G95champ

I love chokes. If at any time in a real fight if I saw a chance to land one you bet I would. As far as joing breaking it just depends on when and where and who. Is it a fight with someone you know or an mugger trying to really hurt you. With that said although I am a Shotokan person I spend a lot of time working on wrist and arm locks in our SD part of class.

Hello and welcome to KF

Welcome

Well I think people pay to learn MA not do push ups. So I have never made people do push ups in class. Or any form of exercise for that matter. I don't want to sign up and take Judo or TKD and do jumping jacks or set ups all class. With that said I think I run a pretty hard class. Although we don't do push ups, set ups, jumping jacks, etc we train hard. We do a lot os squat kicks and isometrick blocks. In other words I hide the no fun stuff in stuff that is part of MA. I coach foootball the same way. If you go to practice you won't see us running sprints for the sake of running. We do drills, and never stop moving. We are in shape because we train hard not because we do 100 push ups in one min. Point is there is more than one way to get in shape and from my exp people are not going to pay for lessons if they never do anything but exercises.

Welcome ot KF

Really the hardest part about our tests as far as being brutal is the fact we turn up the sparring. Our black belts who attack and spar the person testing go all out. Its really a shock to the person testing because they have never saw or felt us go that hard in class before. To keep it up we tag other black blets in about every min or so to keep a fresh attacker comming. That will go on for 30-45 mins. Makes the test very intresting.

Karate is a watered down term anymore that means fighting more or less. Usually with some form of kicking. Karate don't refer to a style for most people. As far as American tradition well I think our tradition is the freedom to cross train. If you look at what America is. We are a nation based on freedom and liberty. We have people from all walks of life and from every country that call themselves Americans. So our tradition is to take a bit of this and a bit of that and make it our own. Capitalism you got to love it. LOL

Welcome

Welcome

Yeah I did not want to question you style. If I did I am sorry it just sounded like a lot of exercises and not much input on techinque. Thanks for clearing that up.

Just a question. Your tests sound more like physical fitness tests. What style of MA do you do? Also I don't know many schools who allow lower ranks to view black belt tests. Both just seemed a bit odd to me.

Thats the story of my life. One day late and one dollar short. Love, work, play you name it. LOL

Without going into great detal our Dan tests are like this. All Basic moves in a bunch of combos. Not hard combos just common ones. Your testing kata a kata of your choice and a kata of our choice. Sparring out blackbelts. Usually 3 about 15 mins each. Before all of this takes place you are given the chance to teach some classes. Because we feel being a blackbelt means you should be able to teach. Only by teaching a move shows us that you really understand it. So way before you test even starts we are watching to see if you can teach and work with people. There is also some basic knowledge questions nothing hard. Hope that helps.

Well I was going to tell you to get in touch with KK75 but she beat me to it. Deby has a link and Im sure its a good one. Your never to old to start karate because unlike most sports you development is base upon you and not everyone else. Good luck.

This is why Kata is so important. If you know several kata you can train alone. Kata will help you with any aspect of your training so work on your kata. If you are in a style that does not teach kata pick up a book and learn a few basic ones. Other ideas you can do. One is to buy a heavy bag. You can work on speed and powr drills with it. You can also give it a swing and work shifting and counter attacks. No its not as good as sparring but its better than nothing. Although you should never stop training physcally sometimes you do. The key is to never stop training mentally. So stay on KF as much as you can and read as much as you can and your mind will grow and make you a much better MA than sparrring ever will. Good luck

Great

Welcome

Welcome It is fun

Welcome

Welcome Kanku is more than likely a 1st kuy kata. Hangetus is usually taught as a black belt kata. Kanku is the sum of all the Heian kata's. Those are 2 of my favorite kata.

Welcome

Burn out at anythign is somethign you have to avoid. When training is not fun you need to take some time off. If you really love it you will miss it. Sort of like BF/GF if you break up and miss each other your probably in love. LOL

I do not test anyone on the Taikyoku but I use it as a into kata for my adults. The kids see the adults doing it and they think they are on the same pace however we all know that is not the case. LOL.... I do teach the first 3 to everyone but I sort of get teh adults over them as fast as possible and begin them working on Heian Shodan.

I have never done TKD but people say it is a lot like Shotokan believe it or not. I don't know how. LOL Sorry TKD guys.... What Im getting at is the learning curve from one to the other is low. However both are base arts that are well rounded so I would stay with one before I got into the other. Im a Shotokan guy btw....

Two ways to go. One is take something close to what you do already to the learning curve is less. Two take somethign completely differant and start from scratch. The second choice sounds better but once most of us have trained for a long time its hard to redevelope our style of thinking and techinques.