DWx

I think it would be pretty tough to do the entire test again but in our sessions we do get thrown theory questions sporadically and get asked to stand in front of the class and demonstrate or explain something. Its a good thing sometimes as a lot of people think to themselves that now that they've learnt something and passed a test with it, they can now discard it from memory and just focus on the next rank. Also keeps you constantly prepared and at a good standard. I don't think I'd mind being asked to test then and there.. depending on whether you were expected to do all the physical endurance as well though. I like to be able to go into work and not collapse from exhaustion!

Congrats!

Aren't they by a different author to the original novels? I liked the films but I'm not that big a fan.

We sorta already have a similar thing here. Anyone ever used the self-checkouts at Sainsbury's?

From the trailers I've seen it looks good.

O wow. That's pretty cool. I still prefer the old fashioned method though... don't have to spend time building something, you just grab a handful and throw.

Hope you find something and somewhere you like. As said above the style itself its going to matter that much, its more the teacher and school as a whole. You may want to check out this thread for some help: http://www.karateforums.com/what-are-the-right-questions-to-ask-vt31895.html Welcome to the forums

Some good photos on here: http://www.nbcolympics.com/taekwondo/photos/index.html Maybe find out if you can get a copy?

Nice way to put it Bushido-man. I guess the best practitioner is one who is an expert in and on. But I don't think there's anything too wrong with being an expert on a particular subject even though you don't necessary do it. As long as the person doesn't go around pretending they are the best practitioner around. Sometimes I think people should be doing more reading and studying as it does help sometimes to understand the more finite concepts and reasons why.

Maybe its because I'm still under 18 myself but I agree with Roys15. Becoming an adult is not going to suddenly make you more experienced. Some MAists never experience any altercation in their lifetime yet you could have a guy in his 20s who's experienced far more than the rest of the dojo combined. And in any case how much does it actually affect how the techniques are taught? My own instructor has never been in a situation where he had to physically use his skills (or if he has he has never talked about it). I guess if we are going to go along the lines of "real experience" he shouldn't be qualified to teach. IMO as long as those teaching can demonstrate a correct technique and then show you how to apply it to a senario then that is more than adequate. So what if they haven't actually been in that particular senario themselves. If they can show you how to apply something it is then up to you as a student to go away and adapt and train that technique. In fact thinking about it, sometimes I would prefer the teacher who hasn't been in a physical altercation because that tells you about how they either avoid a conflict or descalte them before they go physical which is for me equally important as the physical part of self defense. IMO mere children can teach the techniques to pass tests and they can teach for self defense. Just because they can't tell you about the bar fight they were in back in '84 it doesn't mean they can't understand and convey how to apply a movement in a situation.

Good luck. I'm sure you'll be fine.

I know this is going to sound a bit ignorant and simplistic, but in the film Hero both Flying Snow and Broken Sword practice calligraphy as a supplement to their swordplay. I can't remember exactly but it is explained that it requires the same mind and precision.. or something like that. Might have to watch the film again.

Nicely put. IMO issues like this are very subjective and personally I find it hard to have a blanket age restriction. I train with a very talented 12 year old who is a 2nd degree and I would consider him better and more knowlegeable than a lot of adults are. I always used to think he was only a few years younger than me as far as his maturity went but it turns out he is a lot younger than I expected. I guess I'm kinda biased as both myself and my younger sister attained blackbelt as a junior and in fact I may have the opportunity to test for 3rd dan before my 18th this year and Natalie has just acheived her 2nd dan at 14. Too young? Maybe. However both of us have taught, albeit not a whole class but I've never known there to be a problem with people receiving instruction from us. In fact often people approach you for advice and instruction. I'm curious to as when you all consider a person a junior and at what age they become a senior. Especially if they test exactly the same as an adult. In the case of myself and Natalie we both had to do what the adults did. Technique, breaks, thesis... yet because neither of us is 18 yet we don't qualify as a senior and are therefore deemed as lesser.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_sports/7228622.stm What's everyone's opinion on something like this? Leaving aside the question on whether juniors should receive blackbelts or not in the first place, should they be allowed to attain a relatively high rank at a young age? I'm a bit divided on this one. I was a bit skeptical when I saw the kid was 16 as it does seem really young. Yet on the other hand, the kid could be amazing and having trained for a decade more than deserves it. In my system, if you grade at appropriate intervals it is perfectly acceptable to attain 3rd degree within 10 years of training. Also, what's the youngest higher grade you've trained with?

I train for a number of reasons I guess. I'd always loved watching MA films when I was in primary school and although I'd never explicitly said anything I think my parents kinda guessed after the number of times I watched Enter the Dragon. My parents wanted me to keep do something that was active and one of Dad's friends had done Taekwon-Do. I didn't know what it was but it was MA and it sounded foreign . Loved it from my first lesson and haven't stopped since. Compared to other stuff I did MA is just so different. I hated team sports but I also hated solo sports too. MA kinda combines the two and there is so much to it. With things like netball and tennis I found that it was a bit limited for me. It was like you learnt to hit or throw the ball and that was it. All you had to do was go away and improve it, you didn't really learn anything different each time like you do with MA. And with MA there is a whole other side if you want it, the history and philosophy and politics to it. Another major thing for me is the people I've met through it and the confidence and discipline I've gained. As I kid I was a bit shy but now I'm not really bothered by stuff. Going through high school none of my friends would really talk to anybody new or anybody older but I can get on pretty well with people I haven't met before or who aren't my immediate peer group. The discipline too passed over to my school work and definately helped with studying for my exams. The club I train at has such a great group of people too so actually enjoy spending time there, if it wasn't such a nice group of people maybe I wouldn't have liked MA so much.

There was a very similar thing in UK news a couple of weeks (months?) back. However in that case the boyfriend came in from the car park, got the wrong guy and then accidently killed him in the process. I think my main priority would be the safety of myself and my family/friends. Would try to call the police if possible but I don't think alone I would step in. Maybe try to get the girlfriend to get him to stop? Those spectators could have stopped him together if they wanted to but because no-one acted the rest didn't.

Usually do something in our warm-up or we may work on stuff throughout class. Its not the same each time though, it'll be whatever my instructor thinks we need to work on or something that he has had some thoughts on. In our sparring/fitness session we'll do mainly a bit of basic combinations, possibly get the pads out. In our technical sessions we usually take out combinations from the forms or just do whatever is needed to be worked on.

This post was originally published as an article in a dedicated KarateForums.com Articles section, which is no longer online. After the section was closed, this article was most to the most appropriate forum in our community. Breaking is probably one of the most common images non-martial artists associate with the term "martial arts". Typically, breaking requires one to strike a material, such as wood or bricks, in an effort to smash through and destroy it. Not only is it a test of power, breaking also requires one to fully condition themselves both in mind and body. The techniques that you learn in forms or for sparring will be useless if you cannot hit hard with them and generate appropriate power; all you will be doing is waving your arms and legs about to no effect. Although the "one hit, one kill" philosophy may not seem attainable to some, it should still be strove for through training techniques to a high intensity level of power or else they will be useless in combat. Often this is done through engaging in the practice of breaking. In this article, I will discuss some of the benefits of breaking and why this discipline should part of a martial artist's training. Conditioning of the Mind: Mastery Over Yourself and Your Technique The mind plays a crucial role in the art of breaking, and indeed martial arts as a whole. In order to break, one must fully commit themselves to destroying a material; you cannot half-heartedly hit a stack of boards because you will damage yourself instead. Overcoming your mind and managing to channel yourself through the boards is probably the greatest challenge of breaking and is the reason why breaking is usually required at belt promotions since it shows mastery of oneself. In the style of TaeKwon-Do I train in, one of the forms is named after the ideology "Juche". "Juche" in its simplest form represents the idea that "man is the master of everything and decides everything," i.e. man can achieve anything and is in control of his own destiny. Although it was formed with political motives in mind, I believe this attitude is essential when training in the martial arts because how can you hope to master the physical aspect unless you believe in your ability to achieve it? For me, board breaking is the epitome of mastery in the striking arts as it means you can master your mind and master your techniques to produce vast amounts of power. Non-martial artists are often impressed by the idea that an ordinary human can backfist through a brick or kick through a baseball bat. However, these feats demonstrate pure control over your body which I believe defines what it means to be a successful martial artist. I believe that unless a striking system has a suitable replacement for breaking which shows mastery of technique and oneself, breaking should be included in the system's curriculum. One reason beginner breakers fail is because they fear injuring themselves. Many students ask if it hurts. But, if done correctly, breaking should not really hurt at all as your own body receives none of the impact. However, when preparing to break, a student's mind must not focus on the possibility of pain because they will be likely to not commit fully and subsequently injure themselves. The mentality that many students get into is that if they hit the boards lighter it will hurt them less. Unfortunately, striking the boards tentatively is counterproductive because it will hurt more if you don't break than if you throw all your mass and speed into the technique and break successfully. When a wooden board is struck, it first flexes and absorbs the impact before it will break. To snap it in half, you need to generate enough power to take it past the flexing point and cause the fibres to give way to the power travelling through the material. This can be seen if you were to capture a standard board break on camera. First, the board would bend and buckle as the fist (or whatever attacking tool) travels into it. Once the wood can no longer flex and power is still being transferred, the fibres in the wood snap and the board breaks. If a person were to hold back when breaking and not fully commit to the technique, the board would flex and then transfer all the power back into the person's hand (or foot, elbow, etc.) thus injuring that person. Therefore, it is counterproductive for a student who is holding back their technique due to fear of injury as they are actually making it worse for themselves. Instead, they need to forget about the possibility of pain and just hit the board with as much speed and mass as they can to successfully break. By overcoming a fear of injury when breaking, a student has mastered their own mind and learnt to successfully transfer power without causing injury to themselves. This is essential if such a student need ever to actually hit somebody because they would injure themselves if they pulled their technique when striking an attacker or even blocking an incoming attack. Mastering your own fear also leads to greater confidence in yourself. So, a student may be more willing to try doing other things they were previously apprehensive of. Either way, I feel breaking is an opportunity within training to further one's control over themselves and is an important component of learning to effectively manage emotions such as fear. Breaking is also an important component of training due to the fact that, in plenty of modern martial arts, sparring only takes place under light or semi- contact rules and many students never learn to properly hit with their techniques. Unfortunately, if you tried tapping an attacker on the torso you may get a surprise when it doesn't stop them from advancing (on the other hand, they might be surprised, too - which could actually work to your advantage). As a result of this type of combat, students subconsciously learn to "pull" their technique and fail to get the full extension of the arm or leg. When such a student faces a situation where they need to fight, they will be unable to successfully defend themselves. Similar problems arise due to step-sparring because you cannot actually hit your opponent. Thus, students need to engage in some sort of training that allows them to hit full-on. Obviously, it is difficult to train this way in normal class sparring if you must practice under reduced contact rules and training using bags/pads only gives you secondary feedback (i.e. feedback from the person holding the pad). This is where breaking becomes necessary. Modern safety equipment also allows students to be lazy and not attack with the correct tools. Often, proper fists are not formed or kicks are done with the flat of the foot or instep (you can break with this, but it's usually the ball of the foot) because it is easier to allow the hand or foot to mould to the gear rather than forcing the gear to bend around the fist or foot. If you hit a board or block with the wrong attacking tool, you probably won't break (unless you are lucky and used a lot of power). When breaking, a student must learn how to close their fist properly, they must learn which part of the foot to hit with, they must learn to execute the technique properly. If they don't, then they will not break. It is too easy in sparring, forms or pad work to be lazy and not try to use flawless technique. But, if you attempt this when breaking, you are going to injure yourself rather than break the board. Furthermore, sparring can also promote the practice of hitting off target. There are specific target areas (such as the temple, the kidneys, etc.) where the human body is susceptible to attack. So, many martial artists are taught to strike these areas. Yet, points in sparring are generally awarded for striking anywhere on the torso or anywhere in the face. By practicing breaking, particularly on objects that need precision (such as smaller boards or even re-breakable boards), students learn to strike with greater accuracy. Hitting precise points becomes second nature and what they have learnt from striking wood or bricks, they can translate to the human body. Even practicing powerful techniques on bags or pads that were designed with specific target areas does not train the same accuracy as breaking does because it is difficult to tell whether the target was hit properly. Materials needing precision will give you a definitive response. Punching thin air when practising forms or punching in the general target area when sparring will help develop aspects of your technique, but to gain the full potential of the power that is available, a student needs to train specifically for power. Therefore, for me, breaking should be part of a martial artist's training because it covers the areas where sparring and forms fall short. Engaging in breaking also promotes self-discipline. To successfully break, good technique is required. Because of this, it is necessary for a student to spend time perfecting their kicks and strikes or risk injury when attempting to break. The student must also invest time in extensive conditioning exercises if they hope to progress onto more advanced breaks because the body was not made to withstand high intensity impact. Many schools will cover aspects of conditioning, however it is likely that not enough time is spent honing the body's attacking tools. With conditioning the best policy is "a little and often." Ideally, a serious student could be looking at conditioning everyday. This requires a great deal of self-discipline to allocate time to training when you'd rather be doing other things. But, by learning to discipline yourself in your training, you will be bettering yourself as you can learn to discipline yourself in other aspects of life. An example of a highly disciplined martial artist would be Masutatsu Oyama, as he spent many months training in solitude to condition his body. Mas Oyama was conditioned so well he was able to break the horns off bulls with his bare hands and this is the type of self-discipline modern martial artists need to try to emulate. Such conditioning is also necessary for combat as it reduces the likelihood of your bones breaking when struck. When having to defend yourself you do not want the chance that your own hand will break when blocking. You need to make your bones form as strongly as possible. Because breaking requires good conditioning and is a test of whether you are conditioned well enough, I believe breaking is necessary in the martial arts to encourage people to take their training home and not just use martial arts as a hobby - but as a way of life. In the 1970s film "Enter the Dragon" Bruce Lee says, "Boards don't hit back." Many people use this as an excuse not to practice breaking and not to engage in any formal conditioning. However, as explained above, boards can hit back (at least to a certain extent) and, unfortunately, most people can't train power in any other way. Another excuse not to break is that excessive conditioning can injure the body and cause conditions such as arthritis. Many of the old masters have been conditioning for decades and no real harm has come of it; it is only when people take things to the extreme do problems arise from conditioning. In my experience, I have yet to come across a real excuse not to practice breaking and, for me, the pros outweigh the cons. Hence I believe that breaking (or at least power training) should be part of every striking art. References TKDTutor: About Breaking, Breaking Fundamentals, Breaking Materials, Mechanics of Breaking and Makiwara. Iron Hand Tameshiwari

Welcome!

I have a few places I use... Downstairs living room is good for forms if you move the sofa and don't mind having to stop and move a few paces back halfway through. The back garden is the right shape and size just the grass isn't too good as we have a tree thats decided to spread its roots across the lawn. I also got my dad to hang our bag in my sister's bedroom . But if you want to do anything you have to first kick everything under the bed.

Gymnastics might be an alternative. Looking at them most XMA moves are gymnastics with a MA spin on them. But Capoeira would still be awesome to learn. You could also try doing a bit of stuff on your own as there are some good websites out there like: http://www.trickstutorials.com/ .

In this scenario here, you are assuming that the person's rank (or lack thereof) is relative to the experiences that they have outside of the dojahng, which may be considerable. By viewing the rank on the waist, many will automatically discount their knowledge base, in regards to perhaps, say, forms knowledge, or the like. That depends on what my questions were. A lot of questions will be just applicable to lower belts as well as higher belts, but if you take the forms example I would still tend towards asking the higher grade the question. That doesn't necessarily mean that the lower belt wouldn't have equally as good if not better input but as a student, the higher grade most likely would have studied said form longer and hopefully would know more about it. Also if forms play a part in testing, the higher grade would have been the one to have already passed an exam with the form and so I would assume that the examiner deemed their form a correct portrayl whereas on the other hand the lower belt may not have even learnt it yet or is in the process of learning it. Depending on what you mean by "experiences", are a person's experiences outside the dojang really applicable to something like forms? Sure if they'd experienced a number of self defense situations it would be applicable to something like self defense training (and personally I'd welcome input from anyone on something like that), but IMHO I don't think experience will have a great bearing on something like form knowledge or how to execute a technically correct side kick or what the correct proceudure for something is. Of course rank is not propotional to experiences outside of the dojang but experiences outside of the dojang will have a bearing on some topics and virtually no bearing on others. For the purposes of some questions a higher rank would be better to ask. You make a good point here, but at one point in time, none of our Eastern styles had the set curriculum or belt ranking system that goes along with them. These are all innovations of the last 150 years or thereabouts. And Wrestlers don't learn how to Wrestle by just being shown a move and then told to roll around a while, and then move onto something else. It still has a structured learning environment, just without the ranks. JKD and DT would be similar; you work a concept for a while, understand it, and then move into other related concepts. Yes but because we are using these new inovations whereby at green belt you learn this technique and by red belt you have to be able to do that technique I'd say it was safe to assume that the person with a certain belt would most likely be more qualified to answer a specific question relating to a curriculem. In fact you could consider it an advantage over Wrestling, JKD and DT. I could have a problem, walk into a room full of people I didn't know and be able to instantly divide the room up into those people who would most likely know my answer. Depending on the question you may be discounting a few peoples' knowledge base but you get your answer and can go away satisfied. If I walked into a room full of people I didn't know I would have no idea who I should ask and would end up asking everybody until I got an answer. Ranks work for some systems and are not appropriate for others, but for a system with a rank those with a higher rank are probably going to know more within that system.

Welcome to the forums! Where abouts are you from? It would be probably more helpful if we could give you places nearer to you / same country so you wouldn't have to pay extortionate amounts for shipping.

Although not that comphrehensive, Wikipedia might be a good place to look: History of the martial arts and Martial arts timeline You could then persue whatever lines you wanted. I think it'll all depend on what you consider a martial art to be to as where it all came from. I'd imagine humans (or neaderthals) have always engaged in some sort of combat.

Congratulations