EclecticFighter

Yup, many times. The 3 most memorable : 1) a long time ago, in kumite with no gloves , I decided to move forward while my opponent moved forward with a tsuki. He crushed my nose and I left a little bit of me everywhere in the building while trying to find something to stop the bleeding... 2) A twit twice my size punched me squarely in the face (no gloves) mostly because I was dancing around him in kumite and he wanted to prove himself that he was better than me. 3) My sensei punched me squarely on the tip of my chin. I keenly felt my head slide back on my spine.

Not at all. Self defence is mostly about how you react, not how you punch and kick or grab. If you know how to attack/defend, all you need to train is how you react. If your sensei cannot teach it to you, all you have to do is take a short class in self-defence. A good self-defence class will mostly concentrate on the psychological aspect, i.e. how to react and react fast. Well, in my case I mostly do kizami tsuki and kicks in combat and I don't do much block. So it's mostly a matter of dojo, instructor and your personal style. If you only do gyaku tsuki in combat it's because you have not practiced the other techniques enough to be at ease with them. If you suddenly end up in a real fight you will either forget all your training or do what you practiced the most because it became automatic. You will not suddenly do Jeet Kune Do stuff because you never trained in that art in the first place. Well, don't expect to learn everything you need to know in your dojo. I, like you, felt that my shotokan karate was inadequate. I didn't feel my technique was deficient, but I felt I didn't hit hard enough. So I started to train also at home on the makiwara and do one-arm pushups and one-leg squats. We don't do this in dojo but it took me only two weeks to be able to accomplish them. So can you. If you see something interesting in another martial art, study how it is done and try it in dojo during sparring. Sparring in dojo is about experimenting, right? I also felt I was not very good against takedown and doing takedown. So I am looking how others are doing it, for example in MMA fights. Each time I find something I am looking for, I study it and experiment it in dojo. Learning in martial arts is not just about waiting for your sensei to show it to you. Sometimes, your sensei doesn't teach something because he doesn't have time (there's too much else to show to the group) or he simply doesn't know it. You have to search for yourself too. In short, don't feel too bad, you are not alone in this situation. Always question yourself, it's a sure sign you are looking to improve and become a better MA.

It's hard for me to tell what I love most from the martial arts because since I started training I became a totally different person. I am more calm (I guess it helps venting the frustration), less annoying (bothering people) more in shape (guess why!) more confident because of what I can do and most importantly more focused. Being more focused is very important to me because I used to start a lot of projects at the same time and abandon most of them before completion. I also love to practice the techniques, spar and execute katas. I love to train with intensity, you feel great afterward because you feel like you have accomplished something (and it's true). Oh, and I love to kick (yeah, mostly kick) too

Pictures of what???

The bar should be high enough so you can hang under it without touching the ground with your feet and without having to bend your knees. You will then be also able to perform upside down situps without rubbing your head on the ground... I have seen on amazon or Yahoo someone who is selling a chinup/pullup bar that you bolt in a corner, i.e. each end of the bar is screwed on a different wall. Might be an interesting setup to save space. As for upside down situps, it is usually done with special boots equipped with clips you attach on the bar. I don't recommend you tie your feet on the bar with a rope, it will be a pain to do and undo it. As for other equipment, you can build yourself a makiwara (very easy) and I am personally planning to build myself a "pavelizer" with metal tubing and a tube bender to perform correctly Janda situps.

I too have trained on different surface : real tatamis with a very shock absorbant floor underneath, hardwood, concrete (bleah!), gymnastic mats (I hated those), asphalt, grass, laminate floor and right now we have interlocking mats like the one they use in sparring competition. The mats are great when you practice bunkai, throwing and such but your "connection" to the ground is very different from a hard floor. Practicing on many different surface is a very good thing. I personally prefer hardwood, better yet if it's an aerobic/sport floor because they make it shock absorbant which is nicer for your knees. As for the blisters, I stopped having them when I reached 1st kyu

I was 22 when I earned my shodan in Shotokan.

This is indeed what is practiced in many, many shotokan dojos. It gets even worse: most of the 2 by 2 techniques are practiced by only moving forward/backward. Talk about mobility... For a long time now my instructor has been dissatisfied with the big organizations. He is a product of the SKI and I am a product of the JKA. I am dissatisfied too, but I was afraid to switch from one organization to another like he is doing. Still I followed him. As time went on I could see that I was becoming more articulate and adaptable than those who stayed in their big organization. Worse, I was learning MORE from non-japanese masters. I'm not talking about technique here but how to fight, grappling extracted from kata movements, how to move in all directions. Right now we are learning from Steve Ubl. He is a direct student of Nakayama and his teachings are very martial-oriented. Gone are the big and flashy moves in the katas. The movements are more efficient and he teaches the associated bunkais. His bunkais involve a lot of grappling and simultaneous block-punch. When I practice my katas per his teachings, I feel like a beginner, I keep on fumbling my moves because my first impulse is to do the move has I have been doing it for the last 17 years. I feel very fortunate for this teaching because I have always been questioning my effectiveness in real combat and that is why I have started practicing daily on a makiwara. Steve's bunkais are an arsenal with which to expand my little punch-kick-block toolbox . I am very happy to meet a lot of like-minded people here because I feel very alone in a world surrounded by people who define themselves by their organization. It gives me faith in my coming years of training.

I can give you two reasons for this: 1) it is a tournament rule 2) when you grab, you must do something with it (unbalance your opponent, follow with a jointlock, etc) otherwise it is your opponent that will use it against you. He can countergrab you much more easily than you grabbed him or worse turn your grab into a jointlock or he can punch you easily because you only have one hand left to block...

Like everybody is saying, practice makes perfect and timing is everything. However you can make the proper situation happen. For example you can goad your opponent to move forward or backward and then sweep. But there is one very overlooked aspect in ashi-barai: grabbing. When you sweep, you should grab your opponent's sleeve with one hand and use it to further unbalance him. I have seen this done often in international karate championship. One of my favorite sweeper is Alexandre Biamonti, one of the greatest French karate champion. If you can get is videos or see them, you will know what it means to sweep in combat. And since he grabs at the same time, he can often makes his opponents spin in middair before hitting the mat! One of his most davastating sweep is the double sweep : he sweeps with one leg and then immediately follows with his other. If you don't fall on the first sweep, the second will finish you. Food for thoughts

When I moved away from home to go to college, I started looking for an activity to occupy my free time. I checked the list of activities at my college and there it was, karate in all it's glory. At the time I had not even seen a Bruce Lee movie! It turned out I was very lucky because I ended up with a good teacher. Being totally clueless at the time I could have ended up in a martial art school where the level of proficiency is very disputable without knowing it... That was a turning point in my life because it changed me from an obnoxious kid to a more mature and friendlier adult

Like your friend told you, it was because of panic. When you panic, you stop thinking. You fall into a "flee or fight" state. I remember being told that police officers use a technique for preventing them to fall into that state when they do car chases (it is a very dangerous situation). Anybody correct me if i'm wrong, but this is what I remember : When you fall in flee or fight state, your throat becomes dry. So during the whole ordeal, the officer must keep his throat moist (swallow his saliva) to keep his body out of that state. Controlling your breathing should help a lot too, but when you fight, that may prove to be a problem... As for what your friend should do is, like everybody said, keep training. But he should also consider attending a good self-defense class. In a _good_ self-defense class, you don't learn how to fight, you learn how to react. Well, just my thoughts.

I do the following everyday at home (well okay, I rest one or two days a week) : - Naked Warrior workout (one-legged squats + one arm pushups) - Janda situps - various exercices for the back, but I am starting to consider the deadlift seriously - gripper for the hands - Makiwara striking (a real traditional one, not the cheap pads sold everywhere) plus I use the forced relaxation technique to increase my split

Thank you very much! This looks like a most excellent book to investigate!

While we're on the subject of pressure pojnts, I see a few people here give specific names to some pressure points (ex: Lung 5, TW17...) Is there a widely accepted method of naming the pressure points? If yes, where can I find a human body chart with them and the explanation of the effect of each? It can be on the web or a book, as long as it's good