alsey

you got to love bruce

wow dude, good decision. you're the first person i ever met/talked to on the internet that's been in a real sword fight.

in my experience, the thought of striking pressure points didn't even enter my head. i admit i havn't trained much in pressure point striking, but to me the thought of trying to hit one on an opponent who doesn't want to get hit and is trying to hit you is absurd. if you have control of an opponent in a grappling situation, then pressure point strikes become more practical. i find them quite good for setting up locks. at the end of the day if you can honestly hit these points consistently in a real fight and do more damage than a punch to the face, then you're incredibly skilled IMO and that's what you should do. however, i don't believe you i have yet to see a decisive pressure point strike anywhere ever, so please understand my skepticism.

yeah, same here. i forgot about that one.

btw, i didn't bite people!

mine is an old nickname from when i used to get into fights and stuff. apparently i used to fight like an alsatian, hence alsey

my advice would be not to do anything that hurts it. a couple of years ago i pulled a muscle in the small of my back (i forget what its called) doing kendo. i didn't think much of it at the time, but i kept training and doing things which would hurt it again and make my back seize up. eventually i saw a doctor, and he told me i'd damaged the muscle. because i kept doing stuff with it, i made the recovery process last an extra two months and i couldn't train at all for a few weeks. stretch it and exercise it, but try to avoid that odd twinge; that only slows your recovery. but yeah, seeing a doctor would be the best thing.

i practice vipassana meditation for a total of about half an hour to an hour a day. vipassana is a mindfulness or awareness type meditation. does it help my martial training? it helps everything. learning to meditate was the best thing i have done in my life.

in terms of continents, israel is in asia. near east and middle east are pretty much the same thing geographically, but near east is usually used in a historical context. so on the news you'll hear middle east, but an archaeologist would probably call it the near east.

personally i'd quite like to see white-green-brown-black, or 20 different colors-black. but let black be black. its the beginner end of the scale where grades are helpful IMO, not the other end.

i thoroughly agree, rick. i think your trip to okinawa revealed things i often see when i look into MA organization, though probably on a greater scale. everytime i read something or talk to someone about organizations and stuff 'high up' in MA, its never encouraging. at the start we're always told how MA is all about respect and stuff, but i don't see it. not at the top anyway. you get respect from a group for doing what they say, and in doing that you don't get respect from everyone else. ultimately my views on MA politics are much like my views on 'real' politics. it all sucks but there's not much i can do about it and i prefer to forget about it except for the rare occations where my opinion counts for something. MA politics are worse in a way though, because at least in real world politics there is democracy. in MA we still have feudalism or even despotism at times.

i was thinking eko would do it quite well. at least, he's probably the only guy on the island i'd be scared of fighting

sooooo, anyone seen the season 3 preview yet? http://spoilerslost.blogspot.com/2006/09/new-season-3-promo.html (probably not a good idea if you havnt seen all of season 2 yet!!) looks pretty cool. apparently desmond and henry are going to be regulars as well. i can't wait.

here's a few trailers: http://vforvendetta.warnerbros.com/trailer.html

that makes sense i guess. which book was it? abernethy's one of my heroes.

fitness mainly. when i started i wasn't really unfit, just average, but now i'm a lot fitter than all the non-MA people i know. flexibility and strength as well. physically MA just got me in really good shape. the other major thing is self discipline, something i used to seriously lack. other than that i just got a lot of enjoyment from it, its the best hobby ever

he died doing what he loved. and yeah, he was a legend.

not a good idea in my opinion. your sense of pain is a guide to how far you should stretch the muscle, without that you could injure yourself.

so does anyone know why pinan shodan/heian nidan was originally the first kata? its considerably more complicated than pinan nidan/heian shodan. its something i've never quite understood.

i enjoyed it. i don't usually like comic book films, but this was a bit different. probably won't ever watch it again, but it was good. hugo weaving and natalie portman were awesome as usual.

as far as i know there's not much you can do, its essentially the same thing as smoking. the only way to get rid of the effects is to get out of that environment and stay out of it. i'm an ex-smoker and if i could have negated the health risks with suplements, i'd probably still be smoking.

i love that feeling. usually if i'm alone and its quiet, i get that when i do a kata. its very meditative, there's no you or anthing else, just the kata. if you're talking about what i'm talking about, its not due to endorphins. even if you do the kata really slowly so you're not really exerting yourself, you will still get that feeling. mushin is the perfect word for it.

that's mainly because no one agrees on what exactly chi is. proving the existence of chi would be like proving the existance of love or something. its very difficult to examine in a scientific manner, though i'm sure someone will do it sometime in the future. yeah, i agree. in jujitsu we use pressure points quite a lot, usually in setting up arm locks. they often work very well, especially against smaller opponents, but its still not something to rely on.

eastern medicine doesn't really have an answer, because for a start it doesn't even tell you what the energy is or what the lines are. eastern medicine, from what i know of it, is pretty much a 'if you do this, this happens' thing. western medicine does have an explanation; the nervous system.

try googling stretching routines or something. my advice though would be to just start karate. you'll be taught how to stretch, and then if you just do that every day your flexibility will gradually improve. probably the most important things are to be warmed up when you stretch, and to hold the stretches. as for self defence, i think stretching helps in several ways. if the muscles are more supple, you can tense them and relax them faster (so i'm told, i don't actually know how that works) which means faster movement in general. plus it can help you get out of things. at my jujitsu club, i'm notoriously difficult to lock up because i'm more flexible than most of them (probably because i've done karate). finally i've often seen people pull muscles when doing a punch or a kick. no point knowing self defence techniques if doing them suddenly in a real situation will get you injured.