I am learning mostly shaolin kung fu. No schools in the area, I am just good at picking up info from books, etc.
Kybernetecist, you know naginata? That is my favorite to watch, and I have been trying to learn it forever! Unfortunately, the town I am in only does taekwondo. But if I move to a big city, I really wanna learn it. The motions are poetic. That and all the women in it make it high up on my list 
Fight club dopefest! I’m THERE!
Have to agree with you there.
Plus they are pretty cool too. I mean, have you ever gotten hugged by your sensei before?
Anyway, naginata takes a while to learn how to even begin to move it around properly.
Kendo, people can pick up the basics in six months, and the rest is just technique and spirit.
Naginata, it’s taken me a year and a half to get to the point where I can put on armor. And I still am mostly doing drills, just to get used to the armor.
Only a little over 100 registered practitioners in the U.S. - only east coast groups I know of are in Washington,DC and New York. Where do you live?
I am in the centre of Ohio right now. I need to find a dojo in a major city. I was watching a prog on martial arts that was on TLC. They had a segment on naginata, and the sensei was an 82 year-old woman. Really cool looking matrial art!
Hm. Middle of America.
Well, there’s Takami sensei in Illinois. She is very, very, good. Takami Tanner holds at least a godan in Naginata (could not remember, so did a search. She’s listed as having a godan in 1996 - pretty sure it’s higher now) and is similarly ranked in Kendo. She is also very fast and very patient with us new people.
All I know is she is abouta 2-3 hour drive from U of Il. - I have no idea if it is in your direction or not. You could ask down here.
http://www.egroups.com/group/midwestnaginata
I studied karate for about 2 years. The styles I was taught were Shukokai and Shito Ru (sp?). I had to give it up when I started a new job cause I could not get down to the classes. I was getting a bit disillusioned because we did a lot of fighting/sparring, but I was not good at it (not fast enough in footwork, or striking). I got to Blue belt, but we were doing less and less practicing and grading style work, and more sparring.
I would love to get back into a martial art, but I have no idea which style. I don’t know what there is around where I live. The other problem is that I am really unfit, so I think I prolly need to do a bit of fitness training alongside anything else I try.
I would quite like to learn something like Ju jitsu. From what I have seen and heard, it does look a good art to learn. What does everyone else think of Ju Jitsu. I guess it all depends on what you want from a martial art as to which is best for you.
TTFN
Rick
Haven’t been into MA training in many years. I do work out at a gym, but that does little to improve coordination or make you nimble. There is no philosophical system involved either. The One Thing that keeps me from martial arts training is, do I really want to learn how to kick the bejesus out of someone? The answer appears to be that I do not. Obviously there is more to MA than that, but isn’t that the core idea? Someone once suggested yoga, but that looks kinda dull. Any suggestions?
Heh. The one thing I don’t feel like doing after an hour of za-zen is kick anything…
http://www.kendoka.org/camp.html
See here for purposes besides kicking the bejeezus out of people.
http://www.kendoka.org/kendo.html
I haven’t done any real physical training (well, a bit, but not as much as I should), but I’ve been teaching myself how to use weapons, heh. I’ve got the basics (and a bit more in a few cases) of using a katana, sticks (we did some Kali training (stickfighting), and the principles of it apply to most weapons shaped like a stick, heh), knife, staff (though I don’t have a lot of room to practise with one, heh), meter stick (watch out!), playing cards (they can be thrown like throwing stars and if you do it right you can put nice dents in walls, go through paper, and sting someone like hell, heh), and nunchaku.
I don’t have any access to good martial arts weapons (except buying them on the net, but that costs megabucks especially if you have to get them to ship it to Canada), so for nunchaku I took two Nerf arrows (remember the bow and arrow set from long long ago?), stuffed them with stuff so they’d be a little heavy, then put pins in the tops, tied string to each pin, then taped them up so it wouldn’t come undone or the pin wouldn’t pop out. They’re excellent, heh…and you can whap people in the head with them because they’re still just nerf foam arrows.
I found a good resource for learning weapons is Soul Calibur (fighting game on the Dreamcast if you live under a rock). All the moves in the game are motion captured from people who know how to use the weapons, and there are all sorts of weapons in the game. I rented the system and game once, hooked up my VCR to it, and spent about 6 hours recording it. In the training mode you can go through the lists of moves and hit a button to see the computer do them. I just went through the lists for everyone, every move, and taped them. Now I can go through them in slow motion on my VCR and see how they’re done, heh. I learned some damn cool nunchaku stuff from studying Maxi’s moves.