MizuRyu

I really want to replace Tang Soo Do (which I recently quit due to the RIDICULOUS dues I had to pay) with Muay Thai, but the only school here seems to be a slight McDojo. http://www.amafa.com What're your thoughts?

Shaolin Monks gets mixed reviews, my buddy here says it's an amazing game, but I've heard otherwise from different people. I own Jade Empire and lemme tell ya, gotta buy it! Don't even rent it, because if you have an appreciation for well made games, Chinese culture, and martial arts, you'll love it.

I've been practicing 'Ving Tsun' for a little under a year now under sifu Jeff Kohlman and Tom Tomlinson. I'm not quite sure what our direct lineage is, I know Yip Man is somewhere in there. Our shirts say "Ving Tsun Athletic Association" and has the Ving Tsun Kuen emblem on it.

As a Wing Chun practitioner.. I'd have to say the style is limited. But I think Wing Chun should be applied, not adhered to. Mixing it with Tang Soo Do, Muay Thai, BJJ... things of that nature would make it very formidable, but due the lack of solid footwork and powerful strikes, I'd have ot say that WC would be in some deep trouble.

there is no such thing as specific fat burning, your body likes to burn fat as a whole. If you wanna trim down, run/bike/swim like a madman!!!

hmm.. I have answers to a few of those. The minimum time you should rest it depends on whether it is a fracture or sprain, your body type, the severity, the individual bone/series of connective tissues... etc. So it's impossible to tell unless evaluated by a doctor. I fractured my ulna when I was in 8th grade, so I have experience with broken bones, and I would more than definatly tell you DO NOT go to class, especially with ground work, because that could turn a lovely hairline into a compound if pushed and pulled correctly. Identifying isn't easy either... I'd squeeze it and see what it feels like... if the bone is fractured or broken.. you should definatly know right away.. a sprain doesn't feel the same. As for healing it, depends on what it is, but the best thing you can do is just not move it for as long as possible, until it feels right.. if it's a severe sprain, it may need a brace or something, if it's minor, just rest it a lot, ice and aspirin are good. If it's a broken bone, you need medical attention, it isn't a want. You can heal fractures on your own, but they can heal funky and lead to big problems later on in life. These are just general suggestions and observations and do NOT replace anything a doctor tells you, so I'd just wait it out for his advice.

Milk: the wonder source! Eat a lot of nuts, lean meats, eggs, and dairy. Try and stick around 20-30 grams every 2 hours. Eat a lot of small meals, even if you're not bodybuilding you should still eat 5-6 small meals a day, it's a LOT more healthy than the overflowing meals we call breakfast, lunch, and dinner. You typically absorb a LOT more of one thing than you need in any given meal. If those small meals are hard, pack a bag with a peanut butter sandwich, a 20oz of milk, some beef jerky, and an apple. That's how I get along with it.

If you want size and raw strength, powerlift. That means to do between 3 and 5 repetitions in up to 3 sets of the HIGHEST weight physically possible, the mentality has to be that if you won $6 million for a 6th rep, you couldn't do it. If you're looking for power, speed and strength, plyometric training is recommended, which for a bench is basically letting it drop with gravity and forcefully launching it back up, an overload and total contraction of a muscle. This is DANGEROUS with benches, so stick with a weight you're comfortable at at about 10 reps, and have a strong spotter. The only thing piling more reps on accomplishes is increased stamina and speed, it has very little effect on strength. I would recommend working your chest all 3 days that you should be working out, it's one of the easiest muscles in your body to build. Also, accompany the benching with deadlifts, squats, and wide range exercises. Your body likes to grow as a whole much more than it likes to grow part by part.

That's why I decided to take Wing Chun. I took Kyokushin as a kid, then got into Tang Soo Do, and through both I noticed that if someone plows you, you're done! Found a WC school nearby, started goin out of curiosity, now I'm HOOKED. It's probably the most effective training I've taken, I'd highly recommend finding a school or studying the concepts via training tape and a friend (not the BEST idea.. .but better than nothing) or finding a WC practitioner to train with.

Guard your face fiercely... attack his knees and shins like an animal, when he's down, elbows to the face.

nope, incandescent lightbulbs disperse nearly all of their current into heat and light, leaving very little voltage to worry about. Your foot would just about have to go into the socket for the current to be able to jump to your foot. I would know too, I smashed a blub with me head in the crawlspace once.. oops.. lol Anyway, I have great stretch, and the only thing I really do is do the splits when I get the chance (eating a sandwich, shower, standing in line.. etc).. or sit funny. When I wasn't able to do full splits I kept a small index card booklet of measurements, where I'd take a ruler and measure how far I was from the ground at full extention. If anything it at least gives you an idea as to how much progress you're making. The only real way to get better stretch.. is to keep stretching!

From what I know Shaolin encompasses many different styles (at least the syles that they study AT Shaolin), but the more commonly accepted "shaolin kung fu", from my knowledge, refers to the 5 animal system. The tiger, leopard, crane, snake, and dragon. You can train in one or train in all and combine them. It seems to me to be a very complete system. Search 5 Animal Kung Fu on yahoo to get more details.. because that would be a loooot of typing. JKD, Bruce Lee's martial art, can mean 2 things. It can be viewed from the philsophy of it, or some view it as what Bruce Lee actually practiced. Bruce Lee found JKD's roots very deep in Wing Chun (Jeet Kune actually being a WC drill), along with Fencing and Boxing, and he took many other scattered arts, absorbing "what was useful and discarding the useless". The idea was to take all the knowledge possible and combine it into a fluid and adaptable style (inherently a lack thereof), unreliant on tradition or structure. The idea was to be like "water". Of course, this wasn't a new concept, just popularized by Bruce (due to his dedication to this philsophy and his fame through film). Comparing them to eachother is rough... that all depends on what you're looking for. Some schools offer "Jeet Kune Do", but I would never personally consider taking it. The idea behind it is as simple as cross training and finding what's the most fluid and effective for your body and mind. Shaolin 5 Animal seems like it would insanely hard to find, especially a quality school, though I did find this: http://www.shaolin.com.au/cyber.html... that site also has a lot of great information, but I'm not entirely sure on what to think about the DVDs... Hope that helped a little

I've been in TSD for a little over 2 years now. What I see TSD lacking is a sense of aggression. I'm not entirely sure though... in the 2 years I've been there I think I've actually gained more in the 6 months I've been taking Wing Chun. It's really slow... that and $100 a month!

I think I'm quitting TSD for Muay Thai. The Muay Thai school seems particularly authentic. I'm judging this over combat efficiency. What's your opinion?

My friend is a Praying Mantis practitioner who's been trained by his father since he was a child, along with Wing Chun. He started when he was about 5 and he's 19 now, and needless to mention he's about as proficient as any "master" of either. Well, he was showing me some Mantis stuff today, and I noticed it looks pretty, but how would it fare in real combat? And by real combat I mean someone plowing into you with the intent to break or kill. How would this apply to most Kung Fu? I know it's a broad question because of what the term Kung Fu encompasses, but I noticed they all seem to have emphasis on acting and form over actual fighting.

The "wooden man" dummy

We're starting to get into Jong training in Wing Chun, and I looked into buying one to train at home.... unless I can magically pull $1,000 out of the thin air, I'm pretty much Jong-less. Any tips on making your own? I'm not much of a woodworker so I'm not sure where to start... let alone how to really do it. The concepts simple, but I want a high quality piece.. I just need the info to make it.

In our particular school of TSD, we do knuckle and finger stikes, like the pheonix eye of Eight Shadows. Well, I'm a little over a year away from learning these, but I'd like to prepare early as possible through training. The only training advice master Soma has yet to put forth was to do fingertip pushups and lean on your mid knuckles a lot when you're standing around. Does anyone have any good training exercises to add?

I've only used my martial arts twice... which by most martial artist's books seems to be a lot. The first time doesn't count much, I was in 7th grade and beat up a kid for ripping the cross off my neck, which I would define as misuse, I could have just walked away. About a year ago was the 2nd time, my girlfriend's brother smacked her, and it wasn't a gentle slap either. I went ape. When I look back I really regret it, but then again, he turned the whole left side of her face purple.

Ninjutsu seems to trandiontally focus on control of the wrist combined with breaks and strikes. It's a pretty reasonable mix of grappling and striking, they focus on throwing and evading extensively. The original idea was dispatch an opponent in the quickest way possible in the most silent and effective way possible.

Personally, I know I would not have acted with such control as you had. I think you applied what you know in a pretty appropriate way. You didn't harm him long term, you just rattled him a bit, knocked some sense into him. It's hard to calm down belligerent drunk people in an intelligent manner, sometimes they just need to be scared down.

Who here knows anything about it? From what I understand it's structured around finger and hand positions that have some sort of correlation chi and focus.

Yeap, one word: Plyometrics.

I'm taking Tang Soo Do and Wing Chun at the same time and find no problem at all with the cross training. I think it might be attributed to the differences in the styles, and the frequency in which I train, I only have WC 2 hours a week, but I have TSD 8 hours a week. That, and Wing Chun is a very straight forward martial art, extremely hard to confuse with TSD.

from what I saw I thought there was a good selection of combat effective strikes... front kicks, axe kicks, rakes and takedowns. I think the more advanced stuff (the weird cartwheel back kicks and whatnot) are what makes it seem ineffective, but a lot of those are to build power and accuracy, and if built up and practiced enough, can be devastating. Reminds me of certain kicks in Tang Soo Do... only really effective if the opponent is off balance or has NO idea of what he's into.