Ha, I don't have any belt in martial arts, so I assume that pretty much any one of you could take me down, but,

I wonder, firstly, how long did you all have to train to become your rank?

Also, I assume that self-training is nearly impossible, isn't it?

I was in karate for 4 years, i AM retired from karate though. I stopped going to class after i hit 1st degree black belt i used to be a student teacher but i felt that i wanted to do more then karate. i did enter a tournament once though! and i did win a few 1st place trophies and some second place medals. The reason why i was in karate was because my parents made me lol that and they wanted me to learn self-defense and discipline. but one day we were playing soccer with a tennis ball in the dojo and one of the instructors kick it so hard it hit me in the eye and i came home with a black eye. and my mom thought that someone punched me in the eye but my instructor that gave me the black eye i was a trooper and didn't cry though lmao. it hurt to even blink all the more cry lol. those were fun times.

This post has been edited by Tunay: Jan 16 2008, 02:29 PM

lol,for some time I thought, the black eye was the reason y you stopped...
so why did you stop really??
i'm not sure whether i'll go back to karate or not *-) it kinda clashes with the times i go jogging, and i liked that...any idea what i should do???

i guess i stopped because i found other things to do. i got involved with extra curricular activities at school (band, plays, things like that)
oh and i guess another reason why i stopped is because i moved to like the next county over and my parents didn't feel like driving me over ever day


I'm starting to jog too O.o; its part of my new years resolution. not to excersize more or to lose weight but to jog more and specifically job more lol but if you really want to re-join karate you should find times that would work for you. if not change your running times but i'm guessing jogging is a routine thing?

I use to do kickboxing and I got to red belt which was the first one but i was due for a grading to get yellow belt but I stopped due to knee problems. Now I just workout in my garage doing a few round on the heavy bag and lifting weights. Hoping to get back in to martial arts though in the future.

well!

in our system the belts go like:

white, yellow , orange, green, blue, brown, black

and i am Brown belt

Nabeel,
you write:
Could you expand on that a little bit please, as there are so many systems and quite a few of them are very similar.

Well, I don't think my martial art is as well known as Karate or Judo or anything, and it's only starting to get established in my country. The equivalent of it is Kendo in japanese martial arts.

So what I do it called Haidong Gumdo, where we use a sword to fight. We learn forms and techniques, and things like that. One thing that it lacked from our masters teachings was more sparring though. Anyway, I have my Black Belt now, but I worked really hard for it. We had to learn how to blow out a candle with our sword, with just it's movement and not touching it. We had to know all our forms and things like that too. If I were to go for the next level, I would need to be able to cut a bamboo stick with a real sword.

It was really fun, and I miss it, but I haven't practiced it for years now. I should start up again sometime!

That looks quite interesting. Where exactly does that martial art come from? Judging by its name it sounds a bit Vietnamese or Korean. Could you let me know, please?