"I'm Going To Come Back To Training" and other lies
- Thread starter Bill Mattocks
- Start date
Sure. I suspect lots of us do.
I do a fair bit of off roading. What you call green lanes in the UK. I was one of 20 invited to compete in the second Four Wheeler Magazine Real Truck Challenge. I've been doing this for about 20 years.
I race. I have a '99 Corvette that makes 850HP on pump gas. Even at our altitude, it runs 11 second 1/4 mile times, and can top 200MPH in a one mile race. I've been drag racing since I was a teen.
I SCUBA dive. Cave, wreck, hypoxic trimix... everything except rebreathers. I've been diving about 15 years and have something like 1000 dives. Around 2000 hours under water.
I make blades. Anything from folders to swords. I've been doing that for about 35 years.
I started MA training when I was 7, so probably the only hobby I have that I had at that time is reading. I've always been a voracious reader. I'll read anything except bodice rippers.
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Oily Dragon
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Well for me, cooking is something that went from hobby to passion. And it has a lot of parallels with martial arts.
The big dilemma again is there is time in a class, and time in "the field". I don't typically feel nowadays that I need to hit an MA class, any more than a cooking one.
Could I learn something new? Of course but I also still have to cook burgers and dogs and feed people.
With martial arts, you can have that train 6 days a week mentality, and feel great, but you still have to go out and live life. You're not punching people on the regular, hopefully.
And it won't last. Chances are there will come a time when the dojo just isn't where you want to be. That doesn't mean you didn't get your worth from it.
People just age out of martial arts, IMHO, and that's why we have Tai Chi.
That'd be kind of tough for me, since I've been doing MA since I was 3
That’s interesting. What kind of parallels?
I’ve noted ‘drift’ in the techniques of those who no longer attend classes. There are a group of Iaidoka in the UK who broke away from ZNKR swordsmanship and formed their own association (apparently due to a disagreement with a particularly loathsome member of the the British Kendo Association) thus forsaking the steering of high grade teachers from Japan and elsewhere. After years of divergent evolution, their swordsmanship is truly bizarre. It’s like watching a celebrity impersonator who doesn’t quite get their parody of Donald Trump/Boris Johnson close enough to entertain, but only triggers ones internal ‘error correction’ signals. I asked one of their senior students what the jerking of the sword they performed at the end of one kata constituted. He said he had no idea. I worked out it was probably the move that supposedly shakes blood and gore from the blade of the sword.
It’s a shame that you’re forsaking the new because you have to do the mundane.
But with martial arts otaku there is the intent that one will have to potentially punch an assailant and that becomes part of ones everyday living of life, however unlikely that actually is. It’s not a normal notion, but we’re not normal and that’s why we continue practising when the muggles give up.
Yes that’s true and it happened to me when I moved to my present location. But being a swordsmanship otaku, I have to travel to get my instruction.
Like purgatory?
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Breathing is a hobby…of sorts.
Bujingodai
Black Belt
Not quite like you see on TV but paranormal research/investigation for about 29 years, started about the same time as the arts. Have gone across Canada US and overseas. My team is smaller now by choice, we handle a much more pragmatic way of it than most people see. I also geocache quite frequently. About 6300 finds to date, also a little less frequent than before. The martial arts happily is now getting back into place. We travel quite a bit as well. 1st cruise coming in April.
I find paranormal investigation fascinating (although I don’t believe in ghosts etc- they’d be disobeying the second law of thermodynamics if they existed, for heaven’s sake!). I was a member of the Society for Psychical Research for a while until it became apparent that they were not sceptics as advertised! I’ve spent very ‘enjoyable’ nights in haunted castles/houses/Inns and I worked in a hall filled with 80+ human bodies (deceased) and never once have I experienced anything odd. But I am fascinated by it all.
OP
- Thread Starter
- #29
Not really. I have hobbies, some of which I no longer do, some of which I do sporadically as the muse takes me. Photography, vacuum tube amplifier building, stereo speaker refurbishing, motorcycle riding, and lately, flower gardening and restoring old cars.
Bujingodai
Black Belt
It's OK I don't believe in ghosts either per se. That's why I have spent so much time trying to obtain evidence to argue with. The SPR is like any other org really. Maybe good with the original intent but they are all clubs.
I've been playing music (mostly guitar and bass) almost as long as I've been training martial arts. I was in an active band for a number of years. But I haven't been nearly as consistent with my music practice. If I had to estimate, I'd guess that I've put less than 1/5 the hours into practicing music as I have martial arts. At the moment, I'm trying to rebuild a small guitar repertoire, because I went about 3 years without playing guitar and I forgot most of the songs I used to know.
Oily Dragon
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Discipline with hands, feet, body, blades, metal, fire, angry people.
Haven't you ever noticed all the cooking shows are designed like Bloodsport?
Iron Chef is a battlefield.
OP
- Thread Starter
- #33
I find a lot of parallels with martial arts and gardening. First, patience is rewarded. Second, not everything you try works. Third, if it works, it works; it doesn't have to be 'authentic'. It goes on. Even the actual act of gardening teaches some basic body mechanics that have parallels. Circular motions, conservation of energy, balance, and so on.
I was going to add my 2 cents, but Tony has already said pretty much everything I was thinking of saying and a good deal more eloquently.
But there is one other thing that just popped into my head: What about people committing to this forum? Granted, it's not in the same class as training your art, but I did notice that some people post often and really have a lot to contribute, while some of the rest of us are ...a bit more sporadic in posting. Then there are the rare posters that we'd like to here from more often.
Like, maybe GMK Sa Bom Nim. Dude, only four posts in the last year? C'mon and share a little more!
And not to pick on him. At least he did post! What about all our old regulars who have just disappeared? Like, dunno, maybe Juany? ...or a dozen others who had great stuff to say? Where are they now?
Alas.
But there is one other thing that just popped into my head: What about people committing to this forum? Granted, it's not in the same class as training your art, but I did notice that some people post often and really have a lot to contribute, while some of the rest of us are ...a bit more sporadic in posting. Then there are the rare posters that we'd like to here from more often.
Like, maybe GMK Sa Bom Nim. Dude, only four posts in the last year? C'mon and share a little more!
And not to pick on him. At least he did post! What about all our old regulars who have just disappeared? Like, dunno, maybe Juany? ...or a dozen others who had great stuff to say? Where are they now?
Alas.
From experience, your fingers will find the string and frets position almost automatically if you take your conscious mind out of the equation….it’s really weird.
The technical skills are still there. It's just the specific arrangements of individual songs (chord sequences, picking patterns, riffs, etc) which have slipped away. I'm actually taking advantage of the opportunity to learn some new songs, since my brain has apparently stashed all of the info for my old repertoire in the attic somewhere.
The only time when I had difficulties actually playing was when I spent a year or so just playing ukelele rather than guitar. I picked up my guitar one day and was shocked that I kept messing up basic chords because my fingers were used to a different spacing between the stings and frets. Fortunately it only took a day or two of practice for my fingers to relearn where to go.
For some reason, I can never remember the verse riff from ‘Walk This Way’. I end up making something up using a Cmajor pentatonic….it works🤷🏾
Steve
Mostly Harmless
I love watching actual cooking shows but don’t generally enjoy cooking competitions. I have all of the French Chef episodes on dvd and love watching The NY Times cooking channel on YouTube.
And hamburgers are just as fun to cook as anything else. So many different possibilities. Dozens of different ways to make a hamburger.
Hot dogs are pretty easy, but there are better ways to cook them than just boiling them. I’ve dabbled with sausage making, and make my own Italian sausage pretty often.
I like talking about food almost as much as I enjoy eating it.
