Karate Tournament Bull___

I have done so many different martial-arts tournaments that I can't even count them. I have trophy's that have over taken my garage, I've given some away, and I've thrown many of them away. I had fun doing tournaments because I liked meeting people and pushing myself, but I am officially retired from tournaments.

Like I said, I liked doing tournaments because I liked pushing myself and they were a learning experience. But what I have come to realize at this point in my training is that I can no longer use tournaments to measure how I am progressing. I can't rely on tournaments to tell me if my forms are getting better, or if my sparing is improving. The judging is simply not fair! The system is broken.

The biggest problem at tournaments is the lack of fair and consistent judging on forms/kata. I have been to tournaments in 5 different organizations, and it is always the same. Judges are either unqualified, unfair, or lazy.

Unqualified judges have no idea what to look for, so all of the scores are inconsistent. They pick one aspect of technique and if the competitor did it, they give them a high score even if the competitor is missing all of the other elements. Other unqualified judges might score the first competitor too high, and then there is no room to go up on the scoring so the true winner cannot score higher. One of my favorite unqualified judge is the one who looks to see what the other judges score and then copy that. The list for these judges is a mile long. I cannot rely on these judges to test whether or not I am doing what I am supposed to because they have no idea what is going on.

The unfair judges are the most common. They are the ones that just want their friends, students, or instructors to win. They will score their favorite high just because they want them to win, or even score a competitor unfairly low because they don't like that person. I've gone to these judges in the past and asked why I did not do so well and they couldn't give me a real answer because they didn't judge fairly.

Lazy judges just don't care. They like the "power" of judging the competitors, but they don't take judging to heart.  I watched 6th degree black belts center judge rings and they are not even looking in the direction of the competitor. I've seen other judges give the same score to every single competitor, and it was obvious the competitors did not deserve the same scores. Of course these judges can't be relied on to tell me if I am improving or not because they were not even paying attention.

When I judged Power Tumbling (a part of gymnastics), the judges got a score card. The judges had to make sure the competitors had the required elements, and all of the technical issues were listed on the card. Granted, this didn't help with unfair judging completely, but at least there was consistancy. Plus, the competitors knew exactly what was expected of them. Martial-arts needs to start using something like this for forms competitions.

Sparing has some of the same issues. I commend the Olympics for trying to make it more fair with the electronic scoring devices. Hopefully these can be past down to other martial-arts tournaments as well.

All in all, I am peeved and I am done with competing.

No Respect

Okay, so I wasn't the best behaved kid in the world, but I was brought up respecting adults. I was not raised in a house where I was required to say ma'am and sir, but I knew that if I talked disrespectful to my parents or any adult my dad would smack my mouth clear off my face. There were kids my age that were bratty, but not very many. Teachers, parents, grandparents, coaches, etc just did not put up with it.

After teaching martial-arts the past 5 years and being around my children's friends, I am shocked how kids treat and speak to adults. There are great kids, very respectful kids, and super polite kids, but there are also the rudest kids out there. I have crazy wild kids, but until recently they never acted like they were my superior. I guess that is the problem that I personally see with many of the kids I come in contact with or watch. They have this attitude that they are some how more important, smarter, or even wield more power than adults. I've always been annoyed by it, but I've blown it off because it wasn't my problem. I had other issues with my kids, until recently. My kids stopped saying ma'am and sir, have hardly said please and thank you, and pretty much stopped with all pleasantries all together. I AM NOT HAVING THAT!!!!

I know part of it is testing their limits to see what they can get away with, but they've hit the limit and keep pushing and pushing past. So of course I got to thinking of what could be causing this. I started to think about what was different this summer than previous school breaks. The Damn TV! When we moved to our new house, the kids got tv's in their rooms and they have been watching a lot of cable since.

Think about those shows pre-schoolers watch. My kids' favorite was always Dora and Diego. Where are their parents? You see the mom and dad every couple of shows and all they do is ask Dora what she thinks is best. Other than that, Dora is traipsing through the jungle without parental supervision. She is doing whatever she wants.

Now that my kids are older they are into shows like iCarly and Fairly Odd Parents. Have you noticed that the parents and guardians in these shows are complete morons? It is re-inforced over and over in these shows that kids are smarter than adults, and adults are too stupid for any kind of respect.

These are just a couple of examples I can think of at the moment. But I am hoping that taking the cable out of their room and giving them quality family time will change some of this behavior.

Do any of you guys see this trend and behavior?

Back Surgery: What They Didn't Tell Me

It's been awhile since I have blogged about my situation with my goals in both figure competitions and martial-arts.

I've taken the summer off from martial-arts. It's been hard and a bit depressing. I really want to kick a pad, a person...just about anything will do. I miss kicking, I miss doing forms, and I miss the workout, but I told myself I would take time off so that my back can heal. I thought that if I gave my back time that I would be able to come back to martial-arts stronger than before.

Unfortunately that is not the case. Whether or not I took time off from martial-arts, my back was going to get worse. What they didn't tell me before I had my back surgery last year was that there is a risk for developing scar tissue. This scar tissue has caused me to lose flexibility and mobility. I am in a lot of pain, AGAIN.

I spent all of July doing laser treatments and getting injections to help my joints, but this did not work. I went to a pain specialist last week since none of the stuff my surgeon had been doing worked. The specialist told me that since I did initially get better after the surgery before becoming worse, the problem is more than likely scar tissue.

Tomorrow I go in for even more injections. If the medicine relieves some of the pain, then we know that the issue is in the joints. If nothing happens with the injections, then I have to go get another MRI (yay for the wallet -- NOT) to determine if it is really scar tissue.

I'm not sure what they will do if it is scar tissue, but the specialist made me believe that it is tough to remedy.

That is where I am with my training. No heavy lifting, no high impact exercise, no bending or standing for long periods of time, and multiple doctors visits a week has meant that I cannot train for neither martial-arts or figure competitions.