LeaF

welcome to the boards

For one, They are all arts that can be trained throughout ones entire life without losing effectiveness. They also incorparate the power of ones mind, if I understand correctly, also know as Ki/Chi.... But as kensai said, they take much longer to learn

I agree that being physically fit is an important aspect of being a black belt, but each individual is different and that must be accepted. You can not expect a 50 year old wo/man to be able to keep up to someone half their age. They should be pushed to the most extreme limit themselves as an individual can achieve. It appears your uncle went through quite the physical workout, but was the mental aspect lost. Did he not write a test or an essay, did he not have to know the history? In some cases the physical can be signifcantly less difficult then the mental. You confuse me a little, at first you said..... but then you quote your uncle by saying this... Are you saying that kumite is more important then kata, if so I would have to disagree. Perhaps it is that way in Mauy Tai, I do not know. But in Karate you can not have one without the other. There must be a balance of mind body and soul. If one focuses to much on one aspect and ignores the other two you will never be the best you can be..... So in my opinion, Just because you can beat a black belt in a tounament doesn't mean you deserve a black belt! cheers

lol must be a trick question KickChick you joined the martial arts for a reason.... do you remeber it.... ah good well that is your use for the martial arts, each to their own.....

I agree, tournaments in my opinion should not be included in the critera for grading. For instance I personally am not a competitive person, I did not begin the martial arts to win a bunch of metals, I am here for personal improvement, does that mean I should never be allowed to get a black belt because I don't like to compete. Black belts should not just be good fighters, that would be too easy. The mental aspects of the martial arts must not be forgotten. Just because I may be able to win a match of point sparring against a black belt means absolutly nothing. They are there because they earned their place and I could never accept a black belt just because I won a match. What about older people, should they never be black belts because they can't keep up to some of the younger praticitioneers of their art, of coarse not. If this was so the only people that would be black belts would be exceptionally Just my two cents, have a good day Cheers

Karate has the potential for being very effective in self defense situations, but it is not something that can be learned or taught overnight. If you are looking for something that will teach you how to defend youself very quickly, stick to kick boxing or Mauy Tai. But if you give karate a few years you will feeling confident in self defense situations, and it is something you will be able to train in an carry through your entire life

Cool article john, thank you for posting it

cool, good stuff patrick

Congrats to KarateForums.com and great job Patrick, you have fostered growth on this site and helped developed such a great commnity:)

cool thanks for the ideas Patrick

Glad you took the suggestion, welcome to karateforums.com

well bad co-orindation certainly won't help you, but all the more reason to join a martial art. I am sure after a short amount of training you will see your co oridination improve greatly. P.S. don't forget to introduce yourself in our introductions forum

There are chat times see link http://www.karateforums.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4412

Good for you 360, glad you had fun

Come on everyone, we need more people nominating, whether your new to the site or have been around for a while nominate someone based on what you have seen, lets make this a good thing

Hello and welcome to the first ever KarateForums.com Awards. These awards are intended to acknowledge some of the outstanding (and humorous) people that have contributed to making KarateForums.com such a great place in this past year. These awards will take into consideration all forum activity from October 18, 2001 to October 18, 2002. There will be five categories for which awards will be given. 1. Member of the Year- This award is intended to acknowledge a person who starts interesting topics and contributes intelligent and helpful opinions and suggestions. This should be the model member, and your favorite member. Current staff members (Sempais, Senseis and Administrators) are not included in this award. 2. Staff Member of the Year - Basically, the same as Member of the Year, except that this award is for current staff members (Sempais, Senseis and Administrators) only, if you are unsure who the staff are Click Here 3. Funniest Member of the Year- Humor is an important aspect of the forums, and this award recognizes the member who has brought a smile to your face many a time. This person should have a good clean sense of humor and can be either a staff member or normal member. 4. Thread of the Year- This award distinguishes you favourite thread from all the others. This thread may have helped you out, taught you something new or just had a great discussion in it. It should also be martial arts related. 5. Funniest Thread of the Year- This final award distinguishes this thread as the funniest one yet. This thread should have made you laugh till you were blue in the face. This thread must exhibit good, clean humor. At this time I would like to ask you to nominate members and threads for the awards presented above. The nomination process is simple. You will private message me (link provided at end of this post) with the users and threads you would like to nominate. Please only provide in the private message the category for which you are nominating the person/thread for and the person/thread you are nominating, explanations are not necessary. There are just two rules in this nomination process. 1. Each user can nominate only one user/thread for each award. 2. No one can nominate themselves for the user awards or nominate threads that they have started for the thread awards. What are you waiting for, you know the stuff now get out there nominating, people. I will be accepting nominations till November 1, 2002 at which point the nominations will be tallied and the finalists will be voted upon. If you have any questions concerning the nomination process, please do not hesitate to private message me or post them in this thread. With everyone participating, this can be, yet another, fantastic and fun feature at KarateForums.com. Click here to private message me! Sincerely LeaF

Welcome to KarateForums.com, nice to have you

There have been several book recomendation threads, see the links below http://www.karateforums.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4722&highlight=books http://www.karateforums.com/forums/books.php

welcome back to the boards, nice to meet you

Welcome to KarateForums.com, Good luck finding a school

Patrick asked for it...... and we gave it too him Keep it up Everyone, good job!

Children may start training at my dojo around the age of 4. I definitly can agree that they are really just being babysat, and don't really want to be there. We get a lot of little kids in who think karate is all about making loud noises and swinging their arms around, when they find out differently they tend to loose intrest very quicky. I do believe though for the ones that stick it out it is great. We have a couple kids training who started at four and are now 6, and a huge improvement is quite obvious. Although I do believe martial arts are one of the greatest things for young children. They might take a year to learn how to do a kata, or have a low attention span in class, but one area that I see almost all the students improve in is displine. These kids are much more displine then a lot of others their age. They learn how to follow instructions, and behave at a very young age, which their parents love but it is also something that they will carry throughout their entire lives. It is much easier to learn something like this when they are young, and I believe martial arts training is a great way to do this.

There is obviously some sick psycho out there. I don't think there is any connection to 9/11 and I believe these attack will continue until the culpret is arrested. It appears the sniper(s) are making small mistakes, there were witnesses at the last murder I believe. Hopefully (s)he will continue to make mistakes that will lead to their arrest.

Welcome, it is great to have you

Good for you rising, have fun