aes

Well if you noticed I am asking questions about stretching in another area here. I am working hard at improving my flexibility so axe kicks are out of the question (besides this is another illegal kick in my style).

The roundhouse I could do but my dang short legs might not fair well against the avg competitor but if I did it fast enough and moved in quickly I think I could land it.

In our style of Kumite instead of allowing strikes to the groin or face they imagine there is a 6 inch bubble around that area and if you break that bubble but do not make actual contact it is a point. If you make contact it is a disqualification. At black belt level they seem to give more leway here.

Ok when I do these Isometric stretches too often I wondered, because it kind of hurts when I do them this often. What kind of hip and thigh stretches to you recomend? I can do pretty good butterfly stretches already. Almost getting knees to the ground.

This is an area that is a bit confusing to me. The back kick mentioned, is this considered a blind kick? In our standard point sparring matches blind kicks are not allowed. Some great tips though. Thanks

Well usually there are more breaks and saying we went at it for 1/2 an hour steady was an overstatement. There was several minutes of warm up and some short breaks to switch parteners but since there were only 4 people in the last class there were no real breaks. At my belt level no real head contact is allowed accept in tourneys.

I would be very interested in hearing your review. I am drenched in sweat after a half hour of non stop sparring. Antifog items such as ski goggles etc in the past have fogged on me so wonder about this.

I know this topic has been posted and reposted here. I have read the existing threads but none of them seem to apply directly to my issue. I am a 41 year old newbie MA. I love it but my lack of flexibility is going to be my biggest downfall. I cannot deliver a high to the head kick with either a front or roundhouse or crescent kick. This is a big problem for me because many forms will not be as impressive without higher kicks and I like to spar and I have limited options with such a low kick. So I am working on quick stretches that I can do multiple times a day to improve my flexibility. I read some of an old edition of Stretching Scientifically and found it too complex to apply to a daily routine. I have asked my Sensei's and they don't seem to have any good routines that I can do to help either. Here is what I have come up with: I try to do this 3 times a day. I do sideways leg raises where I move my leg up and down over and over with knee straight. This tends to warm my muscles up and adds strength to the muscles on the sides that help hold the leg up. I then go into what I think is called a Y split (toes forward legs outstretched in an inverted Y). I hold it and slowly turn my body and lean in one direction holding it and then do the other side. I pull on the groin muscles like I am trying to pull my legs together then increase this stretch doing this several times. I hold the final position for about 2 minutes. I walk it in heel toe then try to touch my toes and hold it with my legs straight for a good while. After Karate class with my legs good and warmed up I will also go onto a stretch machine and hold my legs stretched for a while and see if any progress has been made (currently only make it to 120 degrees in the machine). I have to do some of these stretches in my office and don't want to make too big of a scene so any advice people might have will have to take this into account. I have been told by our senior Sensei's to not expect to have great flexibility but I am not happy with just settling for mediocre ability there and want to aggressively increase my flexibility. Thanks.

I do not know the proper term for it but I have seen in several mixed MA tournaments people that are big on TKD often like to come in with their foot out and in your face, holding it there and flipping it around. I was wondering what some of the best counters for this in Tourney sparring would be? If their was no rules I would expect leg sweeping their back leg would be effective or a trust kick to their groin or maybe hammering the pressure points around their knees would work too, but this is not allowed in many torneys. The only thing that comes to mind is going in low with a high block under the leg and scoring a groin within 6 inch bubble type point, but there has to be other good counters to this.

It is mandatory in our dojo, but the chest protector and cup seem to be not worn sometimes.

Well I liked the show. Yes it was full of a lot of flash, stuff we don't see much in our Traditional Style of Karate Shorin Ryu, but I still loved the sword kata. It was also great to see some of the science behind MA. As for the hockey helmet comments. I wear foam headgear currently but will be getting a full face mask style soon. Why? Because I would like more safety since this is just a sport for me. I love sparring but am not willing unless it is life or death to have my face mangled for it. I sweat alot, wonder if these face sheild style mask would fog up? We have one black belt in our dojo that loves the flashy style katas. He has a great bo kata that always pleases the crowds and it is really amazing. It does not win him 1st place all the time though, because it is not a traditional kata.

I quickly read an older edition of "Stretching Scientifically " and found it too complicated for me to translate into a quick daily routine to improve my stretch. I just turned 41, I have been studying MA for a bit over a year. My kicks and stretch have improved but are a long way off of being acceptable in my mind. I have been revisiting what it is going to take to improve my stretch considerably, so i searched the topics here for the ever popular stretch questions. My ham strings are a way too tight. I cannot even raise my leg perpendicular to my body for a decent front kick. My round house is a bit higher but still not to the head, lastly my side kick is about the same as the roundhouse. I found the following link that describes PNF partener stretching pretty well. I would like to adapt these for solo use though. http://members.lycos.co.uk/Tamari/pnf.htm Does anyone have a practical yet very effective routine to follow that will get me where I want to be in say 1/2 a year? Currently I have been doing standing Y splits with the pnf technique to try to increase the stretch. Plus toe touches to try to help with the ham strings. I do them about twice a day or more and hold the positions for 20 seconds or so and repeat about 3 times. Plus the full set of stretches we do in class about 3 times a week. I am not as stuck on showing off a remarkable splits, but doing what needs to be done to get my kicks higher and enable me to do a good cresent kick.

For me I don't really care what anyone else thinks. I hated being a hairy ape so I started shaving my body. My wife liked the change so I kept doing it. I know some think this is less masculine, but again I don't care. I do this to please me. Being shaved makes my body definition stand out better, which is nice. But it is a lot of work to keep doing. My body hair is think and very dark. It grows in fast. To keep this shaving managable I follow a pattern of what I shave on each day. One day it will be my legs, the next my chest, once a week I do my arms. Kind of do it on a rotation basis in the shower. It is a myth that it will grow back thicker. It seems like it does because the stubble has a hard edge on it from shaving. I did wax for a while as well, but too expensive to have done professionally all the time and too time consuming for my wife to do for me. It doesn't hurt anyone so why should they care? I also have two pierced ears as well

I have not had to go against a 1st dan, but pretty much everything up to it. Unfortunately I am in the over 35 group, so there is often no novice catagory for us. They say they take into account your belt rank when scoring in kata, but I feel it is pretty hard to impress them when you are going against someone that has been doing it for 6 years (vs my 1 year). None the less, I find competitions fun and give me focus.

I don't have sweat problems that are just under my arms, I drip in sweat even from my face when I am having a good class. Wearing an undershirt just makes me hotter, but I admit I have some trouble with keeping the stains on the underarms from building up. A user here suggested Zout for this and it worked. Also a weak warm water and vinegar solution helps too. Someone once told me I sweat too much because of a high salt diet but I don't believe this. I think it is just a genetic thing.

Mine are 1.25 hours long most days. 3/4 of an hour on weekends. I can go to class pretty much every day if I wanted to but only have time to go 3 times a week.

It can varry with different styles. It took me 3 months.

I think the dojo I go to formally allows 14 yrs and older in the adult class. This rule gets bent a bit to make allowances for some families to train together etc, but is the general rule. Since we have a good number of 14 to 16 year olds in our adult class, I find it a bit distracting. Many (not all) of my younger class mates don't take training as seriously as the adults do and perhaps could benefit from the stricter dicipline enforcement in the kids class as compared to the adult one.

Dang, just as my right toe was starting to look less purple and start to heal... the exact toe on the other foot rolled under my foot in kata practice and got badly injured. I don't think I broke this one but gee it turned black, hurts and is making practicing very hard.

Just smaller toes. Big toe is another ball game. Also my toe is still straight which also adds to not worrying about it too much. It is just very black and blue and sore.

I talked to Kyoshi about it and showed him yesterday. He is pretty sure it is broken, but said doctors don't do much about it. They don't split it or anything and it will heal on it's own. Only recommendation was to tape it up before classes.

At sparring class last night without foot/hand protection, I launched a front kick just as my opponent punched. The punch went across my 1st toe off of my big toe and made a loud "snap" sound. I continued sparring but had a very hard time kicking with this foot as it really hurt, but I also had a harder time kicking with the other foot due to the toes hurting lots and interfering with balance. I am not a run to the doctor kind of guy and don't think it is anything too serious. I suspect the toe popped out of the socket briefly and is back in now. The knuckle of it is a bit swollen and turning pretty purple and it still hurts a fair amount (limping a bit). I know people here are not doctors, but I am wondering what is it that likely happened? P.S. I still plan on going to regular class tonight even if I have to hop around a bit

I wish I could think of a better alias than "aes", but so far I have not come up with one I like.

Thanks for the feedback people. I don't know if my daughter has what it takes dedication wise to go to top level competition like the Olympics, but wondered if it was possible.

I have been told that the only Olympic MA is TKD. Is this true? IE if my daughter worked really hard at Shorin-ryu she could never compete at the Olympic level?