This is my official hello to everyone.

I am an enthusiast of the religion and reading your bible helped me work through some hard times in my teenage years. Without it, I could not have become the man I am proud to be today.

I decided to join the forum for some intelligent discussion on occasion as it can be quite difficult to find on the internet.

Thank you for allowing me the privilege of posting here. I am certain we will have much to learn from each other in the future.

Hello and welcome.

I noticed in your hobbies you have "mma" (mixed martial arts) and self defense. What do you study?

I study no-gi jiu-jitsu and boxing, mostly. Occasionally I spar with some gentlemen at the local muay thai gym.

Concerning weapons, I am a gun fan and enjoy a good knife as well. I want desperately to become proficient with a katana but it is difficult to find people to train with that actually know what they are doing. I have considered taking up fencing but it is just not the same.

Currently, I like to play with throwing knives (though they are merely a hobby as they as not efficient tools for self-defense).

Karate and cardio-kickboxing in my case, both at the same dojo. Best thing I ever did.

I used to practice Karate. My style was Shotokhan. However my thirst for self defense is not to learn how to be "martially artistic". lol

I felt that Martial Arts were not that much different than Ballet except it's a masculine art form and I felt like kicking someone on occassion. (Not really. I just threw that in there for laughs.)

There was a time around my 9th year of age where I studied and practiced the sidekick Bruce Lee always did. You know the overstep and then side kick to knock a person back a few feet?

It became successful to do that but eventually I grew tired of being artistic and wanted to practice something that can be more effective. I've gotten into fights before and tried to use my martial arts but always found myself getting beat.

But anyway... Those times where when I was a kid up to about 11 years old. I was one belt away from the Black Belt.

I'm learning KoJu-Kai which is a mixture of Goju-ryu, Kyokushinkai and Shotokan from what I hear. None of that means anything to me. I'm learning what the Shihan teaches. He never even mentions the words in my first sentence. But he's dead set on teaching us how to win a real world fight and that's what I care about.



Strange. Were you trying to use kicks when punches and elbows would have been better?

I tried both at the time. I was going fairly well until he caught a good punch across the bridge of my nose. I couldn't feel shit where he hit me except pressure and alot of blood.

about 10 years later to the present time, my girl looks at it now and says he broke my nose that time and now I have a little mis-alignment along my septum. It's very minor and you can't see it unless you actually look.

There was another time where I was up against about 5 kids. I got my ass beat big time there. lol

Old memories!