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I second that. Application in kata becomes horrifically apparent after the techniques are shown. I got my first taste of the technique behind the very beginning of nahanchi shodan when I got slapped in the groin and fought to stay standing. Good katas will lead to good technique when taken seriously and practiced a lot.

I think registering yourself as a weapon is less of an issue as is defending your motive in court when you crippled someone in a barfight after ten years of training.

Ryukyu Kempo is very complete and effective. I have yet to see any other style of Karate that suprasses it, but I remain open-minded. The really hard training helps a lot, also. Deadliness is not a good thing to focus on, anyway. If you want to kill someone, buy a gun.

I've seen this weapon before IRL and I was curious about what it may actually be called, its origins, any systems that may use it or something similar, etc. http://www.budkww.com/images/large/bk302.jpg The Bud K catalog calls it a Dungeon Warrior Spike. It looks like a pretty serious piece of steel to label as a fantasy weapon. I would hate to have to deal with someone that wields two of these.

I'm getting tired of everyone just calling everything karate. It gets old fast. Karate can be... o Self-defense for women o Classes for kids trying to kick Ritalin o A more physical form of babysitting o Physical fitness routine o Wreckless fighting o Sloppy get-rich-quick schemes o Misguided teachings o Respectable defense systems o Traditional systems o Frightenly effective fighting styles If you're on this BB and you enjoy your style of karate/kempo/kenpo, tell us what it is and why you're sticking with it. I'm training in Ryukyu Kempo Karate right now. It's very traditional and horrifically effective. It's effective to the point that I now fully understand why people who train in Kempo are considered weapons more so than many styles.

Does anyone else look upon a clean dojo with a suspectful eye? The new dojo I've been training at is so old looking that I picked up a tanto thinking it was a tan bo at first because it was SO worn from training. It actually tripped me out for a while. How many dojos will you honestly run into in your life where people have trained so hard that the oldest weapons have lost a third of their mass, the sais have spots of rust from sweat, etc.? I'm starting to appreciate these things a lot more. I wish new martial art students could see what a dojo looks like after hard training. Granted, some people just keep clean dojos. But I've seen many suspect dojos where the weapons don't look like they've even seen one impact and someone had too much time with a laserjet printer. What happened to all of the old world style dojos like those depicted in pictures from the last century or two?

I've been looking around for vast amounts of cane fighting resources and have had quite a struggle. I've seen the HapKiDo stuff and, while some of the moves look good, I'm not digging getting my Ki finger broken because I point when I block. I've heard that Okinawan cane is killer, but finding hanbo technique is hard. Any ideas?

I think that I would quit if I received an injury due to sloppy teaching, a jerk instructor, students who are allowed to misbehave and rough house, or some other reason. If I didn't execute a technique properly or it was just an accident, no way. The sad truth is that some people don't know the difference between showing, teaching, training, and fighting. Those people are the ones to watch out for if you want to avoid injury.

I started studying Ryukyu Kempo Karate about a month ago, and have started to notice that I can fend off most HapKiDo techniques with little effort. When I spar, flashy combos go away quickly because I'm a much more effective blocker. If I get them there, they start to punch but lack the ability to do it like a Kempo person would. I easily knock away punches and tap away. It's gotten so ridiculous that people fear sparring me and there was talk of banning me for a week just because I win with little effort. It's worth noting that I am not hitting hard, just like they ask. I don't punch in the face, sweep, or kick to the groin. I assure you that I am playing by the rules. A lot of the talk actually started when a guy sparring me somehow managed to get a black eye even though I didn't hit him in the face once. He admitted himself that he caused it and that it was not my fault. Despite this, I guess it's a good enough reason to bring a successful martial artist down. I've even had to deal with direct kicks to the head, professional boxer blows, etc., and still managed to win without pummeling the other guy. Has anyone else had a situation like this happen? Any thoughts on this or just Kempo and HapKiDo? I get this feeling that it may be a school issue less than a HapKiDo thing. We're only taught four blocks by orange belt, whereas in Ryukyu Kempo students get full block exercises on day one.

In all honesty, Taekwondo turned me away from Korean styles for a long time. It's hard to take Korean styles seriously when you see people bouncing around like morons high kicking and screaming, then watch those same people get tossed around like rag dolls by a 56 year-old Aikido master effortlessly. It's cool, though, because they still have their trophies and belt collection when they go home.

Sounds like a ploy to sell more magazines. I can't think of any other rational reason for it. It's a bit silly I think. I second that. Am I supposed to be more turned on because her Wushu is strong? Please....

Who cares? It's a private magazine run by a private company which tailors itself to a highly specialized group of individuals. In that group, the ratio of men to women is much larger. That's the way it is. If you represented the minority more you would be ignoring the majority, which would mean you would be ignoring your primary audience, which in turn would mean less readers and less sales. That's journalism. If you don't like it, write a letter to the editor.

I was wondering if anyone knew of any good (or even halfway decent) wall-mounted targets that protrude straight out for kick practicing? Outside of the dojang I don't really have anyone with the time or patience to hold up a target for me so I can practice accuracy. I'm looking for something that can have the plane of the target positioned horizontally or vertically. I have to move it everywhere from right on the ground up to several feet in the air for various Hapkido kick types. If I can't find one online, I'm considering making one out of some sort of clamp and adjusting rail system. I'll post pictures online if it comes to this

If you do want to protect yourself on the streets and like Korean arts, Hapkido is about the best way you can go. It has a lot of punches and kicks that Tae Kwon Do has, and it has moves that Jiu Jitsu does. Choi, Yong Sool was taught by Takeda, Sokaku, who was a master of Daito-Ryu Aiki-Jujutsu. Morihei Ueshiba, founder of AIkido, also trained under Takeda. Recently I had someone try to show me a complicated lapel grab defense which he couldn't pull off. With no effort, one hand and barely any effort, I showed him a more effective technique that brought him to the floor in under two seconds. It's been my experience that jujutsu and jujutsu-derived arts are incredibly effective (Aiki-Jujutsu, Brazilian Jiu-Jujutsu, Aikido, Hapkido, etc.). With the kicks and other techniques that Ji, Han Jae brought to Hapkido, it is extremely effective. As far as tournaments go, our school did one just because some of the upper level students were curious about them. They were extremely successful at it, but since Hapkido is not a sport we haven't made a habit of competing.

I was wondering what everyone's opinion on this was. I'm hoping that one day I'll be skilled enough to open my own, but not after years of practice and research. The McDojo phenomenon disgusts me and I do not wish to partake in it. What's your guys opinion? Is it emphasis on tradition, ethics and philosphy, honesty of the teacher, proper equipment, reasonable prices, etc.? This thread would probably be nice for anyone, not just people like me who have thought about opening up a school but for potential students who appreciate true martial arts over black belt cash machines.

You mean like going so far as to use belt graphics in a forum? Ha ha, only kidding. Please don't edit me Even if a system doesn't have belts, it usually still has rankings. I used to dislike belts but have grown to appreciate them purely for logical progression of skill and technique. Other than that, a belt just holds your pants up.

As long as you only do what you have to in order to end it without going psycho you'll probably be okay. If you start it or if you break half the bones in someone's body, you probably deserve jail time anyway. You have to remember that if you're training three times a week in self defense you already most likely have an edge. Abusing good training by pulverizing someone into a bloody, broken puddle of human fluids and flesh is probably not a good idea.

Anything with katana blades. As soon as I get my car, I'm driving 45 minutes every Wednesday just to take Kenjutsu/Iaido/Iaijutsu. Aikido got me hooked on sword arts.

Or McDojang if you're into TKD Seriously, though, I think it's growing. I do think that it's unfortunate when people join schools without first researching validity and qualifications, as well as examining ethics.The worst-case scenario is when people find it trendy and everyone wants to join the same school that has a bad teacher who charges a lot. Martial Arts can be a very, very lucrative business. Or they can be something much better.

"Aikido Exercises for Teaching and Training" by C.M. Shifflett:: If you're just starting out in Aikido, this book will help you get right into it fast. It's absolutely great. No Aikido student should train without it. "Hapkido: Traditions, Philoisophy, Technique" by Marc Tedeschi: This book is one of the best books on any martial art, ever. It's so comprehensive. Expensive but worth it. "Aikido for Life" by Gaku Homma: This was the first book I read on Aikido. I knocked it out in a few hours. It's a very good introduction to AIkido. "Tao of Jeet Kune Do" by Bruce Lee: It's a very informative book, although probably better if supplemented with training. I read it before I ever set foot in a Dojo/Dojang.[/b]

TKD has some good kicks and stuff, it just tends to harbor some really stuck up people. I've also noticed that a black belt in TKD usually doesn't mean as much as it would in a more traditional disipline like traditional Okinawan Karate or Aikido. If you go to a school and there's a lot of black belts who are either way too young or way too new to the system/school to have such rankings, be wary. All disiplines can have bad schools like this (I've had the misfortune of getting a free lesson from a school that had color belt rankings for Aikido which wasn't sure if they were teaching Judo, Aiki-Jujitsu, or Aikidom not to mention that the "black belt" would've broken my wrist if I hadn't done so many wrist exercises beforehand), but for some reason TKD seems to have quite a few of them. You might want to give Shotokan Karate a whirl, as TKD owes a lot of its modern form to it. Koreans don't always like to admit this, though, as the Japanese violated their culture for almost the entire first half of the 20th century.

I might be biased is saying this, but I think Hapkido is probably one of the most practical and effective martial arts around in itself. It incorporates punches, kicks, pressure points, locks, throws, jabs, wrist grabs, rolls, breakfalls, weapon techniques, etc. It's very comprehensive and well-rounded. If you train hard enough, you'll be able to stretch however much you need to. That's just my .02 cents.

And then hope you don't mess up or only get halfway through cutting that "Z" into you and disembowling yourself. In feudal Japan, if you screwed up your Samurai buddy could chop your head off and that was not dishonorable. If you mess up, you'll have to deal with hospital recovery and a lot of psychological evaluation.

I've been telling this to people for years now, and they all look at me funny: I'm not worried about death. I'm worried about everything that comes between now and then.

It was said that Morihei Ueshiba's piercing kiai could be heard from a half-mile away. That's an indirect quote from "Budo", which has a foreward about his life. The shout itself is not important, but when the time came he could shout!