Five years and five hours later...

[FrogMan]

I started practicing kenpo karate about five years ago. Tomorrow, I'll be testing for my black belt in a test that should last for at least five hours. Five hours in which I fully expect to be be pushed to my limits, both physically and mentally. It's honestly making me nervous...

I started practicing simply because I wanted to get myself back into shape a bit, never thinking I'd go all the way to the black belt. For those who don't know, the number of people who start practicing martial arts but never get to the black belt is amazingly high.

I also started practicing because I had no clue if what my son was doing was right or not. I've indeed got some shape back and maintained it, but the second part is even better: the bond I've gained with my 11yo son. He's been practicing for six years himself now and seeing how close his dad is to the black belt, he's saying he will not stop before he gets one too. He's probably a year to 18 months away from possibly testing for it.

Anyway, wish me luck and send me good vibes tomorrow. I'll need all the energy I can find, even from miles away.

FM

[Vince]

Man, it seems like just a short time ago you were struggling with what was it, the horse stance?

Congratulations on getting this far man, and best of luck to you tomorrow!

[FrogMan]

Originally Posted by Vince

Man, it seems like just a short time ago you were struggling with what was it, the horse stance?

Congratulations on getting this far man, and best of luck to you tomorrow!

it was actually almost two years ago, but yeah, seems like yesterday. And man, I still struggle with the damn horse stance. Should expect at least five minutes of that stance, usually asked at the end of the five hours. Yippee!!!

Thanks for the good luck.

FM

[bbor]

Originally Posted by FrogMan

it was actually almost two years ago, but yeah, seems like yesterday. And man, I still struggle with the damn horse stance. Should expect at least five minutes of that stance, usually asked at the end of the five hours. Yippee!!!

Thanks for the good luck.

FM

All i remember is you getting it in the nuts
Good Luck Froggie.

[albionmoonlight]

Good Luck, man.

[Sgran]

I got to purple belt in Shotokon Karate in college. What surprised me was that towards the end I got bored with sparing and tournements, and instead enjoyed simply working on my form. Of course, the added confidence was also nice, but martial arts is a nice way to get exercise and feel like you're progressing in something. The most important thing is whether or not the censai preaches self-defence and honor.
Good luck with your test. Few days pass when I don't think about starting up again. My older daughter is 8 now, so maybe I'll follow your lead and join a class with her.

[Eaglesfan27]

Best of luck, my friend.

[finketr]

didn 't you whack yourself in the head with the bo once?

[terpkristin]

Good luck, FM!!!

I can't wait to hear how it goes. Will your wife be recording any of it?

/tk

[FrogMan]

Thanks everyone.

Originally Posted by bbor

All i remember is you getting it in the nuts
Good Luck Froggie.

nope, never happened, but...

Originally Posted by finketr

didn 't you whack yourself in the head with the bo once?

yeah, yeah, yeah... You really liked that one didn't you?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJcCSr7AKlo

It happens toward the end of the kata. I don't do much open bo kata though. We have one traditional bo kata as part of the black belt curriculum but there's about zero change of wacking yourself in the head in a traditional kata.

Originally Posted by Sgran

I got to purple belt in Shotokon Karate in college. What surprised me was that towards the end I got bored with sparing and tournements, and instead enjoyed simply working on my form. Of course, the added confidence was also nice, but martial arts is a nice way to get exercise and feel like you're progressing in something. The most important thing is whether or not the censai preaches self-defence and honor.
Good luck with your test. Few days pass when I don't think about starting up again. My older daughter is 8 now, so maybe I'll follow your lead and join a class with her.

Our style has some roots in shotokan too, although we do very little sparring. We're much more aimed toward self defense which is something I really like. Not sure I'd have lasted until the black belt if I'd have been required to compete and spar on a regular basis.

Starting back karate class with your daughter could be a very nice thing, if she shows even the tiniest bit of interest for it. I'm hoping to get our 4yo started in the Fall, when he'll be about 4 months shy of turning 5. Our oldest started when he was 4 years and 10 months old...

Originally Posted by terpkristin

Good luck, FM!!!

I can't wait to hear how it goes. Will your wife be recording any of it?

Thanks TK, I'll keep you and everyone posted. The test is pretty much happening behind closed doors so no, she won't be filming it. As a proof that there's a big deal of secrecy, the five hours I thought it would last was based on what I'd heard but I was told tonight that it would probably last between 3 and 4 hours. The usual five hours was for when they used to have us go to Quebec City for the test, where they were testing 50-60 people at once. There will only be 11 of us testing at my school tomorrow, with maybe 15 black belts to evaluate/check on us. They will certainly need less than 5 hours to know if we're good enough...

FM

[johnnyshaka]

Good luck!!

[Zelig]

Much respect.... good luck.

[MrBug708]

How did you decide on Kenpo

[FrogMan]

thanks again everyone, less than two hours before the test. Time to relax a bit...

Originally Posted by MrBug708

How did you decide on Kenpo

you know, I used to anser to that question that I sorta "lucked out" or that I picked kenpo by default since my we had signed up our son to the biggest school in our area without knowing much. But with time, I realized that having the chance of watching classes for all belt levels for over a year showed me that I probably would like the style and that's probably what made me try it at firt. What I liked was the self-defense aspect of it all, the fact that we use mostly our hands and elbows and that sparring wasn't obligatory. The school's instructors themselves played a good part in me trying the style. In anything martial arts related, and pretty much anything in life really, I believe that our teacher is a big part of if you will like or dislike what you are learning. The people at that school can respect that everybody has limits. They encourage you to push those limits further, but they won't belittle you by comparing you to others.

FM

[JonInMiddleGA]

Crap.
{I just clicked on the thread figuring congratulations were in order}

Go kick something already

[Edward64]

Frogman, hope you did well. Even if you didn't pass, I am sure the experience will help you the next time.

I took TKD in the 90s and have not had the time (travel alot) to pick it up again. My son has been taking Karate for 4+ yrs (and daughter <1 yr) and although it is a McDojo-type school, I can see it has helped my son. Martial Arts is great, I do doubt how effective some are in self-defense but practicing MA certainly gave me (and my son) increased self-confidence.

BTW, I just finished reading "American Shoalin", pretty funny, light reading book and has great insight into modern Shoalin in China.

[FrogMan]

well, it did last 4.5 hours, and I'm spent, damnit, burnt, totally out of gas... But I passed it!!!

What an amazing feeling. We started it off with 300 punches in the horse stance and closed it with what I would think was some 5 minutes or more again in the horse stance. That is silly, but I had trouble walking after those 300 punches to start it off. Seriously, I thought my thighs were gonna buckled and give out on about every step...

It went really well and I recieved some very good comments, both for my self-defense work and for my katas and that made me real proud.

Was a bit crazy driving back home as a storm started maybe 45 minutes before the end of the test so when we got out of the dojo, we couldn't see two blocks away. I feared they were gonna close the road between the dojo and my home. It wasn't closed but that was the toughest bit of driving I've had to do in a long while. Think about driving with about zero visibility and you just spent 4+ hours doing pushups, situps, being pushed around in selfdefense, it was crazy... But I'm home now, and I'm a black belt.

FM

[FrogMan]

Originally Posted by Edward64

Frogman, hope you did well. Even if you didn't pass, I am sure the experience will help you the next time.

I took TKD in the 90s and have not had the time (travel alot) to pick it up again. My son has been taking Karate for 4+ yrs (and daughter <1 yr) and although it is a McDojo-type school, I can see it has helped my son. Martial Arts is great, I do doubt how effective some are in self-defense but practicing MA certainly gave me (and my son) increased self-confidence.

BTW, I just finished reading "American Shoalin", pretty funny, light reading book and has great insight into modern Shoalin in China.

Thanks. I wasn't really nervous about not passing to be perfectly honest. We'd gone through a pretest in December and I nailed it back then. It was more the physical part of it that had me nervous. Nervous that if pushed to my limits, I might start doing some stuff wrong, but it went quite well.

Very nice about your kids. Even McDojo schools can have some positive effects on kids, I'm sure of that. I also question the effectiveness of some of the selfdefense techniques they show us. Everything seems perfect in the dojo but I'm not always sure it would apply well on the street. I do know one thing though. Practicing kenpo has raised my awareness of everything around me a great deal when I'm in a crowd. I know some things I could do that could hurt someone real bad, and some others that could be used to control. But in the end, I do it mostly to keep myself in shape, and so far it's working...

FM

[terpkristin]

Congratulations, my friend!!!
Now, how's that Su-Shi No Kahn Sho going?

/tk

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by FrogMan

and I'm a black belt.

Congratulations. And thank goodness.

The last thing we need is an image of you with your pants hanging down

[Eaglesfan27]

Congrats!!

[JetsIn06]

Congrats!

[Zelig]

I bet your kid is proud, and one day far in the future he will tell this story with a big smile.

[Schmidty]

Nice job man!!

[bbor]

Grats Froggie!

[johnnyshaka]

Congrats!!! Just out of curiosity, how did the rest of the group do?

[Neuqua]

Congratulations

[Cringer]

Cool. Way to go.

Wanna fight?

[Vinatieri for Prez]

Frog, don't forget to head to the sheriff's station and register your hands as deadly weapons.

[Vince]

Congratulations man -- great work

[FrogMan]

thanks again evreyone. I have a hard time grasping the fact that I am a black belt. I mean, this seems so much like something I'd hear about other people and say "wow", not me. I guess I feel a lot more pride than I thought I would...

That storm I drove through to get back home turned out to be a real nasty one. Power went out around 1am and only got back about an hour ago. Good thing we have the woodstove to warm up the house or else we'd have been freezing our butts in here. The street has been plowed only one car wide, it's kinda crazy...

Originally Posted by Zelig

I bet your kid is proud, and one day far in the future he will tell this story with a big smile.

He sure is, you should have seen him dive for my bag when I got home. I wanted to get his hands on "THE" belt. Funny thing is, it's not even my definitive belt, it's a temporary one. They sent our belts to be embroidered with the yellow band marking it with the first dan last week and should get them early this week. I will exchange the belt I have now for my real one when they get them back.

Originally Posted by johnnyshaka

Congrats!!! Just out of curiosity, how did the rest of the group do?

Everyone of the 11 testing passed. They started the test by telling us that there were possibilities that someone could be pulled aside before the end of the test if their scores weren't high enough. We were being scored on every technical things, from katas to seldefense to more basic stuff, even a score for holding the horse stance... To my knowledge, I have not heard of anybody who was in danger of not passing during the test, but I didn't see much of what the others were doing, since they had us split in four groups. I was told I had one of the highest scores of the 11, which is always nice to hear.

Originally Posted by Cringer

Cool. Way to go.

Wanna fight?

yeah, well, about that, hrm. Can we put it on hold for say, a few days? I can't walk straight today.

Honestly, I'm hurting like hell. Had to go snowblow the driveway this morning and that wasn't fun. I've done a lot of reading today...

Originally Posted by Vinatieri for Prez

Frog, don't forget to head to the sheriff's station and register your hands as deadly weapons.

Not sure if that one is a joke or not. I do know that having practiced martial arts, and now owning a black belt, I have an even bigger responsibility in case of any scuffle that could happen. Unless my life is in danger, I am not to use my skills to hurt anyone. And to be honest, it almost scares me. I know I could hurt someone quite badly, maybe if not careful, even kill someone with a well place strike. It's really something to keep in mind if I ever get caught in some bad situation...

FM

[aran]

Congrats!

Makes me want to start karate. i feel like a bum sitting in front of a computer all day... Even though I'm paid well enough for it.

I'd like to do something serious, though, that isn't McDojo. I'll probably start researching once I get out of college and take night classes the first few years after I get my masters.

[Edward64]

Originally Posted by aran

Congrats!

Makes me want to start karate. i feel like a bum sitting in front of a computer all day... Even though I'm paid well enough for it.

I'd like to do something serious, though, that isn't McDojo. I'll probably start researching once I get out of college and take night classes the first few years after I get my masters.

I would highly recommend that you get started sooner rather than later. If you are in college, you probably (believe it or not) have more free time now than you ever will after you graduate.

FWIW. The stamina, strength, speed, flexibility etc. from youth is an edge that people starting in MA at an older age can only envy.

Don't get too hung up on the McDojo issue. There is still worth in them especially if it is all brand new to you and the teacher is halfway competant.

[Vinatieri for Prez]

Originally Posted by FrogMan

Not sure if that one is a joke or not. I do know that having practiced martial arts, and now owning a black belt, I have an even bigger responsibility in case of any scuffle that could happen. Unless my life is in danger, I am not to use my skills to hurt anyone. And to be honest, it almost scares me. I know I could hurt someone quite badly, maybe if not careful, even kill someone with a well place strike. It's really something to keep in mind if I ever get caught in some bad situation...

FM

Yeah, it was a joke. But you are right about not using "excessive" force in self-defense.

[BYU 14]

Congrats FM, depending on the style I know the Black Belt tests vary from grueling to near death experience. My kids have their's in Shotokan and are working Ju-Jitsu now. My youngest seemed to have a fairly smooth go of it when he tested, but the middle one was put through a grinder. When we picked him up he was barely able to walk, welts on his body, a bloody nose and a mouse under his eye from sparring. (His sparring consisted of sparring consectutively against 5 blackbelts for 3 minutes each with head contact allowed) He was beat to hell, but happy.

It is no small feat to get where you are and you have every reason to be full of pride....nice job!!

[Neon_Chaos]

Great, just what the world needs, more black-belt footbal-sim people.




Congrats!

[Coffee Warlord]

Kinda makes me wanna get back into Kuk Sool Won.

Got to brown belt as a kid before I grew tired of it.

[FrogMan]

Originally Posted by BYU 14

Congrats FM, depending on the style I know the Black Belt tests vary from grueling to near death experience. My kids have their's in Shotokan and are working Ju-Jitsu now. My youngest seemed to have a fairly smooth go of it when he tested, but the middle one was put through a grinder. When we picked him up he was barely able to walk, welts on his body, a bloody nose and a mouse under his eye from sparring. (His sparring consisted of sparring consectutively against 5 blackbelts for 3 minutes each with head contact allowed) He was beat to hell, but happy.

It is no small feat to get where you are and you have every reason to be full of pride....nice job!!

Thanks. I wouldn't call our test near death experience, as our school is fairly family oriented, but they certainly didn't just hand the belt to us. We worked hard and grueling describes the test quite well. I know my 37yo body is still aching as I type this...

That's very cool for your kids, how old are they? Tell them I have a lot of respect for what they are doing. Had I started earlier, I probably would have liked to learn more than one style but time commitment is such that for now I'll stick to kenpo. If anything, I might want to try aikido at some point.

Our kenpo has some roots into shotokan and I know I'll be learning a shotokan form next, I think it's Bassai Dai. I've also dabbled just a little bit with Ju-Jitsu, in the form of a couple seminars on self-defense with Kyoshi John Thérien. If your kids ever have a chance to attend one of his seminars, I'd highly recommend him.

FM

[FrogMan]

Originally Posted by Coffee Warlord

Kinda makes me wanna get back into Kuk Sool Won.

Got to brown belt as a kid before I grew tired of it.

if you do anything, do it for yourself, not simply to attain the belt. Sure it's nice and all, but the belt is just that, a black thing you wear around your waist...

I googled Kuk Sool Won and found very interesting. Had never heard the name before. Looks very much oriented towards the sword handling, isn't it? Anyway, looks like a cool art...

FM

[sachmo71]

huh, my kids are taking kenpo. maybe i should take some classes as well.
i already know Sword of Destruction, so I'm on my way!

[MikeVic]

Congrats!

[FrogMan]

Originally Posted by sachmo71

huh, my kids are taking kenpo. maybe i should take some classes as well.
i already know Sword of Destruction, so I'm on my way!

Hey, by all means, do my friend, do!

Seriously, I understand it is not for everyone. My wife tried it but found it "too difficult" and stopped after only one 12 weeks session. I personally think she wanted to become good instantly and saw the whole as too big a moutain to surmount. She just didn't give herself the time to grow into it.

Take some time to look at adult classes while waiting for your kids, it should give you an idea of what to expect if you'd start practicing now. Your school might even allow you to take a couple of trial classes before you commit for a longer time.

Kenpo is an odd beast because even though names do repeat from one style to another they don't always mean the same thing. We do have a sword of destruction technique but it's a high intermediate one, say #21 or 36 techniques needed to pass the black belt. After googling, I've seen it being referred to as a yellow belt technique, i.e. a much lower one. It's cool though, you are about at what level I was when I decided to start. I was able to differentiate a couple techniques and I was able to tell the difference between the first and the second blocking forms. I just wasn't able to do them myself.

Who knows, maybe if you start taking classes you will pass them and serve as the great motivating aspect pushing them forward to also trying out for a black belt one day.

FM

[Coffee Warlord]

Originally Posted by FrogMan

if you do anything, do it for yourself, not simply to attain the belt. Sure it's nice and all, but the belt is just that, a black thing you wear around your waist...

Oh in total agreement. I don't give a rats ass about the belt, I was dwelling on ways to get myself back in shape. Martial Arts is one excellent way to do so.

I googled Kuk Sool Won and found very interesting. Had never heard the name before. Looks very much oriented towards the sword handling, isn't it? Anyway, looks like a cool art...

Actually has almost nothing to do with sword handling until you're at like...2nd degree black. Kuk Sool Won is a lot of technique/pressure points and movement, especially with legwork. Very little punching involved.

I'm surprised it hasn't caught on more than it has. Looked around Chicago, there's only one school here, way too far away for me to go to.

[FrogMan]

Originally Posted by Coffee Warlord

Oh in total agreement. I don't give a rats ass about the belt, I was dwelling on ways to get myself back in shape. Martial Arts is one excellent way to do so.

Good. We don't see it as much with grown ups, but sometimes kids, or say younger adults, will shoot for the belt and get depressed when they see it does take time... What I bolded is very true.

Originally Posted by Coffee Warlord

Actually has almost nothing to do with sword handling until you're at like...2nd degree black. Kuk Sool Won is a lot of technique/pressure points and movement, especially with legwork. Very little punching involved.

Interesting, the one page I read made it look like it was all about the sword handling.

From what little I know of Korean martial arts (pretty much only Tae Kwon Do, heh), I assumed it involved a lot of kicking. Interesting about the pressure points though, those can be fun, when you are giving, not so much when you are recieving.

FM

[Coffee Warlord]

Originally Posted by FrogMan

Interesting, the one page I read made it look like it was all about the sword handling.

From what little I know of Korean martial arts (pretty much only Tae Kwon Do, heh), I assumed it involved a lot of kicking. Interesting about the pressure points though, those can be fun, when you are giving, not so much when you are recieving.

The wikipedia entry is a fairly decent description of it. There's very few direct attacking (by that I mean kicks, punches, etc) "moves", it's VERY reliant on techniques. Which of course, is where the pressure points come in.

Tae Kwon Do and Kuk Sool Won are wayyyyy different, in my mind (this comes from the many competitions I was in as a kid, largely vs TKD schools). They're a more direct, up front style, whereas Kuk Sool Won is a bit "softer" and more form/technique based.

You'd really get the idea in the differences if you observed the forms. Tae Kwon Do's forms are much more, for lack of better word, mechanical, than Kuk Sool Won's more flowing stuff.

[Coffee Warlord]

Dola.

Actually looking at Hapkido as something to get into at the moment. There's a school very close by.

[FrogMan]

Originally Posted by Coffee Warlord

The wikipedia entry is a fairly decent description of it. There's very few direct attacking (by that I mean kicks, punches, etc) "moves", it's VERY reliant on techniques. Which of course, is where the pressure points come in.

Tae Kwon Do and Kuk Sool Won are wayyyyy different, in my mind (this comes from the many competitions I was in as a kid, largely vs TKD schools). They're a more direct, up front style, whereas Kuk Sool Won is a bit "softer" and more form/technique based.

You'd really get the idea in the differences if you observed the forms. Tae Kwon Do's forms are much more, for lack of better word, mechanical, than Kuk Sool Won's more flowing stuff.

Interesting. What I meant is that my understanding is that Korean meant kicks more than punches, very basic, I know. Kenpo on the other hand is very much a stand up and fight up close very fast without letting an opponent a chance to counter.

I have no knowledge of their forms/katas so I couldn't comment on them.


FM

[FrogMan]

Originally Posted by Coffee Warlord

Dola.

Actually looking at Hapkido as something to get into at the moment. There's a school very close by.

Cool. I'd heard about hapkido before, but had never really looked into what it implied. The wikipedia page for it is interesting to say the least. It's also always funny to see that many martial arts share many common traits. I mean, even though not all techniques are done the same way, self defense remains self defense. An arm bar remains an arm bar and a rear naked choke remains a rear naked choke.

From the wikipedia hapkido page, we worked on that wrist lock at a seminar given by a ju-jitsu master a couple weeks ago:


Combine it with a knee to the back of the thigh, where there's a pressure point, and it is very, very successful in bringing someone down...

FM

[BYU 14]

Originally Posted by FrogMan

Thanks. I wouldn't call our test near death experience, as our school is fairly family oriented, but they certainly didn't just hand the belt to us. We worked hard and grueling describes the test quite well. I know my 37yo body is still aching as I type this...

That's very cool for your kids, how old are they? Tell them I have a lot of respect for what they are doing. Had I started earlier, I probably would have liked to learn more than one style but time commitment is such that for now I'll stick to kenpo. If anything, I might want to try aikido at some point.

Our kenpo has some roots into shotokan and I know I'll be learning a shotokan form next, I think it's Bassai Dai. I've also dabbled just a little bit with Ju-Jitsu, in the form of a couple seminars on self-defense with Kyoshi John Thérien. If your kids ever have a chance to attend one of his seminars, I'd highly recommend him.

FM

They do a lot of seminars and I am sure they have heard of him. The two Black Belts are 19 and 21, and my 25 yr old son is a Brown Belt, his interest just waned a little at the end, but he still enjoys sparring with his brothers on occasion. Tony, the 21 yr old, is the one in the Navy and I he unofficially teaches Ju-Jitsu to some guys in his command and has also got to grapple with Carlos Newton and Frank Shamrock at seminars and all three have been to several different states for tournaments when they competed on a regular basis, so it has been very fullfilling for them.

Keep us posted on your future endeavors for sure.

[FrogMan]

quick update...

A new school of my style of Kenpo will be opening about 3 minutes from my house and tonight, I was offered and accepted a position as instructor with them. Very excited about it.

The guy who's opening the new school used to run a pizza place around town but he sold it because he got so passionate about karate and martial arts. He's also a black belt as is his daughter. She also was a junior amateur world champion in open form (kata).

Last Saturday, he invited me to the grand opening of his new dojo that will happen in a couple of weeks, also sort of mentionning that he'd like to talk to me about possibly being part of his team at some point. I said I'd think about it. He called back tonight and simply asked me straight up if teaching was something I'd be interested in. I've always been around either teaching, or coaching, so yeah, that's something I'd like. He added that he's had me in mind for his dojo for a long time but just couldn't talk about it before he'd done the move with the restaurant and the dojo had been started. He wanted to know if I was interested since I'll be introduced with the other instructors at the grand opening.

We'll be helped by the main school anyway, so it's not like I'll be totally on my own, and his vision is to take on only beginners at first and refer the more advanced students to the main school which is still only 15 minutes away, and that most advanced students are already frequenting anyway. That way, I'll grow into my teaching and when our students grow and eventually become advanced ones, we'll be able to keep on teaching them.

I'm extremely proud of that news, very excited about it, but also a bit nervous. You never wanna look like an idiot in front of a class of anything.

FM