneous tumbling for 15m. more biking - not really worthy of mention; I refused a car after the last one broke down and go everywhere on foot or pedal with occasional bus.

I don't know; it seems like the problem is kids, not karate. 20 years from now, everyone will think MMA is a joke because the only people who do it are toddlers.