Zaine

I was home schooled and I needed a P.E. activity. We knew a guy who was giving karate lessons for free. It took me about a year to really get into it, but once I was hooked... I was hooked.

I am Shorin Ryu and, at least in my style, we do use hips to generate power. What branch of Shorin Ryu do you practice?

I have a group of friends who all also have either an M.A. or and M.S. We often joke that higher degrees do not make you intelligent, but actually sap your intelligence. We become experts in one field and the price is general knowledge about other things

Dead Island 2 looks like a lot of fun! It's on my list to get to eventually.

It's certainly possible. The Pinans, in general, are derived from a number of kata, with kusanku being the seemingly primary inspiration. My guess is that he felt that 3-5 aren't beneficial enough to the system as a whole and you can get everything you need from them from kusanku, passai, and chinto.

I do have an M.A.! Thank you! Funnily enough, my parents didn't have a formal, college education. They were very much into a free exploration type of education. Their philosophy was that if we could teach it to them effectively, then we were adept enough in it to move on. My siblings and I were pulled out of school because of my ADHD. I only ever had one teacher, who was my last elementary school teacher, who was ever good enough of a teacher to handle a kid with ADHD. My parents took my proclivity to be distracted and worked it to my advantage. It allowed me to jump from subject to subject at will in a fun way. Ironically enough, my mother ended up getting her Bachelors and is now a high school teacher. Special education and working with ADHD kids has changed so much. Were I a kid now, I would probably have stayed in traditional school. Now that I'm thinking about it, KarateForums actually played a role in my education. Karate counted as my physical education and I wrote more than one paper about Karate. A lot of the information I got outside of my Sensei came from this website.

It largely depends on the state. Each state has standards that can be different. Texas, where I am and grew up, has pretty lax standards for homeschooling. While there are public standards that someone can look up and go through available for any state, my parents mostly bought various curricula depending on where I was in the learning process. There were a lot of group activities for me. We tied ourselves to a group where we would present a project once a month based on different subjects. I didn't have tests, I just moved on when I had mastered a subject. I didn't take a test until my SATs, which marked my graduation. After that, Texas allowed my father to write a notarized note saying that I have graduated and then I was done. I had a lot of freedom to study what I wanted. When it came to English, I got to read what I wanted and write reports on those books. I got to study what I wanted for history and social studies as well. At the end of the day, if I could do it differently I probably would. I don't regret my education, but I do think that I might have been better served in a traditional school environment.

I don't believe it's ever come up before! It's funny to find other homeschooled people in the wild. You never know where we are.

I haven't gotten it yet! I'm hoping to be able to on Wednesday, but that price tag is killing me!

That's a good thought, Brian. Perhaps metaknowledge refers to our principles in general. Things that contribute to discipline and our understanding of the side of martial arts that relates to character development.

I was homeschooled and would go to the church my mom worked at during her work day. My siblings and I would do our school work and then spend most of the day playing video games in the youth room that had a set-up which included many tvs and consoles for use. On Tuesdays, my mom had a 2 hour meeting and I would get to play D2 on her computer. I always thought it was funny that I was playing it in a church.

During the beta, I played on World Tier 2 and noticed that there were some pretty good challenges. I had to pay attention to the mechanics and make sure that I was doing the right thing. It was a refreshing difference from some of the ARPGs that I have played recently where it felt like I was too overpowered from the jump.

A while ago, Drew made a post giving some tips on being a practitioner of Martial Arts. In it, they mention that "The forms of Tai Chi contain much of the metaknowledge you will need to even stand a chance against some one who is trained, taller, etc." That got me thinking about the metaknowledge of Martial Arts altogether and I have been contemplating it for nearly 2 months. I feel like I have a shaky understanding of what that is, but I am curious about what y'all think when you hear the phrase Martial Arts Metaknowledge. Is it our understanding of technique? Is it the pedagogy and teaching behind a MA curriculum? Is it the ability to size up an opponent? What are your thoughts?

Same. I am typically pretty bad when it comes to PvP trophies, but I feel like I can manage 5 PvP kills to get that particular achievement. There aren't many achievements to be had, honestly. They will add more with whatever DLC they are planning, but this most of the achievements are things that you would want to do anyway. It seems fairly easy to accomplish.

I'm going Necro. Necro was the first class I played in D2 and I fell in love with it. I loved the Necro in D3, as well, and I played Necro during the open beta and had a lot of fun with it.

I wish I had the money to be able to play it now instead of wait until after launch. As of now, I'm waiting for the 14th to be able to play. My wife joked that I should start a GoFundMe since I was being so impatient about it. Until then, I'm just playing some Diablo 2 seasonal content.

Awesome! Thank you for this honor!

I am so pumped for D4. I have been playing D2R a lot over the last few months as well. It's as great as I remember it. I did take a break to play Tears of the Kingdom and have put easily over 100 hours into that, as well. I wanted to sink as much time as I could into it so that I had a "free conscience" while playing D4. All these new video games are really messing up my reading time!

Happy birthday!

My original CI had a school that was in an MMA gym. We were a combat oriented school, so we fit in with the crowd more than maybe some others, but it was fine. We got questions every now and then.

Congrats!

I agree. Zanshin is an important concept to MA as a whole, but especially so in Sanchin. They even have the benefit of sounding alike. I would have like to see a lot more talk about it as a concept.

I'm definitely interested!

Chapter 3: The Mechanics of Being in the Moment I lost my book for a bit. However, with it now found I can continue. I think this is a really cool title for the chapter. However, I do wish that he would have actually talked about the mechanics of being in the moment. I don't feel that he achieved that to any degree. He spends some a lot of time writing disparate facts about the brain, some of which are outdated, and fails to really bring it all together. I think that the worst thing here is that he fails to bring it back to Sanchin. Wilder talks a lot without consideration for the subject matter of the book. If he were to circle all of these random metaphors and allegories back into Sanchin, I think that the book would be much better. Instead, I get long-winded, dry, semi-educated information on the adrenal system with no relation to Sanchin in any way. I have two English degrees, and cannot really comment with any authority on all of this biological information. I just don't think that it has much of a place in this book. It feels like Wilder has a word count to hit and is ginning up any tangentially related subject to meet that criteria. Wilder says two statements here that, to me, stick out as being statements about Sanchin and Martial Arts. The first is this: It seems here that he is suggesting that Sanchin is performed slowly as a learning tool. I disagree with this, and my analysis on this is what started this thread in the first place, so I won't go through the whole thing again. Briefly, Sanchin teaches us about dynamic tension. It teaches when to relax, when to be tense, and how to breath. It's ease of learning has nothing to do with its speed. The second quote: I think this is a good analysis of the kata. Sanchin is good at teaching you how to balance these things within the moment. I often to Sanchin as a way to meditate. It helps me to remove myself from a strong emotion to see things more objectively. These two quotes were in the introduction paragraphs of this chapter. I think if Wilder had spoken towards these things, then the chapter would have been far more cohesive. Putting these lines in the introduction made me think that this was what we were going to be talking about and I found it odd when he took a left turn and began to discuss biology.

I have sent you an email!