So we were channel surfing a week or two back, and lo-and-behold, the first Karate Kid movie was on, and Noriyuki “Pat” Morita was being all awesome and stuff, and it was supremely awesome. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen the first Karate Kid movie, but I swear I could watching it once a week and still love it after years on end.

Alright, that might be a bit of an exageration, but it’s such an awesome movie. Even if Ralph Macchio specialised in some pretty rubbish karate, it’s still 126 minutes of inspired awesomeness. I mean, it wasn’t his fault I guess – getting dropped into a six-month crash-course of martial arts training without any prior experience won’t exactly get the most polished results, particularly if you’re a Westerner, so thumbs up to him for not chucking a wobbly and chickening out.

So, continuing in the spirit of awesomeness, Wifey was channel surfing the other day and a choice piece of 80s awesomeness quickly hit the screen – she was about to turn over since the didn’t realise the extremity of awe-inspired film clip-ness that was hitting the TV:

Well, without the subtitles anyways 🙂 Do you realise how many instances of this Peter Cetera’s Glory of Love there are on YouTube, and that this is the only one with the silly film clip? Pure tomfoolery.

Anyhow, it’s awesome, because he’s singing in a dojo.

… I don’t have much else to add to this. The above film clip will do the job I reckon 🙂 If you’re interested, someone’s also added the lessons of Mr Miyagi to YouTube, so you can entertain yourselves/family/friends/coworkers by looking it up and sharing it with them. I know the people I share my office with were just thrilled when I decided it would be a good idea to share “Paint the Fence”:

😀 😀 😀

Bloginated Monday, 5th October 2009 / Movies
Tag-isms: awesomeness | Mr Miyagi | The Karate Kid | YouTube videos

So last month I whinged about my crap mawashi geri technique, and while I haven’t been to training in a two weeks due to all sorts happening, I’m pleased to say that I haven’t put my training completely out of my mind.

Much as Wifey loves it, I do have the habit of doing karate around the house. Over the last couple of weeks, this has been divided between 2-3 techniques – strong, whipping, flexible and smooth oitsuki (reverse punches), Maegeri (front snapping kicks) and mawashi geri (roundhouse kicks). With the last of those, I’ve been really pissed with my technique of late, so taking into account my belated realisation that I’d already worked out the trick to doing it with one leg, I’ve been practicing to try and get it to work correctly. At first I was constantly over-compensating with the technique and was having trouble retracting my leg fast enough for a graceful landing. It was an improvement, but the overbalance was killing it a bit, too.

So, with a bit more practice, and while far from perfect, I’m managing to snap the technique out and back in again and landing back on my foot without so much of a stumble. I’m also working on utilising my hips more as well – in fact, this lead to something quite interesting that happened only an hour ago – the hips!!!!

I was working up and down the corridor in the house earlier in attempts to be useful (having some issues with the server, and in getting an old IDE hard drive for McAdam that was inaccessible due to an old Norton Ghost/Type 44 partition — doing both at the same time also meant it took abnormally long to get either fixed :P), and I thought I’d try something different with my front kicks… I’ve always read and watched those with two legs perform snapping or normal front kicks and utilise their hips, but I’ve always really struggled as utilising your hips relies on a degree of muscular and body symmetry… and lacking a limb, naturally there are some issues with this 😉 So I thought – bugger it, give it a crack and hopefully you won’t fall over 😀

… and it worked!

I mean, it looked a bit stupid and I couldn’t kick anywhere near as fast as I would with an ordinary snap kick, but I think there was considerable more power in there.

And the trick? Same as with the mawashi geri, use your arms/shoulders/upper torso to take over and assist the hips.

Hopefully in time I’ll get more coordinated at it!!

Oh, and something else has been fun as well lately – I’ve always loved the kicking demonstrations where the martial artist performs multiple kicks with one leg, kinda like foot-boxing or something 🙂 Anywho, I’ve been trying for years now to pull off doing two proper kicks with my real leg (and therefore balancing on the left or the prosthesis, which is where it gets tricky 😉 ), and note that I said proper kicks, not stupid little kicks that look more like leg lifts than kicks 😀 Anywho, I think I’m finally making progress on this – granted there’s not a lot of utility with with this one, it’s there for fun and training balance. Again, getting control to actually start making the two kicks look like actual kicks has come down to greater mastery and control with my hips, so I figure I’m on the way 😀 If it actually starts becoming decent, I’ll let you know.

Hmmm, should sign this one off for some awesome tomfoolery 😀 Stay tuned 🙂

Bloginated Monday, 5th October 2009 / Technique
Tag-isms: hips | Maegeri (front kicks) | mawashi geri | Oitsuki

Well, we’re into September now and I still haven’t gotten into a decent/consistent routine of doing proper training between classes. It’s been a very wet six weeks which certainly hasn’t helped (though I’m not knocking the rain, it’s normally so dry down here it’s nice for a change!!), as I actually train in my nice big shed, but since it isn’t sealed around the base, when the weather gets really wet, I get some leaking around the area I work out in, which is far from a safe training environment (and as I’ve noted various times in this blog, I’m a little accident-prone :P). There’s also been other commitments that have come up after work, I’ve been distracted by a few things, I’ve been slack, stuff like that. None of it is any real, super-legitimate excuse though, and it’s proving hard to break the temptation of taking it easy after a busy day at the office and get into the shed for some training.

Fingers crossed the weather clears up a little so I can cross at least excuse off my list and get back into a decent routine. I know that as soon as I start it, I’ll be fine, it’s just breaking that habit. I’m particularly keen to get back into my stretching and weights routine in order to improve my kicks and build up my muslce mass again, and because I’m vain, I’m also looking forward to flattening my stomach again – the combination of cakes during the week and beer over the last couple of weekends while I was helping McAdam paint/renovate/move in have made my mid-section a little more plump than I’d otherwise care for 😉 I was watching videos of Kanazawa-sensei performing my kata via YouTube last night, and it’s demonstrated I have a long, long way to go in getting it right, so some extra training of kata couldn’t hurt, either.

We’ll see how I go – will post up some progress reports as I go!

Bloginated Wednesday, 23rd September 2009 / General training
Tag-isms: Excuses | routine | training | weight training

Just wanted to take a moment to point to another blog I’ve added to my list – A Teaspoon of Treacle. Why the plug? Because it’s Wifey’s new blog 🙂 We’ve been talking for a while now about her starting up her own foodie blog as she’s extremely talented in the kitchen and has been thinking of doing something about it on the web. So, while I’m not sure how much crossover there’ll be, I’d like to encourage everyone visiting here to drop by her site and take a look!

Thanks!! 😀

Bloginated Monday, 21st September 2009 / Blogs/websites
Tag-isms: food is yum | I'm an awesome husband

That’s a catchy title for what is a really interesting post at The Martial Explorer titled “How to hide in plain sight”. While Jesse’s not in any way suggesting urban ninja action, I thought that the principles there sound like something from an awesome urban ninja film, possibly set in 1980s California or New York, with bad hair and guitar-laden power-ballads 😀

But enough of the silliness, some of the things he writes about are very useful in an urban context, particularly his final point on blending into your environment so that you don’t present yourself as a target – I remember years ago reading material on self defense and preventative actions you can take to ensure you make yourself less of a target to someone looking for trouble, and a lot of it falls back to what Jesse’s talked about in his post. It’s short and snappy, and while it doesn’t have any images of ninjas in the post, the content makes for an excellent read. Because of my leg and the associated limp that comes with it, I try and use other aspects of my body language to play-down my presence if I’m concerned about my safety, whether it be by matching pace with other people, working hard to minimise the limp, presenting myself as a confident individual (head up, back straight, impassive face, stuff like that), etc. Not sure if it’s ever made a difference, but it’s probably good habit nonetheless!

The only point I would add to or emphasise from his post is to make extended use of your senses – sight (again, using your eyes and peripheral vision, not necessarily your head), hearing (it’s amazing what you can pick up on if you attune your hearing appropriately), and your gut instinct, because sometimes you can pick up on a potentially dangerous situation without “logically” determining it, and it’s worthwhile paying attention to it.

Mind, if you’re a bit on the paranoid side, you’ll find your gut instinct can sometimes get a little jumpy 😉 At least that’s my experience!

Bloginated Monday, 21st September 2009 / General training
Tag-isms: preventative action | self defense | urban ninja