So Wifey and I are currently watching season 3 of Happy Days as she’s keen to get me to appreciate the series since she’s a fan. Being the very clever girl she is, she’s picked the series that introduces Arnold, aka Noriyuki “Pat” Morita, aka Mr Miyagi.

To say I had a crazy head spin and my brain had trouble dealing with the extreme awesomeness of the prospect of Mr Miyagi being a regular character on classic sitcom would be an understatement.

Or in short – Wifey is a very, very clever person 😀

Anywho, we were watching a random episode the other night, and Richie the crazy ‘ranga attends a martial arts class at Arnold’s (apparently it was ju jutsu, then became judo part way through the episode – go fig 😉 ) to learn martial arts, and bam, Noriyuki comes out and throws Richie over his shoulder. It was awesome. Never thought I’d see Mr Miyagi on Happy Days teaching some teens martial arts in a sitcom set in the 50s.

Thanks Wifey 😀 😀 😀

Bloginated Monday, 5th October 2009 / Movies
Tag-isms: Arnold's | Happy Days | ju jutsu | judo | Mr Miyagi | Noriyuki "Pat" Morita

So we were channel surfing a week or two back, and lo-and-behold, the first Karate Kid movie was on, and Noriyuki “Pat” Morita was being all awesome and stuff, and it was supremely awesome. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen the first Karate Kid movie, but I swear I could watching it once a week and still love it after years on end.

Alright, that might be a bit of an exageration, but it’s such an awesome movie. Even if Ralph Macchio specialised in some pretty rubbish karate, it’s still 126 minutes of inspired awesomeness. I mean, it wasn’t his fault I guess – getting dropped into a six-month crash-course of martial arts training without any prior experience won’t exactly get the most polished results, particularly if you’re a Westerner, so thumbs up to him for not chucking a wobbly and chickening out.

So, continuing in the spirit of awesomeness, Wifey was channel surfing the other day and a choice piece of 80s awesomeness quickly hit the screen – she was about to turn over since the didn’t realise the extremity of awe-inspired film clip-ness that was hitting the TV:

Well, without the subtitles anyways 🙂 Do you realise how many instances of this Peter Cetera’s Glory of Love there are on YouTube, and that this is the only one with the silly film clip? Pure tomfoolery.

Anyhow, it’s awesome, because he’s singing in a dojo.

… I don’t have much else to add to this. The above film clip will do the job I reckon 🙂 If you’re interested, someone’s also added the lessons of Mr Miyagi to YouTube, so you can entertain yourselves/family/friends/coworkers by looking it up and sharing it with them. I know the people I share my office with were just thrilled when I decided it would be a good idea to share “Paint the Fence”:

😀 😀 😀

Bloginated Monday, 5th October 2009 / Movies
Tag-isms: awesomeness | Mr Miyagi | The Karate Kid | YouTube videos

So last month I whinged about my crap mawashi geri technique, and while I haven’t been to training in a two weeks due to all sorts happening, I’m pleased to say that I haven’t put my training completely out of my mind.

Much as Wifey loves it, I do have the habit of doing karate around the house. Over the last couple of weeks, this has been divided between 2-3 techniques – strong, whipping, flexible and smooth oitsuki (reverse punches), Maegeri (front snapping kicks) and mawashi geri (roundhouse kicks). With the last of those, I’ve been really pissed with my technique of late, so taking into account my belated realisation that I’d already worked out the trick to doing it with one leg, I’ve been practicing to try and get it to work correctly. At first I was constantly over-compensating with the technique and was having trouble retracting my leg fast enough for a graceful landing. It was an improvement, but the overbalance was killing it a bit, too.

So, with a bit more practice, and while far from perfect, I’m managing to snap the technique out and back in again and landing back on my foot without so much of a stumble. I’m also working on utilising my hips more as well – in fact, this lead to something quite interesting that happened only an hour ago – the hips!!!!

I was working up and down the corridor in the house earlier in attempts to be useful (having some issues with the server, and in getting an old IDE hard drive for McAdam that was inaccessible due to an old Norton Ghost/Type 44 partition — doing both at the same time also meant it took abnormally long to get either fixed :P), and I thought I’d try something different with my front kicks… I’ve always read and watched those with two legs perform snapping or normal front kicks and utilise their hips, but I’ve always really struggled as utilising your hips relies on a degree of muscular and body symmetry… and lacking a limb, naturally there are some issues with this 😉 So I thought – bugger it, give it a crack and hopefully you won’t fall over 😀

… and it worked!

I mean, it looked a bit stupid and I couldn’t kick anywhere near as fast as I would with an ordinary snap kick, but I think there was considerable more power in there.

And the trick? Same as with the mawashi geri, use your arms/shoulders/upper torso to take over and assist the hips.

Hopefully in time I’ll get more coordinated at it!!

Oh, and something else has been fun as well lately – I’ve always loved the kicking demonstrations where the martial artist performs multiple kicks with one leg, kinda like foot-boxing or something 🙂 Anywho, I’ve been trying for years now to pull off doing two proper kicks with my real leg (and therefore balancing on the left or the prosthesis, which is where it gets tricky 😉 ), and note that I said proper kicks, not stupid little kicks that look more like leg lifts than kicks 😀 Anywho, I think I’m finally making progress on this – granted there’s not a lot of utility with with this one, it’s there for fun and training balance. Again, getting control to actually start making the two kicks look like actual kicks has come down to greater mastery and control with my hips, so I figure I’m on the way 😀 If it actually starts becoming decent, I’ll let you know.

Hmmm, should sign this one off for some awesome tomfoolery 😀 Stay tuned 🙂

Bloginated Monday, 5th October 2009 / Technique
Tag-isms: hips | Maegeri (front kicks) | mawashi geri | Oitsuki