bushido_man96

Keep at it, Bob! You're doing great!

Its easy to get caught up into all that. Sometimes, having so many options available causes a bit of an overload. But, I think its a good problem to have. Glad to hear you made a choice and are giving it your full attention. Maybe after you've committed some time to it, you could consider adding another option to study.

All instructors have a different approach to teaching, and students have different approaches to learning. Some people like the drill-sergeant style instructors, and some don't. That doesn't make one style any more real or fake than the other. You mentioned the stress factor of training. If you don't enjoy training, then you probably won't do it. At the same time, you don't want to be pampered to the point that your training won't be effective. It sounds to me that what you have at your school is a pretty good arrangement, and it works well for you because it sounds like you are pretty self-motivated. Fear not, you are doing real Karate.

Thank you, Bob! Districts went well this past weekend. Kendall wrestled three matches, and won all three by pins. In the third match, he did a very rough duck-under that he got a takedown with. It was good to see it, but its obvious that it needs a little work. In his second match, against our challenging opponent this year, he managed another throw via headlock, and worked it into a pin. So, it was a good week, and he had a good night of practice on Monday evening, as well. He goes into the state tournament as a #1 facing off with a #4. We leave Friday to get to weigh-ins, wrestle Saturday, and if things go right, wrestle on Sunday, too.

3/15/2017 Defensive Tactics Club: 2:00 - 3:00 pm. Did some mitt work with punching and kicking combinations. Strength Training Press: 45x5x2, 95x5, 95x5, 95x5, 135x3.

This is something that comes with time and work. Use one-step sparring to work on this, making sure you are far enough away to throw techniques with power and speed, and not make contact. As you get more comfortable, start closing the distance more and more. This will start to come together in sparring as well. When you spar, don't think "slow," think "smooth." I say don't think "slow" because then you will be slow, and that's not ever good. But, there is a saying out there for training that goes "slow is smooth, and smooth is faster." I hope this makes some sense. Work on being smooth and getting the combinations to come together smoothly, and as you get more comfortable, they will speed up.

Ok, the run to State has begun. Subdistrict championships were held in Phillipsburg this past weekend, 3/11. Initially, the setup was a three-man round-robin, but one of the kids scratched due to illness and a funeral, so Kendall only wrestled one match, and fittingly enough, against the kid who beat him the previous week at our local tournament. Kendall went out, changed some tactics, and wrestled very smart, and got the win, and almost had a pin. Now, we head to Garden City for Districts, which is going to be a 4-man round-robin, which means that barring injury, he will qualify for state. The only thing to be decided is the scedeing, which will be flushed out based on the records, head-to-head match-ups, and pins that take place in Garden. Updates will follow soon thereafter!

3/8/2017 Defensive Tactics Club: 2:00 - 3:00 pm. Worked on some pistol disarms and retention.

It may be that you are trying to turtle up somewhat? Just absorbing the blows, however, is not a good idea. When you find yourself doing this, you should try to get yourself to move to a better position. I like going forward, personally. When you turn side-on, you take away the number of weapons you present to your opponent. Some folks can make this work; Bill Wallace comes to mind. But not everyone can be Bill Wallace, and he did it mainly because of an injury that didn't allow him to use one leg as well as the other. My advice would be to start training yourself to not do it. I think you should be able to keep your hands up and be able to move and defend at the very least. If you can't, then you've probably sparred past your conditioning level and need to rest a bit. Its hard to train well when you are exhausted, but at times its important to learn how to push yourself through it. Its likely that your conditioning level needs to come up. This is tricky, and everyone will approach it differently. If you are fast and can set up angles and dart in and out, it likely won't matter much if you decide to kick or punch. It also depends on your body structure. You might be shorter, but your legs could be a similar length to theirs still, in which case you would have the same reach with the legs. I'm assuming your legs are shorter than this tall opponent you have, so we won't assume the latter. The key is going to be working angles to get inside, using good footwork. If you can get to angle and line up with their centerline, then you can attack forward and they have to adjust to meet the angle you've created. If you are good defensively, then you can set the opponent up with fakes and feints and use blocking and counterattacking to get inside. A lot of this will come with time spent drilling and sparring.

I agree here. Have you cut some of your Shorin Ryu classes to make time for the other styles?

Welcome!

Welcome aboard, syed1!

Welcome to KF, RyanMMA! Glad to have you here!

3/1/2017 Defensive Tactics Club: 1:30 - 3:00 pm. Worked on some block/pass/pin drills with the club members.

I'm not a big music workout guy. If its there, great, but if not, I'll still work out just fine. If I had a choice, some old AC/DC and the like is what I prefer.

Keep up the good work, Bob!

Ok, another few tournaments have come and gone, so time for a brief update. At 6U State, Kenneth went 2-2, and got 3rd place, which I was really proud of. There were a couple of kids there that were really good, and he got beat pretty quickly by them. The other two he wrestled well against, and got one pin and one win by decision. Kendall had a tough task ahead of him with the Elementary Duals. He went 0-2 unfortunately, wrestling some very big kids that were 6th graders. These kids appeared to be young adolescents, not kids, and it showed. But Kendall got to see what "the next level" of competition looked like, and I think he realizes what to do to get there. We will head back next year and give it another shot. This past weekend, we had our club's tournament here in Hays. Kenneth went 1-2, but unfortunately didn't win enough to place. He was pretty upset by this, but he wrestled really well. We have to clean up some things on his body positioning, especially when finishing moves, and we will try to do that over the summer. Kendall's bracket went all kinds of different ways. He had a bye to open with, and then faced an opponent that he has beaten three times, but struggled with each time, and this kid has kept getting better and better. This time the opponent got the advantage, and beat Kendall 5-1. He took a bad shot and didn't get his head out to the side like he needed to, and so didn't have anywhere to go with it and got buried underneath. From there he couldn't regain control, and struggled throughout. This week in practice he has a few things to focus on. His next match was against a girl from our club that he handled well, winning by tech fall, and his final match he won with a pin in the second period against a kid we hadn't seen all year. Kendall ended up placing third, which I told him to be proud of. The finals match for the division was the kid that beat Kendall and another that Kendall had wrestled and beaten earlier in the year. The match ended up going to the other kid, which was won in sudden victory. You just never know how its going to work out in wrestling. Now, with the regular season out of the way, Kenneth's season is over, and Kendall is preparing for the state run. This coming weekend is sub-districts in Phillipsburg, then hopefully districts in Garden City, and then hopefully State in Topeka.

Not all TV shows are bad surely? As a kid I used to love watching Sammo Hung in Martial Law. Sure some of it was goofy Jackie Chan-esque stuff (Hung and Chan trained at the same Opera school) but a lot of the fighting was entertaining and he did all his own stunts. Nothing wrong with a bit of Walker, Texas Ranger either Agreed. Martial Law was fun to watch, and early Walker was always good. Got cheesy as it went on.

This is likely never to happen. I think I heard Mayweather say he needs $100 million to take a fight. If McGregor did it, he would make more losing to Money then he would ever make again in the UFC. This is mainly McGregor talking a lot to gain more presence. And in Boxing rules, which is the only venue it will happen in, McGregor would get dismantled. I don't know that he would land a square shot on Mayweather. It would be really lopsided, and probably the easiest payday Money had in a long time.

Welcome to KF, and good luck with your testing!

I have most of my belt certificates kept in a notebook. There are some things that I have framed, usually because it was given to me that way. All my old trophies are down in my basement, and my belt is actually still at the gym where my usual locker is (forgot all about it being there). If I ever get my basement cleaned and organized and halfway finished, I might hang some of that stuff down there.

I agree with Bob, observing and correcting is a good way of teaching sparring. The practiced eye of a good instructor will be able to see what a student is doing, and be able to call out corrections in-match for them to try to make. Better yet, during in-class sparring, the instructor can let sparring go for a while, observe what students need to address, and then stop the sparring and initiate some drills practice to get the students the idea of what he is seeing and what they can fix.

Kenneth is weighing in right around 69 lbs, and is wrestling the 70 lb division, so he's only giving up weight when they combine. I've worked with him on trying to stay low with his hips, and on trying to keep his hips squared, and not falling on his hip when he is. With Kendall, its been about staying behind the hips and behind the elbows when he is working from the top position. When he reaches "over the top," he starts to get himself into trouble, and when he gets his hips out to the side, he doesn't have good pressure on them, and they start to get up. He's been working on that in practices. These next tournaments are all going to be tough ones. 6 and Under State for Kenneth will be a challenge. Kendall will be entering the Elementary Duals, which is a pretty special tournament. Elementary Duals consists of kids from 1st grade up to 6th grade, with no age divisions, only weight divisions. So Kendall's bracket will likely consist of 4th, 5th, and 6th graders weighing 140 lbs. I doubt there will be many kids that heavy that are younger, but if there are, they will all be placed in the same bracket. They will place back to 8th place to establish alternates, and what they do is take 6 teams to Iowa for a national competition in which the boys who qualify will represent Team Kansas at a National Duals tournament in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Top 6 qualify, but they take two alternates. Those who make he team get a custom Team Kansas singlet. So, we decided we would try this tournament this year and next since it is the last two years he will be eligible, and it will provide him with some tough competition as we build up towards his actual goal, placing higher in the State tournament this year.

Its great that you are enjoying it. Make sure to do some good stretching after each session, to help improve your flexibility. That will help your kicks. It takes time to get that flexibility.

For sure I will consider it at one stage but don't think I will start it that early though Yeah, I don't think there would be much of a reason to start them off right away. Take some time to get a grasp of the goals of the system, and how things are done, and gauge how things are going. When you feel like you are starting to have issues with some aspect of training, then maybe look into scheduling a private.