alsey

all the fights i've been in were situations in which the law was never going to get involved. but yeah, defending yourself can be pretty dangerous legally.

that doesn't sound good to me. for a start, if the lessons start late then you're not getting what you paid for. warm up and stretching is important, but at the end of the day its a TKD school and 20 minutes of TKD isn't enough IMO. its hard to learn anything if you're only doing it for 20 minutes a week. i'd find somewhere else if i were you.

zorbasan, a fully extended punch is finished. its not moving. you have to hit the target when the knuckles are moving fastest, then complete the punch as everything comes to a stop.

good luck for tomorrow!

exactly, you want self satisfaction. you want to make your self happy. meditation aims to get rid of this selfishness, to get rid of all desire. in some of its deepest forms, meditation aims to temporarily destroy the ego completely so there is no self. ironically, this quest for selflessness brings benefits to the self. as you put it, happiness and completion. sit down, close your eyes and breath. preferably somewhere quiet with no distractions. then just keep doing it; as in my sig. its all about patience. lots and lots of patience. i learnt to meditate from this book: http://www.vipassana.com/meditation/mindfulness_in_plain_english.php i thoroughly recommend it. elbows_and_knees has great advice too; training in MA will do wonders for your confidence and will give you some goals to go after.

to calculate the exact point at which the striking surface is moving fastest is practically impossible because there are so many variables. if you did come up with a figure, the error on it would be enormous. however you can find the point experimentally; breaking boards and stuff is a good way to do this.

meditation and desire for power don't go very well together. the thing with meditation is that the more you look and strive for benefits to the self, the less benefits you will recieve. if you practice meditation with this attitude you will either get annoyed and quit because you're not 'getting' anything, or you will gradually lose that attitude and then start benefit from it.

there is a tendancy these days for people to try and explain supernatural or seemingly supernatural phenomena with stuff like particle physics and quantum physics without actually understanding the physics. trust me, there's nothing in electromagnetic theory or particle physics that would help anyone explain ki.

i didn't see his fight with karo, but i voted no. diego is pretty good but not that good.

striking first gives you advantage. often, especially if the fighters are inexperienced, once that first strike advantage is gained, its very difficult for the other guy to overcome it.

well i'll find out soon enough. i have a jujitsu grading tomorrow, then i think i'm going to check out the BJC club. then in about a month i'll be checking out the BJA club. switching between governing bodies is something that's bothered me ever since i started MA. in jujitsu its really impeded my progress. hopefully the two organisations will recognise eachother to some degree.

yeah, the similarities are few. jujitsu is a samurai combat art designed mostly for the battlefield. ninjitsu involves a lot of things besides combat; espionage, stealth, disguise, even meteorology. the ninja and samurai were almost complete opposites in philosophy and practice.

i've spent the last four years doing a physics degree...this stuff is my bread and butter

ouch, is your foot ok now? and i agree with parkerlineage, bad things tend to happen when kicks are thrown simultaneously.

heh, i like that.

a strike will transfer the most energy to the target at the point at which the striking surface is moving fastest. as others have said, this is before full extention. when a strike is thrown, the limb extends and picks up speed and energy, reaching maximum speed near the end of the strike. this is when you want to make contact. just before the strike is completed, the striking surface rapidly decelerates. at full extention, the striking surface is stationary and carries no kinetic energy.

i mean ninja in the stereotypical action movie sense, not historically accurate sense

lol yeah...might have to think of something different then, or just go for the shoulder wheel and then take her home cos she'll be so impressed by how ninja i am.

bassai is fast and powerful in places, as are most kata. i wouldn't divide kata into fast kata and powerful kata. bassai has a lot of stamping around in it, while in tekki a lot of movements are done from one stance so tekki looks snappier. cathal, you're a kyu grade? when do they teach you hangetsu and gankaku in your school? i didn't learn gankaku until i was nidan.

i don't like that at all, if you practice the art then you are/should be a member of it. ugh...i hate MA politics.

i've done that a few times, in that bit of skin between the thumb and finger.

there are ways of facing death without actually dying

but no one's found a way, and there's no conceivable way that could happen. personally i think its mostly psychological. someone with strong ki can be seen to have strong ki, and that induces psychological effects in whoever is observing them. in theory, these effects can be enough to make someone back away or even run away screaming or something. but there's nothing flying through the air; its in the mind. i'd like to see someone try to use ki on a rock, for example.

with respect, particle physics has nothing to do with it.

all so true.