ARADOX

wow, thanks

Then I've been making some mistakes, oh dear.

That sounds rather pompous and unnessecary

Some good advice here, here's some more: Dynamic tension, go through your kata but always tense your muscles, especially those you want strengthened, tires the hell out of you sometimes though

I was told that some practitioners o0f mantis style are trained not to blink during a fight, I'm pretty sure that's a bit of the old chinese whispers coming through like half the books I've read on the subject of bojutsu *shrugs*, but it's an odd claim.

Perhaps "killing move" was a poor choice of wording, every movement with a sword should be a killing move, but rather the inclusion of concepts such as small scale domoralisation, after all who wants to fight the dude tht just butchered his friend and is now throwing the eyeballs at them, this is the difference between iaijutsu and kenjuts, the latter is more of a warfare situation, iaijutsi I'm led to believe is more of a duelling art, and when coupled with iaido one becomes VERY good at dispatching single assailants, whereas kenjutsu is as mentioned before; warfare.

That's what I meant of course if iaido was simply the art of drawing the sword in one motion there would be no need for an art, the art function referrs to the various ways of killing an assailant with a bladed weapon (probably a katana) while it resides within the scabbard with one well-executed movement. I am not uder any doubt what the tool is used for, I'm saying the Kenjutsu (seems to) have moves that are brutal, perhaps dishnourable and not nesecarily in keeping with ye ol' bushido, and that's why it's considered to be a "black art", the distiguishing factors come when one starts to think about the finishing movements, should the opponant be killed if his arm is no longer a threat? that sort of thing.

I'll fight how I train i.e. with traditional blocks, I feel that these are there for a reason and work for me, I seem to be so well suited for my art it's unreal "shotokan karate with an emphasis on the naha-te side of things", these traditional blocks can be extremely fast and deadly with enough practice (ten years enough for ya), with another twenty under my belt perhaps they will become as they were intended and absoloutly blinding, parrying has it's place but the traditional chudan soto-uke is far superior in my poinion, especially when combined with a proper low stable stance.

I think I remember reading something that stated kenjutsu as something of a black art?, at least as far as the "Swordsmanship" arts are concerned, I mean iaido is just drawing the sword, iaijutso is something akin to kenjutsu, but kenjutsu is actually the art of fighting and killing with the sword, kendo dosen't teach the sort of finishing moves that kenjutsu does. This is second hand info but hopefully it helps somewhat, it may be wise to research iaido as well since it is similar if somewhat less... brutal?, I dunno.

I tend to disagree, if your teacher is a good one, he will have realised what works best (for him at least) and will be teaching you the same techniques, these are techniques that WORK, the low stance that some of you seem to be having trouble with, it's there (in kata) for a reason, a strong stance has an overwhelmingly prfound effect of your attacks, blocks the ability to move with, out of the way, against your opponant. I've been doing shotokan karate for ages (since I was five, I'm now sixteen) and I've found it to be a system completely out of the league of some other styles (jkd especially) in terms of self defence, yes it may lack the showy flashiness of jkd but it WORKS so much better, and yes I have experience in this field. It does help if you study an art or two related to shotokan like aikido and kung fu (combined with shotokan that makes you VERY dangerous) by the way, the best martial artist was not huo yuanja it was miyamoto musashi

I tend to disagree, if your teacher is a good one, he will have realised what works best (for him at least) and will be teaching you the same techniques, these are techniques that WORK, the low stance that some of you seem to be having trouble with, it's there (in kata) for a reason, a strong stance has an overwhelmingly prfound effect of your attacks, blocks the ability to move with, out of the way, against your opponant. I've been doing shotokan karate for ages (since I was five, I'm now sixteen) and I've found it to be a system completely out of the league of some other styles (jkd especially) in terms of self defence, yes it may lack the showy flashiness of jkd but it WORKS so much better, and yes I have experience in this field. It does help if you study an art or two related to shotokan like aikido and kung fu (combined with shotokan that makes you VERY dangerous)

When you start to fall asleep in a lecture and you run through a kata in your head and actually kiai in the appropriate places, very embarrasing. very, very emabarrasing. When you know that most guys get annoyed when thier girlfriend spends about three hours clothes shopping but everyone is wonderfully surprised when you spend about five hours searching a city for a military surplus shop or a MA store, then spend another four hours trying out every weapon they have in there. When you attempt to teach a move to a friend then subconciously "take control" of the situation and finish the move one too many dislocated shoulders doesn't go down too well at Cristmas When you walk around checking people (visually only) for concealed weapons.

Mae tobi geri (jumping forward kick) then chudan double punch

Coooool, someone's gotta teach me that move

I Don't think Karate Kid was responsible for generating the McDojo, Please don't hurt me for saying this but, Bruce Lee, Bruce Lee came before Karate Kid and during that era more people began learning MA than any other in America, and his Kiai, oh man his Kiai was one of the worst things thjat has ever happened to the Martial Arts, how many times have one oyou mentiones the martial arts and someone has gone WWWWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH, just like Bruce Lee, now everyone associates martial arts with that horrible chicken sound, the popularity of the nunchaku has Bruce Lee to blame as well, now Massachusetts (pardon my spelling) and New York have banned this weapon (but not firearms) because of Bruce Lee.