jaymac

It is good that you are going for further testing. I will keep you in my thoughts. Good luck.

I feel so bad for you. I never thought about the poor individuals who work in the casino's and have to deal with non-stop second hand smoke. When I lived at home with my parents, who are chain smokers, I was constantly sick. It wasn't until I got married and moved out that I realized all those years of sore throats, headaches, upset stomachs was from taking in all that smoke. I hope if for you and your health, you will be able to find something new because the casino's will never ban smoking for fear that their players will go elsewhere with their money.

Maybe this idea of thinking is exactly how drunken monkey style developed. Seriously though, to help my stretching and flexibility, I work out everyday and then stretch. Using alcohol to improve your own flexibility has risks of causing injury to self and a bad habit.

All I can imagine is me trying to stretch in the shower and then falling out naked and taking the shower curtain with me.

You can do this! My thoughts are with you. Remember, you can always count on us in this forum to be there for you in a positive manner.

Jim Kelly. I admit, I am a huge Bills fan!

This post makes me increasingly grateful that our dojo is not governed by an outside organization. It is just alot of happy people learning a style passed down from instructor to student for many years without the social politics of a larger overseeing group.

I don't know I how I could add to this already fantastic list of benefits made by everyone here. All I can say is that it has been the best thing that I have done for myself physically and mentally. I carry what I have learned and apply it to my everyday life.

Raw onions and garlic cloves excellent idea! Hey you may actually be able to start a whole new trend in the Martial Arts just using bad breath as a self defense technique!

I think if I switched to another school, I wouldn't mind starting over. It was so fun and rewarding to go through the ranks, but I am sure if I started over, it would be with another style other than shotokan and I would expect to start at white belt.

At this point in your ranking, I would think it would not be wise to start another style because you think it might be softer and not as demanding on your back. I have never met an instructor yet, who would rather allow his students to leave because something in their course may cause more injury to an existing one. I bet your doctor will actually encourage you to continue in training but remind you to be aware of anything that causes slight discomfort.

There are not alot on ninjutsu schools. You may want to contact any Ninjutsu school you can find on the web and tell them you are very interested in training and ask if they know of any schools in your location. Some places just do not advertise because they are very restrictive on who trains in their dojo and only get there students by word of mouth.

People talk bad about my hero to me all the time, but my favorite person is a retired quarterback for the NFL. I have met him a couple of times and he was always nice. I would be bummed out if he turned out to be the kind of person that others describe him as.

That video was cool. Imagine if he missed that bag and hit that lady. Those were pretty powerful strikes.

I have to admit that I did not read the article, but get the basis of its topic. As an adult, I would not mind only having a few belts in the system up to black belt. I do believe though that our society works on a positive reward system. Adding more belts and tape to belts for small achievements on a child is a good reward system. They know what they have to do properly to earn that next stripe/belt. As for 24 fighting chickens, R.Redmond spends alot of his energy being pessimistc about MA. He is a good author, but I do not want to have a negative attitude towards martial arts. I feel that anyone who trains in a style is bettering themself in many areas of life, no matter what color belt or lack of belt they wear.

When running a sparring ring, I do encourage the younger students to kiai because they are using little force behind their strikes. When they kiai, they tend to move in quicker and strike harder and emphasize the blow. I know personally, I do not kiai much while sparring but I make sure I am not holding my breath either. I have gotten the wind knocked out of me before because I wasn't breathing properly.

We only wear our Hakama for Sword training and Black Belt testing. We do have to tie the knot a specific way to indicate rank. I do not like to wear them, but would probably get used to it if we had to wear them more often.

I do think you would probably enjoy kempo. It is a chinese based style with plenty of circular movements.

You said that your son is not adapting well and that he doesn't have a friend there. Instead of pulling him from this school and finding somewhere else where he would have to start all over again, why don't you ask your son to bring a current friend to this dojo and they could train together and move up in rank together. Moving him from this dojo may just sour his taste for Martial Arts all together.

I have to say, I have never met anyone who ranked to black belt in one year. I attended several classes everyday of the week for 3 years before I became eligible to test. I would show up at the very first class and stay until the dojo closed just training and I am sure even after one year I wouldn't have been ready for shodan.

Of most recent, googleearth has been my favorite.

A bottle open would have definitely been faster, but it was cool.

Three times..... do I hear 4?

That's a great idea! That do that at my work when someone resigns, and yet I never thought to do it at the Karate club. Maybe a good idea would be to send out a letter inviting them back, then a couple of months later, if not reply, send out a survey. What you think of the idea? Good idea. If we recieve a response to the exit survey, we try to fix the problem. If it was costs issues, we send an invite with a discounted rates. If it was problems with another instructor, student, we remedy the problem and still send an invite with a discounted rate. It hardly ever has to do with other students though.

Sit down with all the involved individuals and hash this thing out. Find out where you stand with your instructor and the organization.