Zaine

This was a fantastic story. Thank you for sharing.

I consider my BB from American Street Karate honorary. The GM sat on the testing board for my Shorin Ryu BB and said that I also met the requirements for BB in his system so he wrote me a certificate and awarded me a BB.

I disagree. I've done some pretty boring Kata. That being said, I've never done a Kata that wasn't useful to me. Sometimes boring is something you just have to look past.

Luckily for me, I have a convenient website that lists my lineage. Kusanku Takahara Peichin Satanuka "Tode" Sakugawa Sokon "Bushi" Matsumura Nabe Matsumura Hohan Soken Fusei Kise James Coffman Al Gagne Steven Pinder Myself Gotta love it when websites allow you to be a little lazy.

I agree with Wastelander here. For me, I would definitely not spar until it is healed. The last thing you want is to make it worse.

This is definitely a difficult problem to overcome. When I started doing Kung Fu after years of doing Karate it felt like I was learning how to walk again. Eventually you get in the hang of things so just keep on practicing.

I actually feel lost after each new kata . today was my 3rd kata and I am completely lost A good rule of thumb is for each time you practice a new kata, do the ones you already know twice. This does two things. First, it makes sure that you don't forget you old katas while you were focused on the new one. Second, it helps improve the katas that you already know so that you become better at them (also so it doesn't appear that you just stopped training the other ones). It becomes time consuming after awhile but it is well worth it. Just remember what my signature says: Martial Arts is 30% classroom training, 70% solo training.

Welcome to KF!

Anger many times needs and outlet. That outlet can be anything you would like it to be (although I would suggest it be something healthy). When you bottle it up it festers inside of you and eventually you explode. Karate helped me by both giving me an outlet for all the aggression and anger that I had built up and, when I started caring about what it meant to be a Martial Artist, it gave me an example to live with. It showed me how to let go of all of the things that I had been building in my twisted tower of hate. Once I was able to get rid of the anger and learn patience, my life got 1000x better. It was not easy. I made a goal for myself and through sheer will I overcame my insecurities. I had to teach myself that what others thought about me was not as important as I had made it. I learned to pick and choose what I let effect me and how it effected me. That wasn't easy. At first it was insurmountably difficult to separate critiques from personal attacks. However, through Karate I was again able to learn patience and learn how to have confidence in myself. Confidence is the greatest tool one can have to battle that victim mentality. Confidence allows me to take criticism and say "You're right, I could work on that" without taking it as a personal attack. Thanks so much Zaine for taking time to answer my questions. it's actually a good answer that I really need More than happy to help!

Send him my congrats!

Anger many times needs and outlet. That outlet can be anything you would like it to be (although I would suggest it be something healthy). When you bottle it up it festers inside of you and eventually you explode. Karate helped me by both giving me an outlet for all the aggression and anger that I had built up and, when I started caring about what it meant to be a Martial Artist, it gave me an example to live with. It showed me how to let go of all of the things that I had been building in my twisted tower of hate. Once I was able to get rid of the anger and learn patience, my life got 1000x better. It was not easy. I made a goal for myself and through sheer will I overcame my insecurities. I had to teach myself that what others thought about me was not as important as I had made it. I learned to pick and choose what I let effect me and how it effected me. That wasn't easy. At first it was insurmountably difficult to separate critiques from personal attacks. However, through Karate I was again able to learn patience and learn how to have confidence in myself. Confidence is the greatest tool one can have to battle that victim mentality. Confidence allows me to take criticism and say "You're right, I could work on that" without taking it as a personal attack.

Karate in a lot of ways made my life better. I started when I was 12 (it was that or boy scouts and, nothing against the boy scouts, I made the right decision). Karate saw me through a lot of difficult times in my life. When I was younger I was beat up and emotionally tormented by other kids so I initially took Karate because I was tired of being the victim. I wanted to defend myself. Karate was there when I couldn't control my anger and felt depressed because I felt that no one loved me (far from true but chemical imbalances can be a heavy burden). Karate taught me to have the will power to work through the things that plagued me (and still do). It gave me the patience and control to deal with stress. Shortly after finding a good medium (finding that was hard and involved me physically lashing out at a friends mother and being suspended from Karate) I got involved in the philosophical side of Martial Arts. In many ways the study of the philosophical side of Martial Arts put me on the path to study philosophy in general and want to teach. Karate gave me drive and purpose. In my mind the version of me who was a Martial Artist many times pushed me to realize the goals that he had set for me. Without Karate, I don't think I would of had the confidence I have now. I believe that I would be timid and still have a victim mentality. Probably the most important thing it gave me was the ability to listen to those wiser than I.

I have. There were times when I couldn't go to a dojo because it was dojo or roof over my head. My suggestion would be to take up that free dojo, despite the fact that it isn't what you would prefer. Free is free and if you want to practice at a place where you can focus that seems like the best place to do it. Otherwise you can do what I did and work through the distractions to practice at home.

I would disagree to an extent. Everything has an origin point. Sure, there are different origin points for different MAs, maybe one could trace their's back all the way to the beginning. However, at some point in history (although more likely prehistory) someone started the first Martial Art.

Escrima is something that I always have found fascinating but haven't tried out. It's cool that you branched out into something that you're unfamiliar with! It's always a great experience to do something that you are unfamiliar with and keep on doing it so that you can grow!

I agree. There is a story I like to tell when people say (about cooking) that cook a certain way because their Mother did, as did her Mother and so forth. It is common to hear that you should cut the tip of a beef roast because "it enhances the flavor." (At least it was common where I was raised). This was because it "enhanced the flavor." However, if you trace back the myth, eventually someone will tell you that they did it so that it would fit in the pan. Martial arts is similar, I think, in the sense that there are things that we do because of tradition but the actual reason was something completely practical to the situation of its creator and has since lost it's usefulness (because we now have bigger pans).

says bushido_man96This comes from another thread, but has sparked my answer to this thread. Because I feel the above quote is wrong, because there is no link between the two. Yes, similar concepts at work etc, but no direct link. And to me to be a tradition requires that direct link. A link beyond word of mouth, but a link of teacher to pupil, a direct transmission. To me this is the definition of traditional within the martial arts. I think that you miss the point of what he was saying though. He was not claiming that they are linked by either tradition or direct transmission, but in conception. I think that saying MMA is the spiritual successor of Pankration is a perfectly valid (and true) statement. Are they linked? No, probably not in most cases. Does that matter? I don't think so. Furthermore, I don't believe that he was claiming any link through tradition, although I think that MMA does follow in the tradition of Pankration. The way we use tradition in the context of this thread may operate under a different understanding but in the sense that it is a tradition for cultures (especially in the west, it would seem) to have a gladiatorial event (i.e. Pankration, jousting tournaments etc.). With this in mind, I would argue that MMA does, in fact, follow in the tradition of Pankration, despite the fact that MMA is not a direct descendant of Pankration per se.

You have great drive! Keep to it and you will go far!

Congrats!

I teach it from the start. If a student learns a kata, I think that they should know exactly what each move is for. This way it is not only easier to commit to memory but they can use those techniques more effectively should they every need to.

I have not seen it! Thanks for sharing! It was pretty cool to watch.

I agree. I would also guess that it started somewhere in Africa or the Middle East. Possibly it started in Mesopotamia. Possibly somewhere far away and much earlier that we have discovered yet. This whole topic would be a very interesting paper (if you have to do one) for a black belt test requirement.

I wouldn't think that it would be much better. Ask yourself this, however. If you are ever confronted with a situation in which you would have to defend yourself, would it be better for you to use techniques that are painful for you and therefore maybe weaker because of it, or would you be better off using techniques that work for your body. Most martial arts aren't made for every body type and instructors know this. That is why we push our students to understand the technique that our respective systems teach while at the same time stressing that if something works for you, it works for you. If it doesn't, then it doesn't and there is nothing wrong with this. If you enjoy your school, then stick with it and modify the techniques to fit your body.

Welcome to KF!

Awesome! Congrats! My school started out in black gis for whatever reason. I guess it's just what my instructor preferred. When we got to black belt we were allowed to wear blue pants.