Zaine

Welcome to KF! It's great to have you!

Not all of the trainers at the gym are educated professionals. The body is incredibly complex and trainers, who often give medical advice, nutritional advice, and whatever else they find necessary, have no formal training as to what certain conditions are or what the effect of things will be to the body. The prevailing opinion in the trainers that I have spoken to is that if it worked for someone else then it should work for everyone! In this way, you get trainers recommending bad diets (such as Keto, Whole30, Paleo, etc.), exercises that aren't good for the body, and other terrible things. They're not there to consider your health, they are there to make you "jacked." Take it a little easy the next few days and don't go back to that trainer.

Money, change in schedule, they don't find that it is for them. Our understanding tends to be inwardly focused. We find martial arts fun and interesting so it's hard for us to understand that it is not for everyone.

Why don't you teach the Pinans to adults unless asked?

I am not sure what you are asking here.

You read the title correctly, I have found not only the best, but the perfect system of defense there is. Maybe some of you are aware of the D.U.S.T. guy in Detroit and know how lacking the tactics there are. It may have left you wondering if there was a system of defense that could be effective. Wonder no longer, here it is: https://vm.tiktok.com/TTPdMjEW5c/ As you can see, there really is no room for getting it wrong. Now, personally, I would have done my techniques a little differently after the time-stop, but it's obviously effective. I think that this is where the martial artist can get really creative with what they know. Sensei here went with some pressure point techniques, stopping just short of dim mak (probably for legal reasons). Like I said, not what I would do but like we say, if it works it works.

Ultimately it's your dojo and if you're uncomfortable with her coming back without a doctor's release then that's that. You know the situation, you're familiar with the girl, so that's going to play a lot in to it. Personally, I'm given to think that she is fine. 5 months is enough time. I would maybe have her take it slow the first few classes just to be extra sure that she's fully healed and when I was confident of this I would allow her to go 100%. That said, I'm certainly not a doctor, and I don't think that wanting a doctor's release is being too careful. A part of my opinion comes from being a part of the American Healthcare system, which can mean that a significant bill for something like this. If I recall, you're in Australia. Not sure how things go over there but if it's better, then I don't see why not.

Congrats ramymensa!

I think so. At it's root, martial arts is about defense and arose from a need to defend oneself. However, we don't live in a time where needing to defend ourselves on a potentially daily basis is very relevant anymore. The societies that we tend to live in today are far safer than those of our ancestors. A martial art is just a system of defense and attack. Practical application is generally included, even if there is not sparring. However, for me martial arts is about bettering yourself, physically and mentally, through training for martial application. As a personal thing, that training includes partner work and sparring, but it does not have to in my opinion.

I think bushido_man96 has it exactly right here. Walking away is a personal thing. It could be loss of interest, money problems, or just a general feeling of malaise when it comes to practicing. I took a lengthy break from dojo training due to monetary struggles. I was happy to jump back in when I could. Overall, my advice to most people is give it a year after you begin to make decisions like this. This gives you the chance to be excited about it, ebb a little, and then find a happy medium. People fall in an out of love with hobbies all the time, it's normal.

Congrats Ashley!

Happy new year!

Very exciting! Good luck! I hope that people are safe enough to allow you to test!

Feel free to take whatever energy I am not using in making a resolution and apply it to that, Bob! I would also love to see you cancer free in 2022!

Congrats on the promotion! 5th kyu can be an intense test, it's the numerical halfway point! It also represents a pretty big conceptual change, I find. To this point, you've learned a lot of foundational practices, now is the time that you begin really building on that foundation to create the structure that will become your style of doing karate. This is an exciting time for you! Take it slow, enjoy the journey, and have fun.

I don't really care to set goals or resolutions. I can feel the weight of them bearing down upon me as the year goes on. The last goal that I set was to read 24 books in a year and even though I read much more than that I still stressed incessantly about it until I hit that number and it made reading worse for me. As my life grows increasingly busy, with places to take my child, work, finishing my M.A. in Counseling, etc. I find that setting goals that seem arbitrary to an ideal that I have does more harm than good. Similar to you, I instead prefer to review, find things that I liked and didn't and grow from that. Are there things that I would like to accomplish in 2022? Yes, but I stay away from setting timelines and goals because I want to enjoy the time I spend accomplishing them.

Are you old fashioned? Maybe, but I think that this is more common than you might think. In general, I find that it's difficult for people going through the ranks for the first time to understand decisions like this. They've worked hard for their rank and they don't understand why anyone would eschew theirs for any reason. In reality, the color of my belt doesn't really matter. As long as I am learning, then I am happy. It does not mean that I have not earned a rank previously, just that I am acknowledging the need to start clean and learn from the bottom.

Welcome to KF! I disagree heavily with the statement that "good health" necessitates a life free of mental illness. Those with mental illness can be and are in good health, they just sometimes need to take a few extra steps to get there. I feel that you're also confusing overall health with situational health. Does receiving an injury mean that my overall health is poor? Of course not, it just means that I've been injured. Think more broadly in this case. Good health is the pursuit of health and the results therein. One off moments like injury or a bad mental health day do not doom a person, and someone focused on health will approach the hurdle as needed. Largely what this means is that healthy people do not have to worry about health. This is a misnomer, a person who is healthy generally worries about health and therefore do experience stress over it. However, they're not bogged down by necessary doctor visits and going to a specialist. Their physical health needs routine check-ups and that saves a lot of money.

On the one hand, as a life long comic reader, it's comics. On the other hand, if pressured about it, I imagine that DC would say reason that choice in some way similar to this: "There are only so many ways that a body can move. Bruce has spent a large amount of time in training and has, in fact, touched 127 different martial arts. Did he spend years with each? Perhaps not, but he got enough out of it that he was able to come to the correct conclusions about stylistic ends for each of these arts. Bio-mechanics being as they are, and Bruce being the genius that he is, we can see how he has master his body and therefore these martial arts." DC, if you're reading this, I do have a Masters in Creative Writing and I AM available for hire.

So I was talking to a friend who is outside of the realm of karate because I've been thinking about using my Instagram to post karate content (much like Noah, you may have heard of him he's pretty big in some forum I can't remember the name of ). They said that one of the things that they look for when they are getting in to a thing is a brief explanation of the common terms and practices of the thing. Nothing in depth, just a high-level overview so that they feel a little less lost as they begin their journey. That got me thinking about how to tailor an experience for beginners that would make their first few classes a little less awkward. I thought about the people that I've trained with in the past and, by large, they are very accommodating. When they use a Japanese term it is usually explained immediately. No one really expects you to understand and remember everything. A good school is filled with people who are excited to do karate and excited that you are there to do it with them regardless of your level. Anyway, it got me thinking about how intimidating the breadth of terminology can be, especially with the tendency we find to have more than one name for similar (or the same) techniques. Would you say that, in the experiences y'all have had, that you find beginners frustrated trying to remember everything. If so, what do you think we can do, as seniors in the field, to help that. Would it look like having a rank requirement where at each level the student scaffolds what they have with more information? Do we move towards leaving behind the requirement of remembering them at all? What are your thoughts?

That sounds really lonely. What experiences have lead you to that conclusion?

I cannot donate right now, but I can share on social media. I hope this helps.

Congrats Tatsujin! Well deserved!

The short version? I have only ever known just one version, which is pretty short. Does your system have multiple?

Whoa! Thank you everyone who voted for me! This is a cool community and I'm so honored to be recognized. Y'all rock, and I can't wait to see what the next year brings.