NEVER CRACK YOUR KNUCKLES WHEN PEOPLE ARE DOING STRETCHING EXCERCISES!

 Years and years ago in the 1970's i started KARATE training.....When you went into the school gymn we would immediatly start warming up excercises which included a variety of stretching excercises. These consisted of spreading and bending the legs and hips in a variety of cringe forming positions of a totally unatural positions and then once you'd forced yourself into this god awful ,painful position , you then started bouncing to force yourself further into the position to pull the ligaments and tendons. And to add to the fun and twanging tendons ,clicking knees and hips we would have a fun-packed time as partners would press you down into the splits leaning on your shoulders or as you lent against a wall with your leg in the air in front or to the side, they would put their shoulder under and push them further up.....Oh happy days!

I was always able to kick to head height insofar as i'm physically a short arse , with short stubby legs. Many of my fellow Karatekas were able to do the splits and the longer limbed had amazing kicking abilities, but to this day i still cannot do the splits, but could deliver a hefty boot within the limits of my god-taken limited reach.

The funny thing was before i did any training i had to do this 10-20 minute warm up, but when i walked about my hips often felt quite stiff. But the fun started with my knees. Whenever i knelt down my knees used to click horrendously.......I remember looking at the magazines in a branch of W.H.SMITHS.....I wasn't looking at the high level mags, but the comics at the bottom.....I knelt down and this 'K-K-KRACK!!!!' as my knees cracked horribly!.......Everybody in the shop went into a hyper-cringe mode, they looked at me with horror and wondered how a young fit looking teenager could be racked with arthritis and rheumatism!....I shruggled and smiled with a slight touch of embarressment and left the shop.

The funny thing is that when i went to live in India i was introduced to TAI-CHI by SENSEI SUBRAMANYAN. This introduction shaped my KARATE and changed my life as after a few years i'd learnt a lot from the slow relaxed movement of the TAI-CHI and the great MASTER KANAZAWA one of the true masters whom i had the pleasure of meeting on a couple of occassions and he'd studied TAI-CHI with his KARATE for many years and introduced me to the benefits of relaxed movement with proper breathing. A TAI-CHI sifu, MR WONG in KUALUR LUMPUR explained breathing to me and when we stretched instead of the tendon twanging ligament tugging bouncing stuff we would adopt a position and gently stretch using deep breathing.

When i came home and wasn't able to train at various clubs due to transport difficulties i started traing in my Karate moves and techniques in a slow relaxed Tai-Chi way ,concenterating on breathing . When i trained in a club i just did as i was told and would punch and kick with full power ,grunting and yelling like you'd expect. But the time by myself  i suddenly began to understand stuff i'd taken for granted for all my life, why did i have to do this or that , when i did this or that?.....But now i'm nearly 55 , i'm faster and more powerful and more supple than i've ever been ....No cracking, clicking joints.

Slower is faster....Gentler is stronger....The mystical internal energy ,CHI, if you like is all in the breathing, it all hinges on the breathing.....Just stop breathing for 10 minutes and see how you feel!

ACHES N' PAINS N' SORE BITS AND HOW HEALTH N' FITNESS IS A PAIN IN THE ARSE!!!!!

  Years ago there was a telly programme called GLADIATORS where all these muscley false tanned ladies n' gents used to do strange physical tasks for the enjoyment of the studio and viewing audience. They all had dramatic names like WOLF and YORKSHIRE TERRIER, etc.....Not really i cant remember the others ,there might of been a PHOENIX  in there ,but generally like all fit sculpted body people they were a strange bunch. 

There was a time when people used to do excercise to get fit ,things like 'jerks' and swinging of arms like soldiers in the morning when exercise was known as PHYSICAL JERKSas shown in those old war timePUBLIC INFORMATION FILMS... and the most technical was a press up or sit up. But now nobody plays sport(goverment cutbacks and money starved property developers removing playing areas and pitches,etc,but that's for another blog!).... or does physical occupations or pastimes ,so now they jump in their car and go to the posh gym which they've spent a fortune to bust a gut and sweat their cobblers off on a variety of very weird and wonderful looking torture devices. It has always been a source of amusement to me going past a leisure centre and seeing hundreds of people running on the spot all facing out at the traffic oblivious of the world passing in front of them as they've got ear phones on or watching the telly above them as drivers and pedestrians are laughing at them and commenting to each other ,"Look at them knob'eads!"....."It's a lot cheaper running around the block!".....

I know a lot of people who 'Go to the gym' and all of them are always complaining of aches and pains i've come to the conclusion that this healthy living will kill you. Whereas in the old days people were active and did their 'physical jerks' nowadays every muscle has a huge machine bearing a vast array of weights to strain this or that particular muscle, so people can develop whatever part of their body they want,mostly for appearance sake rather than health and fitness sake. Muscles have become a fashion statement, like most fashions they come and go and are designed. Take the abdominal muscles ,or as us in the know refer to them as 'AB's', or now the SIX-PACK Every pop or movie star ,etc has the 6-pack. The 6-pack is top of everybodies fitness shopping list, but is totally unnatural. You look at all the movie stars from before BRAD PITT,etc in the 80's back, CHARLTON HESTON,etc and not one of them have the 6-PACK!

You see people walking around town in the middle of winter blizzards in tee-shirts because they have to show their gym pumped bulk, funny thing is most work on their arms and have huge barrel like chests and powerful thick arms and sad spindly neglected legs. A lot of these muscle jocks accentuate their muscle with tatooes, i can't help thinking come the day when the gym membership isn't renewed and the pleasures of laziness and bone-idleness sets in and the muscle starts to shrink, does the tatoo shrivel like a picture on a scrunched up piece of paper.

I trained in KARATYE for many a year and like most young fellahs i used muscle power convinced that ,that was the way it was done ,but to do that you had to be fit and had to be warmed up before you could even start. Now i'm a middle aged old fart i've realised that is wrong. All fighters ,etc are finished by their 30's as their body can't maintain that strain. I discovered TAI-CHI when we lived in INDIA 10 years ago and combined with KARATE i discovered this insane method of training where, instead of speed and power ,general busting a gut ,et al....The slower and more relaxed you moved the better. My KARATE developed speed and power from going in totally the opposite direction, for a lazy bastard like me ,this was proof there is a god and he's a feckin' genius! I'm currently training myself to do a Karate seminar with one of the real Karate greats SENSEI TERRY O'NEILL....As i'm not with a club i'm training myself so i don't get too badly beaten. But the secret of Karate as explained to me once by the great Japanese master HIROKAZU KANAZAWA is in breathing ,relax and breathe and the speed and power is there. The amazing thing is  i dont get stiff i dont even have to warm up, but it is advised, i'm a middle aged old fart and i can kick above my head although i've never been able to do the splits even after all these years of stretching excercises, but ah well......And i don't have a 6-pack , but i can take a punch in the gut off anybody.