Nidankid23

I was just curious to those black belts out there what their black belt promotionals consisted of. For instance, mine was about 4 1/2 hours long: 20 minutes of speeches, 30 minutes of warming up excersises, an hour of intense drills and technique combinations, another hour of doing our entire past of katas, about another fifty minutes of self defenses against eachother, another hour of sparring eachother and our extreme higher ranks. Just curious about other's experiences.

That is quite a lot of katas. My style averages at about 2-3 katas per rank. Incidentally it takes an average amount of time to promote to the next rank (6 months).

I agree, history can always be a quenstionable area. I also seen what you mean about close minded practitioners. I think some martial artists get blinded by a pride that can often times be misplaced.

I know it may be redundant for me to mention this, but you should try looking in big magazines like century just to see if they have anything you might like.

I know it is ingrained in most martial artists that they should respect eachother and live and train in harmony with each other, but I have found that their tends to be tension between some styles of martial arts. I am just looking to see if anyone else has noticed this and their examples on it. I know around where I train their tends to be a tension between Tae Kwon Do and Karate. This is a little awkward for me because I am a black belt in both. Your thoughts?

Karate has definatley influenced little things like self discipline, control, endurance, fitness. Another useful thing is pain tolerance

Name: Tyler Rank: Second Degree Black Belt Style: Tae Kwon Do Rank: Nidan Style: Budokai Karate

I have seen students failing tests before, and I think that the only reason passing rates would be that high is because instructors don't invite students to test unless they are truly ready.

We used to promote about once every three months, but our master recently started a new idea of promoting on the floor when he beleived that a student was ready. (This new policy does not effect me, but I beleive it to be a much better way of promoting students.)

It is available for use in my dojo but is usualyl done in one's own time.

I do beleive that they are all important for their various reasons. The Taikyoku series is important to develop basic fluidity of motion and footwork, and of course to develop one's basic skills. I agree that the Sanchin katas are also very important too, because they help to provide muscle strength and important breathing techniques. (But we all know deep in our hearts we want to say our highest kata )

I personally feel that Defense only dictates the nature of your technique, protecting yourself, and not the actual technique itself. Although there are some techniques and stances that are used primarily for defensive situations, I beleive the only difference between the first jab thrown (offensivley) and the oppenents jab (defensive) is their reason for throwing it, the technique itself does not change. Thats my two cents at least .

I'd have to agree with Jussi Häkkinen, Shureido is a high quality provider for goods but they tend to be expensive.