I just signed up for the Warrior Dash.

http://www.warriordash.com/index.php

You can see I'm in intense training already.

Maybe I was wrong about martial arts and kids.

Maybe they should be taught how to injure each other. If for no other reason than just how funny this picture is. I know that what I teach my daughters has almost nothing to with with rules in any competition. It's different when it's your own kids though. Other people's kids shouldn't learn this stuff.

Look at the face on junior giving the arm bar up there. He's ready to break that shit; he doesn't give a fuck.



Training to failure is training to fail.

I read this online a lot. That when you work out you shouldn't push any set to the point where you can't do any more reps ("failure") because it's training your body and mind to fail. That instead you should quit every set a few reps before you fail, for example three reps with a weight you could have done five with or one rep with a weight you could have done three with. Well, that's for chickenshits. You should give everything you have when you work out. Practice like you play. I'd rather be trained to fail than trained to quit.
Maybe that means you won't get to work out every day because you'll be too sore. Well suck it up, buttercup! Try getting in shape instead of deliberately pussifying your workouts. If you're afraid of discomfort find a new hobby because this one ain't for you.
Most of the dickheads who are actually training this way in the gyms are doing five reps with weights they should be doing 10 with and could be getting 12-15 with if they put any genuine effort into it. What the fuck?! Half your effort? That's the very definition of half-assed.

Who do you think is going to quit first?

It won't be the one willing to go until there's nothing left.

Master Young Cheol Park

This was my instructor and coach back when I used to do taekwondo. One of the best instructors in the world.

He's bending a steel bar with his throat in this picture.

Something you would literally die from if you even tried it. 

Taekwondo takes a lot of shit nowadays for not being "practical" and also because it was imported from Japan and Korea apparently has no indigenous martial arts of its own. I say so fucking what? Why should it matter if Korea imported karate from Japan? Japan got it from Okinawa. Okinawa got it from China. China apparently got it from India and it has been argued that India got it from Greece. What's the issue then? Is it because they renamed it taekwondo? Fuck off. Taekwondo sounds better than "Korean karate" and that's just the way it is, deal with it. Regardless of where it may have originally came from, taekwondo is quite a bit different from karate and not just because of the rules in competition.
At some point the South Korean government decided that the name taekwondo would encompass all forms of Korean martial arts. That includes tae kwon do, tang soo do, hapkido and Korean wrestling (name of which I can't remember right now). A lifetime of study in taekwondo would bring knowledge of an all-encompassing, complete martial art, combat sport and self-defense system. Since most people either start out as kids and then quit when they're teenagers or start out as broken down, past their prime pot-bellied middle-aged adults, most people don't put enough time into the art to get everything out of it that it has to offer. Competition is good for kids. Competitions have rules and that's a good thing. Do we really want kids knowing how to maim each other with their bare hands in the playground? Koryo is the first poomse you learn as a black belt. It contains a movement where you tear a man's scrotum off. Kids don't need that shit explained to them. Kicking each other in the face at tournaments is good enough. And for the middle-aged crowd, well, they're just lucky to be off the couch, aren't they? Their complaints don't even count. While most dojangs tend to focus on competition, why shouldn't they? Does it make more sense to train to compete in the Olympics or to cheap shot a mugger or some loudmouth at the bar? If muggers are that big of a concern for you you've probably got bigger problems than what martial arts style you should be studying. If you know taekwondo and still get rocked at the bar by some drunk asshole that's because YOU'RE a pussy. YOU. Taekwondo didn't lose that fight; you did. Own it and smash him with a cue ball next time. If you want to win a gold medal in the Olympics, good for you and good luck.
Koreans, both South and North, take their martial arts very seriously. Some of the demonstrations I've seen with my own eyes seemed almost superhuman. Their kyukpa or breaking is among the best in the world. Comparable only with China if you ask me and way beyond any Japanese tameshiwari. I've seen Koreans break shit with their bare hands that other people would need four or five hits with a sledgehammer to break (if they could even swing a sledgehammer, it's becoming a lost art) and Koreans don't tend to have the massive callouses on their knuckles that Okinawan and Japanese breaking specialists tend to have either. I have no idea why this is, but it's something I've definitely noticed.

What do you do with your empties?

He smashed a whole bunch of these beer bottles that day, all with his bare hand. After he was done he walked across the broken glass in his bare feet with a kid on his shoulders then he took his jacket off and layed on the glass bare chested while a grown man stood on his chest. Not a scratch on him afterward either. Believe it or not, Master Park has done shit way more impressive than this but there isn't a lot of photo or video footage of it. There is a video on youtube of him walking across a bridge made of floursescent light tubes. I was there live for that one as a kid and it was really impressive in real life. I'd link it but I still haven't figured out how all this blogging stuff works and don't know how to link youtube videos. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgGarJB5oZI That's the URL for it anyway. He once pulled an airplane by a rope with his bare hands and he looks like he's never even worked out. He used to make fun of me for lifting weights all the time. He was a big believer in calisthenics, stance training and plyometrics for strength training. He also practiced a form of ki cultivation that involved pointing with your finger. I can't even begin to explain it but it definitely worked for him. If he got into a stance and pointed his finger, staring intently at it, he couldn't be moved from that spot no matter how hard you pushed or pulled. He could chug a beer like a champion too.
His favourite poomse seemed to be Keumgang. He knew all the forms but would practice that one all the time. Anyone who knows what they're looking at knows that Keumgang is the most applicable to a real fight of all the WTF poomses. The naihanchi of taekwondo, if you will. I actually prefer naihanchi myself, mostly because it takes almost no space at all to perform while Keumgang takes a shitload.
Young Cheol Park dominated competitive taekwondo in South Korea in every weight class from flyweight to middleweight. He's been a coach for the Pan Am games and has enough medals to drown someone in. Served with the South Korean Marines too. I actually can't rememebr too many more details about the man right now. This whole blog post is pretty pointless anyway. I just happened to be thinking about him because my son asked me about taekwondo earlier tonight.

I was the third kid from the right on the floor in this picture, yellow belt at the time.

That's Young Park's son Jae jumping through the hoop.

His daughter is one of the people holding the boards being broken. I know her name but can't spell it. Hanju?

Last I heard she had become a pro golfer. She could wrist curl more than most people could curl and could put guys twice her size on their asses. Her style was more like hapkido, straight forward standing self-defense rather than competitive kicks.

Anyway, if you live in Hamilton, Ontario and want to learn taekwondo, Young Park is the man to learn it from. His dojang is across the street from Limeridge Mall. Seriously, how many people can bend a steel bar by leaning on it with their throats? You can't learn that sort of thing from anyone who can't do it either.

You don't have a disease, you're just a fucking loser.

I read recently that obesity is now considered a disease and so is smoking. In my eyes this merely reflects the utter weakness of modern society. These things are not diseases. Diabetes is a disease. Cancer is a disease. Obesity is your body's manifestation of a lifetime of sloth and gluttony. Smoking is just a bad habit.

If you don't know, in this day and age, that smoking is bad for you then you might as well just wrap your mouth around the tailpipe of a car. Stay there a minute, I'll throw it in reverse. And if you're one of those douchebags that whines about how you want to quit every time you light up then you're an even bigger pussy than anyone has given you credit for up until now. DON'T FUCKING LIGHT UP THEN! Would you like me to stomp you all over the floor and have to listen to me complain the whole time about how I really don't want to be doing it? Of course not, because we both know that would be bullshit, just like you not wanting to light that cigarette. If you want to smoke, smoke, I don't give a shit. Just don't pretend you don't want to be doing it or that quitting is any harder than just not having a smoke instead of having one.

And obesity, well, holy shit. Obese people are the biggest pile of weaklings there is. There may be a few exceptions here and there but for every great athlete who happens to be a fat fuck, there are 50 more who got that way sitting on their ass elbow deep in a bag of chips for years at a time if not decades. It's disgusting when these sloppy pieces of shit want us to feel sorry for them because of what they've made themselves into. I had one tell me once that I should try and use the word "heavy" because the word "fat" is offensive. Offensive to who?! I'm not offended by it at all. If fat people don't want to be made fun of for being fat maybe they should try not being fat. Try eating five meals a day instead of seventeen for a start. Try taking the fucking stairs. I don't give a shit when fat peoples' feelings get hurt; want to know why? Because they're fat. Simple as that, fuckheads. Maybe I'm an asshole but at least I'm not a fat asshole. Fuck you, lardass.

Calling these things diseases is a cop out to the real problem. A generation is going to grow up unhealthy as fuck before they even finish high school and they'll all think it's okay because they're just suffering from diseases that could have happened to anybody. Well nobody told you to buy that first pack of cigarettes and nobody forced you to keep your punk ass parked on the couch playing video games your entire childhood instead of playing outside. These are weaknesses. Admit it to yourself and move on. Don't make it anybody else' problem by dressing it up as a disease.

Comfortable, fuckface?

Apparently Jack LaLanne is dead.

Again? Well, that sort of thing will happen to you when you hang out with the likes of David Carradine.

I personally would never have shook David Carradine's hand without rubber gloves, an apron and a respirator but it just goes to show how gutsy Jack LaLanne really was. It looks like he put his coat on inside out this night. Senility maybe? Or maybe his good buddy Carradine here had already thrown up on him earlier.

"I asked you a goddamn question, boy. What's my fuckin' shoe size?!"

Holy shit, it's a fucking snowman!

Endurance

I like it when "streetfighters" claim that they don't need to train for endurance because their fights only last a few seconds. The funniest part is that most "streetfighters" have only been in one or two fights and wouldn't know shit about getting in shape anyhow. Legitimate streetfighters tend to know better, albeit not much.

You need to build up your endurance even if all you train for is a sudden, unoprovoked self-defense situation that's probably never even going to happen.

  

 Not for the same reason as a competitive fighter though. A fighter needs stamina for when the rounds get deep. Get tired and you'll get knocked out. Or tapped out or choked out or whatever out you prefer. For self-defense or a barroom brawl it's a little bit different. You might not necessarily need the long term wind that comes from endurance training (you probably will) but what you will need is a familiarity with the confusion and uncoordination that endurance training tends to bring out. If you get forced into a fight you're going to experience an adrenaline dump. Within seconds you'll feel like you've been doing sprint intervals for several minutes. The less used to this feeling you are, the more likely you are to choose flight over fight as your split-second response. Since we're on the subject it's a good idea to train your self-defense skills, kata or whatever the fuck it is that you do, when you're already exhausted from your endurance training because that's how it's going to feel when the shit hits the fan anyway. It won't feel as good at first but get used to it. At the boxing gym up the street here nobody touches the bag or gets in the ring until they've done at least 20 minutes of running and doing jump rope intervals. In the old days Okinawan karatekas wouldn't do any kata or bunkai until after they'd done their hojo undo.

Skill training definitely feels better when you're fresh. It's also a lot easier. Easy is for wimps. If all you're interested in is pretty looking poomse or fancy looking tricks that might be fine. But when some asshole like me shoves you off of your stool in front of the girl you were hopelessly trying to mack you're going to be just some other joke who traditional martial arts training didn't work for. You'll join an MMA gym and hang out with the other prettyboys who've been bullied and preach online about the superiority of MMA over the older self-defense systems. Well no shit, retard. Competitive mixed martial arts fighters train for endurance. They're not going to panic when the adrenaline dumps because they feel it dump all the time.

It doesn't hurt that competitive fighters (boxing, wrestling, judo, MMA, etc) aren't going to be shocked at the prospect of physical contact either but that's somewhat of another matter. If you really wanted to learn how to fight you would train in a gym with fighters who actually fight. But not everybody does and they've all got their reasons so in the meantime stop bullshitting and just do your cardio work like everybody else.

I wonder if my next-door neighbour even owns a snow shovel.

We share the same walkway, porch and stairs and he hasn't shovelled them once this year. I can't even remember him doing it last year or the year before even though I remember doing it myself a bunch of times. I haven't even seen his face this year (I've seen his fucking footprints though) never mind hearing so much as a thank you. Motherfucker has got a wife and at least two kids that I know of. None of them can shovel the goddamn porch? I'll bet if I shovel only my side next time he'll have something to say then. Probably still won't see his face though, which is just as well.

Me on steroids.

I would turn into a shark is I was on steroids. Fact.

This is what the UFC should look like.

Fuckin' right I would watch that.

I'd want to see armed monkeys too.

If you whine about not being able to quit smoking it's because you're a douchebag.

I was looking through the Toronto Sun today at lunch and there was a couple of pages about how dangerous smoking is for your health. Well no shit. If it was good for you it wouldn't be much fun now, would it?

Can't see the rest of her, but I imagine she's hot.

Part of this section was a bunch of retards all complaining about how hard it is to quit and giving their measly shit excuses as to why. Fuck off! Either you want to do something or you don't. If you really didn't feel like having a cigarette you wouldn't even light one. If you really didn't want to smoke then you wouldn't buy them. So maybe all you chickenshits want to do is complain and smoking gives you something in common to complain about. I mentioned how if these dummies actually wanted to quit they would just do it and one of the guys who I work with said, "Easier said than done."

What the fuck?

Obviously if you "can't" quit it's because you don't want to. Since that's clearly the case then just smoke your goddamned cigarettes and shut the fuck up about it. Nobody cares how hard you've tried to quit because nobody's fooled into thinking you've ever actually tried.

People buy these elaborate programs, devices and drugs to help them quit. They tell all their friends and coworkers they're quitting so they can have all kinds of support. That's weakness. Plain and simple. How about you fucktards save your money and I'll just kick you in the chest every time I see you with a pack of smokes? Then you can decide on the lesser of two evils.

"I've tried and tried to stop having Glen kick me but I just can't help it; I'm addicted!"

I haven't had a cigarette in more than a week now. I can't remember the exact day it was the last time I had one but it's been about a week. Want to know what the secret was? I smoked my last one and then I DIDN'T BUY ANY MORE!

GOOFS!

The only good ninja is a dead ninja.

Ninjas make me sick. I'll slap one in the face right now. Goofy looking, sneaky little fuckheads. From now on every ninja I see is going to get punched out and stomped into the fucking ground. Going around at night in a mask is for chickenshits and Batman. Let me get my hands around any ninja's throat during the day and we'll see. Look him right in his beady little eyes glaring back from his stupid mask while I crush his neck like a banana. Then I'll steal his wallet and go fuck his old lady. Only if she wants to. She probably will. Any woman who has been fucking a ninja for any length of time will be desperate for somebody with balls.

The only thing I hate worse than a cowardly ninja is a chimp.

Hey, lardass! You can wipe that stupid grin off your face because your days are numbered.

I'm racist against chimps and I'm not ashamed to admit it. They're all nothing but ugly, grubby, degenerate retards. I'll kick any chimp's ass. Dana White should put me in the octagon with a chimp. I'll push his face into the fence and drag it across like a cheese grater. I have yet to meet a chimp who wasn't an asshole and didn't deserve to get beat down.I'm just waiting for the opportunity to catch one walking around by himself. I'll powerbomb him right onto a fire hydrant.

Better walk away, motherfucker.

Holy shit

Speechless.

Why do people assume that if you look like you work out you must be a personal trainer?

Do I look like a fucking personal trainer? I'm going to start asking people if they're sumo wrestlers.

Was Funakoshi a pussy?

Gichin Funakoshi takes a lot of shit online for not being a "fighter." Since he's been dead since 1957 it shouldn't really matter, not to mention most of the kids mocking him are not "fighters" either.

Anyway, Funakoshi didn't consider karate for fighting anyway. He considered it a last resort for self-defense and self-defense is different than fighting. When two people agree to a fight, whether it's in a ring, an octagon or a parking lot, there are rules. Obviously two assholes stepping outside at the bar will have less rules than two athletes stepping into the ring but still, a kick to the balls or a thumb to the eye is still considered foul play. Using weapons or having friends jump in is also considerd unfair. It still happens but everybody watching will have the same attitude about it. Self-defense is more like being attacked when you have not agreed to the fight, and in that case there are no rules. Anything goes.

I've only read about one altercation involving Gichin Funakoshi that actually came to blows. He was such a tiny little shit that a lot of people fucked with him over the course of his life but as far as I know it was only once that he had to use his physical skills in self-defense against another person. It was after World War II and he was an old fart walking home by himself. A veteran home from the front lines tried to rob him, grabbed his umbrella off of him and tried to hit him with it. Who the fuck carries an umbrella? Umbrellas are gay as fuck. Little girls carry umbrellas. Sometimes women do but no man should ever carry one. They're lame. So anyway, Funakoshi dodges the umbrella and grabs this character by the nuts. Squeezes him so hard that he screams and falls down and then doesn't let him go until the cops show up. Being a lifelong, obsessive-compulsive, daily practitioner of karate at that time, he would have had a pretty strong grip. That would be a pretty dirty move if they had both agreed to the fight. But since Funakoshi didn't want to fight, why should he have played by the "rules?" Plus, this guy was less than half Funakoshi's age and probably bigger than he was since Funakoshi was a well known shrimp. If he had stepped back and put his hands up ready for a fight ("get in my guard!"), he probably would have lost. He would have got his head caved in and all his shit taken. Instead he surprised buddy with a dirty trick, shocking him into thinking "Fuck, I fucked with the wrong guy."
So there's the difference between fighting and self-defense. Funakoshi wasn't a fighter, per se, but he wasn't afraid to fuck you up either if you backed him into a corner. Kind of like when you piss off a dog. It doesn't back up and go into a low stance. That's what dogs do when they want to play. When a dog wants to bite you it will just go straight for the bite, letting you know right away that he's not fucking around and you should have thought twice. Dogs know when it's time to throw down, somebody is going to get hurt or killed. Gichin Funakoshi knew it too.

Five foot fuck all of COME GET SOME!

Naihanchi again

If you were only going to practice one kata this would be the one.

BA Baracus could beat the shit out of any character from Star Wars.

If you don't think so, it's because you're a total nerd and you can just fuck right off.

The only other actor who might (MIGHT) give Mr T a half-decent go would be Sonny Chiba.

There is a slight chance, however, that Charles Bronson would have rocked both of them.

Anyway, it goes without saying that any one of them could have easily kicked Bruce Lee's sorry ass.

You could disagree, but you'd be wrong.

The secret to growing a full beard

Stop shaving, retard!

If you can't grow one, it's probably because you've got some kind of brain damage or perhaps some sort of mental birth defect. Slap your parents. Then go fuck yourself because you're a loser and deep down you've known this for a long time.

Junior here is about to hand over his lunch.

Lets have it, geek! Your girlfriend too!

This guy has clearly modelled his life after me. He's even stolen my look.

He must have gotten a late start though. I'll be twice as ripped when I'm his age.