lordtariel

You know, you get those kind of people an any art you choose be it MMA or Traditional. Odds are, if you get a bad instructor, he's going to ingrain those habits and views on his students. If you then only have that one MMA gym in your city then it's easy to assume that everyone is that way. It's very easy to generalize.

Is there really a significant difference?

I'll sometimes trim, but I'd have to shave twice a day if I wanted to shave my body.

I would probably check out all of them and go with the one that excites you the most. It'll be easier to avoid burnout that way.

You gotta remember you're on the interweb out there, so there's a feeling of safe anonimity, especially in a huge site like youtube. I wouldn't worry about the "u r t3h suck" comments.

Nothing wrong with that. There's only two reasons I would do anything different. If someone's life is at stake or they try to get you to come with them. Gun control is a touchy subject and in my opinion, there's too many extreemists on both sides of the fence and not enough people in the middle ground.

Yup, you can have a dual boot macOS/Windows machine

While I don't think it should be a requirement, I think some experience with guns is actually a good idea. You need to know not only how to deal with someone who pulls a gun, but how to make it safe once you've disarmed them, what its strengths and weaknesses are, and if the person using the gun is proficient with it. I don't think you need to train as a marksman in martial arts(Unless you're in Kyudo ), but a general introduction is important.

There's more to shooting a gun than pulling a trigger though.

Carring a weapon is fine, but ONLY if you know how to use it and are prepared to use it. If you don't know how to use the weapon you carry your opponent may just feed it to you, and if you're not mentally prepared to defend against and possibly kill your attacker, you're better off either just trying to get away or giving them what they want because you'll be too messed in the head when you try and defend yourself.

If I've had a really good class, I'll go home and write down what we did in a journal. When I'm away from the dojo for an extended period of time, I'll just follow some of the lessons that I've written down in my training journal.

We do both in our dojo. If our sensei's running us through some complicated combinations or something, sometimes he uses english because we're already using most of our brain power trying to get them working correctly. Part of the our belt requirements are vocabulary.

If you're doing kata, try practicing the kata facing different directions. There's no knowing where the judges will be and you won't believe how many people can only preform a kata facing one specific direction. Don't go into the tournament with any expectations and you'll come out fine.

Just based off of the websites, I'd look at the idaho self defense center as my first choice. I'd boycott dragon bushido dojo just based off of their website design(but then again, I'm a web designer )

It's a decent game, if a bit short for my tastes. There was an old game on the origional playstation called legend of legaia I believe that was pretty good as well.

Yes, you can now run windows on a macintosh. My friend just bought a macintosh for that very purpose. I'll let you know if he runs into any problems.

My recommendation is to take a weekend and have her rent each of the systems and a couple of games. That way she can find out the one she likes the best. It's much cheaper to spend the money to rent the consoles than to buy one and decide you want the other later. I prefer the PS2 because I'm really into RPG's, but I probably won't spend the money on the PS3 until the whole blu-ray HD thing is settled.

"Yeah, it only takes a year and a half to get your black belt" "I teach a secret system that's been handed down from master to student over the generations"

There's no better way to learn than to teach.

You might not go in at the rank you were, but I know at least in my dojo, if you can test up to your rank, you got your rank. Actually, having three different instructors could be a good thing, you'll get an idea of what works for you and what doesn't and when you finally settle, you can look for that in a dojo.

You know it.

They do make belts and things that have interior pockets for money and passports. That would make having a dummy wallet make more sense. I don't see getting my wallet stolen as a big deal, I'm only liable for about $50 if someone gets a hold of my credit card or bank account before I report it stolen. But then again, I keep my credit card in a safe deposit box at the bank so I'm not tempted

Shotokan: Can be practiced by yourself anywhere Judo: Primarily practiced only with a partner on mats. In early training you must have an advanced student or instructor with you as well. As other people have said, one's primarily a striking art, the other's a grappling art. I recommend getting some training in both if you're looking to train for self defense. I found I was more injury prone in Judo, but it probably really depends on the person and the class.

Or at least they would think twice before pulling that stuff with someone at the dojo

We've been doing some grappling training in my class lately and I've noticed something when we've been doing it. It seems like as soon as they hit the ground, a lot of the students immediatly fixate on getting back up. Even to the point of not paying attention to their opponent. This was illustrated by one of our sempais dropping a student five times in a row last week because they weren't paying attention to where they were and how they were getting up. Has anyone else seen this type of thing in their classes? Do other Karate systems make a study of grappling? I don't feel there's anything wrong with getting up quickly or doing all your fighting standing up, but it seems more like a reflex rather than a concious choice. I really enjoy mixing it up on the ground, but that's probably the judo talking.