The results showed that a substantial part of the information was not retained by the athletes and the information coherency was inversely related to the number of transmitted ideas. The coaches were, mainly, prescriptive and the form of the information was not important for the retention of the information. Gender was a differentiated variable as the girls showed more coherency in the retained ideas in relation to the ideas transmitted by the coach.
From the “they just don’t make them like they used to” bin comes this story of a retired boxer and veteran of the British armed forces who did not take too kindly to being attacked by a knife wielding thug.
Excerpt:
He should have picked on someone his own age.
Gregory McCalium, 24, was left with severe facial wounds after the knife-wielding thug attempted to rob his elderly neighbor in tBotley near Oxford, England, Britain’s SkyNews reported. The would-be burglar broke into the home of Frank Corti last Aug. 19 – without realizing the 72-year-old was a retired boxer
The TKRI/Seijinkai annual summer camp is always chock full of good training, ideas and discussion, but this year was distinguished by TKRI Mo. student David Baron earning his shodan under Harry Cook. It’s an honor to count Dave among our yudansha, and we are all proud of him.
You might remember that Randy and I have had a fair few posts and comments about food and nutrition in the past. Well I’m just back from our annual gasshuku in Virginia. The long weekend was brilliant, as always, and I’m sure there will be a few pictures from it coming up. But I also got a chance to see Randy’s new vegetable garden, and he sent me back to St Louis with an ice-chest packed with lettuce, herbs, chard, carrots, peas and squash. Here is just some of the treasure:
Veggies from Randy's garden.
At Takushoku there was a chance your sempai might kill you. Mine are sending me home with heirloom carrots. Better, no?
Linked Article "Iliotibial Band (IT Band) Syndrome" by Amy Miller Bohn M.D.
A lot of karate people subject their IT bands to this sort of loving attention:
(leg conditioning begins at 1:10)
(Stance checking at 1:50)
(leg conditioning begins at .19)
Outside tension stances also place tension in the IT bands. As a consequence, just like runners, many karate people suffer from hip and knee problems related to overly tight IT bands.
Here are a couple of articles that address hip and knee problems resulting from tight IT bands:
If you look at the anterior (front) view of the right thigh muscles and follow the tendon of this muscle down, you’ll see that it runs all the way to the knee. This thick band of tendon is the iliotibial band. Or iliotibial tract, as it is labeled in the diagram.
The knee pain occurs when the tensor fasciae latae muscle and iliotibial band become tight. This causes the tendon to pull the knee joint out of alignment and rub against the outside of the knee, which results in inflammation and pain.
Hip pain in athletes involves a wide differential diagnosis. Adolescents and young adults are at particular risk for various apophyseal and epiphyseal injuries due to lack of ossification of these cartilaginous growth plates. Older athletes are more likely to present with tendinitis in these areas because their growth plates have closed. Several bursae in the hip area are prone to inflammation. The trochanteric bursa is the most commonly injured, and the lesion is easily identified by palpation of the area. Iliotibial band syndrome presents with similar lateral hip pain and may be identified by provocative testing (Ober’s test). A methodical physical examination that specifically tests the various muscle groups that move the hip joint can help determine a more specific diagnosis for the often vague complaint of hip pain.
ITBFS is an overuse injury that produces pain on the lateral knee during running and, occasionally, cycling. Pain is generally caused by an unusually tight ITB, the undersurface of which frictions over the lateral femoral condyle. This occurs during knee flexion and extension at approximately 30 degrees knee flexion when running and cycling, when the ITB flicks over the lateral femoral condyle. This process leads to friction, microtrauma, inflammation – and hence pain develops.
I recognize that it is important to condition one’s legs to be able to receive blows, I practice leg conditioning myself. Here are a couple of videos that demonstrate self myo fascial release techniques and stretches that may help keep our knees and hips healthy.
Michael Ghiglieri served in Vietnam and went on to study primatology. Both his combat experience, and his time spent observing chimpanzee troops in the wild inform this dark and deeply troubling work.
This is a wide ranging book and Ghiglieri does not shy away from criticizing people he believes harm our understanding of violence by portraying a world they wish existed, instead of the one that we in fact live in. He is impatient with what he describes as feminist accounts of rape (rape as power), liberal accounts of violence (blaming society rather than the criminal), gun control laws, and socialism. He supports the death penalty by arguing that lex talonis (eye for an eye retributive justice) is both justified and effective at reducing violence in societies. Ghiglieri describes the reproductive advantages of aggression, rape, murder, war and genocide. He seeks to demonstrate why the advantages realized by aggressive, violent males (in all species of the great apes) inevitably lead to magnification of these traits in populations. He is not prepared to let men get by with this sort of behavior however, he devotes the end of his book to a discussion of cooperation and retributive justice as means of inhibiting violence.
Whether or not one shares Ghiglieri’s social or political views, his theory of justice, or believes that his description of violence is accurate or adequately portrayed; this book demands more than comfortable cliches and responses based on naive Rousseauian views of human nature. I recommend this book to anyone interested in deepening their understanding of violence.
BAGHDAD — Gunmen killed the coach of Iraq’s national karate team Friday in Mosul, underscoring the dangers still facing this northern city less than two weeks before a deadline for U.S. troops to withdraw from urban areas.
Izzat Abdullah, a 45-year-old Sunni, was shot to death near his house in an eastern section of Mosul, according to police and sports officials.
Tight calves and ankles plague many karate people. Sometimes stretching is just not sufficient. Here is an informative video demonstrating the use of a foam roller to help get the kinks out of your calf muscles.
Caution: After about five minutes of using the foam roller I turn into a helpless blob of goo. It is habit forming.
Mr. McKenna’s You Tube channel is full of great stuff. I recommend that you subscribe to it (it is free). It is a great way to enjoy good quality, informative, martial arts related videos without have to sort through all of the noise.
By now most of our readers know that TKRI is affiliated with Harry Cook’s Seijinkai Karate-do Association. Below is a link to an interview with Harry that Shaun Banfield conducted and published on the Shotokan Way e-magazine.
Excerpt:
SB) Of course, you also became an English teacher in Japan. Did you get time to train at many of the major dojos, and how would you describe training in the ‘heartland’?
(HC) My plan originally was to train at the JKA, but Terry O’Neill told me to go and see Higaonna. Once I had seen him I didn’t feel the need to bother with any of the others. I did train at Kanazawa sensei’s dojo every now and then but to be honest they were doing basically the same things I had been doing in the UK. I dabbled with a bit of sword and jo but the bulk of my training was at the Yoyogi Shurenkai dojo of Higaonna sensei. In most dojos training physically demanding, and some instructors are without any doubt racist bullies; they take advantage of foreign students and batter them while claiming they are teaching them budo. It is nonsense. I stress that this was a minority. Higaonna sensei was never like that; we got bashed yes, but everyone did, it was a natural part of the training.
"Try to see yourself as you truly are and try to adopt what is meritorious in the work of others. As a karateka you will of course often watch others practice. When you do and you see strong points in the performance of others, try to incorporate them into your own technique. At the same time, if the trainee you are watching seems to be doing less than his best ask yourself whether you too may not be failing to practice with diligence. Each of us has good qualities and bad; the wise man seeks to emulate the good he perceives in others and avoid the bad." Funakoshi Gichin
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