Geocitiesuser Member

Why would you be shy about this? That's awesome

Good, do it! It's not something you get rich financially from, but it makes you rich spirtually.

^ That drives me nuts. For whatever reasons, I've grown into a "helping out a lot" role, and one of the things I do constantly is hold for breaking. A lot of times if someone breaks their boards or not will be a direct result of the holders! We even have a whole curriculum on holding for the people on the "helping out a…

We unfortunately have a lot of black belts in "paper only" as you mentioned it. Some of my more serious classmates and instructors complain, but I look at it in the sense that you get out what you put in. My instructor told me once never to be intimidated by a belt color, the paper belts are a big reason why. We add a…

The parents, as a group, are to blame for a lot of shortcomings of modern martial arts gyms for kids, and it leaks into adult classes as well. Everyone complains about "McDojos", but most people fail to realize that it's that way because of the parents! The only reason the school I go to has so many belts and so many belt…

awesome breaks. I'm surprised the bald guy was such a lousy holder (no offense to him). He flinched hard, if he unlocked his arm or if there wasn't the other guy holding with him, it would have ruined your break.

Agreed on all points. The ITF boots in particular are something I really dislike because it prevents the kids from hitting with the correct part of the foot, they can just kick blindly and it's just bad. They're also hard to move in, and the brand our school makes us wear fall apart easily. My ITF style foot gear is 70%…

Another big trend right now is no longer allowing head kicks in kids tournaments. Our culture is so .... wussed out. When I'm an old man we are going to get invaded by a bunch of cavemen with sticks and lose. Hopefully Generation Z is tougher than what their parents are letting them be.

Albany NY / WTF Taekwondo / 3+ / forever cutting / roughly 37yrs old

Still drivable distance then lol. I'm in Albany. I actually hate going to NYC because it's so crowded and parking is always a nightmare.

I'll probably be posting about state tournaments come jan/feb/march as well. Not sure if any other members are here in the northeast, but I attend tournaments in NY/NJ/CT/MA

Awesome. I'd love to go to a tournament with a mix of different styles like that. I didn't know that was a thing.

I won't be doing world class. Those guys are nasty. I would literally get my teeth knocked out lol. Even the competition in the free sparring is pretty nasty because it gets such a wide variety of competitors from different schools. So far all of my TKD injuries have come from the governor's cup XD

"But I think that if you suspect you might be scaring off fellow adults, you should sit down and assess whether that's actually true and if so, why." I'm a big guy that hits hard. A lot of the adults are not fit. So I worry I'm going too hard on some of them. WTF sparring is weird. It's more about making clean contact than…

Losing weight is "simple" but definitely not easy. It's kind of weird to see people arguing that it is. I've lost 130lbs and have been at this for many years. I'll be the first one to tell you, willpower is a limited resource, life happens, and sometimes you have to dig so deep to not eat the pizza that it hurts. With that…

We'll do round robins on birthdays lol, we all take turns sparring the same person. My instructor will usually stagger the opponents so it's not a complete blood bath. Part of our curriculum for black belt is also two on one sparring. I've only done it a few times (being the one) but have tag teamed people quite a bit. My…

It will always be wtf in my heart

Getting off topic, but all of my sparring has been pretty light lately :( Now that I'm a red belt I find myself more and more taking a bit of a leadership/instructional role where I am working with young kids and lower belts. It's okay, I am honored that I am trusted enough and seen as skilled enough to do that. But at the…

Don't ask me why because I don't know, but we do ITF style forms. We spar using ITF gear as well (because it's more protective) but we are a WTF and Kukkiwon certified school that spars WTF/olympic style. We are a MASSIVE school of 9 locations, 3 owned by each of one of grandmasters, and each one is run a bit differently.…

We do one per belt. Our progression is gi choy, chong gi, do san, yul gok, tae guk 6, hwa rang, tae guk 8, choo mu. After that black belts do different form depending on cycle and dan. For frequency i train usually 5 days a week and its still not really enough

Also short sighted. I do all training and sparring without my glasses. I typically only wear mine if necessary (driving, shopping, tv watching).

http://amzn.to/2gHe2Fu Fits my ALL of my gear with a little bit of room to spare for belt/uniform if need be. (We use ITF style gear so it takes up a lot of room, even though we spar WTF style). I'm happy with it. The top can be zipped to be either full coverage, or just the rubber mesh, which I find invaluable because my…

I will post a link to mine later. It has a mesh top so the gear can dry

So important if you exercise hard. Plus if you over do it you can out take any opponent with just a fart.

4 year contract: about $5,000 Belt test every three months: $45 Intramural tournaments: $40-120 depending on events Boards for breaking: $2 for small one $2.50 for normal sized (usually in stacks of up to 10) Black Belt Test: $300 + $200 for Kukkiwon registration (iirc, not sure, I'm not there yet) So, it's not cheap. They…

Sometimes we test on a hardwood basketball court floor, and a lot of people complain their hearts out lol. Jumping jacks on hard wood is not fun when you're an overweight adult.

Pro: There might be cats

The current rule system is okay. Pushing is now allowed to avoid clinching. Clean punch 1 point, clean kick 2 points, head kick 3 points, and adding a spin to any kick adds a point. At our intramural all kicks are one point no matter where they land, but for some very stupid reason, push kick does not count.

Our intramurals also have a funny scoring system they made up on their own that has no relevance to olympic sparring.

Running is horrible... no one believes me lol. I hate it! Makes my body feel sore in the "bad way". Just too high impact on asphalt