Zaine

Sounds super intense. Congratulations on your passing! Sounds like you earned it!

At this point in my training, I look to see if the teacher giving all the right techniques and focusing on them for an appropriate amount of time, and also how big of an ego he has, I like a humble teacher. I say that because I know that as long as I'm learning the techniques, I can drill them at home enough to become proficient in them, and go back and ask whether or not I'm doing the correctly. For me any martial art as been 30% class time training and 70% solo training.

Shorin Ryu is a great system, I've dabbled in TKD, take Longfist and Mantis, and Shorin Ryu is still by far my favorite, and it is defiantly a practical system that will teach you to defend yourself if you train it right. Now, when I first started Shorin Ryu I hating kata training. I had joined because I had a bully, and I was tired of getting the crap beat out of me, so I joined to learn how to defend myself, and to me the kata portion just didn't fit in to that mold. It wasn't until I reached my 6th kyu that I started to realize what katas were worth. I was never the best at katas, but I knew them, and I knew the moves well enough to go through them but there were anything but "crisp and clean." I was sparring with a bigger guy in class and I realized that I was starting to use moves from the katas that I had learned, and as I was talking to my instructor about it he told me that katas were anything but useless. They teach to drill moves into your head until they become muscle memory. So in a way, it's like the one step drills and the sparring, they're teaching your body to react in certain ways in certain situations. Once I realized that, I started moving faster through the ranks because I got it and I started practicing Shorin Ryu as a whole and not just the things that I liked. I still didn't like practicing katas, although now I love it, but I pushed myself to everyday take some time and go through the list of katas that I knew. Now, I never had a problem with a weapons kata because I love learning them, but I can see where you're coming from. Look at the bo and the sai as extensions of your body that you are trying to learn to control (what is a kata if not a drill in controlling your body?) and that may make it better. The Okinawan's used the weapons they used to defend against swords because swords were outlawed if you were an Okinawan native, so they improvised. Clearly this is not necessary today, no one is going to come at you with a katana (most likely). So the continued practice of using weapons is part tradition, part control. Once you start using the weapons you learned with some proficiency you are going to be amazed by how much control over your body you have as opposed to how much you did before. Shorin Ryu is rarely going to teach you something that is going to be useless. Stick with it, it's a rewarding system with a great history. Good luck on your training!

We used it as a strike to the throat, and then that hand was used to grasp the back of the head to pull them into an elbow strike, you reload (ours is more pronounced than his) and you threw him and did a punch as they were going down.

I am someone who believes in discernment and has studied this to a good extent. I would say it might be a person in the building who has burdened themselves with something to the extent that it follows them. They can be nice on the outside but dying on the inside. It could also be some sort of spirit in the building (if you believe that sort of thing like I do) that is causing this feeling. Ask your instructors about it, you might be surprised by the answer, regardless of the answer though, it will give you some good insight as to what to do about your situation. Good luck.

TKD is super popular in America because it's fun, it's athletic and it's not as high impact as other systems. Because of that, there are a good deal of really bad schools of TKD, and for every bad TKD school, there has to be two good ones to outweigh it. This situation would be the same if there were as many Shorin Ryu or Shaolin Kung Fu schools, but unfortunately the burden seems to fall to TKD. That being said, TKD is an excellent system, and even though I have never taken it, I would defend it if the school were a good one. Also, just because the instructor is bad, doesn't mean that the student has to be and vice versa. Your training and skill in any art depends on you, and how you train.

I wouldn't feel guilty, instructors are good at understanding this sort of thing, even if it bruises their egos a bit. I would express my concerns to the teacher though, especially if you feel connected to them in one way or another. Being upfront about how you feel to an instructor is infinitely important to me, and I would want any student that I would have to feel comfortable enough to come to me with questions or concerns about the direction that the school is taking. That being said, Dobbersky is absolutely right. Don't think that just because it's all basics doesn't mean you're not learning anything. I know that it's exciting to have something new and exciting to learn, but my instructor used to tell us that for every time you did a new kata, you should do the old one twice. Basics are the foundation, and without foundation your house will crumble and fall away. If it's new stuff that challenges you that you want, go up to the teacher and ask if she'll teach you something new after class, my instructor loved that. It's not your instructors job to make sure you have new stuff to learn, it's your instructors job to give you enough to be able to defend yourself, after that it's up to you to drill it until it's so imprinted upon your mind that you don't have to think when you do it. Good luck to you on whatever you decide.

He certainly did a number on his face! This is one of the many reasons as to why I chose to be a martial artist instead of a boy scout (to elaborate, I had a choice between the two).

The Naihanchis happen to be one of my favorite set of katas, it's also probably one of the most wrapped in secret. My teacher was constantly telling me how secretive it was, and revealing new ways things could be used as. Naihanchi two has a particular gruesome move that unfortunately is much to difficult to accurately describe in text. My advice to you is to find a good teacher who has the Naihanchis in their system and train with them. On a side not, I recently had a Kung Fu teacher tell me something that we incredibly useful to my bunkai training, and he probably didn't mean to. He said if I showed him how I did he, he could show me how he would do it. That is to say, if you find something that works, use it. Any martial art has a beautiful capacity to be open to interpretation, and if you find a way that something in any kata works for you, then it works. Karate is about defense, and if it defends properly, then it isn't wrong, it just isn't the way that someone may have intended it to be.

All in all most of these take place due to people who are in sports karate. Some of these do however teach good habits, but most times the bad ones outweigh the good. For example, in AOK tournaments one hit sparring is predomant, and this teaches students to find openings, and it's fun to do every once in awhile, in fact, my 6th - 4th kyu tests were exclusivly points sparring to exhibit the control and awareness of where the openings in the opponets stance were. That being said, as far as an in class room sparring match goes, I consider it robbing the students of a proper education when teachers don't teach their students to actually fight and use full force. Of course, the force used should be more mellow at first, building higher and higher as the student progresses in his or her system. As for the other stuff they are good training tools, but in my opinion they shouldn't be replaced with traditional fighting.

Well some believe that chi is nothing more that physiology. In all actuallity I think that chi is very scientifically grounded in anatomy via the meridian points in our body, which direct blood flow and how much of it goes where. If a meridian is obstructed then you could actually die in some cases. This is where acupuncture comes in. It helps to promote blood flow which can cure a good amount of ailments. Pressure points actually have nothing to due with chi, they are simply sensitive areas where nerves have clustered. As far as the original question goes though, most of it is real, but as far as the levitation and stuff goes, I would stack that to something higher than chi, what it is I have no idea, but I wouldn't call it chi.

True, as a karate instructor the biggest thing that I teach my children isn't how to fight but how to respect others in this world. I essentially try and teach them the "Middle Path" without calling it that, due to the fact that I teach at a Christian school and myself being Christian it is just easier as a believer of the "Middle Path" to restrain from calling it that to avoid flack from my overseer.

Okay.

But I'm not asking for everyone else's, I want yall's.

Now I am not here to state what I think it is. Only to have a healthy debate in which to come to a better understanding of it. So lets start with what yall think.

Btw, he's my best friend, so don't get me in trouble. I got double tested with him, and I bloodyed him. But we both passed our double test to 1st kyu.

I challege you to a fight.

Oh and Ernie Reyes Jr. is actually a really good fighter, he used to be a kick boxer.

I think you blew this way out of preportion. These people are competition fighters, and the rules actually state that you can't fight so hardcore as you might be used to. To say that your insulted though...get over it, is it your style or you that is looking bad, its you thats the fighter. They don't represent us they represent themselves.

You dont hit a makiwara board to make your hits stronger, you do it so when you hit people or things it doesnt hurt you...

Actually it is smart to start with foam. It gives you a base idea on how a nunchaku moves with out the pain of when you screw up badly. The move to the wood, you dont really have to relearn it, it is just different with the weight, I had no problem when I started using real nunchaku from the padded.

I mean, it hurts, a lot...when you miss

Wood and cord, its as unknownstyle said, better for joint locks and control

Google is a wonderful thing, century seems to have good weapons all together, and it is good as a start, I would get more high class ones later on.