the best, a-round
I've been doing karate for two weeks now. I don't think it counts as "cross-training" until you do jiu-jitsu or kickboxing, but I do guess it counts as cheating or straying from the path or something. I still do aikido exercises in the morning (I now have a "morning routine", which makes me feel pretty damn old) but I haven't thrown anybody or had to fall in a long time. The wood floor in the dojo looks inviting enough to take rolls on, but I do enough stupid crap on accident that I don't think I need to act out on purpose.
Karate is a hell of a workout, or at least a much heavier workout than aikido. Also, the balls of my feet are pretty permanently blistered right now; I don't know how long it takes for the real calluses to settle in. Getting yelled at when I slipped on the pus from a popped blister was sort of a high point. I also made my knuckles crackable on command for a solid weekend just by beating on a makiwara (a post with some padding wrapped around it) for a couple of minutes. In general karate hurts a lot more than aikido did, but it's not so bad on the whole.
The pecking order is really strong in this dojo, but you know, a blatantly obvious hierarchy is easy enough to deal with. Calling barbaric social structures "refreshingly simple" or "honest" is sort of the first step down the slippery slope to monarchism, so I'll stay away from that. But a straight-up tyrant makes it pretty easy to see what you're trading for what. Having to bow and say "osu" like twenty times in an hour in exchange a solid workout and an interesting challenge is a fair bargain.
Karate is a hell of a workout, or at least a much heavier workout than aikido. Also, the balls of my feet are pretty permanently blistered right now; I don't know how long it takes for the real calluses to settle in. Getting yelled at when I slipped on the pus from a popped blister was sort of a high point. I also made my knuckles crackable on command for a solid weekend just by beating on a makiwara (a post with some padding wrapped around it) for a couple of minutes. In general karate hurts a lot more than aikido did, but it's not so bad on the whole.
The pecking order is really strong in this dojo, but you know, a blatantly obvious hierarchy is easy enough to deal with. Calling barbaric social structures "refreshingly simple" or "honest" is sort of the first step down the slippery slope to monarchism, so I'll stay away from that. But a straight-up tyrant makes it pretty easy to see what you're trading for what. Having to bow and say "osu" like twenty times in an hour in exchange a solid workout and an interesting challenge is a fair bargain.