bushido_man96

I'd be leery to attempt to tie anything to competitive achievements. Reason being is that there comes a point in competitions where natural ability becomes a big factor in who is able to compete and who isn't. It's easier for great athletes to demonstrate skill in competition. But great athletes aren't always the best coaches and instructors. There are lots of people out there that are so naturally gifted that they pick up on movements easily, and don't struggle with physical skills. Hence, they don't have to troubleshoot as often as the less naturally talented, who have to work harder and smarter to get just a little bit more out of everything. These are the folks who tend to become good coaches and teachers. Case in point here. Knows the curriculum for shodan, but due to the competition standards set by that instructor, can't be a shodan. But may in fact have the competence to teach and coach the movements, given the chance.

3/22/2023 Strength Training Rowing Machine: 2 min warmup. Squats: 45x5x2, 135x5, 185x3, 225x5, 225x5. Press: 45x5x2, 75x5, 95x3, 115x1, 140x5, 140x5, 140x5. Deadlifts: 185x5, 225x3, 315x1, 345x5. Light squat today to get the system warmed up. Press went good, and deadlift was a religious experience today. After finishing them, I could tell my body still isn't completely recovered from being sick. 10% deload, just like everything else, and I'm always kind of blasted after the set of 5, but today was just worse. I could feel my lungs trying to catch up. TKD Class: 6:30 - 7:30 pm. T-Shirt Class. I did some basic work on the standing heavy bag, just working combinations over and over again. I got a little bit of speed bag work going, but then our 11 year old 1st dan wanted me to hold a rebreakable board for her to attempt a jumping, spinning, inside ax kick. I drilled her on the kick, working on the turning and spinning mechanics and driving the leg down and through the board. After some drilling, she did some breaks, with two different levels of boards.

I agree. The current CI at our school is interested in expanding our self-defense knowledge. However, ho sin sul (self-defense) is reserved for the black belt classes. How is that helpful or right? We had also talked about introducing some grappling drills, just to get some exposure to it, and to give our students some idea of how to deal with it. However, he had an issue with teaching it especially to some of the younger kids right away. Too advanced. I told him there are a BJJ white belts out there. Didn't seem to help much. Another issue I have is that the school is always worried about the next testing. I just don't care for that approach. The instructors always end up "teaching to the test," and therefore the classes are structured for learning testing material. So no exploration gets done.

This is a very interesting thought, indeed. First off, thanks for sharing this with us. I look forward to the discussions! At first glance, I wasn't so sure, but the way you went on to explain it, I feel like you've hit on some very good points. The one that jumped out to me the most was this: A caveat real quick: I usually tend to read threads from top to bottom, seeing what other posters have said so far. I did not do that with this thread, because I didn't want to influence my answer in any way. I'll catch up on the replies after this post. So, when I read that section of your post, it really resonated with me. That's exactly the frustration I have with my school/organization at this point in time. For example, the GM added this series of three-step sparring; 18 of them if I recall, and the first 6 are required at the dan testings now. To me, this is frivolously adding worthless curriculum to give black belts some more busy work to do; more to memorize for testing. Compound that with the exorbitant testing fees (it would cost me more than a good car payment to test for 5th dan), it makes the thought of testing frustrating. Then you mentioned the politics; I wonder how others in the organization, especially ones that I've taught in the past who have now tested up to or past my current rank, look at me. I honestly don't care, but what does bother me is the expectation of "respecting the rank" when I don't honestly think they have more to offer than I do. At any rate, that a lot of me and my issues, but like I mentioned, your comment really resonated with me in that sense. I'm tired of busting my but to learn some new three-steps that I don't think are useful or beneficial training. The thought of exploring deeper into the style, and even learning from other stylists, really appeals to me. I like your idea, but it would definitely be a hard one to pull off. It will probably be relegated to a few stylists here and there that decide to go with this approach. There's a lot of merit in it; when practitioners start seeing each other more and more as peers as opposed to wondering where they fall into the hierarchy, then so many new things become possible. Like Bob always says, "Proof is on the floor!"

Congratulations!

I like that suggestion, Patrick. I plan on being really low key with this league.

Form creep happens to everyone. It's always good to have another qualified eye pointing things out.

I'm in.

3/20/2023 Strength Training Squats: 45x5x2, 135x5, 185x3, 225x1, 265x5, 265x5, 265x5. Press: 45x5x2, 75x5, 95x3, 115x1, 135x5, 135x5, 135x5. After battling sickness for 17 days, once more unto the breach. I deloaded 10%, and it went ok. My legs will be sore from squatting for a few days, but by and large, the session went ok. Legs got a little shaky, and the movement patters were a bit rusty, but I'll be right as rain in a week or so. TKD Class: 6:30 - 7:30 pm. Black Belt Class. Chon Ji, Do-Kang 1 & 2. I was pretty much taking it easy the rest of class, and we were working on some self-defense aspects with the CI's 11 year old daughter.

That's awesome! Congratulations!

Bob makes a lot of good points. I think the longer many of us stay in the arts, the less we thing about rank and what it might mean, where the more important aspect is what can someone teach? If I can learn something from someone that I don't know and find valuable, then their rank is really unimportant. I do think it's important to understand and see if someone is a fraud or not, but like many things, this comes with time and experience. My current rank basically means that I can teach someone the fundamentals of TKD, and I can confidently convey the aspects of the techniques to them, along with some concepts behind self-defense. How good someone thinks I am is pretty irrelevant to me; I know me pretty well, and am comfortable with my abilities. Can I teach ground skills? Not too many of them, and not really well. So, I'd recommend someone seek somebody other than me out for that, and then tell me who they found, so maybe I can go learn from them, too.

Welcome to KF, Fractured!

Welcome to KF!

Congratulations, Fractured! Well done!

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

The problem is that half of the time half of the teams in the league are looking for a QB to run their offense, let alone trying to find 2 of them that are good, and make the team, and then don't want to sign for a ton of money when their rookie contract is up. I do understand what you are saying, but I just don't see it being a practical outcome in the NFL.

A few things I used to work on in the past: Cross the T: this is a matter of using footwork and techniques to get into a position where you are side on, but the opponent is not; his front is to you. From there, he has more targets open for you to go after and for him to defend, so advantage offense. Clear with a Kick: we're kickers in TKD, so what I used to tell a student was to clear with a kick when they finish a combo. This helps to keep the opponent out of range so you can see them come back and re-engage. It also teaches them to control some space.

Yeah, I expected this going into it. If I could bench press without pain, I would, but anything I can sub to train the chest a bit, I'm willing to compromise on. I'm starting out really low so that I can keep a bead on how my shoulders feel going forward with the movement. 3/3/2023 Strength Training Squats: 45x5x2, 135x5, 185x3, 265x1, 295x5, 295x5, 295x5. Press: 45x5x2, 75x5, 100x3, 130x1, 150x5, 150x5, 150x5. Lat Pull-downs: 142.5x10, 142.5x10, 142.5x10. Iso-lateral Bench Press: 30x10, 30x10, 30x10 (15). A decent session here, and then, over the weekend, I got sick. Some cold bug, and I was coughing so hard that it made my back and stomach muscles really sore. So, I've missed a week of training, and am likely to miss some more. The cough isn't nearly as bad as it was, but I still notice some fatigue. As per usual, life deloads me.

I think what and how you plan on training on a particular day can lead to wearing different gear for protection, based on the training. Light drilling might require little to no equipment. Harder contact naturally tends to lend itself to more protective equipment in many cases. I also notice that when harder contact is the goal, a rule-set tends to get implemented in order to prevent serious injury. In the end, I think it's a matter of finding a balance.

Congratulations, Noah! A well deserved award! Thanks for all you've done here at KF, and here's to the next 10 years on staff!

I think it's hard to run a two QB system in the NFL. Mainly due to the salary cap, and having to pay for other important positions, too.

I might be able to join.

3/1/2023 Strength Training Deadlifts: 135x5, 185x5, 265x3, 345x1, 385x1, 385x1, 385xfail. Press: 45x5x2, 75x5, 100x3, 148.5x5, 148.5x5, 148.5x5. Lat Pull-downs: 140x10, 140x10, 140x10. Iso-lateral Bench Press: 25x10, 25x10, 25x10 (12.5). Ok, quite a bit to unpack here, mostly on the deadlifts. I failed to pull 385 for a set of 5, and there were several factors involved: 1. I got a horrible sleep today. 2. I have a gash in the web of my right hand from a door handle I needed to replace. I covered it with tape on Monday's workout, but it just got sweaty and slid around. I managed through all the lifts ok, but the only pull was lat pull-downs. 3. I didn't get to do my light squat session prior to pulling today. 4. I tried using the generic straps the gym had to try to mitigate the grip in the pull. It didn't work at all. I pulled the first one with the straps, and pulled the second rep without (hook grip and chalk). Two of the worst reps I've ever pulled, too. Bar drifting away from the shins, and it felt like it would stop after an inch off the ground. With so many variables, it's hard to know if any one contributed more than any other. I'm hoping that by next week my hand is feeling better. I'm going to switch up my pulling routine, too. I'm going to alternate the deadlifts and the snatch deads every other week, so I'll only pull heavy once every two weeks. Hopefully that allows me to recover enough between heavy pulls to keep driving progress. I tried out the iso-lateral bench press (which is a seated upright Hammer Strength machine, so not lying down). I seemed to be able to move through the range of motion ok, so I'll keep trying it. Each side of the machine is loaded individually, and each arm could be worked separately, or in unison. I'm doing it in unison, so I'm adding up the amount on each side for the total weight, but I'm not sure if that's right. The number in parentheses is the load on each side. TKD Class: 6:30 - 7:30 pm. T-Shirt Class. Not much happening here today; it was me an one other guy in the class. I did some black belt forms: Choong Moo, Kwang Gae, Poe Eun. A little stretching, and some speed bag work. Unfortunately, a lot of chatter, too.

Fans may grumble about it, but fans aren't in the building studying this stuff 5 days a week, and fans don't have to worry about losing their jobs if they make the wrong decisions. I think if Hurts hadn't missed some playing time, he would have won the MVP. I also think he's here to stay; no Wentz dropoff. Hurts has improved vastly over the past three seasons. I don't know how much more improvement he can make, but he's shown that he can carry a team to the ultimate prize. Will be interesting to see how the 4th down thing progresses. There will be a lot of analysis based on net points i assume from 4th down tries, plus net yardage, with teams coming up with their own acceptable metric: I envisage something like : we get 50% of tries and average 7pts per successful 4th down try drive, so 3.5pts per attempt but when we fail we give up a field goal on 1 in 3 but no points the others, so a loss of -1 with a net of +2.5pts - obviously will be a lot more complicated. NFL and Baseball are really good for making use of analytics so if there is a gain to be made there then someone will I think you have to take into account the nature of the game being played in, too. This was the Super Bowl; all or nothing. I'm not sure they consider going for it as many times during an early regular season game, but I could be wrong. I think the fact that it was the Super Bowl made a huge difference in going for it that many times. Sneaking on 3rd and 4th downs like that, that many times throughout the course of the regular season puts the QB in a dangerous spot quite often.

2/27/2023 Strength Training Squats: 45x5x2, 135x5, 185x3, 260x1, 290x5, 290x5, 290x5. Press: 45x5x2, 75x5, 100x3, 130x1, 148.5x5, 148.5x5, 148.5x5. Lat Pull-downs: 137.5x10, 137.5x10, 137.5x10. Pectoral Flies: 45x12, 45x12, 45x12. Squats and presses went well. I'm finding on the press sets that I can keep reps 1-3 fairly strict, but reps 4 and 5 require a little more layback. I added the pec flies in because I'm trying to find a way to work my chest other than bench press. I'll run these a few more times and see how they feel. I could feel a little tug on the shoulders doing them, so I will take it slowly. TKD Class: 6:30 - 7:30 pm. Black Belt Class. Warmed up with Do-Kangs 1 and 2, and then jumped right into Ho Sin Sul. We did a lot of wrist grabs, working to an arm bar or lock, to a takedown, to a lock and restraint.