bushido_man96

I second this. Life throws us curves quite often. Glad to hear you are back to it.

Sounds like it's all worked out. Too bad your CI has that outlook on cross training.

Congratulations!

Welcome back, Luther! Great to see you!

What a week it was. Jacksonville fell out of the playoffs, Pittsburg made it in, and the Dolphins end up the 6 seed and play the Chiefs in Arrowhead. That's going to be a tough one, I think. Hopefully, the cold weather will be to KC's advantage. That AFC East truly went down to the wire. The NFL had to like having what basically amounted to a couple of Division Championship games last Sunday, between the Bills and Dolphins, and the Texans and Colts. It's crazy to think that if the Dolphins would have won, they would have had Buffalo coming back to town the very next week.

I really enjoyed it. We sat three rows from the top, and I was right on the 50 yard line. We were way up there, but we could see the whole field. I had a good time, I just wish they would have won the game. We offered the choice of that game, or the Bengals game. Oh well....

So, should spouses not train together?

I'd echo a lot of what has been mentioned already. Be up front about who you are and what your school will offer. Be honest about who you are and what you are presenting. Along with the other things DP listed about posting, perhaps also presenting an outline of the typical class, or perhaps some short videos of the various sections of class that show what you teach and how you teach it. Just out of curiosity, would you allow your students to enter competitions? Would competition be completely off the board? Would you not do any kind of sparring? I ask because I wouldn't say that our school is competition focused, but we do have students that compete, and host our own tournaments as well.

A blizzard out here really put a damper onto training for the week. But got some sessions in towards the end of the week. 1/10/2024 TKD Class: 5:30 - 6:30 pm. Traditional Class. Been a long time since I've done a traditional class. Basics, forms (Choong Jang), one-steps (low green belt), and a little sparring with the only other student, a little green belt. After sparring, we held rebreakable boards for the green belt to work on his side kick technique. 6:30 - 7:30 pm, T-shirt Class. Did both classes tonight. I went through all the black belt forms except for Choong Moo, did some round kicks and front kicks on the bag, and spent some time before and after this class stretching in The Rack. I'm going to try to make both classes on Wednesdays going forward. 1/11/2024 Strength Training Squats: 45x5x2, 135x5, 175x3, 200x3, 200x3, 200x3. Press: 45x5x2, 65x5, 95x3, 110x5, 110x5, 110x5. Deadlifts: 135x5, 185x5, 225x3, 265x1, 295x3, 295x3.

Hope you get to feeling better soon, DP. That ski erg machine sounds kind of interesting. It definitely helps to do conditioning on something you enjoy, and it sounds like you enjoy it.

It's difficult to determine why the Martial Arts haven't had the popularity that they one did, back in the "golden age" of Karate. I'm not sure what the state of clubs at universities/colleges is anymore, or if that could even help. Perhaps more people are driven to MMA, which I don't think is a bad thing. In fact, I think MMA can help drive some people to the "traditional" arts. At any rate, things tend to be cyclical, and perhaps we can hope for an upturn over the course of the next few years.

That sounds like a positive spin on things for sure! Please keep us posted as to how things go.

I find rep progression to be pretty useful when it comes to some of the ancillary lifts, but can also be useful with the compound lifts.

That's awesome! Enjoy your training, and keep us posted on your progress, and what all you learn!

If you could pick the faces for the Mt. Rushmore of Martial Artists, who would you pick? Who do you believe has had that kind of an impact on the Martial Arts world? This is not intended to be a "who's the best" type of conversation, but instead a recognition of those who either changed things or impacted the progression of the Martial Arts. I think mine would be Gichin Funakoshi, Jigoro Kano, Morehei Ueshiba, and Helio Gracie. I think these four individuals did quite a lot for the advancement of various styles of Martial Arts. Who would be on your Mt. Rushmore? Again, I picking this forum because I'm looking for Martial Artists from all over different disciplines. I think we could do another for each section, like a Mt. Rushmore for Karate, and for TKD, Chinese styles, etc.

DP, that's a very good point to make. Some people believe they are "starting a fight," and another may believe they are going to kill someone. Two different mindsets, to be sure. Bob, I like the points you've made. Of the two, I think the dual is easier to avoid, especially if one is able to be free of his ego. If it isn't avoided, it's usually due to egoism (but not always).

There's a lot involved with each situation, and each situation is different. Actions leading up to the encounter are important; is the person trying to de-escalate, or are they using words to aggravate the situation? What led them to the decision to "throw the first punch?" (as it may not be a punch; could be a takedown, bodylock, etc.) Was the aggressor invading their space after they asked them to back away? Did he ball up his fists or hunch his shoulders? Did he make some overt action that caused to believe you were in danger? Things such as these are important to take into consideration.

1/4/2024 Strength Training Squats: 45x5x2 135x5, 175x3, 195x3, 195x3, 195x3. Bench Press: 45x5x2, 65x5, 85x3, 110x5, 110x5, 110x5. Lat Pull-downs: 140x10, 140x10, 140x10. I'm going to take a different approach to the lat pull-downs. I'm going to find a number where I can't get 10 reps on the first set. From there, I'll do 3 sets to failure with a 5 minute rest between sets, and when the first set gets to 10 reps, I'll up the weight to the next plate on the stack. The hope is to drive towards doing chin-ups.

1/3/2024 TKD Class: 6:30 - 7:30 pm. T-shirt Class. Before class started, I spent about 15 minutes going through or traditional basics warmup. I sat in The Rack for several minutes afterward, and got a good stretch. For class, I rolled out a Wavemaster, and did our first kicking "station," which was 5 variations of front leg side kicks. I did 5 kicks each leg. After that, I did Chon Ji, Dan Gun, and Bo Choong hyungs, then went back to the bag for another kicking station, this time 5 variations of front leg round kicks, again 5 each leg. Next was sparring. Why not, it'd only been a few months! It went ok, really, and I felt like I moved ok and blocked well. Overall, not a bad night after being off a few months due to work.

Happy New Year all!

Going back to this original question for some clarification. Seeing the way the conversation has evolved, I think defining some things is important. How do we define "overcoming" the attacker? Are we talking about standing over our fallen opponent in victory? Or are we talking about doing just enough to get away and be safe, and avoid injury as much as possible? Are we talking about two people having a disagreement, and then "stepping outside," dual style? Or we talking about the sudden violence of an ambush attack? I think identifying these parameters can add some nuance to the conversation.

It's all in the articulation of what happened. If you can articulate what the person's actions were, and if you felt they were aggressive in nature, especially if he was uncomfortably close to you, then you should be able to articulate a good case for self-defense.

1/2/2024 Strength Training Squats: 45x5x2, 135x5, 185x3, 185x3, 185x3. Press: 45x5x2, 65x5, 85x3, 105x5, 105x5, 105x5. Deadlifts: 135x5, 185x5, 225x3, 280x3, 280x3. Going to try triples across on squats.

12/30/2023 Aikido Class: 9:30 am - 12:30 pm. Another day of the winter camp. This morning session was focused on keeping weight under center. The idea was to focus on keeping weight under center during the techniques, and he chose techniques that helped us work on that. So, keeping the stance work in mind from the day before, along with trying to stay centered, I think I did ok on some things. I definitely still need work, but seeing these basic principles being focused on will help in my classes going forward. I was pretty sore and achy from the previous session, but I hung in there. Aikido Class: 3:00 - 6:00 pm. Second session of the day; this one was focused on the centerline, and keeping the techniques in the centerline, and making the body work as a unit along the centerline as well. We ended up repeating some of the same techniques we had done in the earlier session, so now I was thinking of stance, and keeping weight under center (and relaxing my shoulders all the while), and now keeping the techniques in the center and "connected." More good practice, and I still have a long way to go. Six hours of Aikido isn't a bad day.

"Rage, RAGE! Rage against the dying of the light! Do not go gentle into that good night!"