alsey

today i'm moving house again (i do that a lot), and the new house won't have an internet connection for a while. plus i'm starting a new degree and a new job so i'm going to be pretty busy for while. so yeah, i probably won't be around here for a few weeks. i'll be back though, this forum has been great. see you all soon

we've done the no blocking drill several times, its really good. if you can get to do this at your dojo its great for developing offensiveness.

in my opinion, the whole concept of spiritual mediums is absurd. if they tell you what's going to happen in your future and it does happen, they've either investigated it somehow and found out, or its coincidence. now, if this guy has got in touch with some burglars to rob your house then he's pretty stupid because you can report him to the police. if it was me, i would report him to the police right now just to be on the safe side. on the other hand if you honestly believe this guy can see the future, there's still not any point in worrying about it. if you prevent it from happening, then he was wrong. if he was right, then there's nothing you can do about it.

yes, apparently so. my dictionary defines combat as 'fighting' and it doesn't mention anything about intent to kill. i hate semantical arguments, so would it be better if we call it fighting instead of combat? all motobu said in that quote is that kata was not developed for fighting other trained fighters, but that it is effective against those who don't know the methods being used against them. whether you intend to kill the opponent or not is besides the point.

try being more offensive and make your opponent do the blocking. try to create openings instead of just waiting for them; throw some jabs or a kick to try to get the opponent to react, then counter as he does. its easier said than done, but you just have to attack. move towards him with the feeling that you can't be stopped, and attack. even if your strikes don't land, they force the opponent to move or block and hopefully he will open something in doing that.

yeah, the character changes have been great, though i want locke to go back to old school locke and start throwing knives at stuff again. i just felt sorry for him for most of season 2.

i don't see any conflict. combat is combat, it doesn't necessarily involve trained fighters. i agree. imagine if for some reason (hypothetically) you did those rifle drills, but without actually holding the rifle: you made the same movements with your hands and did all the breathing, but without the rifle. and then you pass on the 'kata' to some people who don't know much about rifles; they won't have a clue what you're doing. the squeezing the trigger action might be familiar, but everything else will be obscure and meaningless. this is analagous to what has happened with karate kata. there's a huge difference: katanas are sharp. to hurt someone with a bat you have to make a relatively big swing which the opponent can move inside of. a katana only needs a small swing to cut, or a thrust can be made. back to the original point though; i'd be much better off training to defend against a bat attack than a katana attack, because that's what i'm more likely to encounter. the kata movements just don't fit with someone throwing a high kick at you, in my opinion. the initial deflection might be similar, but the follow up wouldn't make much sense. but again, i want to train to defend myself from common attacks so i concentrate on punches. its not necessarily a matter of skill, its more one of actual techniques. a bar brawler with no formal training can still be skilled and dangerous, but he's not going to throw karate techniques at me. what i actually do in bunkai practice is train against a skilled opponent, but that opponent uses common street attacks rather than formal karate techniques.

i do it without noticing it really, i think i've always done it. i guess it adds confidence.

exactly. what about the UFC guys? tito oritz; i think his attitude is terrible but i'd never hesitate to call him a martial artist. royce gracie was arrogant going into that hughes fight, but in my opinion he's one of the greatest martial artists on the planet.

choki motobu: "the techniques of kata were never developed to be used against a professional fighter in an arena or on a battlefield. they were, however, most effective against someone who has no idea of the strategy being used to counter their aggressive behaviour." now fair enough, motobu wasn't exactly a founder of karate but he knew a load more about kata than anyone today does. in his time, kata was still the basis of genuine combative training. karate began before that. there were the minamoto samurai who fled from japan in the 11th century, and it was their bujutsu combined with chinese kempo that formed karate. it was the okinawan king sho shin who first imposed the ban on civilians carrying weapons, in the 15th century. there weren't many samurai running around, and the street fights a karateka was likely to encounter were much like those a citizen today is likely to encounter. they had cobble streets instead of tarmac ones, and nunchucks instead of baseball bats, but the enemy was the mugger, the drunkard, the burglar; the same threats we face today. it wasn't until the 17th century that the satsuma came to invade okinawa, and enforced a weapons ban in their own way. the okinawans and the samurai no doubt had a few fights, and who do you reckon won most of the time? the farmer who's fought a few thugs in the street with his bare hands, or the veteran soldier armed with a sword? no, you're right about that. no one's underestimating anyone. that's just what kata techniques work best against (i believe). why learn to protect yourself against oi tsuki or yoko geri if the chance of someone genuinely attacking you like that is rediculously small. i mean, maybe there's some guy out there who's going to attack me with a sword, but i don't spend my time learning how to defend myself from a sword attack. likewise, maybe there's some guy who's going to attack me with a roundhouse to the head, but i don't spend my time learning to defend against it because its highly unlikely to happen. what's likely to happen is that some guy will throw a punch or two, grab my lapel, push me, or tackle me. that's what i want to be 100% sure that i can defend myself against, and kata is pretty much perfect for dealing with those sorts of attacks. it so happens i've done plenty of kumite as well, so if someone does throw a roundhouse to my head, i'm not helpless, but that's not the focus of my training.

without the kata, you don't have the techniques. they're not taught in karate these days (in most schools). practicing kata helps you to understand what the movements are for, as well as giving a means of practice when you don't have a partner. there are some moves where me and the people i train with would develop an application, practice it, then later through doing the kata we'd find another application, sometimes a better one. yes. not as perfect as it looks in kata, but yes.

wow, that's interesting. so does it flex like a rapier blade?

its not been explained, but in the episode before the finale, one of the others asks michael if walt had ever appeared where he's not supposed to be, before the crash. he's definately got some powers of some sort, but we don't know anything about them really. i honestly think season 3 is going to answer quite a lot of questions, at least partially. they say something mind blowing is going to happen in the first 6 episodes, then i think after that the clues are going to start fitting together.

lol. its silly things like that that made star wars great.

i love that. asking for demonstrations is what i usually get when people find out, usually in the most unsuitable places.