ckdstudent

Depends, you cannot say simply because someone is stronger they will win. Speed, luck, reflex, flexibility all come into it. However, with all other things being equal the stronger fighter will win. Of course, all other things being equal the faster fighter would win a fight as well. Moral of the story: all things are never equal, judging from incomplete information is impossible and you can never have complete information.

Hmm, we'd have a kid like that either: a) doing pressups or something equally distasteful (depending on the kid) each time b) being given a loud dressingdown in front of the class c) sitting out until they were ready to adjust their attitude

No, the most dangerous is definitely the hyperactive, ten year old yellow belt. Especially when you give pressups as a punishment so they've got shoulders like Schwarzenegger. Actually that's an exaggeration, but I agree with you in principle.

Easy. Shotokan karate. Tai Chi has become more a meditation than an art, and much more suited to those with the patience, diligence and attention to detail and technique to make it effective. Shotokan however is fairly easy to learn at a basic level, and when you have mastered the techniques power will come, besides which a twelve year old girl is most likely to be fighting twelve year olds or adults. I don't know if you've seen a young kid who's been studying say, judo, for a few years trying to throw a reasonably heavy (not trained, just heavy and instinctively rooted) adult its a fairly sad sight. However I have been hit by a ten year old girl at her full power, and been floored (not knocked out, but physically knocked over from the force, and I don't have bad balance), until that point I had never appreciated how much power young kids can generate, but there's a lot in there, easily enough to defend themselves. _________________ --------- Pil Sung Jimmy B [ This Message was edited by: ckdstudent on 2002-06-24 17:05 ]

There is more than one style of karate, see if you can guess the reason why... ...no luck? Perhaps its because it means that people *don't* have to wear out their knees in low stances, or kill the nerves in their forearms and shins (that's basically what conditioning is, training yourself to ignore pain response, and killing your nerves in thr process).

Now I agree with you completely. If I trained with people I trust with completely (my friends fall into this category, but instructors aren't allowed to train together in class) then I'd have no problems with the same type of training that you do, or even harder. Unfortunately I'm somewhat paranoid and with good reason. While I know that I can pull a punch to brush cloth rather than to break a rib I also know that most of the juniors in my club don't.

If they attack me then everything they have is forfeit, not merely for my safety but simply to prevent me being bruised or hurt in the least. I wouldn't kill someone who just tried to punch me in a random swing, but I wouldn't hesitate to kick them in the groin or knock them unconscious with a nearby beer bottle.

Honour is overrated.

Might be easier to say for those who don't like this type of training, rather than those who can't take it. I know I can take hits, I just don't see any need to when I'm training, if that makes me weak or a coward then so be it but I'll experience less pain overall.

Yes. Way back in feudal Japan. Unfortunately murder purely because you don't like the way someone teaches is no longer condoned in many countries. Even if it was wouldn't it be easier simply to talk to the students, explain to them the problems with what they're doing, and then if they still want to do it let them and if not allow them to enter your school instead?

Actually on that I do agree with you, dedication is an essential. The problem is that as an art gets bigger, and this is any art, not any particular one, you will always get those coming into it purely for the money. Its a fact of life, a pity, but it happens. Some martial arts actually try to minimise this by requiring certification in order to start up a Choi, when the certificate can only be granted after you've attained a certain rank and standard. Being a young art we have an advantage in this. Anyone teaching Choi badly is simply expelled from the art, because the name is copyrighted and so cannot be used by anyone whom Grandmaster Choi has not given permission to use it. With something like Karate or Tae Kwon Do, or even Kung Fu the fact that there are different styles makes it inevitable that you will get those purely in it for the money waving the flag of the style, and of course it is hard to do anything about them because then you'd have to decide what exactly the style was, which would upset those doing things differently but still well.

Yes, and for training do the army take new recruits and chuck them into the battlefield, or do they start off with wargames? For full power techniques we use shields, meaning you can hit as hard as you want and not actually injure anyone or be at risk of seriously hurting anyone, and yet you still get used to throwing full power techniques. There are people in the class, myself amoung them, who know that if someone attacks us it'll probably only take one blow to finish the fight because we've personally had to do this, but we never trained to hit each other, bare knuckle at near-full power simply so that we could get used to it. Like I said, save the injuries for your attacker. The whole point of CKD is training people for self-defense without injuring them in class. Apparently your style thinks differently, that's fair enough. You take all of the hardcases who enjoy beating each other up in class and we'll take everyone else. I'm not trying to be impolite or disrespectful here, but that is essentially what both of our styles want. You want the people who enjoy the violence and the chance to wail on each other, we want the people who want to learn to defend themselves without getting hurt in the process. Different philosophies.

Unfortunately we do live in that type of culture, and we've got to live with it and adapt. As for the statement that you need to take punches and kicks in training or you'll go down in real life I'd have to argue although this may just be because I'm naturally tough (although I doubt it). I had never taken a severe punch in my life, and the first time I did was some guy in a park who wanted my wallet, so he hit me with a chain wrapped round his fist as hard as he could. I was still upright and barely even dazed, able to finish the fight with little difficulty before continuing on my way home. I also have friends who were in similar situations (without the chain) and yet none of them went down. My sister (tiny little girl, don't know why anyone attacked her as they did and I would quite calmly break every single bone in their body one at a time if I ever find them) took a backfist around the head once at school and didn't suffer for it at all, except for a bruise on her cheek. As I said, maybe me, my family, and my friends and the people I train with are all exceptionally tough, but somehow I doubt it. The simple fact is that in a real fight most people have no idea how to put real power behind a technique, that takes training, and most of the time once you're trained you're less willing to get into a fight, or at least that's the idea.

I suppose that might be a slight difference in ideology between our arts. Choi is supposed to teach you how to defend yourself, any other benefits (which are there such as discipline, confidence, and so on) are purely side effects of the way we train and not the reason that we train that way. As such Choi is very much a non-traditional art (hell, its only fifteen years old), so it would be hard to ditch tradition in favour of cash when we've not really had time to build up much of either.

Yes, and there's no way Senegal could beat France, no way England could beat Argentina. Wait, odds don't tell you everything? I never knew that one. Anything can happen, always.

If a higher rank laughs at a white belt they deserve to be flat down, either from the white belt or someone equal or senior to them, by that level they should have learnt respect. Do you know how much it costs to learn to drive, taking account of insurance, licensing, lessons and the two tests (theory and practical)? How about this one. As a foreign student in England going to college (high school for the Americans) you'd be expected to pay something in the region of £10'000 as your fees, plus accomodation. Going to University I'm going to be paying £1000 a year, and I'll probably end up earning more through martial arts than through a job (although since the subject I'm studying puts me in high demand maybe not), so paying £500 or so for a years training and grading, including insurance, licensing and as many classes as I can make it to (up to eight a week unless I'm willing to make over an hours drive) doesn't really seem that bad after all. Actually since I'm now an assistant I don't pay monthly fees either, so that cuts it down to about £100 a year. And before you call my instructor money grabbing I'd just like to point out that he has lived for eighteen months out of the back of a van, six months in an attic, four in a garden shed and eight in a wendy house simply so that he can keep his schools running and pay for courses to improve his own knowledge to pass on to us.

From the way you put it it sounds like karate is an art for violent masochists. That's really gonna help the art spread and gain new students. Its also going to be really useful when it comes to the insurance issue.

And its a good thing to walk away from a class bleeding and bruised? Personally I'm quite happy to save injuries for the people who try to attack me, not my training partners who are, after all, on my side.

I won't say something's not up, but this does seem to happen every single time there's a world cup on. There's a match at some point where there's a bad decision and everyone starts yelling about it. Who remembers the Hand of God goal?

We use belts for several reasons, the first is to give people something to aim at. Its nice to have something solid which you can look at, and remember the work that you put in, and look back to where you started and see how far you've come since then. There's also the fact that we teach techniques at different levels, to give the students time to learn their new techniques, patterns and combinations. With the belt system they can go to any school and the instructor can instantly tell what they have, and have not been taught. I don't see the difference between this and say, GCSE or A-level qualifications. If you pass to the next level it means that you have met a set standard, and the instructor can tell that you can hold at least that level. Finally yes, there's money. Why is everyone so against instructors earning money from their art? If you want to go on a painting course, you pay for it. If you want to learn how to sculpt, you pay someone to teach you. If you want to learn to shoot you pay to learn at a range. If you want to learn to sail you pay someone to teach you and you pay for tests which give you relevant qualifications. If you want to learn to drive you pay for lessons and you pay for a driving test. What is it that makes martial arts so valueless that no one is willing to pay for them?

Gee, what a suprise, someone saying that the referee made bad decisions and that another team should have won the match. This is a novelty.

All parries are blocks, however not all blocks are parries.

The point is quite simple, backup. Martial arts won't always work.

Literally translates to 'Certain Victory', in fact we use it as just about anything, running from a greeting to Pil Sung spirit which is either persistance or sheer bloody-minded stubborness. Its the slogan of CKD. [ This Message was edited by: ckdstudent on 2002-06-23 10:23 ]

Actually I'm a Brit through and through, but there ya go. I always found it easier to ignore any non-serious diseases and simply continue with my life, if its serious I'll generally just go to bed for a few days until it calms down.