Interesting thing happened this week – went to karate on Wednesday night, and nobody was there!! I knew numbers were low, I guess over the last 8 weeks of absence the class must have closed up if there weren’t enough people attending. Bummer

But, rather than getting bogged down, I’ve started looking elsewhere. I’m looking to jump into another school, either shotokan or goju ryu, but I reckon goju ryu might be my preference if I can find one in my area. I’m trying to stay away from mixed or freestyle karate – I recognise that these might be broader in application and I intend no disrespect to those who practice these styles, but for me, I still want to train within a traditional framework. I’m going to check out a class near where I live next week, and the advantage is that they train multiple nights a week, have affiliation with some of the broader national groups, and also offer traditional karate/Okinawan weapon training as well, which is ace as I’ve always been keen on doing some weapon training – bo, sai, nunchuku, kama, it’s all good. I’ll post my thoughts next week, but I’ve already talked to Jyastin-kun and he’s pretty stoked to see what it’s like. We’ll be starting again at 10th kyu, but that’s okay – the syllabus will be different anyways, and I’ll hopefully be able to breeze through the first few kyu before I hit where I used to be.

Oh, and as an aside, I’ve thrown up a heap of new training pics – feel free to have a look and leave some comments if you want, it’s all good There’s some cool mid-air shots Wifey captured that I thought looked pretty awesome, I’m really happy with how they turned out. Oh, and note the awesome Activision t-shirt I was wearing on the day that Tank and Meru got me for my birthday – retro awesome

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1. Archive: Training tonight
2. Archive: Post-Australia Day wrap-up
3. Archive: I’m back :)

Part of being an above-knee amputee is accepting that it’s tricky learning new techniques and mastering ones you’ve already been taught – granted this is difficult for anyone trying to master any kind of martial art, but when you’ve lost a limb (or part thereof) in a discipline that is designed to work your entire body in perfect harmony, you get some tricky stuff coming up. To this day I still can’t fire off a decent round kick with my right leg as I have very little support from my prosthesis on my left – I don’t have a foot to subtly shift my centre of balance, I don’t have an ankle to control the pivoting of my body, and I don’t have a knee to take the weight and securely leverage and assist my hips in swinging through a powerful kick; in contrast, I can feel all of this working in natural coordination when I kick with my fake leg and accordingly stand using my right. The best analogy for someone able-bodied is to imagine that they have to kick with their good leg whilst they balance on a stilt attached to their hip with a hinge in the middle in place of a knee – not only do you have to balance yourself by default, but if you shift your weight a little you’ll go arse-up as the hinge will cause the leg to collapse on itself. It means that your stance isn’t as stable as you would like, and its from your stance that you deliver true power.

On a technical note, there are legs with knee units that can counter the ‘collapsability’ of the knee unit I use; the side-affect of such a knee is that by doing this, I lose the ability to swing my left leg around and snap it back like a nunchaku. The knee I use is better suited to the way I use my leg, and it has the benefit of being servicable locally.

So, technicalities aside, I’ll get to the point of this post. Due to my physical condition, there has been a bit of self-taught/self-learnt techniques, or rather, variations of existing techniques better suited to my body. I’ve started working these out over time, but I thought it might be a good opportunity to start to write about them, if I haven’t mentioned them already

The easiest (and the first) variation I learnt came early on, after I’d been training for about 6+ months and I had my boxing station to help with my training. When breaking down a simple round-kick, the move consists of raising your leg (bent) so that it’s horizontal to the floor, swinging through with your hips and letting your leg swing out, quickly retract it once it hits full extension, then return to your stance. The variant on this technique is what I call a ‘torque kick’; the principle movements are the same, but it employs a greater swinging action by using your supporting knee and your hips to generate a much greater level of impact.

I’ll explain by using myself as a reference – remember that my right leg is the good leg, and the left is my above-knee prosthesis; I’m not sure if this will be of much use to below-knee amputees, but I thought it might still be interesting in case the technique some how helps them. First up, start off in a short fighting stance. Slide your right foot across a little to your left, keeping your foot pointed straight ahead like you normally would in a short fighting stance; keep your left leg in the same spot. Doing this should twist your hips very slightly.

Next, keep your right leg in the same position, but twist your right foot further to your right about 10 – 15 degrees and turn your hips slightly clockwise. This movement is what earns this technique its name – you’re literally holding your body in a twisted position and have all the muscles in your leg, hips and torso torqued nice and tight.

Next, release all of the built-up pressure and swing the leg out using your stump, leg, hips and torso (in that relative order) into the target. The result, with practice, should be an incredibly powerful round-kick into your target. When I got the hang of the move, I spent a good 10-20 minutes pounding my boxing bag with the kick repeatedly, using both the foot and the steel pole of the ‘shin’ without the padded cover as striking points. The technique proved so effective that I actually tore the bag apart, sending shit everywhere. It was supremely awesome in the heat of the moment, but it also meant I had to grab another bag

All that being said, the technique is certainly not without fault. It’s difficult to master control of the technique, making it extremely dangerous if performed outside of the appropriate circumstances, and never, ever use it when sparring; never.

Secondly, the pressure it places in your joints (ankle/knee/hips/lower back) is quite high and without the proper precations and care, you could do yourself a pretty serious injury to these vital parts of your good leg and your lower back – don’t say you haven’t been warned!!

Finally, if you don’t connect with your target and you haven’t mastered control of the technique (which is difficult as it relies un unleashing a large portion of stored energy), you’ll be leaving yourself open for a nasty counter attack. Again, don’t let me tell you that you’ve been warned

I was going to write about a couple of other variations I’ve worked on, but I’ve waffled on enough for one post The names I’ve attributed to some of the other variations include the spinning-heel strike (like a modified roundhouse kick, but taking advantage of the strength of the artificial foot), modified jumping round kick, inside-out hook kick, jumping inside-out hook kick and modified-ish jumping roundhouse kick (possibly evolving into a modified tornado kick – we’ll see how it goes).

I’m hoping to actually throw together some footage of some of these techniques as well as some basics that show how amputees can perform and control a number of the basic moves if people are interested, and will probably fire up a blog and send out a bulletin whenever I get around to doing it. I’ll probably get it done whenever I manage to get Wifey to take some training photos, which we’ve been meaning to do for ages. I’m keen to share all I can about how these excellent moves can be modified to suit the limits of what amputees can do. I think what I’m afraid of is coming off like some kind of faux-expert, when I’m a student through-and-through, and am always learning from my teachers and from personal experience. Humility is the best trait one can have when doing martial arts, and my fear is that this won’t be reflected if I throw some footage together or what-not. Having had to learn a lot of this myself through trial and error, I’m hoping that by showing it in motion it’ll be easier for people to understand.

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1. Learning to walk again through karate
2. Experimenting with empi techniques (elbow strikes)
3. Archive: Randomness

Despite belief to the contrary, I haven’t dropped off the face of the planet Apologies to any regulars for the lack of updates for so long, it’s been ultra crazy around here lately. Wifey and I are still getting the house ready for sale, it’s been taking much longer than we thought, but it’s looking great. On top of that, we also celebrated our first wedding anniversary in July, I had my industry’s ultra huge conference/exhibition two weeks back that I was heavily involved in, and Wifey and I have been in Sydney holidaying and visiting my brother and his wife for the past week. Crazy stuff.

As a result, I haven’t had the chance to train for about 6-8 weeks, but I’m finally in a place where I can get back into the groove of things. I’ll be training Wednesday night and starting back on my weekly regime of stretching and pushups/crunches/etc. I’m also going to do my best to knock out my love handles by trying a few more exercises that should do the job.

So you can expect some more regular updates as a result of this Wifey and I are also taking this week off work and she’s offered to take some pics of my doing some techniques so I can plonk some more photos on MySpace, which is cool. I’ve put some pics from the recent trip top Sydney up as well if anyone’s interested. The new lotus pic on my profile was taken in the awesome Chinese gardens in Sydney, and there’s an amusing composite of me doing jump kicks in front of one of the things in another part of the garden Kudos to Wifey on both accounts for indulging me ^^

I’ve also recently been in touch with a guy from the US who is an amputee martial artist. He coined the best phrase for it – amped fighters. He’s into full-contact mma, and I’d encourage you to check out his profile (click here). Even though we approach this from different angles (I’m going down a more traditional martial arts path, whereas Robert is going into the more full-on, full-contact tournament style with greater practical application), we’re both heading towards the same goal – to push our bodies to the max regardless of our physical condition. I wish him all the very best of luck and look forward to continuing to read up on his progress.

So with that, I’ll leave you all to it. Thanks for sticking around, I’ll be looking forward to posting more as I go!

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1. Archive: I belong to the international order of stupid
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Okay, Wifey and I watched the incredible wrongness that is Double Dragon the Movie last week. I hadn’t seen it before, and my other half had seen it as part of one of her friend’s obsessions with Scott Wolf. Now, for the people out there who aren’t aware, Double Dragon was a videogame released to the masses in 1987 by the now defunct developer Technos. Double Dragon pretty much pioneered the side-scrolling fighting genre in video game land, and the games are classics – XBox 360 owners recently have had a remake thrust on them, but thankfully there’s also the option to enjoy it in all its original blocky glory.

Oops, got carried away again. Anywho, Double Dragon is a video game. Video games generally don’t translate well to movies, due to (a) the Hollywood studio execs are idiots, (b) the director and producers are idiots, (c) a story is contructed out of a property with no real story, and (d) there was no money to begin with, so it was a lost cause. Double Dragon pretty much falls into all of these categories – the studios behind it were idiots, the final package doesn’t speak all that well of the director/producers, there was obviouly very little money, and there is little premise for a story. That is because the storyline for Double Dragon is as follows – Billy Lee has a girlfriend. A dude in a mohawk punches her in the belly and then walks off. Billy and his brother Jimmy rescue the girl. Billy and Jimmy then fight each other as as to win her.

No, seriously, that’s about it. Wikipedia reckons there’s some post-apocalyptic futre thing going on. I think Technos (and by extension, Taito (who translated it into English) were smoking crack when they determined this, as the blocky scenery suggests 80s tragedy, not post-apocalyptic future.

So, in the movie Double Dragon, we start off with a winning opening – ninjas raid a Chinese village. We don’t know where, as a handy subtitle suggests that we are “Somewhere in China”. The shonky factor increases when we go a post-apocalyptic future – 2007 – to LA, whre a big earthquake blew everything up. We then witness Billy and Jimmy Lee in an underground fighting tournament that demonstrates that Wolf needed more body double shots, as he is officially shit. Jimmy Lee, unknown but talented, doesn’t suck. The dude that played T-1000 from Terminator 2 is the villain and has a goatee, and there’s lots of biff, bad effects and cheap explosions. There’s also Alissa Milano in short blonde hair, who, like Wolf, can’t fight to save her life either. Then at the end of the movie, they join two dragon-shaped pendants (the ‘Double Dragons’) and suddenly they have campy uniforms in blue and red colours. The end.

This movie fails on so many levels and should only be watched with a healthy sense of humour handy, possibly enhanced by (responsible, over 18 and legal [don't close my blog MySpace ]) consumption of alcohol. I won’t get those two hours of my life back, but at least I could laugh at it and didn’t waste any money on watching it.

Scott Wolf, go home to your Party of Five. Or better yet, Go Home and Be a Family Man. Man, I’m such a tragic geek

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This is the third time I’ve tried to write this blog, hopefully I get it done

Anywho, training last Wednesday was great – I pushed myself really hard and felt I finally smashed through whatever imaginary barrier was holding me back. My form was better, my kata was more accurate, and kicks weren’t shithouse Can’t wait for this week, should be ace.

I’m planning on trying to get back into a routine at the moment, and have decided to follow Renato’s use of body-weight training and have started implementing three sets of knuckle push-ups into my training between classes, along with at least 100 crunches. While things will be a bit frantic as Wifey and I are preparing to sell our place and buy another, bigger one, I’m hoping to continue to squeeze in more regular training between classes. Hopefully

Oh, and in non-karate news, I finally finished up my Media/Lounge Room PC on the weekend. I originally started playing with the idea back in 2004, and I finally got it done. I’m such a slacker I’ve kept a journal of my progress and I’ll be setting it up on a separate webpage down the road. I’ll post a link up somewhere when its done.

Again, I’ll try to squeeze in another blog before the end of the week, but no promises – things are still pretty busy!!! Wifey and I watched the utterly terrible Double Dragon movie over the weekend for a laugh, and I feel compelled to write a blog about it somewhere down the line

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1. Archive: Training tonight
2. Archive: Ack, I keep neglecting my blog :P
3. Archive: Post-Australia Day wrap-up

Sorry about the delays… things have been mega busy the last week, between work and other stuff. Wifey and I are looking at selling our current place for a bigger house, so we’ve officially started (a) looking at what’s available in our area in our price range, and (b) started on fixing up bits of the house that need some work, which I’ve been putting off due to laxiness So if my blogs are a little infrequent over the next month, I at least have a legitimate reason

Anywho, training last week went well – some drills and plenty of kata. In fact, I hope we do lotsa kata tonight, as my seifa is so sloppy at the moment. Prior to the two months off, I was performing very tight, very focused kata and I was really happy with my progress. Now I feel like a bit of a dingbat whenever I do it… I keep forgetting the finer points to really hone my technique, so I’ve decided to try and put more effort into it. My kicks are still feeling a little sloppy, and I think it’s because I haven’t been stretching as regularly as I used to prior to a couple of weeks back. I’m not sure 100%, so I’m thinking of trying to get back into a more regular routine. Same for cycling – my knee and ankle are feeling really good these days, so I’d like to get back into some cycling again on the exercise bike. I’m also hoping to do some weight training tomorrow night. So yeah, the hopeful bit is that I can get back into some sort of rhythm again. I feel like I’m getting nowhere in trimming my belly and my love handles as was my aim, so maybe all the above will help alleviate that. I’m so vain

Apart from that, things are going well – had an awesome long weekend spent lazing around, going out and about with Wifey, I caught up with McAdam for some booze and video games, and finally finished up my media PC… well, almost – have to configure a couple of USB devices, but that’s easy to do and shouldn’t take too long. Might have it finished by the end of the month even… that’d be awesome. It only took me three years

I’ll try and get a post-training + post-weights blog up before the end of the week. Until then, thanks for reading!!!!!

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Okay, just a quick one for today – training last Wednesday went great. Wasn’t as intense as I’d liked, but I pushed myself hard and helped out a bit in class with some of the juniors. Basic moves, some drills and kata took care of most of it. For some reason my kicks felt a bit crap… I’m not sure if I had my leg on weird that night, or something else was wrong, or if I was having an unco night or something… but it was still a good class. Can’t wait for this week’s one though Hopefully I’ll be able to make it – Wifey and I are looking at selling our unit to buy a house, so we’re in the process of seeing all those important people that make such a thing possible. I’m hoping I’ll be able to organise something so I can still train, but we’ll see.

Apart from that, there’s not much to tell – I told you it was going to be a quick blog

Things are still mega busy so I’ll update as I can. I had over 70 hits on the blog last week which was really cool, so a big thank you to everyone for reading!

More updates as they come – I might be able to get another blog in before training on Wednesday, but if not, I’ll post something up later in the week.

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3. Archive: Post-training wrap-up

I can’t remember if I’ve talked about it much before, but my first formal introduction to martial arts training came when I was in Year 4, when I was about… 8 I think. Either that or it was Year 5 and I was 9. Regardless, I was in primary school, and I was still in the throes of “Angry Sean-o”. Most people I talk to now can’t believe that I was a little punk when I was a kid. From the age of about 5 or 6 until about 11, I was a great big pain in the arse. I used to answer back to the teachers, would regularly have to see the principal, would get constantly grounded, used to pick angry fights with my older brother Miguel, I started up a ‘fight club’ at school when I was 9 (not that (a) Fight Club was anywhere near to being created in all its uberness, or (b) a primary schoolyard organised scrap constitutes a ‘fight club’ ) and was generally an arsehole.

Anywho, I had this passion for martial arts, and my Dad thought that it would be a good idea to take himself, Miguel and I to Taekwondo classes by the time we returned from a few years in Darwin and I was hopefully old enough to tell the difference when to use the martial art, and when not to. To be honest I wasn’t sure what the outcome was – I was still a pain during the time I did Taekwondo (which was for maybe a year, possibly more?), but to my credit I don’t think I actually used it to randomly injure too many kids… I know I would have used it on Miguel because we used to fight pretty full-on as kids, but outside of that… I don’t know. I remember picking a fight in class when the teacher was out getting something… I’m not sure why, I was probably bragging about the fact I did Taekwondo knowing me This  proved to possibly be a good thing however…

You see, the kid I picked a fight with used his hands, and I learnt the hard way that in order to kick at someone, you need some room… and being wedged between classroom desks and chairs is hardly fertile ground for delivering a clumsy kick at someone. So, in short, I lost the scrap, and probably looked pretty goofy as well I’ve never forgotten the lesson though – be wary of your surroundings.

But back to Taekwondo. I only managed to scrape to my yellow belt, which in my mind’s eye took forever. I daresay the reason I stopped going was because I had a habit in those days of being pretty fickle with stuff – I did swimming for a few years and was getting really good, then got bored of it and stopped. Did Taekwondo for a while, then stopped. Got really into basketball (basketball was very in circa 1992-1994, as were parachute pants and Megadrive; things change ) for a few years, then stopped when I got to high school. In fact, I pretty much stopped everything when I got to high school – changed my focus to studying and by then I’d gotten out all of the angriness… or learnt to suppress it That, also, is the subject of another blog.

So, how did I go with TKD? Not too sure to be honest. I mean, I see the kids at karate, and while you have to admire their effort, they’re not exactly excuding perfect form. I’d be kinda weirded out if they did; in that sense, watching little kids do martial arts isn’t entirely unlike watching junior, like primary school soccer or footy – the kids get out there, and kick the ball somewhere and run after it. It’s very cute, but we’re talking elite sportsmen for the most part. Sure, it probably solidifies concepts or foundations for later on, but I’m getting distracted again…

Anyway, I remember doing all the moves and stuff, the kicks, punches and so forth. It was actually a good thing I reckon in the long run, even if I only did it for a short period of time. I felt it made starting karate a little easier since I remembered some of the basics – chamber your punch, long stances, first kata, raise your knee for your kicks – and the lesson format was kinda familiar, too. And all training halls with the wooden floors and kinda aged stone walls (aka your average community gym/hall) have that same smell/feeling when you go inside.

It’s so long ago that I can’t remember in much detail how I coped with learning different things, how I overcame stuff, how my technique evolved… if it did at all But I knew from experience that when it came time to learn a martial art that I couldn’t do Taekwondo – too much focus on leg work and not enough on upper body techniques. I know this is a generalisation (and conversley, TKD practitioners criticise karate for the quality of their kicks; in fact, most martial arts have participants who have a habit of criticising different styles or different arts altogether [again, food for thought and the subject of further blogs!]), but I believe that I’ve made the right choice in choosing to go down the path of karate.

I waffle on too much Quick summary – I did Taekwondo as a kid, it was fun, but I was fickle and gave it up My Dad and brother kept going a little longer and got to their green belt (it went white >> yellow >> green), but they stopped after Miguel got hit by a car and broke his leg, which is pretty understandable.

Well, next time I report I daresay will be a post-training round-up. Oh, and for those interested I’ve added a few more photos and stuff to my pics; nothing training-related, just random stuff Enjoy!

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3. Hakutsuru, the white crane – classical karate style with techniques that only use one leg?

Ack, apologies for the lack of blogging last week – between work and everything else, it’s been crazy.

Now, I know I was going to talk about my first karate lesson or bring up my previous Taekwondo experience when I was a kid, but I thought for today I’d simply go over last week’s training, because it was pure awesomeness

As I’ve brought up over the last couple of weeks’ blogs, I’ve been working on my leg stretching, and I reckon it’s finally paying off. Part of our training on Wednesday night last week was to spar with Sensei R with the aim being to go into a full offensive pattern aiming for his big punching pads he wore on his hands. Now in the past I would have gone into a routine with more emphasis on punches than kicks, but I was feeling pretty good about my kicks and thought this was an excellent opportunity to try it out. Not only was I impressed, but I think even Sensei R was surprised with how developed my kicks were – I was lunging with double-strike side kicks, thrusting side kicks, head-level front kicks, round kicks, crescent kicks, going from one to the next to the next with barely a break! It felt so good, so amazing to be able to pull it all off, and I came home feeling really proud of myself, like I’d really started to accomplish something.

The other thing I discovered whilst waiting outside at 10:30pm at night waiting for Baxter the Ninja Dog to do his business… because, you know, there’s nothing unusual for someone to randomly train their karate before they go to bed at night, leaving the neighbours to wonder why they keep hearing these random stomping noises as the foot on my artificial leg goes ‘PLONK!’ on the pavers

Anyway, I was trying different kicks with my fake leg, and I stumbled across a jumping inside-out crescent kick I can do! I look a little goofy when I land, but it’s really cool I’m not really sure how effective it would be in practice, but it’s great to be able to use my legs in this way. Hopefully with more practice I can get closer to trying butterfly and tornado kicks

Also, on Thursday night Wifey and I went over my parents’ place, and Tank and I went out the back yard to do kick training and stuff, which was awesome. He’s convinced me to take some video footage and post it up on MySpace showing some of my kicks (including my 360-degree vertical heel strike… well, that’s what I call it anyway ), and I learnt the my forward kick with my real leg is actually more powerful than I thought. Oh, and I also helped Tank make is MySpace look awesomeness.

Well, hopefully next will be a little less crazy and I can post a few more blogs.

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You know, I don’t even know the name of the song that aforementioned quip is from. All I know is that I keep on seeing it on VH1. Oh, and the correct line is ‘lift some weights, eat some steaks’ hahahaha, it’s sooooo bad! Except the random board kicking in the clip was cool. And the slapper girls in it are amusing as well.

Anyway, the reason for the title is because I did weight training last night. Nothing terribly intense, as I didn’t want to push myself, just wake the muscles up as my father in law said. Speaking of my father in law, I was telling him about the blog and that I’m using pseudonyms for peoples’ names – he’s informed me he will now be known as Fat Dave, as that was his moniker when he used to be on a radio show.

So anywho, did some weight training last night, which was ace. My arms are a little sore this morning, so I figure I must have done them some good. In my plan to shave off the extra couple of kilos I’ve put on over the past two months, I’ve also decided to bring back the size of my meals to the same portion as Wifey’s – it was acually her suggestion, and so far it’s all been good. I remember last time I made the conscious effort to bring back the size of the meals I was eating, and I actually started feeling better because I wasn’t eating to the point of feeling bloated; the same thing’s happening this time as well, so it’s all good.

I ended up skipping on karate this week – I had some torn skin on the back of my stump that I was hoping would heal up; it hadn’t by Wednesday, so I’ve thrown a couple of bandaids over it since Wednesday night, and it’s been feeling much better, and I’m not making it worse when wearing my leg, which is why I think it was taking too long to heal up before. Looking forward, therefore, for training next week

In non-training stuff, I want to mention two things briefly. First, I’ve added a handful of photos and stuff to the pics section – go and have a look. Hamez has been kind enough to add some comments, so feel free to add some additional ones

Secondly, McAdam, Tank, Wifey and myself went to see Spider-man 3 on Tuesday. Y’know, ’cause it’s cheap to go on Tuesday nights. Tight-arse Tuesday and all that. Anywho, I won’t wax lyrical on it, but I did enjoy it, there was heaps going on which I thought was really good. Some comments though, and be warned there might be some spoilers in there:

• The strut scene was complete awesome
• The news reporter bit was dicky and unnecessary – please cut it out for the DVD release
• Venom looks uber
• The scene towards the end where Spidey swings past the flag should have featured “America~~, f*ck yeah!” from Parker/Stone’s sublimely golden Team America instead of the film’s score. In fact, as soon as I can get some footage of that clip, I’ll rip out the audio and throw that in there instead, then YouTube. Though I might be drop-kicked by The Man if someone gets cranky about it
• Speaking of flag waving, Spidey 3 was much improved over the unnecessary plastering of it over the course of the previous film. I mean, the fact it’s set in New York and they all have American accents kinda gives it away that the movie’s set in the US. Just say no to unnecessary cultural/political propaganda in Hollywood films

So yes, those are my thoughts of Spidey 3

I’ll fire up another update next week, and I’ve decided I’ll try to make the time over the coming weeks to cover two things – firstly, recount my first lesson at karate, and secondly, talk about how I used to do Taekwondo with my older brother Miguel and my Dad when I was much younger, probably around 8 or 9 years old. Oh, and hopefully I’ll update my profile stuff on what I’m watching/reading – it’s really out of date now

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