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I took up Shotokan Karate last October and what's started out as a hobby has turned into an obsession! I love every aspect of it, the history, the discipline, the style, the fitness, the lot! I've just taken my 7th Kyu and made it to yellow belt. Any other budding Martial Artists out there then?

I'm a blue belt in Wado-Ru karate (not sure on spelling) I've been practiceing on and off for about 13 years but I haven't been down the dojo for at least a couple of years and I was 15 the last time I won a trophy.

I got my family into it when I first started going and there are now 3 black belts in the house but my parents don't go anymore and my brother occasionally goes inbetween bouts of cricket and athletics. (thats right, I'm the only nerd in a sports household)
It's smallish local club after splitting from the not exactly huge Tokui Karate Union a short while back but it's a fun place to learn and I've made some good friends.

I did train once at a friends Shotokan dojo but I ended up doing 2 hours of training on a broken arm after running into a wall during a warm up drill (yep I'm just that hard)

nasty! I briefly did wado-ryu as a kid, didn't get far though as i had the attention span of a fish, my dad reached 1st kyu though. I'm not really following the competition side of it, i think that's more of a wado thing as we've had former wado fighters joining our class who've won all sorts of trophies. Shotokan's more of a hard style of Karate hence the high injury rate, luckily i've only gotten away with bruises and pulled muscles!

Prowl1984 wrote:I took up Shotokan Karate last October and what's started out as a hobby has turned into an obsession! I love every aspect of it, the history, the discipline, the style, the fitness, the lot! I've just taken my 7th Kyu and made it to yellow belt. Any other budding Martial Artists out there then?

I'm 3rd degree brown in Shaolin kempo karate. That's one belt away from Black. I've been training for 3 years and loving it. I also took Machado jiu jitsu for about a year, so far I'm a white belt with 4 stripes, then the economic recession came so my family had to cut back so now it's just kempo but I learned so much from that one year in jiu jitsu. Karate is an excellent form of exercise. Wednesdays and Saturdays are my favorite days of the week because they're sparing nights for the advance class at my local dojo. I'd say fight nights but then everybody would think of Fight Club and nobody usually ever comes out of the dojo KO'd with a broken jaw. We wear padded gloves and mouth guards and what not. I'm CRAZY about fighting sparing! Just the thrill of no longer having to watch UFC when you actually know self-defense. I swear, if you don't pay attention to what's going on in the middle of a sparing session, crossing the dojo can be worse then crossing the street. Sparing sessions at the dojo are officially an hour long. But my instructor is a really cool dude and will let us keep sparing for much longer. My friends and I will go crazy on each other always trying to push each others abilities. Sometimes we'll do one person vs. 2 or more other people. It gets really sick! Some of the black-belts in my dojo are wickedly awesome at(aw screw it I'll say it)fighting. it's like watching the Matrix without bullet time when you see two black belts fight each other. One thing that does suck is that the walls are kinda thin see no running up the walls for me. I'll end up running threw them and into the massage parlor next door.:lol:Testing for the higher ranks can be very difficult and tideous. Especially when the test is run by a professional physical trainer for 6 frickin' hours. It's so worth it plus I love the workout. The worst injuries I get on a daily basis are bruises, scratches, and bloody lips and the rare broken toenail. The worst I ever received was a few badly bruised ribs from a reverse round house kick so I was out for a month.

Here's some advice for those about to start karate. The dojo is the worst place to be an asshole. Make as many friends as possible otherwise every time you spar people are gunna give you a real tough time.

"Sparing" is great fun especially if you've got one or two competetive mates who can egg you on with a bit of oneupmanship, and I get to fight my Dad wich is fun anyway but I was never allowed to fight my brother otherwise one of us would go to far.

It never got particularly hard or 'sick' it was just good fun.

I'm between 4th and 3rd Kyu (Orange belt with green ends) with Judo. Haven't practised the sport for over 10 years now, though...

I do love sparring although we have got "That guy" in our class who always takes things too far and promptly gets his ass handed to him. My dad's usually the one giving it back My Sensei's also a copper so as well as Shotokan syllabus we also get taught various take-down and restraint techniques used by the Police