Why_Worry

In my opinion you dont really ned to worry about getting the chi to your fist or foot or elbow or whatever. IF you focuse and move from your center and relax it will automatically go there. When you punch back sure you are shooting out the punch from your center/hara where your center of chi is so instead of punching from the chi in your hand, you punch with the whole chi in your body.

Yeah, i dont understand that one at all.

I used to feel like that about and i am thirteen too. I started karate about a year ago so we are on about the same page here. What someone told me is that it doesnt really matter when you start practicing or believing in your case because what i was told was many great masters of martial arts (internal and external) started when they were grown up and pretty old (as in like 40 or 50 years old), so stop worrying your too old cause you deffinately arent. ALso what my karate teachers tell me all the time is "You work and you work and you dont see any improvement for the longest time then it just all come together." We study chi alot at my karate class too and if you just keep on trying, even if it doesnt seem like its going anywhere, eventually it will just all come together. It doesnt matter if you rpactice every day or once a week, its going to come together eventually.

Its in the book "The weaponless warrior" written by Richard Kim. Its in the end of the book past the biographies of people where he gives his opinion of karate and morals and he says that story. I gave someone else the book when i was done reading it, but if you find it, it has it in the book. I would recommend reading that book, not neccesarily for that part of the book but the rest of the book. If you dont know anything about Richard Kim, here is a website on him. https://www.shimakarate.com/sensei_kim.shtml y2_sub, that exact picture (your profile is on that website).

They actually did sometiems learn short stick techniques (today known as escrima/kali/arnis) sometimes but they also learned kenjutsu/kendo, iaido and jujutsu as well as the very first martial art (according to most texts) which was an archery martial art called Kyudo. They would even learn to time their shotts so that they would shoot the arrow at the exact moment when the horses feet where off the ground. Kyudo focuses more on technique rather than where the arrow lands (but usually the arrow lands right where you want it). It is also practiced sometiems in zen as well as sword techniques. Oh they also learned the art of the naginata, which the name is sometiems just called naginata.

Kata is the most important thing. YOu learn everything in kata and when you do kumite you can see your progress easierly. Where i go, we almost never do kumite. We just do blocks, releases and katas and thats basically it and maybe once every couple of months we do kumite. We sometimes do complimentary sparring where we can apply all our blocks and just keep it going maybe once a month, but most of it is kata, releases, and blocks.

Some of my style of karate that i learn has a few kung fu techniques in it as my senseis' teacher learned from a very good kung fu teacher who knew a little karate as well as from another karate teacher. Also back when karate was being introduced to okinawa it was coming from china which also had some kung fu aspects in it.

I actually think ninjitsu is pretty cool but i would recomend going with whatever you like better. Something i found out although i dont knwo if it was completely true is that in japan the military uses ninjas kind of as swat/spies/riotcontrol. Of course they arent wearing the traditional outfit, but they use ninjitsu. But if one of the two is a commercial/franchise school i would go with the one that is NOT a franchise/comercial school, otherwise its completely yoru choice.

I mean they are all important in japan but i dont know much about the martial arts common things. like in japan sumo is the national sport and karate is in the physcial education program and jujutsu is used by the police and riot control.

I dont knwo much about judo but in karate we use our chi to move us and control our body so it doesnt require muscle so you can move faster with less effort and gain much more power by using it and when you look at these huge sumo wrestlers they use chi as well as they are huge have amazing agility and speed especially for their size.

Saying mind, i am assuming you mean chi/ki as well. So in that case i would deffinitely go with mind because as my senseis tell me over and over again "Muscle is limited while chi is infinite." If you get used to using chi then eventually since breathing moves the chi when you breath the technique will com eout as it has gotten used to doing and you dont have to put any effort into it. As Goju Miyagi said "Any martial artist worth the name could perform for hours without drawing a heavy breath." There is a story where he performed and did amazing things for 3-5 hours straight (i'm not sure exactly how long as the book said way past the two hour mark (it was a challenge)) without ever drawing a heavy breath. But then again in order to train the chi to move your body you need to originally move the muscle along with the chi so it gets used to it, but for two skilled martial artist who use each i would said mind.

Yeah as he said it doesnt really make a difference. If you think about it when someone kicks at you whether they are bigger or smaller it doesnt really make a difference. I know from basic reaction i do a monkey block so even if they are alot taller with a bigger reach, they are still gonna be really close in now and off balance no matter what wether they are bigger or smaller than me. IT reall matters on technique.

It really depends. I am one of the taller people in my class and every once in a while we do sparring and i have a lower stance than some shorter people in my class so your center of gravity doesnt really have much to do with your hieght but then a short person can do the same and can easily be just as strong as the taller person so it doesnt really make much of a difference in my opinion. Also, grappling works pretty well with smaller people as they dont have to get the other person as high off the ground to throw them. Its really just whoever is a better fighter as Gojo_Boi said.

Yeah, kick names are confusing. I know some people that call spinning back kicks round house kicks. Actually it hink alot of people do. Its also kinda because it seems in all martial arts everyone kicks a little bit different while there arent many different ways to punch or elbow someone.

Also, i'm not an expert on this, that was just my opinion.

I read a few entries back it said how to fight a tai chi practitioner. Its kinda like karate where we have the five elements. (fire, earth, metal, water, wood). Tai chi is a water art so to beat it...actually now that i tihnk about it, we learn not to beat them, just let them go because according to the five elemets you need to be earth to beat water which means neither one wins but neither wins which while is the best idea most likely, if it is in a tournament where one of you needs to win then i will give wha ti think below. From my experience from facing people who fight with a very water (remember tai chi is basically a water art, although there can be more striking) like personality you have to make sure you are flowing and dont tiring yourself out. Other wise they wont be tired at all and they will just take you out once you cant fight anymore. I wouldnt recoment going for the arms as they will just most likely grab your arm or damage it. I would just stop their movements and wait for them to have no other options except striek you or run.

lol, thats along while. Good point. Now that i think about it, its not my favorite film, but its still entertaining to watch. Oh, but the one i ahve is dubbed (not subtitles).

I forget the names of the people in this story so forgive me it but there is a story about this guy who wanted to learn karate so he could become a great fighter. He eventually got frustrated with the repetitive kata training and no actually contact or sparring so he quit. He went on to become an exceptional street fighter who never lost a match except one day he was walking and he saw a man about 50 walking and the man seemed so laid back and calm that it annoyed him. So he ran at him and tried to punch him. The man stepped to the side and grabbed the street fighter and held him down and the street fighter couldnt get away and for once in his life he had fear of defeat. The man let him go and kept walking like nothing had happened while the street fight just stood there stunned by what happened. He later found out that the man was a kata practitioner who practiced almost only katas and had never been in a fight once in his life. You shouldnt underestimate how skillful one can become from just practing katas. You practice katas over and over again until it reaches a point where you no longer think and just move and the kata becomes part of you and each move is part of you. Katas are sometimes refered to as "moving zen".

Yeah, and Wado Ryu is created my Hironori Otsuka who was bascially Gichin Funakoshi's senior student. I dont knwo if he was his "senior student" but it was as close as you can really get. So he really got the idea for a peaceful martial art from Shotokan he just changed around the moves to incorporate more dodging and a few things from jujitsu which he learned from his father. So from what i know both Shotokan and Wado Ryu are peaceful martial arts. But still there are those practicing both purely for the fighting concept. But still its fun to watch the martial arts movies where everyone in it goes liek crazy and its not peaceful in any way. Except for the movie kill bill, i watched that and it was kinda sickening to be honest. But some of the katas on my style are from shotokan and i havent learned any of the Heian Katas yet, but for my next belt i will. Well anyway good luck too and that is a pretty good idea to open a topic. (ALso if anyone else reads this, is there anyone else who practices martial arts peacefully?)

Yeah, i would think single stick techniques would be taught first because with the hand that doesnt have a stick you learnt o push away the striking hand/stick of the other person and once you get used to that you can use two sticks to do the same thing just a little modifed with trapping too and stuff so in learning one stick you can kind of learn two sticks at the same time.

If you ask me you should try karate (just not a franchise or commercial school). You have to find a good school. The reason is that karate has a philosophical aspect, the defense aspect of it is to maintain control in close quarters. You also learn releases for just about every situation (some of which seem to be to get away from the police ((like the wrist grab from behind)) ) I would recomend Wado Ryu karate because even though all karate class you will most likely eventually learn how to defend against a weapon, wado ryu has alot of moving out of the way so eventually stepping out of the way becomes natural in blocking which could help against say a knife or just about any weapon attack. Although it can take a while to become efficiently good at it, its worth it if you become very good. ALso you will learn skills and talents and things like humility self confidence which is basically you dont need to fight to prove yourself. You have nothing to prove so why fight. It can help you with peacefulness. Just as a note: I am kind of biased against karate since i practice it. krav maga is another good one but thats purely self defense, but if what you want is something that can provide you with good self defense fairly quick, you might wnat ot go with that. I would recomend staying away from most Chinese martial arts for your fourth reason because alot of chinese martial arts are very flower and while amazing to watch and very effect even in close quarters if you master them, you might not have enough room.

Welcome and its great to finally meet someone who shares the same idea about peaceful martial arts (from your comment in my post introducing myself.).

I just realized, i have been thinking this as people who study traditional karate and not for competitions. IN my opninion a traditional karate student would win against a boxer but if all they do is train for competition then i think a boxer would win. And as Y2_sub said, most karate competition practitioners dont practice longer than boxers. But if you were to find an old karateka how has been practicing for like 50 or 60 years then i would be almost certain the karateka would win. If you have ever watched a martial artist, even if they are old, if they have been practicing for many years they still have amazing speed and agility and stamina.

Some great karate practititioner said a begginers stance is a fighting stnace while an ex[erts stance is a natural one which means that when you do a block its from a natural stance so if you have mastered the blocks it is more effective to be in a natural stance also you are always in a natural stance when just talking but you are completely alert when its your stance. Also the more you practice the more the blocks will come natural.

Cool story. At first it seemed like your sensei was jsut going to stay training and not go anywhere and beat a bunch of those guys with karate and i was like "What? Wow this is a strange story." But then i saw that he went with them and tough them karate. Not as action packed but very cool none the less. I might look up your sensei some time to see if anything is under his name.