username8517

Here are a couple places: World Wide Martial Arts Kamikaze

Who says you don't? Yeah, guess I set myself up for that one didn't I

You hear that Patrick, he's calling you out

Yeah, I figured, but thought it couldn't hurt to show you.

Yes, but the key thing to remember is what kind of quality of posts are those? If I was to just type utter non-sense day in and day out I would be on the track to hit 5000 too. Just joking of course. Congratulations busihdo_man! Keep up the good work.

Here is the one Asain World Martial Arts offers: Weighted Vest

Currently I pay nothing to train. (a perk of being an instructor ) But the place where our dojo is at is in a rec center. Membership to the rec center was either $80 or $125 for a year (prices went up a bit since the new year, I think like an extra $20 but I'm not positive)--depending on whether you live in that particular city or not--but that also includes free access to all the other facilities such as a weight room, track, swimming pool, gymansium, aerobics room, baby sitting services, game room, etc. Not a bad deal in my opinion.

I agree with a lot of what you say. From my personal experience, I started MA when I was a child. My reasons for starting it at the time was because I had three cousins in there, I enjoyed hanging out with them, and most importantly, I thought it would be fun. Heck, even my brother soon joined after I did. However, I soon found out that karate was not all fun and games, wax on/wax off (to use a term fitting to your terminology), and flying through the air. It was about real dedication and hard work. And one by one, they all started to drop out as time progressed and real life got in the way. Heck, even I got out of MA when I was around my freshman year of high school so I could have more of a social life. After all, I had just gotten my first degree black belt a year prior, what more was there left to know? But after leaving high school and entering the real world, I found my passion for martial arts never really disappeared and I got back in. What does this have to do with your original question you ask: Well it serves as a backdrop to my answer. Yes I think large amounts of children can be detrimental to MA, but there are upsides to it as well. The problem I see is when children are put into martial arts at too young of an age in order to protect themselves from a bully at school, as a social event, or as a means of giving the child something to do while mommy and/or daddy does something else (i.e.--MA as a baby sitter). With the bully scenario, children are often not equipped to deal with a bully mentally or emotionally--and some times physically--until they reach an age of maturity where they can stand on their own and say I've had it! It's the parent's responsibility to watch after the child until that point--not some 8th degree black belt who only sees a student maybe 2-3 hours a week. After all, kids often imitate what they see in real life. If you doubt me at all, put a group of kids together and have them watch 30 minutes of Power Rangers and see how many start jumping around kicking and punching like the red ranger not an hour after the show is over. So this creates a problem--are you going to show little Johnny how to do a proper throat strike and just hope he doesn't do it if he's ever picked on? Or do you basically dumb down the techniques and applications you show him to ones that are less debilitating or permanent in nature? What about the students who are just there socially or because they're parents want them to be? Odds are these children will have increased difficulty keeping attention, paying proper respect, and staying quiet. But then again, if they leave, so does mommy and daddy's wallet. So what are your options here. Make things more fun? Put more focus on no contact (or light if any is allowed at all) sparring and hitting bags and focus less on proper techniques and applications? Like you, I'm at the point in my life and training where I would perfer my training to be in someone's garage or basement. Where I would come home sore and bruised. Training where I limp out of there not because I'm injured, but because I've pushed my body that far and that hard. However, would I be training today if my martial arts as a child had not instilled that passion in me? Hard to say for sure but I would probably say no if I had to put money on it. This is really where the paradox of children in martial arts comes into play--retention. For every 1000 students that enter martial arts for various reasons, if only 3% stay around past getting their black belt (just making number up here) and keep training hard, if not harder than they had in the past, then that still 30 skilled and talented martial artists who might not be around today.

You know what they say about great minds Yes to an extent. But bear in mind you can get bad instruction at a place that isn't a McDojo too. A thin line exists here that I think needs the following for clarification: A McDojo will show you technique after technique after technique, kata after kata after kata, and so on as you move up the ranks rather quickly. You may even get some good advice on how to perfect your technique or make it "competition pretty", but until they show you the actual application of the move(s), you essentially do not know how to execute them. Only through actual first hand experience of applying said move(s) against a moving resisting target will you learn the critical parts of technique--distance, timing, proper breathing, effects of proper execution (i.e.--what actually happens when you hit someone in a target loctaion), etc. This is often how some people find out that they are in a McDojo. They get together with another martial artist for a round of friendly training in the name of MA and they find their skills are lacking.

Several people have made similar comments to the one above. My question is: Too late for what? I mean unless the individual is extremely old, or becomes permenantly injured when does it become too late? Just an example off the top of my head, say two months into a signed year long contract. You now bound to fulfill the year's worth of payments even if you never show up again.

Hello and welcome

Also check to see how many times a week you are allowed to train at their facilities. While it may seem that the boxing is the most expensive at first glance, they might offer more training times a week than the others.

Yes, congratulations indeed.

Don't know if they have any offical rank or not, but Tommy Lee Jones and Benicio Del Toro learned Sayoc Kali for the movie The Hunted

Ditto

Unfortunatley I don't think I can respond to the poll as I don't think I've retained a single thing from any of the economics classes I took in college.

I will agree with this. However, as I think we both will agree to is that kata is not the end-all-be-all of martial arts. As it's been stated before, all the proper and perfect technique in the world isn't going to do any good if you don't have practice exerting the moves in real application. Now please bear in mind, I'm not saying kata is useless either. It is a tool that provides many many benefits if one chooses to both utilize and understand them. Can you get by without it and be a well equiped fighter--sure--I'm not arguing that. But to disregard kata because there are other means of training is not a valid stance for getting rid of it in my opinion. For example, you probably have multiple ways to get to work in the morning--you can drive your car, take a bus, carpool, ride a bike, etc. Each one having their own benefits and drawbacks to those who choose to take them (just like various training methods available to everyone). For the sake of debate, let's say I was pro-bus and you were pro-drive your own car. Would you advocate that buses, bikes, and carpools were useless and outdated because cars are a valid substitute and you can still get to work fine without them? How well do I know these other techniques I don't practice--certainly not as well as the 12 I do Okay, all joking aside, I know of them well enough to give instruction on them and look for potential ways to improve them/correct errors. But certainly not well enough where I would utilize them as a spontaneous response in an actual situation. There are some I will play around with from time to time in light sparring just to see how they work. And yes, obviously there are a few moves that are natural enough to work for everyone across the board with some modification. But those certainly are not the only techniques you practice correct?

That is one of the many reasons kata is taught. But since there are other benefits to it, saying people are taught kata just because it's part of a system is a generalization that I find completely off. I certainly hope not. If I, as male who is approximately 6'3 and 230 lbs, completely disregard all moves and techniques that I don't find useful, and focus only on those 12 twelve techniques I do practice regularly, what would I teach someone who is a female, stands 5'2 and weighs 110 lbs? Because certainly what works for me may not work for someone of that stature. Or what about 8-9-10 year old kids that come into the dojo? So obviously I would have to retain knowledge of other moves and techniques that might be more suitable for others. So basically I'm going to need to have a record of moves to show each student under me, regardless of what works for them or not, let them pick out what works for them, and then pass along all that knowledge to those they might teach down the road--sounds a lot like kata to me

For a couple reasons: --Let's me look at the same move in different ways --Different things to workout (in kata not with a partner) --What works for me may not work for others --Etc, etc. Basically the same reasons why kata is a useful tool for people to take advantage of if they choose to.

Going by this assumption, in my currently style alon would know somewhere between 80-160 different techniques (factoring in copies of the same technique on the low end). However when I practice I only run through the same dozen or so.

You know what I find kind of funny about this, and I don't know if anyone else has ever noticed it, but after each knock-out they always rush to immediately move the person and revive them as soon as their body starts to falter. On the ones where they do touch the "victim", the target they aim for 99% of the time is the Posterior Auricular Nerve, which basically controls all major nerve functions on the outside of the skull. I've always wondered how many times they've just managed to stun someone by striking there and claiming they revived the "victim" right away. In other words, I want to see a demonstration where they knock someone out (perferably with no touch ) and just leave them lying on the ground to prove their unconscious.

This is true. However, I also keep a pocketknife on me 95% of the time.

Many styles of Shorin-Ryu do train with traditional Japanese & Okinawan weapons such as the sai and bo. Although it does differ from school to school (and I imagine branch to branch as well). Me, personally, I think that weapons training is imperiative if you're training for self-defense reasons. I took Kali for that same reason--if I encounter someone in the street, they're probably going to be weilding a knife or stick like weapon (a club or tire iron for example) rather than a katana, sai, or bo. If you're taking MA to get in shape, have fun, or just something to do and are not real concerned with the combat side of martial arts, then you can probably do just fine without any weapons training.

Yeah, I had a friend send that to me about a month ago or so. Great Stuff! Go to his website--more funny stuff there too.

I loved Dillman's explaination on why it didn't work on the sceptic scientist: "His tongue might have been in the wrong position." So apparently if I encounter someone trying to knock me out with chi, all I need to do is move my tongue around like I'm trying to french kiss my attacker or alternate which one of my big toes are raised and I'll be fine.