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Version: 1.0
(July 25, 2005)
Ugh takes us to task for not putting anything up. So here you go.
Talking to Canadians is one of those exercises where you think you have lots of common points of reference, but as you talk about them, you realize that they aren't common, they and there is some twist that you had no idea existed. To wit: Thanksgiving (Canada)
More elucidation or more examples cheerfully requested, in the spirit of the season.
Nov 30, 2009, 09:41:46 nous wrote:
Can't help you at all on the Thanksgiving front.
As always, dissertation is eating my brain, but in the mean time...
...I've been playing a lot of loud, bad guitar. I played around with a lot of virtual amps using a USB direct box to my computer and have to say that they are more fun than just about any amp I have tried, real or modeling.
...I started taking a Filipino martial arts class this quarter and have been loving it. Eight weeks in and I am starting to feel a little less like an idiot whenever the instructor demos something new.
Feeling the jones for some more ink sometime soon. Been doing a sort of Norse tribal thing. Thinking that I'm going to get some viking spirals and a serpent to join the ukonvasara that I have on my forearm.
Think we might go see The Road this week at the little art theater down the street.
Nov 30, 2009, 19:53:30 libjpn wrote:
Yowsa! Escrima? Or is it one of the no-weapon varieties? They all look really fun.
Nov 30, 2009, 23:24:47 Slartibartfast wrote:
I haven't done anything with weapons yet. I'm kind of looking forward to bo training, possibly because of my having read about Robin Hood and his band of Merry Men (some of which wielded the quarterstaff) at a very young age.
At this rate I may just get a black belt by the time I'm 50.
Dec 01, 2009, 00:06:12 nous wrote:
It's based in Giron Arnis Escrima, and we are doing weapons training, but we're doing mostly single blade work and self-defense applications. It is fun and the flow of it is just insane once you start to learn the wrist locks and stuff.
Slarti - I think I probably read the same Robin Hood you did. Was it the one with the <a href="http://www.lib.rochester.ed...">Howard Pyle illustrations</a>? I loved that one.
Dec 01, 2009, 00:09:10 nous wrote:
Proper link to the [url=http://www.lib.rochester.ed...]Robin Hood Project[/url]
Dec 01, 2009, 22:19:09 Ugh wrote:
Hey, no one should take me seriously, usually.
so I don't know what to think of Von's latest post, some kind of weird reverse cheney 1% doctrine - if there is a 1% chance of magical ponies appearing to solve all our problems, then we must act as if its a certainty.
Dec 03, 2009, 01:41:48 Ugh wrote:
Good luck with that, Pres. Obama.
Dec 03, 2009, 03:44:41 Slartibartfast wrote:
Could be, nous. Probably. I no longer have the book, if I ever owned it in the first place.
Arnis? I have a friend who practices that a bit, in addition to tang soo do.
Dec 03, 2009, 10:00:17 nous wrote:
Yeah, arnis, although I hear the instructor calling it escrima more often than arnis (and the founder of the system called it Bahala Na). No one is quite sure what to call most of the Filipino martial arts, which figures in a country made up of several islands and hundreds of language groups, and with less cultural weight given to systems and lineage than to finding a method that works for the individual context.
There are other MA classes on campus, including really good Aikido, Iaido, and Kendo instructors, but those all seem like very serious and focused classes and I really enjoy the informality of our escrima class.
I forget, Slarti, are you doing tang soo do as your primary system? You've talked about your classes before, but I can't remember if you mentioned the system by name.
Dec 03, 2009, 21:32:02 Slartibartfast wrote:
Tae kwon do, actually, with some kickboxing and muay thai thrown in.
My instructor is a 6th dan, and he's just getting his certification (didn't know they had such things, actually) as a muay thai instructor as well. He's all about getting the TKD forms right, but he's also all about using whatever works in actual combat.
Sparring the guy, which I find myself doing from time to time, he's constantly changing the way he interacts with me, so I wind up expending a lot of physical and mental energy re-adapting to his strategy. It's not just a matter of stance, it's the whole offense-defense balance and mix of techniques that's constantly shifting.
Every once in a while I get lucky and land something on him.
We've also got a couple of 4th dans and a 5th dan as instructors; it's an ongoing mystery to me to what degree they hold back from kicking my ass. One of them I have to occasionally ask to dial up the intensity, so that I have to respect him. If he's not landing hard enough, I just tend to take one so that I can deliver a couple.
The guy that's actually hurt me the most is a recent black belt; he just about broke my eye socket a year ago with a round kick, and a few weeks back landed an overhand right square on the bridge of my nose. That one was a lesson for me: I tend to keep sparring until I'm just about completely spent, and it's at the point where I'm so exhausted that I no longer protect myself as well, that I get nailed. I like to get as much out of sparring as I can, fitness-wise, but I'm finding out that it's probably better to stop and rest, so that I don't get damaged.
I'd like to get into some of the grappling arts, but I want to get my black belt in TKD first. I test for brown belt next month, but the climb from brown to black is nearly as long as the climb from white to brown, because you have to have the fitness level plus mastery in all of the techniques and forms up to black belt level. Maybe by the time I'm 50.
Dec 04, 2009, 07:54:14 nous wrote:
Cool. Good luck with that test.
We don't really do much in the way of forms, mostly it's guided discovery and three-step sparring types of things focused more on techniques-in-flow and on shifting approaches when a technique goes wrong at anything from weapon range to down-and-ground. Highest kick I've thrown was knee-level. Amazing how compact things get when there's a blade involved. No one wants to stick a hand or foot out there to get cut. And once an attack is out there you have to really worry about defense and not open yourself up because knives are just nasty. There's not much sport in the sparring.
Dec 04, 2009, 09:16:48 libjpn wrote:
Good luck on the testing. They say in judo that the most dangerous person is a brown belt because they have all the techniques but don't yet have the control to not hurt someone and freshly minted black belts probably have a similar situation.
We just had two Japanese Olympians in TKD give a talk and a demonstration here, and it certainly seemed like TKD doesn't make many allowances for folks who might not be at peak physical condition and lack flexibility (i.e. me). I have had occasion to work out with judo and jiu-jitsu folks here, but I only do groundwork with them, cause while I might be able to keep up with them, the possibility of serious damage is too great. Groundwork can really let you push yourself to the exhaustion without increasing the danger of walking into a roundhouse kick.
Dec 05, 2009, 00:13:58 Slartibartfast wrote:
Testing in my school: you don't get invited to test until you've demonstrated everything that they're going to test you on. The testing is more of a formality; it actually winds up being harder, by a fair margin, than your typical 1-hour workout class. So no luck will be involved; it's more that I've got to have a decent level of focus. Which, if you've ever done classes under the head instructor (vs. the various lower-level instructors) is pretty much a given; the head instructors are usually much more demanding in terms of focus and performance.
But thanks for the kind wishes.
And yes, agreed: brown belt is fairly dangerous. But yellow can be dangerous, too; the yellow belts tend to wind up kicking you in the knee, thigh, kidneys or thigh, or squarely in the cup. Lately we've had some folks come in as white belts (usually you have to be yellow to spar) that spar, because they've got boxing background, and those guys start out being all over the map, kicking-wise.
I like sparring because it tends to work out poor combat habits. Last night, one of my instructors pointed out to me one reason why I'm getting hit, repeatedly: because although I can now kick at about head level (which is a huge improvement for me, flexibility- and technique-wise), I'm dropping my hands when I do it, and so when I land the foot I'm kicking with, I'm doing it with my hands down. If my opponent is timing my kick (which at least half of the people I spar with are able to do), then they can tag me right about the time I put my kicking foot back down.
I think the remedy for that will be doing some kicking on the bag, paying special attention to keeping my guard up while doing so. Which is the tricky part about throwing kicks that people don't seem to discuss, much: somehow, you've got to maintain your balance while kicking, because you're rotating about at least one axis, while extending your limbs in ways that you don't tend to do when just throwing punches. So the natural thing to do is to use your arms to try and adjust balance.
Which can have some consequences which involve someone else's extremeties impacting your head.
So, maintaining balance while constraining arm motion is one of those skills that just needs to be developed. It's not enough to be flexible and agile and balanced, you've got to be all of those with some added constraints about not moving limbs out of position.
Maybe if I had a tail.
Dec 07, 2009, 04:21:38 nous wrote:
[i]I can now kick at about head level (which is a huge improvement for me, flexibility- and technique-wise)[/i]
::creaks in sympathy:: I've never been particularly flexible and I'm really feeling it having started these classes on the wrong side of 40. Unlike TKD, though, aging escrimadors feel it mostly in the need to get low enough and still keep over one's center and be able to move. I've been looking at sparring vids on youtube and TKD sparrers stay much more upright than Filipino ones, who are always shifting levels and moving at an angle. I can shift lower okay. It's that moving part that kills me every time.
Dec 07, 2009, 05:15:19 Slartibartfast wrote:
I feel your pain in re the over-40 complaints, nous, but you can get more flexible, with consistent stretching. It helps to warm up first, and it helps to do stretching that works for you.
My typical stretching...workout, I guess you would call it, is a hundred jumping jacks to get warmed up a bit, followed by ten or fifteen each straight front kick, roundhouse, swing kick to the side, and back kick with 5lb leg weights. Then I do some work bringing the leg into chamber position and slowly executing the kick, again with leg weights, to strengthen and re-warm the muscles. I do that for front snap and side kicks only. Then I do standing straddle stretches, taking care to stretch down to each ankle as well as the center. Then I do a stretch that looks a bit like a lunge: bent leg out in front, other leg stretched straight out back, knee not touching the ground. You're almost in a lunge position, only your back leg is straight. Then you bend down and try to put your elbow on the ground right beside your foot. If your right leg is in front, your right elbow goes next to your foot; right forearm on the ground perpendicular to your foot.
If you're not that flexible, you won't be able to put your elbow anywhere near the floor. The object, though, isn't to succeed in doing that. The object is to do the best you can, and slowly improve your effort over time.
Another good stretch is, you get down on your knees, then spread your knees out laterally as far as you can. Then lie down on your face, and then you can adjust your torso with your arms, back and forth, working the hip flexors as you scoot your torso backward. Most people can't make their hips go further back than their knees, but again: the objective is to loosen up those muscles.
Hip flexors and hamstrings are difficult to strengthen and stretch. It just takes regular effort, and you'll see improvement.