still kicking

With respect, tsd, that is not what I mean, but I think I will bow out of the conversation. I am not conceding defeat, just don't want to hash through it all. Perhaps we can agree to disagree?

That's why we do bag work, but I knew this was going to open up a can of worms. Can't we just leave it at "different strokes?" Or not, carry on...

Interesting post, JusticeZero. At first I was confused where you were from, though maybe Angola, ha ha. I am sure that people in extreme locations who are forced to survive on food that most of us would consider disgusting get used to it and find it enjoyable. I once had the experience of craving liver, even though I normally hate it, when I became very anemic and low in Vit. B-12. Then after I got well I hated it again. As far as craving comfort foods from childhood, for me it would be velveeta on wonder bread or tater tots. I guess those are kind of disgusting, too.

tsd1591 wrote: Tsd, people train in martial arts for a variety of reasons. I would argue that there are lots of big tough guys who could beat the stuffings out of people who I would not consider to be "skilled martial artists", whereas there are lots of skilled martial artists who would consider getting a busted up mouth and nose in class to be a very bad night. Different strokes, I guess. I get a bit annoyed at the comments about "tippy tappy" sparring -- a bit patronizing, I think. I would hazard a guess that the best tournament fighters in the world could hold their own against anyone, but whatever, for me it's not about beating the, um, stuffings out of people, or having it done to me, but developing my art. In my opinion, the issue is control. If you train point sparring with medium hard contact to the body when up against other advanced students, and do a lot of bag work, you should be pretty well covered. People who say they want to get hitting people full out into their muscle memory are making the mistake of thinking that in a "real fight" we should just let our body take over, whereas I think the mind always has to be assessing the situation. Same as am I sparring an orange belt or a black belt, weak or strong, fearful or confident, you modify your techniques according to who and what's in front of you. In any case... I do not see any point to voluntarily submitting to getting beaten up to the point of injury on a regular basis, but hey, different strokes and all that.

Well, sometimes I like to watch videos on here of other KF posters, just out of curiosity about who they are. You can form impressions about people from what they post, good or bad, frequent or infrequent, beginner or advanced, then be really surprised when you see them on video! Though of course, in general would prefer to watch a high quality video featuring a skilled practitioner who can teach me something. Lacking that, if nothing else I might learn to not watch that person's videos any more.

It is true that there are lots of habits for good health, many or most of them common sense, but the problem is that there is so much conflicting information out there that it can be overwhelming. A lot of it is common sense, such as getting enough sleep and exercise, drinking plenty of water, and managing stress, but when it comes to diet, it's not so easy. What I strive for is to eat lots of fruits and veggies, whole grains, beans, low fat dairy, fish and occasionally meat, and to avoid refined sugar and fried and processed foods. Also to avoid too much caffeine and alcohol. How well I succeed with that varies, and what constitutes "too much" is obviously a matter of opinion. I do think that eating 5 or 6 small meals a day is good, for the sake of maintaining steady metabolism and blood sugar, but the problem with that is defining "small". It is all too easy to eat 5 or 6 regular size or large meals a day, then you get fat!

Hey Holley -- MasterPain is right about the public opinion part. I just wanted to say that I hope you're doing OK. As I recall from my readings on here, without rechecking all of the posts, you are a 20 year old or so orange belt -- a beginner! My opinion is that as an adult you should not be kicking a kid in the head numerous times, no matter how clueless he is. Nevertheless, as an orange belt you should be getting more guidance and supervision on this. I hope you don't feel bad about everyone's feedback. Getting ahead and excelling in the martial arts is largely about persistance, and this kind of thing is just one of the many many things that can discourage people, so I hope that you hang in there!

John ASE wrote: Yes, Chuzo Kotaka, who is my teacher's teacher, is head of IKF. To us, and I imagine to all IKF schools, George Kotaka is "sensei George", whereas Chuzo Kotaka is just "Sensei", as in, "because Sensei says".

likeke34 wrote: Better you than me.

George Kotaka is awesome! Our school is part of his main org in Hawaii (IKF), and I have trained with him, or rather under him, a few times as well. Not that he's not considerably ahead of me in terms of ability, but I do appreciate being a part of the same organization. It makes for some really good training, at least in terms of what I am looking for. Plus, it's a good excuse to go to Hawaii from time to time. Swimming and sunning by day, training every evening -- Paradise!

MasterPain wrote: I know, weird, huh?

I enjoyed these! Good footwork, and it's nice to see sharp, clean sparring -- though of course I am biased towards TJK. I am confused, though. Which one are you?

We say "hai" instead of "oss", but I agree, it does become automatic when being given instruction. I have to stop myself from saying "hai" when my supervisor at work tells me to do something.

I think you are lucky to have several good options, and as others have said, train at the ones that don't make you feel bad! Who knows why it is, but it sounds like you've had this experience there over time, not just once or twice. I would not want to train somewhere with "bad vibes". Maybe it's just the paint job or something, but life is too short to try to figure it out, IMHO, especially when there are other options. Good luck!

OK, ya got me, Isshinryu... what the heck is Balut?

Anyone on here consider themselves to be a "foodie"? I'm not -- don't even like to cook, particularly, tho do love to eat. However, due to recently recovering from a medical condition, I found myself with a lot of time on my hands, and thus watching lots of TV. I'm not sure I would have signed up for sattelite TV if I knew how many of the channels were info-mercials, but I digress. During that time, I really got into watching the Food Network. What attracted me was the show "Chopped", where 4 chefs compete for a cash prize. Anyway... so I've only recently been exposed to the world of trendy food fads. Then tonight I was watching the show "Human Planet" on Discovery. There was an episode about the arctic, and it showed some Inuit (Eskimo) people in Greenland, who survive winters on what to most of us, I think, would be a disgusting concoction. They catch hundreds of "little auks" (birds), stuff them inside of a sealskin, and then bury it. It ferments for several months, then in the middle of winter they dig it up and eat the fermented birds, bones and all. Apparently it smells so much they have to eat it outside. Whoa! It made me wonder, though, if it will eventually become a food trend. I mean as with everything, it becomes harder and harder to be unique, so I figured some day some avant garde chef would try to introduce this kind of cuisine as the Next Big Thing. Anyone think it stands a chance?

I'll work on that, BB of C.

Good comments so far. In my view, above all, a test is something that is possible to fail, otherwise it is not a "test"!

Good work on attaining your orange belt. Keep at it!

Good job on the brown belt. Brown belt is an exciting time! It sounds like you had a good challenging test.

Do you sell T-Shirts to promote your school? We have some made from time to time. I doubt if anyone is going to see someone wearing a T-shirt and say "Oh, I think I'll go train at that school". But... I do think it's possible that if they had already been thinking about it, it might remind them and they will take the plunge. If nothing else, it's a little profit for the school, and promotes school spirit. A couple of times we've had contests where people could submit designs and we voted on the ones we liked best to be used for the T-shirts. Maybe it's silly, but hey, who ever has enough T-shirts? I'm wondering about other schools' experience with this.

Thanks, bushidoman and Patrick. The silver lining is that I am now appreciating my training, and being able to participate, all the more. I will never take good health and able bodiedness for granted again, of that I am sure!

Thanks for the link to the article, DWx. That was great -- very detailed, interesting read, even funny. The funniest part to me was when Master Weiss said that he picked a hospital nearby so he could jog home from the recovery room. Right. Well, it's good to be optimistic. He ended up having a great result, ant that's all that matters. I think this would be interesting for any martial artist to read, even if hip surgery is nowhere in their future, just for the info and inspiration about how to overcome major obstacles in our training, and the importance of perseverance. Thanks again!

Oh, forgot to mention. Of course I would be very interested in hearing from anyone else who went through it and is back to training. What did you do to rehab, etc. I am doing a lot of PT exercises, plus walking w/ my trekking poles.

I haven't been on here much lately, because I've been kind of preoccupied. In January I had my left hip replaced, and the right on March 1st. It's not that I didn't have time to hang around on karate forums, it's just that it was too hard to not be training, so I didn't even want to think about karate very much. Recovery is going well, I think. Doc gave me "large ball" replacements, which means little chance of dislocation, and says that after I am well healed should be able to do pretty much whatever I want in karate! I am planning to take it easy with running and jumping, and not do any full power bag work again, but other than that I am really excited to get back to it. Have gone to class a few times in the past couple of weeks -- just real easy warmups and walking through kata in high stances, but it felt SO GOOD to be there and see everybody and be moving again. Almost 3 months of pain meds and TV makes for major sluggishness -- I mean seriously. My main challenge will be to not try to do too much too soon, but since I have absolutely no desire to repeat the whole process any time soon, I plan to be real careful for a while. Oh, there is this little detail of wanting to test for my shodan-ho next March, but I figure if I can wait until late summer or fall to start really cranking it up, I should be OK. I know a couple of people on here had previously mentioned that they knew other karate people with joint replacements who had been able to get back to training, and I am quite hopeful about it. And HAPPY to be back!!!