Elky

Mr Childs, what exactly are the complaints that you've heard regarding making money in the martial arts? Most of the complaints that I've heard relate to the fact that optimising financial gain through the martial arts does not equate to optimising the standard of the martial arts taught. In essence, you have to compromise on the quality of the training offered in order to maximise revenue. Obviously this is not necessarily the case, but in the less scrupulous cases, it undoubtedly is.

All of you - train somewhere else! You're not getting what you need out of your training if incompetent kids are running the class. If your instructor is allowing this to happen, he doesn't have your best interests at heart.

Plain white (although blue is fine if you're a judoka or BJJer). Anything else looks camp.

Funnily enough, I am waiting to hear back from them via e-mail. It's been a few days now. The fella you'll probably hear back from is Bob Poynton (he always used to answer the KUGB e-mails anyway) - he knows 10 times more about karate than everyone in GKR put together and is a generally cool guy. Should be able to point you in the right direction.

I've seen quite a lot of kyokushin matches where people score knockdowns with a sort of half-mawashi, half-mikazuki geri. Is this a kick that you train a lot in kyokushinkai karate, or is it more that it's a quick opportunistic mawashi geri that doesn't quite have time to complete the hip movement?

Heck, there's nothing wrong with making friends! "I don't need friends, I've got a wife" is not a healthy attitude - it'll increase the number of people you can go for beers with when your wife's being a pain in the butt.

No, but if the guy was wearing black pants and a gold shirt, chances are he wasn't one of the KUGB guys so could've trained in anything. Yep, nothing wrong with a nice straightforward punch if you can land it. Wouldn't you be a bit disappointed in the strikers' skills if the other guy didn't fall down in pain? That's what they train to do.

More so than harming anyone else? That's a bit dodgy.

Why bother training more than 5 times week? You're gonna get very good with 5 days a week. Have a couple of days off. Chill out. Have a beer and a chocolate bar and watch movies! You'll be a more rounded individual!

Sorry to be the barer of bad tidings, but no, one doesn't exist. You might be able to buy a book on self protection tips (all the peripheral stuff like avoiding dangerous areas, how to use your keys to poke people in the eye etc) but you cannot learn to fight from a book.

She wouldn't think that, and if she did she's an idiot and shouldn't be training in MA. I would say that most women are very experienced at spotting when someone's just being a letch, and I'm sure you're not one. Someone else posted a while ago about some girl in his class who had a fit when someone accidentally touched her breast. People like that should be kicked straight out of the door and told not to come back until they pull themselves together and grow up. What you've got to remember is that, to men breasts may be something "special", but to women, they're just another body part. As long as you're not deliberately being creepy or punching them really hard in the breast (which I'm told is very painful), most women aren't gonna get too wound up about it.

Hit them in the face

There's a boxed set! I've got it It roxx! Apart from the crappy one with the girl.

^^this^^

Got 1st kyu in four years but three years later haven't got 1st dan yet. And I don't suck that much!

Good work! Well done!

Can I ask, what's waveform striking?

Lift heavy things and eat plenty

I would say the ideal training would be MMA. Anything else is like taking badminton lessons to get good at tennis.

Ryoto Machida http://www.sherdog.com/fightfinder/fightfinder.asp?FighterID=7513

I would always be going for the head punch or ribs punch. If a scumbag happen to fall over and crack their head, big deal, but I wouldn't ever try to kill anyone.

I disagree with this point. In a short course of RBSD seminars, this should be the guiding principle, but in a martial art you can train your body to create new reflexive movements rather than relying on the old ones. This is the case in just about every MA. I think this is often forgotten these days because people want to "get in there and fight fight fight", but karate has never been about a quick fix. It's about meticulously training your body.

Hi Matt - I've noticed you tend to ask lots of clothing related questions on martial arts forums. Perhaps martial arts forums aren't the best place to ask about clothes? Aren't there any clothing/shopping forums that might be able to help you more easily than MA forums?

Even if your opponent's miles away? These guys aren't rank amateurs and they're not WTF taekwondo competitors - they know what to do with their hands. Elwyn Hall wouldn't be duking it out with a guy in the street and trying to absorb blows into his forearm. It's bang, bang, bang and down they go. That's what karate's about.

Because there's no point waving your hands in the air if your opponent is too far away to hit your head. And you discourage them from coming close enough to hit your head by hitting them if they do. Their guard tends to be mobile; the first instinct is to increase distance between yourself and your opponent to not allow them to hit you, then if they do manage to close the distance, you strike aggressively to drive them away and then try and guard your head as a last resort. Standing there with your hands in front of your face isn't a spectacularly good tactic - you're just inviting a boot to the ribs or a punch to the torso. It's easier to guard your head with distance.