kyop

I had the same problem as grandmasterchen in that I broke the bag with a side kick. Not 8 times though, I'm over 50 so it takes more work to bust one. I like the feel of the hanging wavemaster with the water core and the foam. It has the feel of hitting a torso. The sand filled bags tend to be like a brick at the bottom and I like to hang them where the bottom is near solar plexus level and you can uppercut them. If you keep hitting something this hard and forget your gloves occasionally, you're probably going to end up with arthritis in your hands. I didn't give a flip about that in my twenties but now I sweat a lot and when I broke the bladder in the wavemaster I thought that I was really sweating up a storm until I noticed that there was about 2 gallons or more on the floor

GOM: I primarily use a korean thrust side-kick but don't sell snap kicks short. I've seen some japanese style fighters that have lethal side kicks. They seem intuitively easy to block but when you have the timing and power from 10 or more years of doing it over and over and over, trust me, you can jam it and it will still hurt you. The issue of staying vertical is based on "What do you do for an encore?" At higher levels, you're not going to one-technique a lot of fighters. When your leaning back as you side kick you're a one-trick pony. If you have enough strength and flexibility to stay near vertical, you can come off the kick rapidly with a strong hand technique. I love karate studio ads in the yellow pages where the person is doing a side kick head-high but their head is at ankle level. God help you when someone gets a hold of that foot and plows the north 40 with you. But why get your hands dirty when you can kick out the supporting leg and do an Irish jig on their head? I've always loved high kicks but low kicks are so darn effective. When you get side kicked on top of the quad and become a uni-ped, you can appreciate how a fighter can get lazy from taking that free candy. In a real fight, people just don't understand after you do this and try to explain how courteous you were for not blowing out their knee. Ingrates!

We had to do all the preceding tests in order. Gold, green, blue, brown, etc. All basic stances with blocks and strikes, then every kick known progressing to flying front, round and side kicks. Breaking included jump spin back kick (easy on the kickers but hard on the holders). Flying side kick break (3 boards with no exception based on gender). Then forms - Korean forms from Chon-ji through Chung-mu+ Kwang-gae then Japanese forms Heian 1-5, Tekki Shodan and Bassai. Sometimes you had to do forms twice. Then lots of 1 step-sparring. Then, when your legs were good and rubbery, the free-fighting started. Lots of one on one with your peers working up to 2v1, 3v1. The multiple opponent stuff was against gold and green belts but they hand picked thugs. At this point in the testing, you weren't supposed to win. Like many of the hard-core school testings described above, the point of the black belt test was to take you to your mental and physical limit and then give you a kick in the butt beyond that breaking point. The goal was to survive not pass. Probably the "best" part was little or no water for the 3 hours. Insane! I was up that night at 3AM uncontrollably slurping down water and refrigerated water melon. My thirst mechanism went haywire and I certainly should have been on an IV. Years later, I tested at a traditional TKD school where, as the saying goes, during the trip from the orient to the states, the instructor/owner advanced one degree in rank for every time zone passed. The test criteria there was this, "Did the check clear?"

Could probably use a little more info. Are you in a traditional TKD school? I've trained primarily in non-traditional TKD but had a brief exposure to a traditional school. In the non-traditional schools, we practiced leg sweeps, groin strikes and lots of punching. I trained in a traditional school after moving to a small town and went to one of their tournaments. I fought in black belt division and got a point deducted and screamed at in Korean for throwing a well controlled head punch. Lost the fight because of that dirty technique. I told the instructor/owner of the school that they give you trophies for doing that in open tournaments. Better yet, in street fights, you maybe get to go on living. I quit that school about a week later but before I did, I just had to ask the black belts there this question..."What do you think the first 2 things are that will happen to you in a street fight?" They had no idea so I offered, "You'll probably either get kicked in the crotch or punched in the face." They were incredulous. No way this would happen! Ummmhh...okay. If you have good kicks and can grapple but have been taught that your hands are for keeping your balance while your kicking, maybe boxing is the answer. Any system that will teach you how to get those hands working. It's a nice fall back position when you get to be a geezer like me and your legs don't want to jump up in the sky like they used to.

I don't want to read too much into your post but first you placed limitations upon yourself, citing "medical conditions". But immediately thereafter, you have a problem with conditions imposed by someone else??? What are you in it for? Is it to outshine everyone else or to achieve goals that are specific to you? I've been at it 35 years and I'm a shodan. Granted, I'm a shodan in 3 different systems but that's as far as I'm going to go. I train in a gi bottom and a t shirt. My belt, when I wear it, is really nice and new looking. I sat on the testing board of people who now wear these stringy frayed black belts and really look the part. So what? I practice forms up to 5th degree and do them quite well IMHO. When I competed, I fought dudes with more stripes on their belts than I could count and it had no bearing on the outcome. I wouldn't have tested for black belt but it got people to leave me alone. I could then get advice from people who I sought out because I saw they had something special and I wanted to learn about it. I tested, got my shodan and convinced myself that "It don't get no blacker". Actually, it gets more stringy and then red and white or some such thing. Take 2 fighters of greatly different abilities and put the black belt on the weaker one and a green belt on the better one. Let them fight and see what it all means. Like the prior posts say, it doesn't mean much at all. Kinda like the Wizard of Ox handing out watch-fob hearts, diploma brains and courage medals. Quite the illusion!