DWx

You make some good points Ottoman, I would definately say that if someone cannot hold my attention and be able to organise/structure a class then they are a poor teacher.

One thing I've always found with older teachers, is that they are more likely to have a sort of total discipline in their class while younger teachers tend to go for the relaxed atmosphere that Kez described... Not sure which I prefer to be honest. Would depend on what kinda mood I was in and what I wanted to be taught.

How does the reccomended test compare to the decided? Do you have to more/different stuff or is it the same? Just wondering...

Good Luck!

I don't actually do any form of karate and I didn't know what that kata looked like so I looked it up on YouTube and came across this. Looks like the dude is pretty good, he does it "normal" speed first, then does it slow so you can see all the moves and then he does it with the camera looking at him from behind, may help you: When I can't get a form into my head, I break it down as much as possible and then using a video (or another person if I can) I take bits out and do them over and over again until its ok. I'm sure you'll get it in the end just gotta keep at it!

XMA revolution is Chat's own demo team. Hey vanish, if there isn't a school available, you could just learn some gymnastics/acrobatics instead. There's a lot of help for people who want to learn XMA on the internet, loads of tutorials on stuff like YouTube. If you search tricking or XMA you can usually find some good ones. http://www.trickstutorials.com/ <- that site's quite good for advice and hints.

One thing I would be wary of is that there seems to be a lot of classes geared towards children and that the photos on the site show primarily children. This isn't necessarily a sign of McDojo but you want to make sure that you are getting taught on your level and not on a watered down syllabus for the children at the back of the class. As for uniforms and equipment (I'm assuming this is sparring equipment), unfortunately they are a must have and pretty much any school will be asking you to buy them. You will need both the uniforms for the reasons Elky mention and its just nice to have your own sparring equipment. For one it fits better because you've worn it in and two for hygeine reasons. Maybe see if you can watch a testing if there is one coming up. That should give you a pretty good idea of the standard. $40 dollars a month is less than I'm paying and my dobok cost £40 as opposed to $40 so I guess you shouldn't be all that worried about the prices. Welcome to the forums!

Can't remember where I saw it but I read once that an ITF student can try out for an Olympic team if they pay to get certified by the Kukkiwon and show that they are at least a 1st dan standard.

Congrats!

Loopkicks is another good team. Although they tend to do a lot less martial arts and a lot mor acrobatics compared to people like Team Ryouko.

Found him now: http://www.usnmat.net/page7.html This organisation also promotes you through the dan ranks so I would just like to draw your attention to the requirements to grade: http://www.usnmat.net/page3.html

Something that was a bit iffy for me was the number of different styles he had gained blackbelt rank in. http://www.lionhearttifton.com/index-3.html This guy is a 4th degree in American Karate 2nd degree in ITF TKD 1st degree in WTF TKD 5th degree & founder of Universal Kempo/Juijitsu blackbelt in Modern Arnis certified coach in USA boxing assistant director of Sogo Budo Kyokai (I'm not sure what this and can't find anything on it, can anyone explain it to me???) + several "Hockheim's knife / Counter knife combatives" all within the space of 10 years and the only one he has told us when he started is the TKD (which I am assuming is the ITF as he got his blackbelt in that first)... Oh and I'd like to know which USA Martial Arts Hall of Fame he was inducted into because I can't find him at all and I've looked in quite a few. I'm not trying to pick at the guy, I just seem very dubious because its a lot blackbelts in a short space of time...

If MA is not about belt rank but skill, does it matter if I hand a 5th dan to a 10 year old?

Yours may not be but another persons may. Why should they not be allowed to grade to blackbelt?

Not only is this a sweeping statement across all indviduals, I think it ignores one important factor: Age does not equal mental ability, capacity or maturity. Sure it helps but it is not the most important factor. And how does one judge when you are mentally suited to be given a belt in any case? Maybe if someone defined what mental things you need to suddenly have grasped on your 15th birthday, I might be more inclined to see this way of thinking. As with my "before and after blackbelt" arguement earlier on, I do not think that the "blackbelt mentallity" of a martial artist should be developed only when they have acheived blackbelt status. This should accompany training right from the beginning and should be improving all the time. When childeren are taught martial arts it is always stressed in our dojang that they need to know when and where fighting is appropriate. On the last grading panel I sat on, I asked a 5 year old white belt to tell me when and where he should use his TKD. The kid gave me a whole list of senarios of where it was not appropriate to attempt to fight somebody such as in the playground at school. For me this is exactly the type of mentality that needs to be developed at an early age and at the start of training rather than later on when a blackbelt is granted or when the person's birthday occurs. If we are talking about mental things in the sense of understanding techniques and applications, shouldn't this also accompany training throughout? What use is it to learn a movement in a form but not know what type of attack/defense that movement is? It would be like learning how to write the alphabet by first learning how to draw the shapes and then learning the sounds after you could write the letters in joined up handwriting. What about understanding of philosophies and ideals that accompany many MAs? Well surely people who are more intelligent have a higher chance of understanding a philosphy than those with less mental ability. So an intelligent 13 year old who has the same physical abilities of a less intelligent 15 year old would not be promoted because they are too young. Yet to me, I would see these two martial artists on equal footing or even perhaps the 13 year old might be more suited to the blackbelt. I cannot think of any other mental things that one would need to develop once attaining blackbelt so if anyone cares to explain them I will re-examine my argument. As for physically maturing by the time you turn 15, we all know that different people mature quicker than others. Females actually hit puberty sooner than males so their bodies turn into "adult bodies" sooner. By this reckoning a female should be able to do the physical aspect sooner because they have been in an adult state longer and so would have developed their bones etc. Then you get the differences within the genders. How many times as a kid did you try to buy things like movies and alcohol underage? The people that get away with it look older than their peers because they have physicaly matured faster. So why should there be a set age benchmark for people to be physically ready to receive a blackbelt? It should be a physical benchmark... but wait, we already have that in the form of a physical test. As someone who received their blackbelt at a comparitively young age I tend to be biased towards allowing for child blackbelts however I must insist that this should be on a case by case basis...

I don't know to be honest. Normally I would expect a blackbelt's age to be into at least double figures but as with the young girl I described above, it varies from case to case. If I saw a 5 year old with a blackbelt alarm bells would start ringing. However for all I know the kid may be the reincarnation of Bruce Lee (with all his skills kept) and have the philosophical understanding akin to that of the Dalai Lama... FYI, I was a blackbelt at the age of 14... technically I still am a junior even though I now hold my 2nd dan. Its kinda stupid really, I can drive a car, get married, have kids but technically at 17 I am still a junior blackbelt holder.

My opinion is it depends on case to case. My instructor's daughter for example is 8 or 9-ish, I think. Still in junior school. Anyway, she is a blackbelt but fully deserves it in my opinion. She can land hits on me when sparring and her head is about my elbow height. I don't go easy on her at all and I compete and place in sparring nationally. She has total control over her techniques and is IMO one of the best young martial artists I have come across. She also is mature enough in her approach to MA to know when and why she should or should not use her skills. On the other hand, we have a young teenager who passed his blackbelt but wasn't really that exceptional and has been on the decline ever since. No matter how many times he is told to do something, he doesn't go away and practice it. He now struggles with new content and lacks any improvement his peers have made. It seems as though he is content with his belt and does not strive to become better. If I was in charge I would have demoted him or at least put him on some sort of warning.

Politics concerning blackbelts can be quite expansive. I am assuming you've heard the term "McDojo"? So there's handing out belts to quite frankly very poor MAists who have just paid the right amount of money. Then you get the "junior" blackbelt issue where people disagree over the minimum age a person (child) can be awarded a blackbelt or if they should be awarded an alternative, ie. "junior blackbelt" and then make them test again when thy reach "adult age". Politics over blackbelts can also get into the realms of over "who certified your blackbelt? what org are you from?" etc. The list just goes on....

Why does there have to be a before and after blackbelt? Why should my training change just because one day I get handed a new belt and someone says "congratulations, you are now a blackbelt"? IMO your training should be getting tougher and you should be getting better all the time. I don't really think there is a point when you have become a blackbelt. Its like growing, each day I get taller and taller (well not any more but for arguments sake...). Its only a little bit at a time so its not really noticeable on a day-to-day basis but when I compare it to how I was 3 months ago the difference is noticable. This is how I believe my skills should be. So to answer KNOCKuOUT's orginal question, I don't train any different from what I did before I attained the right to wear a blackbelt, I train differently from yesterday, I train differently from last week... I still do the same number of hours in the dojang as I did when I was pre-blackbelt, I have (and still do) try to work myself more intensively each session to improve my skills as a MAist. Personally, I reached a point where a blackbelt itself was no-longer my goal. My new goal was to attain blackbelt but then try to surpass that blackbelt and try to be better than that. It is impossible for me to reach perfection in my skills and understanding but I want to get as close to it as I can. I think this is what keeps me motivated. As for when you reach your peak, a physical peak is more likely to be when your body reaches its own physical peak so 20s, 30s maybe? Your mental peak may be a lot different to this. I think that most of us have a better understanding of things as we get older but IMO I don't think there is really an exact time when we reach our mental peak. Some people are quite advanced in their mental age and so will reach there peak earlier whereas it will take others longer to grasp concepts and ideas. If it weren't for our bodies eventually taking there toll on our brains, I would be inclined to say that one can never reach their mental peak... They are just my thoughts though, you may disagree or agree with them....

My moudled one by the dentist still makes me gag. I guess its just the feeling of having something like that in my mouth...

I came across this site a while ago, has a load of their own katas on video: http://www.nunchaku.org/

They use the term because a "perfect" sine wave motion is supposed to reflect the curve that is shown when you plot sine angles onto a graph. Guess they couldn't think of a better name... Just been looking at videos of WTF vs ITF on Youtube, most tend to be fairly biased to one style or the other. I don't think I've found a fair representation of both arts in one video yet...

Ah ok, I change my statement then : So whilst some WTF may focus on sparring only for tournament, ITF focuses on both. I guess its because forms aren't in the olympics that I thought that. I still say that it will depend from ITF school to ITF on how much they focus on certain aspects of training. Just out of interest, do you do the ITF forms with or without the sine wave?

It would depend on school to school and also how the class is structured. Some ITF schools prefer to focus on the technical side of things with forms and then supplement that with step sparring and a bit of free sparring. Other schools will focus on the opposite. Then again you will get schools that have a balance between the two. Mostly it depends on intructor preference about what they think is the most valuable aspect of their training and what they think they should focus on passing on. Also ITF have forms as a tournament event too alongside sparring. So whilst WTF may focus on sparring only for tournament, ITF focuses on both.

Welcome!