I just earned my black belt!!

[JEM618]

Here at karate forums! That must mean I'm an expert.

 

No, that just means you post a lot.

 

Don't confuse quality with quantity.

 

Don't confuse efforts with results.

 

Which is more powerful the hundred words that start a war or the one word that can stop it?

 

[thaiboxerken]

Are you implying that the quality of my posts are low?

[JEM618]

I just made a statement, I’m not passing judgment. And really, what do you care what I think?

 

Try this: ‘Expert Self Test’

 

Click on your profile

 

Click on view all posts

 

Count all the redundant posts, i.e., the same information, opinion or belief over and over again.

 

Count all the posts that contain inflammatory, condescending, or sarcastic remarks.

 

Count all the posts that are not in you area of expertise and offer no insight or information regarding the topic.

 

Of course, many of the posts could fall into one or more categories, so to be fair, if one does fit in more than one category, count it once.

 

Subtract those from your total, to find out your ‘useful, intelligent post count’.

 

Oh yeah, that classic remark about nuclear power being a ‘trick’… Well I don’t know what category to put that one in except ‘posts that make me look sub intelligent’. But if you make that category and count up all those post, it will severely hurt your ‘useful, intelligent post count’.

 

Disclaimer: We could ALL do this exercise and with an open and honest mind drop our post counts by at least 10-15%.

 

BTW, Ken -

 

Did you try the exercise I suggested in one of my

 

replies to you? Awaiting your reply...

 

Have you located any dojos in your area? Shall I repost the link? Curious to hear...

 

Have a nice day!

[thaiboxerken]

Well, it's kind of hard to do your exercise about the unbendable are since "fluid tension" is an alien term to me. What do you mean by "fluid tension".

 

I think the quality of my posts are excellent. I think you just don't like your beliefs challenged and wish that I go away so you can be happy with them.

[JEM618]

Well, it's kind of hard to do your exercise about the unbendable are since "fluid tension" is an alien term to me. What do you mean by "fluid tension"..

 

Explained, again, to the best of my ability below.

I think the quality of my posts are excellent. I think you just don't like your beliefs challenged and wish that I go away so you can be happy with them.

 

Comment below. I am not judging you posts, I told you to take the 'Expert Self Test'. If you did, and you found that NONE of your posts fell into any of the four categories, that's fine with me.

 

Well Ken, I agree, that exercise, albeit the easiest of all the ‘ki’ training / testing exercises, was difficult for me to grasp. When I first started to train at my dojo (incase you haven’t noticed, I live in Japan), my Japanese was limited to; ‘Good morning’, ‘My name is…’ ‘Thank you’, and ‘Have a nice day’. Imagine my frustration when my sensei demonstrated it, then asked me to do it, and when I couldn’t, tried to explain it for about five minutes in Japanese. The end of his explanation was tagged with three words in English, ‘OK, you do’.

 

The only way to ‘get it right’ is to keep playing around with it until you can ‘feel it’. I have used the term or expression ‘fluid tension’ to describe the feeling. Perhaps dynamic tension would be easier to understand? I really don’t know, after all, how could I explain dynamic tension?

 

Anyway, the simplest explanation that seems to work nearly 100% of the time is this:

 

If you recall the previous explanation, the exercise is done in two parts; first it’s done with the arm extended, fist clenched and muscles tensed. This shows that when the muscles in the arm are locked in a static position, with equal force applied to them, the arm will bend.

 

Now, with the ‘unbendable arm’ the arm is extended the hand remains open and the muscles are held in a state of ‘fluid’ or ‘dynamic’ tension. Here is where the confusion lies; when told to relax the arm, most people relax too much, and the arm bends quite easily. But what you’re really trying to do is find muscle tension that lies somewhere between a totally flexed or ‘static’ state and a relaxed or ‘fluid, dynamic’ state.

 

I know this sounds ‘warm and fuzzy’ but try to imagine: In the first part your arm is like an iron bar that will bend with appropriate force applied. In the second part, imagine your arm is like a fire hose, water under heavy pressure is streaming from the end of the hose, i.e., your finger tips. The pressure of the water is so great, that the water travels from the tip of the hose away from you as far as you can see. I’m sure that at some point in your life, you have seen that it sometimes takes two grown men to handle a three inch hose coming off of a pump truck at a fire. Moreover, if you were to try stopping the flow of water coming from that hose by bending it, it would not be an easy task. (Yes, it’s possible – I’ve been out washing my car and when I’ve wanted to take the nozzle off the hose, I just kink the hose and unscrew it, then let the water flow again (40 psi). I’m talking about a 3 inch hose with an average nozzle pressure upwards of 250 psi – Just a guess, maybe some firemen can help on this one)

 

You will notice that I have called it an EXERCISE not a TECHNIQUE. It’s simply used to demonstrate a concept.

 

It’s rather sad that this forum goes round and round on this one ‘unbendable arm’ topic, as there are fourteen other ‘ki’ development exercises that could be discussed. That’s right, FOURTEEN more! I imagine that ‘unbendable arm’ gets so much attention because it’s the first one we learn and tends to be the easiest to do or teach others. No, it’s not a technique, I would never imagine using as one, but I would defiantly use the concept it teaches us.

 

No, I don’t wish you would go away, not at all, without resistance there is no growth. I just wish you would bring more to the discussion than what you have so far. After telling you at least ten times ‘ki’ is not worthy of the ‘Randi challenge’ you continue to post that we should take the challenge, which is rather silly. Your position is static and arguments stale.

 

I appreciate you trying.

 

Have a nice day!

[thaiboxerken]

It seems to me that the unbendable arm exercise has more to do with flexing only those muscles necessary to keep your arm from bending. It's simple body mechanics and has nothing to do with Ki. I can do this trick easy.

[thaiboxerken]

Hey, perhaps we I can practice Japanese with you. My mother is Okinawan, but I forgot it when we moved to the USA.

 

I'm trying to learn again.

 

Wakari masu ka?

[JEM618]

分かるよ!

 

Your name being Ken, is that short for Kenneth or was it chosen because ‘Ken’ is a popular Japanese boy’s name?

 

Both read ‘Ken’ 健 = healthy、賢 = smart

[thaiboxerken]

分かるよ!

 

Your name being Ken, is that short for Kenneth or was it chosen because ‘Ken’ is a popular Japanese boy’s name?

 

Both read ‘Ken’ 健 = healthy、賢 = smart

 

It's Kenneth.

 

I don't have a japanese name.

[JEM618]

It seems to me that the unbendable arm exercise has more to do with flexing only those muscles necessary to keep your arm from bending. It's simple body mechanics and has nothing to do with Ki. I can do this trick easy.

 

But I wouldn't call it 'flexing' because 'flexing' requires the opposite muscle group to relax. E.g., if you flex your bicep completely, your tricep must relax completely. However, you can flex both at at varying degrees that equal 100%.

 

Again, I wouldn't call it a 'trick' as much as I'd call it a concept or principal. And, as I've mentioned before the word 'ki' or concept of it was around long before the western terms 'body mechanics', static, dynamic, etc.

 

How does this help you improve your skill? Well that's for another day but something I'd be happy to discuss.

 

But for now, I’ll leave you with this:

 

Throughout the years, Tohei Sensei has maintained his focus on spreading the study and practice of the four basic principles of ki: （This is the English translation.）

 

Ken, I assure you, reading this myself, in English, it’s hard to understand.

 

Four major principals of ‘ki’

 

1. Keep one point.

 

2. Relax completely.

 

3. Keep weight underside.

 

4. Extend ki.

 

Lost in the translation! These are the same four points in Japanese, just by comparing the English and Japanese, even if you can read Japanese, you can see something is missing…

 

Below each line, I’ve tried to write the literal meaning – it will sound really strange, but that is the point…

 

心身統一の四大原則

 

１．臍下の一点に心をしずめ統一する。

 

Below your navel, in the center of your body, relax your heart.

 

２．全身の力を完全に抜く。

 

Completely remove all the power from your body.

 

３．身体の総ての部分の重みを、その最下部におく。

 

The weight for all parts of your body should be at the lowest part of each.

 

４．氣を出す。

 

Extend your ‘ki’.

 

(I’m not gonna even touch ‘ki’, but I got the following off the net.)

 

Ki is a Japanese word which is written with a Chinese character so there is a Chinese meaning and a Japanese meaning of the word Ki which are very different which creates much confusion. Of course for the Chinese meaning -I suppose that the Chinese pronounce it as Qi or something like that-you better ask the Chinese people, but since I am Japanese I prefer to use the word Ki in the Japanese way. So in the Japanese meaning Ki is something which is unclear, something that cannot be defined. In daily life it means something like feeling, sentiment or emotions or ideas which are not yet clear but will become clear later. Or some motivation, etc, etc. That is why to understand Ki is very important in the sense that it is a process of understanding one's own life and understanding ourselves.

 

You are fortunate, show your mom the Japanese and ask her to compare it to the English; I’m sure she'll laugh at the brevity of the English compared to the Japanese. Also, and this has nothing to do with your moms English, I’m sure shell have trouble explaining what the Japanese means in simple English. It’s just not simple.

 

Cheers