JusticeZero

I'd wonder what they mean by 'done too much karate', since that sounds like one of those things where someone has a problem, and just jumps two or three steps of logic to a sweeping general statement without analyzing it or explaining how the two are related.

Linear techniques don't necessarily impress me all that much. "The shortest path.." ..yeah, sure, but what good is the shortest path if when you arrive, you don't have the power and angle to do what you came to do?

A kwoon, dojo, or equivalent which uses well practiced business tactics to have a polished image, but which provides training of very inferior quality and inflated, valueless rankings. Typically, but not always, these are expensive as well.

Silat is as I recall Indonesian MA. Pretty wide variety there, but specifically Harimau uses a lot of ground-level stance techniques too.

Seriously, i'm seeing a lot of missing posts... Capoeira Angola, Harimau Silat, and Mantis Kung Fu would seem to be a nice combination to me, though in practice a lot of the power generation and such most likely clashes.

Hmm, odd, stuff seems to have been eaten.. Muscle is more dense (heavier) than fat. Muscle is healthy to have. Muscle burns fat just by existing. Muscle is also the first thing to be consumed when you cut back on your food intake; you lose muscle mass fast and never touch your fat stores. Obviously, you want to gain and keep muscle. Since muscle is heavy, this means your weight will increase. Ignore the weight, instead pay attention to your measuring tape.

That's actually a pretty difficult question. The vague sounding and cryptic, completely unsatisfactory to you in most likelyhood is, "Yes. I only do Capoeira Angola. Sao Bento Grande is an Angola toque." I'm not in a Pastinha lineage, nor a Bimba lineage, my lineage never did the focus-filter those two are known for. (Bimba focusing on high game, Pastinha focusing on ultra-low) Sao Bento Grande is just another one of the toques we learn to play in with our normal game.

Been working on it. The other issue is that I need to make paired drills that will challenge both of them, and that's pretty close to impossible.

That's not quite "staged". They train with target choice from the waist up plus sweeps, and esquiva evades that. Plus, the goal isn't so much to hit as it is to trap and outmaneuver, so techniques are chosen for the ability to force movement. So what you're seeing isn't choreographed, it's the result of rule differences and request to not break their training partner. Unless they're throwing kicks from out of range. But that's not staged, that just sucks.

Yeah. The problem is not that you are too old to train. The problem is that generally there are "kids classes" and "adult classes" and you're caught right in between; either you'll be the oldest in the kid's class, or the youngest in the adult classes. Personally, i'd advise you see if you can step on up to the adult classes and see if the atmosphere there is more comfortable for you.

Currently I have to go with a fixed period of classes (everyone starts at the same time) with repeat students taking the same class. The class size is tny - I had 4 students on the first day, one dropped for medical reasons and another just vanished (and that doesn't even count the one who signed up and never showed) So now I have one new student just trying to learn the basics, and one student who's been with me for a few months. I don't want to confuse the new person, and I don't want to ignore the senior. I've tried working different levels of the same material so far, and caught the new people trying to learn what the senior is being given as corrections and overloading, forgetting the stuff I told them to work on. (EG: New, you work on just putting your feet down in the right place. .. Senior, I want you to focus on turning your hips out more, like so. ... *looks back - New has her feet totally in the wrong place, and is poorly trying to turn her hips out more, which wasn't a problem she had to begin with*) Plus, I want to keep the senior working on the material we won't cover until later in the class. Any suggestions?

*shrugs* Well, in that case it shouldn't be hard to fight a chinese MA stylist either, just smack them at the beginning while they're doing all their preparatory dances and form changes. Karate is a bit harder, because you need to bring boards for them to break until they get tired. Seriously. I don't see a question here to respond to?

Read my sig. Just jump in.

Floating rib is a good target too. So's the arms themself. ("Please try to block this..")

If your teacher thinks it is disrespectful, it is. If not, it isn't. But if you come into class saying "Well in my other class, we do it like -this-.." and looking down your nose at how one or the other art does things, that's some serious disrespect there. I've seen all three.

Do the kick reeeeallly sloowly, focusing on your balance and form. Drill it that way awhile. Then do some reps where you slooowly push a chair around, throwing a few books on it for weight.

1: A boxer can take a lot of abuse, and a kick while closing isn't going to be a finisher. 2: A lot of TKD stylists train for sport, not fighting - none of their kicks were going to do all that much anyways. 3: As a rule, TKD stylists, because they concentrate so much on kicking and remove the counters to kicking (sweeps, takedowns, etc) from their 'allowed techniques', tend to not be very good at countering the responses that they will tend to see a lot of, because they rarely are faced with them. One of these is the ability to keep a resisting opponent in kicking range, as all their training partners tend to want to stay in the same range.

Don't do the whole 'groin kick' thing, it doesn't work like people think it will. Delayed effect if they're committed to the attack, so you pop someone and cheer because you think it's all over, then get pounced and torn to bits over the next 30 seconds, then they crawl off to whimper. I've taken kicks there in training, and they don't prevent me from finishing the match. It's after I finish and break that it sinks in.

You can practice looking at things at long distances etc. and improve your ability to recognize things etc. somewhat. This is not because you are "exercizing your eyes", it is because you are exercizing the part of your brain that processes the input from your eyes. The eyes are still the defining factor and those won't improve.

In the experience i've seen, the kicker can block punches just fine - their arms are live and defensive the whole time - but some of those kicks if you try to block them, all that's going to happen is that when you get clobbered it will be by your own hand and arm after the kick blows through the block like it wasn't there.Unreasonable to think you can keep someone at that range indefinately, but then again, it's unreasonable to think that you can keep someone at boxing range indefinately.

Run like heck. If for some unlikely reason you can't run, be very mobile so that you can hit the one nearest a few times and keep moving so that everyone else spends their time moving to attack rather than attacking.

One woman I know and have trained with started taking Capoeira classes in her mid-60's. You are NEVER TOO OLD, unless you are actually literally on your deathbed.

"Martial Arts Home Training: The Complete Guide to the Construction and Use of Home Training Equipment" - Mike Young, Tuttle Publishing C 1999 (don't know if there's been revisions or reprints)

I am hesitant to correct a student after they have been given three things to work on. People seem to be able to hold about three corrections in their mind at once, and if you add more, other corrections start falling out.

Less danger of falling