24fightingchickens

I think Kosh woud know what is wrong.

I remember this horrible stuff from when I was a teenager. Oh, it was awful. I was always worried about wearing the right clothes, driving the right car, and stuff like that. I wish I knew then what I know now - girls don't care about that kind of thing as much as you think they do. That's not how you land a realy great girlfriend. And the really cool thing about your beat junk heap car is that it is "evil girl repellent." It may not look like it to you now, but if I were 16 or whatever again, I would thank God for my beat junk heap car, because it chased off the shallow money grubbing useless girls that were no fun at all. A really great girl to spend time with just breezes past that kind of thing. She might even get a kick out of it if you are pretty secure with yourself. Women like a man who is secure with himself - who doesn't mind being a little silly and having a laugh at his own expense. Dress nice, and drive your junk heap with pride. Speak of your car as if it were a limo, and hold yourself up tall. And the two of you can laugh at the car together. If she thinks its shameful to be seen in it, she's a crummy kid, and she's telling you so in plenty of time to ditch her in favor of someone else. If you want to truly charm a woman, then what you do is stop investing time and energy in your things, and instead invest time and energy in her. Find out everything about her - all of her favorite stuff from her favorite color to her favorite food. Ask her about her day. Be the best listener on Earth. Don't tell her a thing about yourself or rant or run-on about anything about you. Women want a man who listens to them. When you figure that secret out, that women like attention, true listening, honest concern for them, and a guy who is secure, the world is your oyster dude. And on how to dress? The best "trick" I ever learned from a mentor of mine about how to ask a girl out to something was to ask her to go shopping with me and dress me up nice for a date with her. Let her pick out the clothes. Women like that helpless puppy dog thing where you respect their opinion. And the really cool thing is, you will actually be dressed well for the first time in your life. I agree with the others - if you go out set to impress, she will see right through you as an insecure attention hound who wants to win her over and get validation from her. A good woman can smell that on a guy from a mile away. Instead, be secure with yourself, which means not being afraid to acknowledge your dorkiness. Sometimes the best way to ask a girl out is to start off with, "Wow. I'm really a lot more nervous than I thought I'd be, but you're just so..." and let the magic happen from there. Trust me. If you cannot get a date with the girl you want to go with, maybe you are being a little overly choosy? Maybe there is a girl who likes you that you aren't even noticing right under your nose who is cute while you are over-focused on the playmate of the month. She might even be sending you signals that she wants you to ask her. And, all of this advice is useless if you cannot view being rejected as another step in the right direction. Guys who get girls are not afraid to pile up rejection all over the place. Eventually, you get a "yes."

Hello, rats. Welcome. "When the long night comes, go back to the end of the beginning." -Kosh

I disagree with this because in my experience, I have never seen anyone learn to manage their emotions because of martial arts training. I have seen people learn this by getting religious, working rehab programs, having spiritual experiences, seeing a therapist regularly... all motivated by having some life changing experience that caused them to truly question how they live and how they manage their minds and hearts. I have never seen any evidence to convince me that people sign up for karate and after a decade they are able to manage their emotions. Especially considering the way the bigwigs of the karate world act toward one another and the political power games they play in their organizational schemes. I'm not saying it isn't possible, I'm saying I set that "channeling emotions" bar pretty high and I've never seen someone use martial arts to jump it before. I'm afraid I disagree with this as well. Individuals cannot be held to a physical standard, because people do not come in standards. Instructors have always tested students in a farcical fashion because we, as the teachers, have known all along what would happen on the test. We determined the outcome before the test began. I do not know what you mean by the black belts needing to shape up. My philosophy for doing karate does not include putting responsibilities on senior students. They come to class for whatever reasons, and I try to leave them be. That doesn't match with my experience either. People simply do not like to fail karate tests. IAnd they tend to quit. Even karate clubs in Japan rarely fail their students. I've seen it in both countries. This is the point I was trying to get across, and unfortunately, this is not done. Clubs need money. Students bring it. Failing students chases them off. That's it. Even a club operated for free, as I operated mine, still experienced extremely high churn as a result of my taking belt tests more seriously than students and failing them because I let them test even if I thought they weren't ready. I think you are wrong there. I told them in advance that there was going to be a "practice test" in which they would all practice getting failing grades. I told them exactly what I was doing and when I would do it. I was open and honest about it. The tests in JKA Shotokan last all of five to ten minutes long. It is not a grueling ten hour experience. At the end of class, I put them through tests, and then I failed them all. The point was to teach them to accept failure. And even this farcical exercise caused some beginners to quit and others to complain about "labeling." I don't see anything dishonest with that. But it does expose a fundamental truth that I believe in about people - they don't like being told they are not good at something that they do for a hobby, and they don't like negative feedback. Meaning respect and showing respect are two different things. I believe you did judge me, but that's OK. I don't care.

I doubt it will affect anything at all other than the 60 seconds you perform Bassai-Dai during the test. By the time you are ready for that grade, you shouldn't need to focus really hard on one kata exclusively for months to be able to do it well enough. So, my question would be "Why did they bother?"

LOL! You misspelled it again. It is yakusoku.

Yes, a lot of us do get to that stage. I reached it around the 20 year mark as well. Shotokan is a sport. It is not a self-defense course, it is not training in military techniques, nor is it a practical fighting method. It is a sport. You learn to perform pretty kata, and you learn to perform tag sparring. My experience is very similar - even after having done a couple of years in Japan training - I get the impression that what I mastered was like sport fencing and performance art. And of course the thing I mastered more than anything else was practicing karate, rather than using it. I'm not sure you will find the solution in another martial art. Part of what is annoying about martial arts practice for a lot of people desiring a practical approach is that you do various preparatory drills, but since you cannot injure people, everything really ends up being a bunch of speculation, including your skills, until that one moment in your life when you finally have someone try to jump you, and it works - or doesn't - depending on the thousands of variables possible. Now I am more interested in developing my skills around my needs, rather than learning a "style." You might be experiencing the same thing. The Japanese have a slogan for this called Shu, Ha, Ri - it means that at first you are obedient, then rebellious, and then at peace with having left behind what did not work (obedience, divergence, transcendance). It is the natural maturation process, imo, that leads us to that point. When we get there, lots of folks scold us and try to get us to go back to obedience (where they are in their development) and stop making them uncomfortable by bad-mouthing the great masters or some other line. They will also throw platitudes at us such as "Empty your cup", which is code language for "Be controlled by me." Instead of being controlled, I would recommend you read a book by Stephen Covey called The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and pay special attention to the section on maturity and the continuum he presents. He predicts your rebellious feelings and chalks it up to a maturing sense of independence. It becomes rebellious when unfostered. Remember, the Okinawans used to learn whatever was lying around from whomever they felt like trading around with. The Chinese did this as well. It is only since the Japanese that we have had the military approach with all of the exclusive teacher-student loyalty included in the karate package.

None of the above. Many years ago I dumped the tightened fist. I have enough skill to hit with my knuckles without having a fist at all. My fingers can hang loose and I can still plant my knuckles. The reason for this is that a fist has nothing to do with punching with a knuckle as the contact point. It is the muscles and tendons of the forearm that stabilize and align the knuckles. Having a clenched fist does not help anything but to keep your fingers from getting caught on something.

You saw kata practice, I believe. A kata is a pre-arranged routine of techniques performed in a stepping pattern almost like a choreographed dance. Kata have their origins in Chinese arts - particularly those of Fuzhou, China, where kata were called quan. Each quan was felt to be the central training device of a complete system. Today, the kata have all been adjusted by the Japanese so that all of them are basically pieces of a greater whole, with far less variation between them.

Thereby invalidating the need for the test itself except as a farcical ritual or rite of passage designed to do little other than convince the student himself that he is ready for a new rank. In reality, ranks are awarded based on subjective opinion. The test serves to create an objective-appearing frame of references from which the teacher can bestow ranks willy-nilly upon his students without appearing to simply hand them out. Also, low failure rates are polluted by corruption. Since many students quit following the humiliation of failing a test, most karate clubs prefer to pass their students and keep their rent money. You can detect that this is happening when you see teachers holding students back until they are sure they are ready. The consequences of failure are worse for the teacher and the club than the student. I experimented for a time with handing out F's on tests to my students like crazy, to see what would happen. Even though I told the students that I was going to fail all but one of them, several people still became so angry that they were ready to quit rather than take the 5 minute test again a couple of weeks later. As I remember, they did quit, despite an hour long counseling session in which I explained to them the purpose was to give them failing experience so they wouldn't freak out if they failed in the future. I explained it would purify our relationship for us to both know I would only give them objective, true results as I truly saw them, and that they would benefit from this by knowing that there was no political motivation behind their promotions. I have come to believe that people want their belt ranks to be political. Most do not care why they get them, they just want them for whatever reason, even if they obviously screw up on a test. I have only ever had one student tell me he refused to accept a promotion because he was not happy with his performance, and he was wrong, he had done great. He was just depressed. Belt tests are loaded with all sorts of problems. I prefer not to have them with my students of karate, and instead simply ask them to amass hours of training and then assess their skill on my own and hand out belts in private.

In ippon kumite, the attacker takes a single step forward from their en guard position and attacks. The defender is expected to counter that attack in some fashion. At the beginner level, the attack will step forward and punch to the face or stomach, and the defender will try to step back, block, and throw a reverse punch. At more advanced levels, the attack will take a single step or shift forward but might throw two or three hand or foot techniques in combination, and the defender might step forward as well and intercept and counter all in one move, sweep them to the floor as they come in, or shift out and counter as they go by. In sanbon, three iteration", usually the attacker takes three steps and throws one attack on each step. Beginners try to block 1--2--3 and then counter with a reverse punch. At higher levels, you can play with the rhythm, distancing, changing techniques, etc to make it quite interesting.

Square, rectangle. Yakusoku kumite means "promise" sparring - or prearranged sparring. Gohon kumite means "five iteration sparring". You basically take five steps forward and five back etc. Gohan kumite means "rice sparring." Perhaps it means to spar over a meal or to pelt one another with rice. Gohon kumite is one method of doing yakusoku kumite - in some ways of doing it. In more advanced gohon kumite, it is not yakusoku kumite. Depends on how you do the drill. BTW, there really isn't such a thing as "gohon kumite" as a specific drill. There is ippon, one step or single iteration, and then there are multi step drills. Depending on the amount of space in the room, then it will be 3, 5, 7 or even 10 step sparring. The Japanese usually dont have a basketball court so they do 3 step a lot, ime.

"This is what the heian can be used for."

Japanese I know use the words interchangeably, since the application can either be the analsysis or the usage of the technique depending on how you speak about it. Semantics. However, bunkai can be used to take a technique apart for practice rather than application, which is a difference in use between the two. I think trying to make a rule as to when to use this is not going to work so well. Consider English: "Let's analyze this technique" - then the instructor shows how you would use it in a fight. "Let's apply this technique" and he does the same thing. "Let's analyze this technique." - then the instructor starts to perform it slowly and break it into a four count. That's pretty much how I've seen it used.

We are not discussing the counting of things - we are discussing naming numbers from one to ten. For those who don't know... When you are simply naming numbers to count, such as counting numbers from one to ten as people step across the floor, the onyomi are the preferred way, and some Japanese will flip around the shi/yon and shichi/nana as they do this. What you are talking about is using numbers as "counters", which is peculiarity of the Japanese language. When you are counting things, rather than simply naming numbers, we use the kunyomi. For example, if a couple of kids are competing to see who can stand on his head the longest, they might count the seconds ichi, ni, san, shi, go, roku, shichi, hachi, ku... But if you ask one of them how many boxes he sees, he will answer "yotsu." Depending on the counter word you put after the number, you might or might not use kunyomi or onyomi. They must be memorized, unfortunately. The counter for chopsticks is zen. Izzen, nizen, sanzen, yonzen, gozen, etc... The counter for machines is dai. Ichidai, nidai, sandai, yondai, godai Note that when counting things using a counter word, like dan ranks using dan, the shi word tends to flip over to the kunyomi. Dans are counted a little differently because sho means "first" - it is the kanji for "begin" - like beginning dan. The rest count using onyomi mixed with kunyomi. The most popular counter is "tsu" for smalling loaf-of-bread sized things. hitotsu, futatsu, mitsu, yotsu, itsutsu, etc, which uses pure kunyomi. Counters are a total pain. You have to learn different counters for all sorts of different things. Long cylinders are hon. People are nin. There are lots of others.

I can understand that you don't want to study martial arts in a business, but I would not go so far as to say that martial arts schools should not be businesses. That word "should" usually doesn't have anything behind it to back it up, imo, and is best avoided. Perhaps what you really mean to say is that you simply don't think martial arts and business mix well in your experience. I have no problem with a martial arts business. I think they are a great idea for someone who wants to earn a living and teach martial arts. I also don't have a problem with a business using contracts, discounts, and all sorts of other business practices to increase revenue. I just don't want to do karate in such a place myself. I have a feeling you really meant to say the same thing. In 1955, the first commercial Japanese karate dojo was opened in Yotsuya, Japan. A bunch of university professors dropped out of the JKA over it - protesting the making of money using karate. And yet they made money as professors teaching all sorts of different subjects. So, anything but this one subject can be taught professionally? I think they were a little envious that their colleagues were going to get to do karate all day and reap the benefits of the constant training in a way that they never would. I cannot imagine any other reason to protest someone making a living doing what they love.

I did not notice that the Japanese used the kunyomi for 4 and 7 very often. They used the onyomi when they were counting to ten, or for example when counting numbers for techniques. They said shi and shichi all the time. I think the superstition might be the source of the tendency to flip into the kunyomi on those two numbers more than others, but I don't think the superstition is there any longer. It's just the historical reason it started. Now I think they do this without thinking about it sometimes, and many don't do it at all.

Yes. The purpose of a contract from the business's perspective is to reduce churn - churn meaning the tendency of customers to leave. Churn rates are usually tracked by companies and attempts are made to reduce the rate of churn. Putting people on a contract binds them and prevents them from churning as quickly, reducing churn rates, which increases revenue. I agree with you that the typical reasons given for contracts to students tend to try to lay the blame for having them at their feet. Instead, perhaps karate clubs could undertake to study why they have such churn, and then make changes in their practices rather than simply trying to trap people in with them. The problem is that most karate businesses view their curriculum and approach as being superior to the methods that would retain more students, and through this stubborn insistence on trying to run a business that is intentionally designed to not have mass appeal, they end up running counter to themselves and eventually burning out. Huge karate schools are successful because they are willing to do to their classes what their customers want, rather than offer only karate that they think is "the best karate."

It is their right to ask you to leave, and we can be grateful to people like this who give us an opportunity to stand up for our principles and not be cowed into compliance through threats, coercion, or manipulation. You must be gratified to know that you have the guts to walk out rather than surrender your strong faith and way of life. I admire you for sticking to your guns.

Consumer advocacy groups have been working for some time to overhaul the direct debit process as it exists in US banks. Currently, no amount is stipulated when access to electronic transactions is granted. In fact, and this may surprise some, if you give anyone access to direct deposit into your account in the US, they also have total power to withdraw all funds from your account either through some error or more sinister motivation. Anyone who has your account number, a signed form giving permission to electronically access your account, and your bank's routing number can withdraw all of your money. I think some more security is called for there.

In the US, we can use an online banking tool to set up automatic payments to be mailed in check form to a business on a weekly, monthly, annual, or one-time basis. It is very sophisicated, and I use it to pay the mortgage and some other regular bills that are always the same amount. I recommend doing that over direct debit. That way I have control and no one has access to my account.

A credit card is probably safer than paying with cash if you pay in advance. If there is disagreement about whether or not you got everything you paid for, you can place the charges in dispute and keep the business from continuing to charge you. It is auto-debit that scares me - that and contracts.

I did not generalize and say that all places that insist you sign up for a monthly direct debit card ar bad and evil. You are the only one who said that. I wrote that I do not trust a business to allow them to have direct debit access to my account because I do not want a billing mistake to result in all of my cash being withdrawn. I said that consumer reporters by in large agree that direct debit is not a good practice, that it is insecure, and that allowing a business to debit your account at will through such a system has been very problematic in the past. I also said that I prefer not to sign up for a contract, because after I do this, the contract can be sold to a third party vendor, and that will make it difficult for me to leverage my relationship with the school owner to barter for extra training or discounts if he is no longer the holder of my contract. I said it puts me at a disadvantage. Please do not put words in my mouth and then argue with them as if I said them. Neither have I, but then I do not allow anyone that access to my account. Everyday thousands of people call their banks and complain about having their money withdrawn by a business that mis-billed them through direct debit - either maliciously or by accident - either way, the process of recovering the lost funds is tedious, and not worth the inconvenience for me.

Isn't the "shin" in shinzen the kanji for "God?" 神前 And doesn't the word shinzen literally mean "before the altar" or "before God?" Aren't the pictures on the walls bowed to on the wall specifically because Japan incorporates Buddhism in her society - particularly related to death, and kamidana, shinzen, and shinza are there as a sort of altar to these ancestors because of that?

No, I do not find it wierd for me to speak Japanese words that I have been trained how to pronounce "wierd." I do feel wierd trying to imitate a Japanese while interacting with someone else trying to imitate a Japanese when neither of us has the background to bow properly. I disagree. There is no "deal." I do not have to do anything that I do not enjoy as part of my karate. I do not have to purchase and retain the entire package. It is mine to do with what I want. That is irrelevant to me.