Kyai y'all

[wilkan]

I post this message to improve my conviction to follow these forums.

I am a 24 year old Finnish guy. I have had four years of unmotivated training in Judo and a couple months worth of playing around with an unpractical Taekwondo rip-off called Hanmoodo where you get a black belt in five years and it is marketed to women as a light sport. Those two styles basically sucked for only working with specific, preset situations and even in those they would be too slow to not prevent you from getting horribly mauled. There were no alternatives at the time, so I wasn't very interested in learning either of those styles. I think the instructors weren't enthusiastic about them to the slightest.

A fun fact: I once witnessed a tournament of young adult judokas with black belts and most of the matches were about trying to press the opponent down with one's own weight and then attempt to legsweep him, using a white-belt technique. On the other hand, the older judokas tend have matches that take less than a minute. That is why I consider Judo an artificial, ceremonial sport and not a martial art. I have heard that sports karate isn't any better.

Currently, I train for myself. My biggest realization is that basically no martial arts for non-professionals I know have any guidelines for how to improve your physical attributes like strength, speed, coordination and burden-oriented endurance systematically in a constructive way. If the average people must find that stuff out by himself, he's gonna make horrible, long-term mistakes like over-buffing oneself into a slow and stiff brute or he never knows what the psyche-wise differences between biweekly and everyday training routines have. There is already enough techniques out there to kill Zod, so I think it is more productive to work on making something new like a "General Training Routine for Martial Artists"(tm?). I like doing this stuff for fun and most of the traditional techs do not interest me, so I'm more about general fitness training and self-entertainment than the exercise you might get a dojo or a gym.

Then again, I love techniques. I think most budokas lack the skills to deal with a close-contact situation like a match with a body builder. I think every proud Martial Artist should be able to perform the "security guard Martial Arts" which involves not kicking his teeth out but using locking techniques to prevent excessive damage on both sides. My personal interests are Sumo, Muay Thai, kickboxing, Jeet Kune Do, straight-forward karate with no circular movements like most of Shotokan and street fighting to know the underhanded nature of Martial Arts. I prefer progressive/aggressive styles because of my disgust of the sloth-like training partners in the group training days and I like to use speed and cunning to tackle a self-defense situation; you never lose if you know when to run and you are fit.

Over the years my interest in collective training, especially sparring, has increased considerably, though my motivation behind it is pretty sinister; I doubt there will be any challenge from average, biweekly trainees, so I am more curious about playing with them. I am probably going to get beaten, though I think I'd enjoy even that immensely. I have trained with body-hardening exercises like punching tree trunks and knuckle push-ups long enough that the overall association of pain is pretty positive -- usually you get stronger that way. Nowadays I'm a bit lazier and I "train" toughness mostly at night by punching myself to solar plexus to get some sleep. I think by the point you get that practical about it, it stops being just a hobby.

I like to train by doing long, weighted exercise with medium intensity with ex tempore coordination exercises thrown in the mix. I have found out that doing those flurry punches and random combos is a pretty effective way to get the effect of long training session with a very short time. I have enough stamina to do with hours, though that would sap my imagination and make me skip training altogether, making the overall positive effects diminish drastically. I do sometimes do it long if I'm feeling emotionally occupied at the moment.

To sum up what I have learned about practicing of Martial Arts in general is to 1) have fun, 2) relax and consciously breath out before, during and after a straining stunt or a move, make a breathing noise if you have to, 3) try out new stuff and 4) any contact-oriented style can be effective -- it is the quality and the amount of training that makes a master of one school beat a master of another school.

I look forward to reading the articles on the forums. Until then, keep breathing out.

An addition: I have read some of http://www.karateforums.com/tkd-rant-vt41431.html and the thoughts listed there completely match mine. My more-or-less bitter point is that everyone of my temperament should start with a straight-forward, simple styles like boxing or combat-oriented karate. It simply makes a hobby frustrating when you cannot apply what you have learned as you have learned them. For example, how is a judoka who has no training with punches and kicks supposed to survive long enough until he gets a grip of his opponent that might have clothes that themselves are not throw-able in the same way as the Judo gi that is made specifically to be easy to grab hold of.

The fact that you throw with assumption that your opponent has a specific clothing makes Judo throwing-wise AFAIK much weaker as the archaic Greco-Roman wrestling. Of course you can fix the technique to grab the limbs instead of the gi, but when a flagship techniques like those are taught in as ineffective form as they were taught to us yellow-belts, I know I wasted my time. Sure, we were kids, so they might have emphasized the pressure on the gi to minimize the tissue damage.

I recall the annual license cost a ton back then and considering that I have come up myself with better stuff with no charge, it looks like over-cashing in to me. Never was this talked about during the training, so I feel like I paid a full price for incomplete facilities.

I seem to always land on the cash-in styles.

[Student4Life]

Welcome to KF. You seem to have formulated a pretty deep opinion for someone who has not trained very long. I agree with you that some schools lack technique, but also as you said you get what you put into it. Perhaps you should seek out a Kyokushin Dojo. From what you say it is exactly what you're looking for. Conditioning, full contact training, straight forward technique. Anyhow, again welcome. Look forward to reading your posts!

[sensei8]

Welcome to KF!!!!!!!!

[Patrick]

Welcome to KF, wilkan.

Patrick

[ninjanurse]

Welcome!

[bushido_man96]

Welcome to KF.

[DWx]

Welcome wilkan