tessone

KickChick, could you point to some resources about core muscle training or perhaps describe what it involves? Working on my back was one of the reasons I joined KSW initially (a friend with back troubles is now a brown-black belt and his back is better for it), but anything I could do outside of the dojang would help immensely.

Understood. I guess I'm lucky to be in school (and thus have school insurance and parents to cover doctor bills). Good luck with the leg!

Hey, that's cheati--- Ahhhh!!! *runs*

What art do you study? I think it makes sense that only the advanced students (the black belts) work with weapons. I have enough to think about just trying to study weaponless techniques and forms with needing to worry about sword kata and defenses against knife attacks.

His !@# is jealous of TKD, clearly.

Let G and H be groups, f:G->H be a group homomorphism, and e1 and e2 be the identity elements in G and H respectively. Then prove that f(e1) = e2. And a math joke: Q: What is purple and commutes? A: An Abelian grape.

From what I understand, you shouldn't be able to move the leg if you'd snapped the muscle. However, it might not be a bad idea to have a doctor (or at least a trainer) take a look at the leg. You can never be too cautious.

I think about my forms all the time, too! My SO thinks it's cute (for now), so that's a lucky break. The etiquette spills over, too. I find myself calling my math professor "sir" sometimes, which is not something that's terribly common at my (incredibly) liberal arts school.

This question is addressed here in Martial Arts and Politics. HTH.

I'm curious--when do the various arts start their students on weapons? I know that in Kuk Sool Won, I've never seen anyone below brown-black touch a staff or sword, but a friend of mine who started Aikido this term was handed a sword almost immediately. _________________ Chris Tessone White Belt, Kuk Sool Won [ This Message was edited by: tessone on 2002-04-28 21:26 ]

A little boy began to study judo, but on the way to practice the second day, he was hit by a car. He was mostly okay, but sadly, he had to have his left arm amputated. Returning to practice under his aging master, the boy was taught only one move. For an entire year, the master forced the boy to perfect that one move. A tournament was coming up, and the boy began to ask his teacher to instruct him in more of judo. The master refused, telling the boy to keep practicing his move. The tournament came around, and the boy advanced to the finals. In the last round, he was set against a huge, muscular opponent. It seemed the tournament was over for him. Yet in the end as his opponent was having trouble concentrating, the boy used his move, pinned his adversary, and won the tournament. Afterward, the boy went up to his master and said, "Sensei, how could I win knowing so little judo?" The master responded, "You have mastered one of judo's most difficult techniques. The only defense against this technique is for your opponent to grab your left arm."

I enjoy both games, but yeah, network play definitely adds a whole lot to the experience of playing.

Yup. You'd hope people putting on demonstrations would keep in mind that they're representing the art to the public and to other martial artists. What belts were these guys/gals? Black belts, or color belts? I keep thinking of the demonstration Will did, part of which demonstrated defense against a knife attack. "Drop the knife, drop the knife!"

Welcome, lau gar! Even though it's great to have so many experienced people around the forums, it's also nice to have a few fellow white belts.

Welcome to the forum!

I came on, but then my machine crashed. I'll try again next week and see if I have more luck.

Thank you all for your posts. However, I'd seen those websites before, and they were included in my previous statement that such resources are woefully incomplete in one way or another. As for the longer post, I was hoping for original write-ups by board members. I'm not going to go stealing content from other people's websites or quoting from articles; it's just not right!

You definitely need to stop by a real dojang and see what Kuk Sool Won is all about. My friend Will (2nd dan) and his brother (1st dan) did an awesome demonstration at a tournament this weekend that would likely have impressed you.

EST is 5 hours off from London. So 4:30 EST is 9:30 GMT, if I have my directions right.

Welcome, JagPhil!

I'll try to be there. Depends on fraternity stuff a bit, but I'll try.

Understood. We train four days a week, so I'm able to pick things up more quickly. This is the end of my second week, and I have five of the six parts to Ki Chyo Yung. Granted, parts four and five need refinement--I'm not ready to test for my yellow stripe--but I've found that by applying myself, practicing forms at home, and never missing class, I'm learning a lot quickly and getting the chance to refine it.

See, I'd say this is a very Western mentality that isn't really in keeping with the arts themselves. The West is very centered on the notion that A is A--we put things in dichotomies (black/white, good/bad) and like sorting things into groups, etc. Eastern philosophy, on the other hand, is far more holistic. All of the etiquette, internal arts, forms, breathing techniques, etc., that we learn are intimately wrapped up in training to defend oneself. There's no way to separate them, and to say that one thing is more or less important in martial arts is to miss the bigger picture.

The Russian writer Nikolai Gogol also felt he was tormented by fate and he was Russian Orthodox. It happens to the best of us. At any rate, whatever the particulars of Lee's life or the other masters of the internal arts, I don't see anything in them to suggest that they're spiritually unhealthy for a Christian. I'd still suggest looking very carefully at Scripture and seeing what it says to you.

As someone who is also a Christian, I'd suggest you first look at the art you practice and reflect on what your religious beliefs really are. Most importantly, does your study of martial arts and your use of chi/ki affect your belief or your identity as a Christian? I'd tend to say not. If it is affecting things (say, skipping out on church to spend more time in the dojang), think about whether that's really inherent in the art, or whether it's your own human weakness ("I should go to church, but I really want to perfect this technique."). I see nothing at all to suggest that martial arts is incompatible with the Christian faith. Does Scripture suggest that any seemingly ab-, para-, or supernormal phenomenon is demonic? Certainly not. So even if ki is something not entirely explainable by physics, that doesn't mean qigong is witchcraft. What makes you believe the people you cited were possessed by demons?