And now I am "old."

[gyoja]

I personally don't feel old until I get around younger people. So no my goal is to hang around younger people who are out of shape. I'll let you know how thst turns out lol.

 

[Fungus]

One of my instructors referred to this as "old man tricks." Very advanced!

I think they say, "Sen no sen," for the ability to move simultaneously with the opponent, anticipating his movement and "countering" even an instant before or as the opponent attacks. A completely different level of understanding.

Some of our master instructors are like this, suddenly in the fight he just starts to smile big, and I know then is then reading me like an open book, but hoping for someone to outsmart him but that is very difficult. I succeeded once by throwing a technique noone does much, so he didn't see it coming. It's very inspiring to get the honour to fight with them. Suddenly there was a axe kick stopping ontop of my nose and he was just smiling.

 

[Hyoho]

I personally don't feel old until I get around younger people. So no my goal is to hang around younger people who are out of shape. I'll let you know how thst turns out lol

I'm loving it. Thought I had retired and now I have three club members in the next world championships.

 

[gyoja]

I personally don't feel old until I get around younger people. So no my goal is to hang around younger people who are out of shape. I'll let you know how thst turns out lol.

The majority of my students are teens and I’m surprised how out of shape most are. Stop by, it will lift your spirits!

 

[Fungus]

I personally don't feel old until I get around younger people. So no my goal is to hang around younger people who are out of shape. I'll let you know how thst turns out lol.

I feel like the opposite, when joining a class the you become "rank-peers" regardless of age, so as long as there are no actual mirrors in the dojo (or you look away from it), you can naturally mirror yourself in the group and get some mental energy

 

[Cri70]

53 here (54 after the summer) and so far I haven't noticed much physical degradation. I'm sure that if I had trained hard I could have run longer and faster when I was 20.. but wasn't training hard then, so I run longer and faster now .

I was lucky that I got into playing guitar at 13, and I discovered relatively early that when it comes to body control, practice pays off, but not any practice. You need repetition but also to know how to do it - otherwise there's no progress or it's very slow. I also observed that even if u do everything right, the single biggest stop to progress/reason to decline is simply injury; and very often, self-inflicted injury by trying too much, too early.

So in that sense my practice has never changed, regardless the specific type of body control I want to achieve. For example, for years I thought that I was just stiff and so be it. Then for the first time in my life, in my late 40s I took flexibility "seriously" and started delving into the gory details on how to practice it.. and discovered that it is a skill, and for decades I'd just done the wrong things in insufficient quantity to learn it. Starting to do the right things, and enough of them in a consistent way, in a few months I became more flexible than I'd ever been, and I'm still making significant progress now.

Then at a certain point, I guess, biological degradation becomes such that one declines no matter what. The mystery of aging is still unsolved, and past a certain threshold, say the 100s, it may well be impossible to avoid decline.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

According to the CDC, about 36 million senior citizens fall each year with 32,000 of them dying.

Train single leg balance is the key.

 

[gyoja]

According to the CDC, about 36 million senior citizens fall each year with 32,000 of them dying.

Train single leg balance is the key.



View attachment 30854

I do a lot of single leg balance exercises with my students. It really helps them with their advanced kicks.

 

[Monkey Turned Wolf]

Just to let y'all know, I appreciate you. Every time a thread comes up where people complain about being old, or having issues in whatever way, I take a few minutes to either stretch, or do a set of pushups or crunches. Hopefully you keep it up, and the reminders stay for me to stay healthy when I reach your age.

Edit: @Kung Fu Wang my favorite 'stretch' is imagining an opponent where I do a single leg sweep on them, and drilling that 5-10 times.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

Edit: @Kung Fu Wang my favorite 'stretch' is imagining an opponent where I do a single leg sweep on them, and drilling that 5-10 times.

Foot sweep is also an excellent way to maintain flexibility and balance. 20 reps is my favor number.

 

[Taiji Rebel]

According to the CDC, about 36 million senior citizens fall each year with 32,000 of them dying.

Train single leg balance is the key.



View attachment 30854

Learning how to balance is important, but it is also vital to master falling safely. This is where arts like Aikido, Judo etc come into their own. Even those with the greatest balance are not impervious to losing their footing and taking a fall now and again.

 

[gyoja]

Learning how to balance is important, but it is also vital to master falling safely. This is where arts like Aikido, Judo etc come into their own. Even those with the greatest balance are not impervious to losing their footing and taking a fall now and again.

I include falling as part of the curriculum. It helps keep the students safe during throws, sweeps and takedowns.

 

[JowGaWolf]

I include falling as part of the curriculum. It helps keep the students safe during throws, sweeps and takedowns.

I added falling to my training nothing serious, more of an exercise that allows my body to be familiar with the sensation of falling. This is more to help me as I get older.

I also plan on buying a skateboard to help with balance issues as well. I used to be really good at it, but now it's like I've never been on one. I figure I'll pick it up again and see where it takes me. Hopefully not to the hospital lol

 

[gyoja]

Hopefully not to the hospital lol

That’s exactly where I would end up if I tried to ride one!

 

[Taiji Rebel]

That’s exactly where I would end up if I tried to ride one!

Spent my youth doing martial arts and riding skateboards - there's a lot of crossover between the two. We can learn from all kind of artforms and professions according to Miyamoto Musashi

 

[gyoja]

Spent my youth doing martial arts and riding skateboards - there's a lot of crossover between the two. We can learn from all kind of artforms and professions according to Miyamoto Musashi

Martial arts really helped in my profession. So did hunting…

 

[Xue Sheng]

Spent my youth doing martial arts and riding skateboards - there's a lot of crossover between the two. We can learn from all kind of artforms and professions according to Miyamoto Musashi

spent my youth doing martial arts and riding dirt bikes.... not sure Musashi had the dirt bike bit in mind

 

[HighKick]

53 here (54 after the summer) and so far I haven't noticed much physical degradation. I'm sure that if I had trained hard I could have run longer and faster when I was 20.. but wasn't training hard then, so I run longer and faster now .

I was lucky that I got into playing guitar at 13, and I discovered relatively early that when it comes to body control, practice pays off, but not any practice. You need repetition but also to know how to do it - otherwise there's no progress or it's very slow. I also observed that even if u do everything right, the single biggest stop to progress/reason to decline is simply injury; and very often, self-inflicted injury by trying too much, too early.

So in that sense my practice has never changed, regardless the specific type of body control I want to achieve. For example, for years I thought that I was just stiff and so be it. Then for the first time in my life, in my late 40s I took flexibility "seriously" and started delving into the gory details on how to practice it.. and discovered that it is a skill, and for decades I'd just done the wrong things in insufficient quantity to learn it. Starting to do the right things, and enough of them in a consistent way, in a few months I became more flexible than I'd ever been, and I'm still making significant progress now.

Then at a certain point, I guess, biological degradation becomes such that one declines no matter what. The mystery of aging is still unsolved, and past a certain threshold, say the 100s, it may well be impossible to avoid decline.

"Practice do not make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect".

 

[Gyakuto]

"Practice do not make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect".

There’s a really nice book call ‘Bounce’ which addresses this with a few interviews with noted sports people which says that progressively making one’s training more awkward and hence difficult, leads to improvement rather than mindless repetition. I put the idea to a professional soccer player from who I was buying a house and with whom I had become friendly. It seems he was famous for heading the football and as a child he’d bounce the ball off his bedroom wall and head it back for hours on end. When it became easy, he’d head the ball at the junction of the wall and ceiling so the return was a little bit less predictable. When that got easy, the corner of the walls and ceiling became his target to add more randomness, then standing on one leg, spinning around so he had less time to assess the incoming ball’s trajectory…! So he agreed with the idea that making skill training more and more difficult pays dividends.

With regards guitar playing (since you mentioned it) and in a similar vein, I’d recommend ‘Steve Vai’s 10 hour Guitar Workout’.

 

[JowGaWolf]

"Practice do not make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect".

This reminds me of something that I heard in the past in regard to practicing a technique incorrectly. Practice Long, Practice Wrong.

It was a reminder for the students to remember that if we are spending long hours practicing a technique incorrectly then all we are just doing is practicing wrong. Martial arts is hard enough. The last thing I want to do is spend 50+ hours practicing something the wrong way and then spend another 50+ hours correcting it.