bushido_man96

That's nuts.

That's pretty cool. I loved that game.

Hehehe.... Keep us posted, Throwdown. It sounds like a good time.

Sounds good. I look forward to seeing the pic.

Sounds like fun. I just wish I had a place around to do some sword work.

Chivalry Bookshelf sells books on fencing, and they are pretty good. Not sport fencing, either; some of the good stuff. You might check some of them out.

Sword and shield.

I would love to see this fight. I have always liked watching Oscar fight. He is getting up there in age, though...

I think that this is what you have going for you, right here. Where your muscles may not get loose enough for you to stretch statically, your legs may be strong enough to hold your leg up higher, and the dynamic flexibility you have probably allows you to kick high. However, make sure that you strive to improve your flexibility through stretching exercises. You'll be glad that you did.

Do a Google search of your area, and see what schools come up. With a list of schools, it would be easier to identify what your choices are, and you could narrow down what you are looking for. Welcome to the Forums! I hope you find what you are looking for.

The way he throws it makes it a pretty blind kick. I think he is basically getting his back to his opponent, and then throwing out the back kick. It can get pretty easy to shoot that kick off to the side of the bag, and it can take a lot of practice to get it lined up right. From what I have seen him do, he is technically correct. It just isn't high. I am not sure if he is very flexible or not, but some stretching would help to not make him look so stiff when he throws it.

The Australian pull ups, I was told, anyways, are when you hang under a lower bar where your feet can touch the ground, and you pull your chest up to the bar. Kind of like an upside down bench press, I guess? Felt really good, whatever its called. 7-31-08 TKD Class: 6:00 - 7:00. Good class tonight. We really smacked the basics hard, and did some kicking on the walls. I did a bit of slow kicking and combinations before class started, as well.

Staying hydrated would be a good idea. Also, ask the instructor if you can bring a bottle of water of something like that to class to drink on periodically.

If you have any certified physical trainers in your area, you should think about consulting them. Tell them what you want to improve on, and they should be able to put together a program for you that will benefit what you do alongside the strength training.

Cool. That list could be helpful for me.

I didn't really think that it was, and I practice a kicking style. It is really a compact kick, and if you want to get that motion going into your opponent, like he was talking about, that little hop can give you quite a bit of extra umph into the kick. It also lets you abandon that little step prior to the setup. I have seen Cung Le use the same step over with the front leg to set his up as well.

I thought that it was a nice touch that the challenger had to foot the bill. Nice touch. Maybe we could get GSP to take up the challenge??

It appears to me that the combat sports that tend to come about in the West tend to get looked at differently by practitioners of Eastern Martial Arts; even be Western practitioners. Boxing, Wrestling, and now MMA seem to get looked at in this light, as well. I think much of this comes from the bias that many people think Martial Arts only come from the Far East, and that something can only be a Martial Arts style if it fits into the parameters set by Eastern styles. Many parameters, I believe, that did not come into vogue until the last 100 or 200 years. In the West, as the technology of warfare advanced, so did the training methods, and the use for hand-to-hand combat with intimate weapons and the body began to leave the battlefield. Therefore, we see our various Martial systems go from the combat usage to a competitive sport, like Boxing and Wrestling. MMA is basically the modern rendition of Pankration, except people don't die in the competition. So, we have a mindset that a style has to have its own "language," like Japanese/Okinawan for Karate, and Korean for TKD. Now, if we take this into consideration, the MMA style is developing its own pedagogy: monikers like "ground and pound" and "sprawl and brawl" are becoming terminology used in the gym. This is the same thing, in my opinion. Now, the other bias is that an MA, in order to be an MA, has to have some philosophy or mindset, such as "doing good for the world" or "fighting for justice" while "maintaining loyalty to the instructor" and developing things like integrity, perserverance, indomitable spirit, etc. These are all good things to develop, too. Don't get me wrong here. However, most of someone's level of acceptance to these things will be based on personal opinion and philosophies. Guys like Gichin Funakoshi and Bruce Lee had some great personal philosophies; the problem is that often times people take them as the written word, without questioning or exploring for a philosophy of their own. One of the main reasons that the philosophies of these two gentleman took off as they did is because they were in positions of importance or visibility that allowed them to do so. Even though they are good philosophies, they are not my philosophy. I'll finish up with this: the Eastern mind and the Western mind just don't usually see things the same way. And this is ok. This is good, in fact. Variety is the spice of life. In the end, I think it is important to look at things that develop in the West with a Western eye, as opposed to trying to fit it into an Eastern mold.

Part of studying a culture is learning and knowing its fighting culture. I think that there is much that one can learn from observing and studying a Martial Art or culture's fighting style, and by not actively participating in a style, art, or organization, then the observer can perhaps more easily make unbiased observations, points, conclusions, etc.

Congrats!

Welcome back. Always good to see old faces pop in.

Looks pretty good. I don't think I have seen the latest one yet, though. I need to catch up.

Congrats! It sounds like quite the feat you made it through.

In time, I think you will. It just takes a while to get used to again. 7-30-08 At the park Dips: 2x5 Austrailian pull-ups (?): 2x10 These really hit the biceps. Combat Hapkido: 7:00 - 8:00. Taught again tonight. I worked with one newer student, and then the other one joined us at 7:30. At that point, they worked together. I pretty much did some of the same drills that we did on Monday of this week. These two students seem to be very interested in the Hapkido program, so I am hoping that we can get this thing to take off.

You may be sore from doing movements that your aren't used to doing on a regular basis. The side kick motion is not one that is done often outside of the Martial Arts, so you may be going through an adjustment period. If the pain continues much past two weeks time, I would go see a doctor about it.