bushido_man96

That is interesting info. I wonder if Mr. Norris has a website with the info on it. I think I also heard somewhere that Norris was the first westerner awarded the rank of 8th degree black belt. Can anyone confirm this?

I think that sounds cool. Anyone who has read my posts concerning Capoeria knows I think it would be cool to learn, regardless of its practicality. I think it will give you some very interesting kicking options to work with. And they have some cool arial stuff too.

I heard a statistic once: 10% of the people who start training a martial art make it to black belt. Then, only 10% of those go on to 2nd dan, and 10% of those on to 3rd, etc. From what I've seen in my career, this seems fairly close.

Good luck! I am sure you will do fine.

That is a great article. So much good stuff in there, I will have to reference it many times. Lots of new stuff to me as well. Many people train to enhance their physical speed, but don't give a lot of thought to the mental aspects of speed. I will now. Thank you. Keep contributing....you have good stuff!

I agree with you Jaymac. I also feel that it is important that the juniors of the schools receive the respect that they deserve as well. Without the juniors, we can't be seniors.

Murphy's Law: anything that can go wrong, will go wrong!

I don't know if I would change the belt system so much as I would change the time between testings, i.e., adding more time.

Did your school at that time ever break boards as testing requirements?

Props to you buddy! You are a bigger man than I.

That is something that the sport styles have over the more traditional styles. I know that my conditioning isn't the greatest, but I am working on improving it.

One things for sure, I don't think I could take too many low kicks and last very long. I admire and respect the conditioning of Thai boxers.

I would have to agree with patusai, and say kickboxing. But it depends mainly on your style; how active you are in the ring.

Ok, so I guess the cofusion I had with kenpo/kempo is about equivalent to the cofusion you had for jui-jitsu/ju-jutsu. See, we are not idiots, just not informed!

Oh, yes. Maybe I should find some of those. I do have the ICHF videos, and I like them a lot.

I tried to see if I could find jumps or cuts in the video, but I don't have a well trained eye for that. Not sure.

Really focus your efforts on the basics. If I had to choose I'd say your three best guard submissions are going to be armbar, triangle and kimura. Three best guard sweeps will be scissor, push sweep and elevator. The best submissions from the mount would be armbar and kimura. With the gi on you should also practice the cross chokes. Learn the upa escape and elbow escape from the mount and at least one way to open the guard and get back to your feet. That may sound like alot but it's really not. Some other things may be very difficult to learn without the instruction of someone who knows what they're doing well. Oh yeah!!! OF COURSE THE REAR NAKED CHOKE is extremely valuable. Don't know how I forgot to put that in there. Thank you. Very helpful advise. Need to get my brother around now for a partner.

Anytime, ps1.

Sounds like you had a very constructive learning environment. When I think of two schools getting together and working out, this is the scenario that I think of.

Wow! Unbelievable. That is fast.

I say go for it. You can learn great manipulation tactics from Hapkido, and I think you will enjoy it. What style of Hapkido is it?

Thanks, Sohan. That is info that I did not know about. I do have some of Chu's books, and they are great, too. I don't always know who is credible and who is not.

Thanks for the advise, Sohan. I think I will bookmark those sites. I also have some of the Gracie books. I could peruse them and work something out.

I like breaking boards as well. They demonstrate focus and power. But, my question was, do you practice it in class prior to having students perform them in testing?

My classes are pretty uniform as we practice basic techniques in the form of the Shotokan's Ten-no-kata Omote at the beginning of each and every class for about 10 minutes. After that we will branch in to more varying kihon (basics) for about 20 mins and then Kata (forms) for an hour and kumite (sparring) for a half-hour after that (actual times may vary from class to class). Sounds like you have a long class. That would be nice, though. Ours is only an hour long, but I can go 4 times a week. I think if I ever started a school again, I would have 1.5 hour classes.