alsey

well none of those are technically styles of karate, though tang soo do and kenpo have a lot of similarities to karate. i havn't practiced any of them much myself so you might want to take a look at the wiki pages on them before someone else more knowledgeable arrives: kenpo - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenpo aikido - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aikido tang soo do - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_Soo_Do kenpo tends to vary quite a bit. from what i have seen of it it seems quite karate like, with striking but also a good bit of grappling. i've done a tiny bit of aikido; the principle is using the opponents movement against them, usually resulting in a throw of some sort. its a very 'nice' art to practice. tang soo do is like a korean version of karate i think. sorry if any of this is wrong, as i said i don't know much about these arts. don't worry about your size. everyone is different and different size bring different advantages and disadvantages in martial arts. there are little people who can beat big people, and big people who can beat little people. it doesn't really matter.

yeah, i hope i didn't sound like i was criticizing you for what someone else was doing. though i do think as a member of that school you should try to do something about it. its not just the fact that he's calling himself a doctor without the proper qualifications. to me doing something like that just says that the person is dishonest, which is something you really don't want in an instructor.

dude that's just misleading and unethical. you can't just call yourself a doctor just because you feel like it. becoming a doctor of anything takes years of study and work which is then peer reviewed to the finest detail; its insulting to those who have such qualifications and those who are training for them to just publicly announce yourself as a doctor. this IMO is the nail in the coffin for a school that seemed very dodgy in the first place.

i think he would either have carried on making movies (he'd be awesome as the stereotypical old kung fu master dude) or gone into MMA fighting. but who knows? anyone's life can take all sorts of unexpected turns.

dunno man, but i understand your question. ever seen master mutobo? i have this picture of him and he has such a beer belly.

these days i mostly practice jitte, enpi and jion, though i do all the heians, tekki shodan, bassai dai and kanku dai from time to time.

daimyo i totally agree with that about having to do one of the heians or tekki shodan. we did the same thing. i did kanku dai for my shodan though. its not that suicidal as long as you practice it a lot, but kata was always my favorite part of karate and i probably practiced it more than most students at my dojo.

i'd actually say karate is mostly grappling in its old forms. all real combat styles are mainly about grappling. but modern karate-do as it is practiced in most schools is for all intents and purposes a striking art.

some people just want to have a fight, which is of course ridiculous.

its hard to find genuine information on ninja because of the way they were perceived when they were around, and the way they are portrayed today. i've read many books, websites, and magazine articles claiming to give a 'real history of ninja' or something to that effect, and most of them contradict eachother. you have to remember that ninja were very secretive and when they were around they were commonly believed to have magic powers and stuff. because of this not much real historical information exists about them, and as you will find if you do research, a lot of it is contradictive. from what i know (or think i know), the ninja were hardly cool. the samurai were much cooler however the modern idea of the ninja who flips out and kills people for no reason and has the ultimate power, yes that's pretty cool.

shotokan is the only style i've studied properly. i don't like the way karate is taught these days though. i guess my favorite styles are the old okinawan ones where combat was still the main reason for karate. i attended a ryukyu kempo seminar once, it was brilliant.

its a fundamental property of the universe. it represents balance, but also a changing balance. everything is constantly changing, and everything remains in balance.

i've never been in a formal full contact fight, though i've been in a few real fights. to be quite honest i don't want to get hit hard in the head if i can help it, i'll save that for real fighting.

lol what an idiot. he was asking for it.

very good! you won without having to fight. that's what every martial artist should strive for.

i'm not that familiar with sochin, but that looked pretty good! if i'm ever outdoors somewhere and there's no one around, i'll always do a kata or two. mountains are incredible for kata.

for me kata is all about practicing real combat techniques. any athletic benefits or anything else is a (good) side effect.

jion was the last kata i learnt, and i havn't practiced it much compared to the other kata i know. its got that feel to it though. some katas you just know when you do them the first few times that they're gonna stick with you for a long time. i'm practicing it more now, i mainly just do jion, jitte and enpi these days.

yeah there's no need to wash a gi at high enough temperatures for it to shrink. not for a half decent gi anyway. i've never washed a belt either.

good post legkicker. i've been to four different JJJ schools; two of them called it jujitsu, one called it ju-jitsu, one called it jujutsu. you'll see these variations on spelling crop up everywhere in japanese martial arts (in fact, in anything japanese, chinese or korean translated into english. you can also see it in arabic or any other language that doesn't use roman letters when you translate it). i'll also say that in those four schools the amount of groundwork varies quite a bit. 15% groundwork is probably a bit low in my experience, i'd say more like 25%. at my current dojo the seniors seem to do mostly groundwork.

nidan shotokan. i quit shotokan a couple of years ago while i was preparing for sandan. i just got completely fed up of the way it was taught these days.

karate dojos usually have smooth wooden floors. if you wear socks you're gonna slip over. you can grip the floor a lot better without socks. plus, in all honesty, you look a bit stupid in a gi and socks.

yes, i've already admitted that. i've been in and seen real street fights and they look nothing like anything i've ever seen in a dojo, and neither do they look like UFC. maybe the general opinion is different on this forum (i'd only been here a day or two when i made that previous post), but among the people i know in real life often the UFC really is seen as the ultimate in fighting and everyone goes on about how realistic it is. its not realisitic, but that doesn't mean that its bad or that the fighting methods used in it are bad.

very good point. however, it probably wouldn't have been that uncommon for a street thug in okinawa to carry a staff of some sort.

i don't think anyone thinks all styles are equal; they're all different and have different advantages and disadvantages. until you define exactly what you mean by 'better' then its subjective and no style can be said to be better than another. once you define precisely what 'better' means, then some styles will be better than others.