Nick_sam

i play the saxophone mainly, but i also play the bass, drums and piano... in fact (i thought i'd use this opportunity for a shameless plug!) i have a website for my band, HOPPER... https://www.hoppermusic.com I'm (believe it or not) the sax player, nick. have a listen to the stuff on their and see if you like it! hehe oh, and the message board seriously needs populating ( the site has just been put up) ok, end shameless plug now! nick

there is an introdution section, you just have to scroll down the page a bit! my style? aikido, and looking to start something else sometime in the future!

if you shave, you're gonna get stubble. doesnt matter where you shave, you'll still get it! and it will probably be very rough and uncomfortable.

i have a question (or a couple!) about kobudo. i understand it is the art that exclusively involves weapons? is it japanese? is it a stand-alone art, or is it a part of another? (eg: kobudo being an element of karate trainging, etc). does anyone know of any good dojos that teach kobudo in london? i hope i havnt made any wrong assumptions (how embarrasing!) on what kobudo actually is! i would be really grateful for any input at all! thanks, nick

hi, great to see another UK person here!

i really enjoyed phillip pullmans's his dark materials. absolutely fantastic! im partial to fantasy myself (although not really into the whole wizards, dragons, goblins, etc). i quite enjoyed david gemmell's books at one point, but Roald Dahl's more mature books are stunningly good! check out Kiss Kiss and My Uncle Oswald by roald dahl. satire and dark humour to the extreme! great stuff

light oak wood is normally quite good, no?

anyone here had any experience with the bokken from https://www.sandatacrafts.com ? are they heavier than most other bokken (ie oak woods)? they do look very good and im getting a bit sick of using a jo staff because i dont have a bokken!

it has to be said, system of a down and incubus are stunning bands!!! deep down, im a jazz man! modern jazz is my thang! favourite bands.. the bad plus michael brecker joshua redman system of a down incubus and good ol' led zep! but there are so many more i couldnt possibly mention them here!

it looks like its more about putting your opponent off balance using blocks and strikes, then getting him on the floor when his footing has gone askew. does this point have any validity to it?

it looked like it could be powerful to me!

21 and male

what exactly IS goju ryu??

dont get a teenage mutant ninja turtle design printed on your gi. better yet, dont go in dressed as a TMNT!

why is that? is it just disrespectful?

and a good day to you too! i like to think if im gonna do something i may as well do it properly, else not bother at all. i guess if i were to find a middle point between your and Rathe's advice, i should probably wait a bit longer, at least until i have gotten a slightly tighter grip on the principles of the subject, so then i would have a better judgement on what is right and wrong.. thanks for the encouragement!

a question... do you reckon finding a partner to practice with in my free time would be beneficial? why i say this is he may not be as advanced as some of the other students, but is still ahead of me, but there is a small possibility of doing a move slighly wrong. would this be a huge problem, or could it be easily corrected?

i normally feel better after a session. sort of exhilirated, i guess.

thats not a bad idea.. i should get a book!

yeah, my sensei is kinda old school i guess! he's really cool tho and has a sense of humour so its not like im dissappointing him. its just me!

my only reservation about hapkido is that it has a lot of similarities to aikido and so it would be easy to confuse one technique with the other.

well that is reasurring, definately. i guess i'll just have to try and redeem myself on saturday!

does anyone here find that sometimes they have an absolutely awful practice session? you just cant register which foot goes where, which hand goes up or down, etc, no matter how many times told? i just had one of those today. the first one, infact, since starting aikido about a month and a bit ago. i know, when i first started everything was new (obviously) but i was fast-ish to pick up what went where, and a week ago i was obviously improving. today, i was totally incompetent! everything felt wrong, my sense of direction was just plain stupid, and sensei said that his dead grandmother could grip better than me. and he cant be younger than 70!!! so apart from wanting to get this failiure of a day off my chest and subjecting you fine people to my ramblings, is this sort of day normal, once in a while? or am i just not very good!?

yes i am looking into kung fu as well, there are just so many styles its hard to know which one would be right for me and where to start looking! i think you're right about hapkido, except it doesnt really use hight kicks, from what i understand. looks interesting tho!

yeah i guess you are right about that. i suppose if i actually saw aikido in action in more realistic conditions you would end up with people being slammed on the floor face first and arms broken, so i guess its all relative. of course none of that would happen in the dojo!a great thing about arts like hapkido and aikido is as well as learning how to evade and attack and turn the attack around to your advantage, you also learn how to recieve the attack. hapkido-ists (how do you say it?) have to learn to recieve kicks to the stomach, which seems harder than leaning how to fall or be taken down in a joint-lock. it wouldnt surprise me if there were a couple of winded stomaches by the end of a hapkido session, lol!