I bet you can't beat the performance artists I saw the other day who was pretending to be a statue. (She had absolutely hideous wings on.)
When I picked the female trainer for the Wii Fit Yoga thing, my wife was all "I'll just leave you two alone." I just thought, if I'm going to stare at a screen, I'd rather not look at a fake man in yoga pants.
Friends who have the Wii are always telling me that the balance part of it assesses their age at some sort of grandfatherly figure.
With the martial arts I can stand on one leg [in a variety of different poses] completely motionless more or less indefinitely, so I'd be curious to test myself on the Wii.
Wii tells me I'm really old also, so I stopped using the Fit and stick to the Tennis. But, at the start anyway, you need to stand still with your weight evenly distributed between your feet. The scale has two halves.
what I really want is someone to make PacMan using the Wii Fit board as a controller
They did! Teh NAMCO Museum Remix!. You knew they would... NAMCO would never miss a profit opportunity by not making Pacman available for a given platform:
Interactive Controls - Use your controller to drive, whack, shoot and at times, roll Pac-Man in various objectives.Plus! It's got DigDug and Galaxian. So I'm guessing you get to use the controller to inflate the alligators. I don't know if you need nunchuk controller to go with it.
I bow to none in my capacity to remain absolutely motionless;
Well, I bow to you O Empress of Zen Stillness. Standing motionless while playing a video game is not in my repertoire.
max
['Happy Mother's Day!']
Obama's made his pick. Time for the smearing to go into overdrive!
Obama bought a Wii and picked his Mii?
With the martial arts I can stand on one leg [in a variety of different poses] completely motionless more or less indefinitely
With the martial arts, I ripped up my ankles so bad that I cannot balance on one foot for any length of time. The tendons in my ankles are too loose to do any stabilizing or correcting.
I am still angry at the yoga instructor who wouldn't let me put an arm against the wall. "Gaze at a spot on the wall", she said. "Calm your busy mind", she said. I want to do the pose, and I'd love to show off by grabbing my other foot above my head, but balancing on one foot is not possible for me and it isn't because of my mental state.
(I'm almost scared to type this here or say it aloud, but I haven't turned either ankle in more than a year. I'm stunned at my amazing good luck.)
The tendons in my ankles are so damn tight that I have never turned an ankle nor can I tapdance worth a damn. I spent middle school doing ankle-strengthening exercises under my desk during class, to prepare for pointe. The exercise I always recommend to people with wonky ankles is to trace the alphabet in the air with your foot, articulating through each letter. On the other hand, my ankles pop loudly with every step I take and have done so for years, so perhaps you want to take that advice with some salt.
JM, were Love in a Cold Climate and The Pursuit of Love your recommendations? They were great.
I've gotten the alphabet advice before, but thought that my ankles were beyond that point. A year of no re-injury, though, makes me wonder if they've healed a little. (It also makes me wonder if all the intensely painful bodywork I've gotten for lifting has been helping.) Maybe I should try the alphabet again.
Yes, yes, Megan should try you again too.
Oudemia, I'm sorry. I should have gone back to look. They were great! Thank you.
Yeah, I don't even recognize those titles. Have you tried using a theraband? Only thing with those is that you need to go carefully and slowly because it's possible to screw yourself up with poor technique.
I'll start with drawing letters in the air, I think. A band sounds like a deliberate rehab program and that's too much pressure.
The exercise I always recommend to people with wonky ankles is to trace the alphabet in the air with your foot, articulating through each letter.
This is good advice.
I am not buying a Wii Fit board because I want to keep my video games and exercise separate, but I am curious about the balance exercises. Mine is still pretty good. In college I frustrated a trainer while doing rehabilitation exercises for a knee injury. She had me stand on one leg on a mini trampoline, to work out the little stabilizer muscles. This was not hard. Okay, she thought, we'll play catch with the medicine ball while you stand on one leg on the trampoline. This was also not hard. Then the trainer started throwing the medicine ball up high, then down low. This required effort.
OT: no more masturbating to Jay Bennett.
Swimming is great for your ankles.
Snap your ankles!
Heebie knows the important quotes in life!
Snap your fingers, snap your neck!
Woo-ha, I got you all in check!
Jay Bennett
I would really appreciate it if people my age would quit fucking dying, because it's starting to make me all paranoid. That I'm currently the age my father was when he died is plenty weird enough, thank you very much.
The yoga parts of Wii Fit drive me crazy. How can I be doing warrior pose when my front foot is on this platform, and therefore several inches higher off the ground than my back foot? I realize this is kind of a crazy complaint when you compare Wii yoga to, say, the "skiing".
Obama's made his pick. Time for the smearing to go into overdrive!
I strongly condemn President Obama. We were just dealing with this particular problem with our toddler. As a role model for children the President should never pick his nose, and never EVER smear it.
26:
Place your back foot on that thick book that I want to buy on Powells.
27: My toddler will, even if I'm holding a tissue, go for my shirt when he needs to wipe his nose.
My 17 year old removes large items from her nose and rolls them in her fingers like a fine cigar. Until she hands them to me for disposal.
29: Your shirt is washable and reusable; a tissue is not. Your toddler is clearly part of the green booger movement.
My son's nose is still to small for large items. So, mostly it's just snot and the occassional bit of dirt.
31: Tonight, I'll get a hanky and test your hypothesis.
removes large items from her nose
Maybe she'll find that thick book you want to buy on Powell's.
36: Who can get a computer in their nose?
34: I thought stuff like 20 was based on principle - that is, the belief that it's immoral to masturbate to visions of dead people - rather than an objective fact? Surely whether he can do do proves nothing about any hypothethesis, other than whether MH is a necrophiliac.
I had to google to see who Jay Bennett was. I'm not a huge fan of music.
Yes, you thought, Cyrus. That's a hypothesis. Now off to test it.
26: You know what's really weird about the skiing? It's fun, and I enjoy it, but it's got the weight shifting thing exactly backwards -- in real life, putting your weight on your right ski makes you turn left.
re: 10
Yeah, there's one of the beginners at our club has a dodgy ankle and hers turns over all the time. It doesn't seem to bother her [or seem painful] but it does seem to be the result of some past injury.
Touch wood, I've had no serious ankle problems at all. I did injure one ankle but I did it standing up from a stretch [it was one of those bizarre freak things] and it cleared up pretty quickly as it seems to have been a nerve impingement rather than any soft-tissue, connective tissue or joint damage.
My chronic problem is a minor but long-running knee injury, however my physio didn't think kicking was the root cause or aggravating it.
||
Best I can figure, the even-at-his-best-still-awful Richard Cohen has now completely run out of anything to say. Even by the bargain basement standards of the WaPo op-ed page, this one bombs.
|>
43: Huh. I wonder if he actually meant to say that he always thought Edwards was queer as a three-dollar bill, or whether he (or I, I suppose) misremembered the idiom.
Googling suggests that "phony as a three-dollar bill" is a recognized alternative form, so that's probably what Cohen meant.
Edwards has always struck me as phony, probably because I don't trust someone that much older than me who looks that much younger.
LB, if you want something more akin to proper exercise, but still involving doing silly things on a board in front of your television, I hear EA Sports Active is pretty good. And more likely to hold your interest than Wii Fit.
There seem to be a lot more decent exercise DVDs around these days, too.
42: Some folks just have dodgy knees. My brother's knee will go out for little cause. My grandfather's apparently, too, but in those days it was known as a "trick" knee. Fun trick, dislocating itself.
49: That may be an indication of an acl injury.
re: 49
Mine is probably a patello-femoral issue, apparently. Muscle imbalance, plus an imbalance in flexibility* means that the patella doesn't track quite right when the knee is bent. That causes inflammation and knee pain. There may also be some cartilage damage but nothing serious enough to require surgery. My physio thinks it should be curable just through a regime of stretching and strengthening. There's no ligament damage or sign of anything that needs surgery or any kind of medical intervention.
http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/90286-overview
I'm just a bit crap about remembering to do the exercises daily.
* my hamstrings are fairly flexible but my quads and hip-flexors are a little tight.
49, 50: Ugh. I have/had* a similar problem. The knee never actually went out of joint, but if I fell down wrong it would sure feel like it. It also is/was more sensitive and gets/got tired more easily than the rest of me. When I went up to the top of this, for example, the change in air pressure was large and rapid enough to leave me limping until I got back down to the ground.
I knew I needed to do something about it after one session of fencing class left me barely able to walk the following day, so I started physical therapy.
* Tense ambiguity because I haven't had serious problems with it in years, but I also have rarely or never been in the kind of situation where I would have to worry about that. That is, sports with rough falling and/or lots of weight on one leg at a time.
re: 52
Fencing is quite hard on the knees, though, no? Particularly if your technique isn't good I'd bet. I fenced for a while and found it pretty good at building up strong quads, but it did give me a fair bit of knee grumbling at the start. IANAF, though [been nearly 7 or 8 years since I last did it].
Try fencing in desk chairs (with wheels). Let me know if it works, because I'm thinking ESPN2 needs a new sport to cover.
53: No amount of technique is going to help reduce the amount of lunges necessary.
This is so great! My brother had wanted a Wii ever since they came out, and my parents refused to buy him one. Then he made some money (through commissions!) and went out and bought one on his own. Two months later my mom got a Wii to do Wii fit! Oh the irony. (At that point parents and brother were on opposite continents) Even more irony: my brother couldn't use his Wii due to lack of a tv, so my mom was using hers more than he could use his!
53. Yes, quite. I didn't stick with it after that one trial session.
re: 55
Yeah, but things like watching the position of the knees relative to the toes, watching the placement of the feet to avoid putting torsion into the knee etc. can't hurt.
Plus, building up gradually, of course. When I started fencing I don't remember doing lots of lunges until I'd been doing it a while.
Oh, good position can only help, but a twingy knee is often just the result of overuse. The bad thing about fencing is that the movements are specific to one side of the body.
59: unless you're Inigo Montoya.
Megan, PT is your friend. I hadn't injured my ankles in years, then I took a spill and it would. not. heal. A few months with a PT and my ankles are better-behaved than since I was a kid. There are worse things than rehab - such as not being able to trust your foot will hold when you walk. Suck it up and go.
Yeah, s avate is slightly one-sided -- it's left-foot lead most of the time, although you may switch stances temporarily* -- but nothing like as bad as fencing.
* and there isn't really a 'south-paw' thing either, left-handers are encouraged to fight with a left-lead, too.
As long as we're talking about martial arts, is anybody other than Tweety and me following Lyoto Machida's rise to the UFC light heavyweight championship this past weekend? Jesus, but he wrecked Evans.
For the folks who don't follow, Machida's style is based in shotokan karate which, really, nobody else in MMA uses and was generally considered not useful in the sport. However, everybody they've put in there with him has looked utterly baffled. They can barely lay a glove on him.
re: 63
Left foot forward, left hand forward. Like an orthodox western boxer.
re: 64
MMA is mostly on pay channels in the UK, which I don't have access to. I don't really follow the sport anyway [except from seeing the occasional clip on youtube or whatever].
Okay, she thought, we'll play catch with the medicine ball while you stand on one leg on the trampoline. This was also not hard.
I'm jealous. My balance is quite good for most purposes but I'm lousy at maintaining balance while doing some other physical activity.
I'm trying to work on strengthening that.
Eh, that was years ago when I was in shape.
Doing squat will help keep you knees nice and healthy.
65: The fight's here (for now, anyhow). Previous fight is here.
64: I actually haven't particularly either, but I'm watching that fight now, and that's pretty great. The low kick combos are very cool. I'm actually surprised that there's not more variety in training a/f/a striking; people seem to have latched on to Muay Thai without looking very hard at other standup styles, when people have been doing great with Karate in K-1, etcetera for a long time.
64: I thought he might outpoint Evans, or one of Evans' powerful counters might land on his weirdly upright chin. I did not expect him to utterly detroy someone so quick and resilient. I'm going to attribute his newfound finishing ability to his training partner, in an attempt to retain as much of my worldview as possible.
Daaaaamn. Yeah, baffled is one word for it.
If anybody's curious, the fight is here.
73: his chin is upright, but it's like 8 feet away with that wacky stance.
his weirdly upright chin
His chin's up, but he leans way back at the waist, so he's often out of arm's reach.
That low kick, punch combination is pretty great. We used to do similar things a lot in Wing Chun; it's so confusing, because the two strikes are coming at exactly the same time, essentially. Your instinct is to defend the kick, but the punch has much more power, but then you can easily get tripped by the kick! Great.
His chin's up, but he leans way back at the waist, so he's often out of arm's reach.
That's not normally enough. Leaning backwards with the chin up in the air is the position a lot of beginners (like me!) adopt while flailing away. Boxers can feast on that. His backwards and lateral motion, and his timing are what make it work.
That low kick, punch combination is pretty great.
I think he gets those from Sumo, of all things.
I'm 5 mins into the video and they've thrown one kick.
Isnt there a rule that they cant just dance around each other?
backwards and lateral motion, and his timing
Indeed. His timing is almost otherworldly. The throw and KO of Thiago Silva was one of the most impressive slo-mo replays I've seen.
81: Except for one flurry, all the action's in the 2nd round, Will.
I think he gets those from Sumo, of all things.
Hm, why would it need to come from something that exotic? Like I said, we did that in Wing Chun, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised if there was something similar in Shotokan.
Except for one flurry, all the action's in the 2nd round, Will
Reminds me of my college days.
83: I think he has Sumo in his background and the combination of hand strike followed almost immediately by a foot sweep is used quite often there (from what I've heard: I no almost nothing about it).
I'm 5 mins into the video and they've thrown one kick.
The UFC matchmakers must be having fits now, with two seemingly unbeatable, potentially devastating champions in the light-heavyweight and middleweight divisions who are perfectly happy winning uneventful decisions unless they have hyper-aggressive opponents.
Wing Chun?
Look at the early UFCs for how karate does against, well, anything else. Machida is a terrific grappler, karate gives him a seasoning of just enough unorthodoxy in his standup style to be more evasive and disguise his kicks better than muay thai does.
85: Now we need to start the tag-team events.
I'd say no s/b know, but if I started correcting some of my mistakes now...
The early UFCs have basically nothing to do with the current UFCs.
re: 71
That's where savate would be so great if they let people use it. Tons of low kicking techniques and low-high combinations, kick-punch combinations etc, but they aren't legal in most (all?) MMA tournaments because the savate requires shoes (and I can see why people would be reluctant to allow people in wearing hard shoes).
There's a low savate kick that the JKD guys borrowed which is basically just slamming the inside edge of the shoe into the shin -- it's more or less invisible when thrown with punches.
There's a low savate kick that the JKD guys borrowed which is basically just slamming the inside edge of the shoe into the shin -- it's more or less invisible when thrown with punches.
That came from Wing Chun, yo.
Or at least, the version that's used in JKD did.
I think he has Sumo in his background
Two-time Brazilian champion and runner-up South American champion.
Yes, because all the styles have cross-pollinated. To say someone is a "karate" person now means they have more karate influence in their broad MMA package than the other fighters do.
Man, according to you, everything came from Wing Chun.
re: 91
Nah, it's described in the Tao of JKD as coming from savate. Loads of wing chun in JKD, of course, but there's one particular kick that Lee describes that is explicitly described as a savate kick.
95: most of JKD did. Not other than that, though.
97: okay, you one-up me there. There's a similar kick in Wing Chun; I'm interested in how the Savate one's different. Does it use the shoe more in a slicing way?
...which is still not much karate.
The greatest moment of my extremely limited, almost nonexistent fighting career was against a karate guy. He started to kick, I tackled him, we rolled around ineffectually but I was mostly on top, then a cop came by and broke it up. This prefigured the evolution of MMA. But the submission holds were missing.
Jeet kune do is not a style per se, more of a philosophy, true, but there is definitely a physical foundation of theories and tools which Bruce Lee drew upon to create his art. These were: Boxing, the trapping aspects of Wing Chun, and the footwork, theory, and strategy of western fencing. He also utilized kicking technique from the french art of savate (that kick he does in Return/Way of the dragon where the guy with the kicking shield goes flying into the cardboard boxes, that's a savate kick.) and took grappling techniques from judo and wrestling. (NOT brazilian jiu jitsu, which is where all the modern jkd people get their ground game.)
Interesting, and that makes sense. That always struck me as an odd kick, but I'm mostly familiar with kung fu and muay thai, so that explains it.
re: 99
There's a couple of variations. It can just be a slam with the foot swung pendulum like into the inside of the shin, hitting with the inside of the shoe, or it can be done with a step when it becomes like a combination sweep/slam type affair. It's pretty old -- it's one of the 'signature' savate moves going right back to 19th century texts on the sport.
p. 78 of the Tao of JKD [just checked a PDF]. Has a diagram and some sketches labelled with savate and savate terminology.
...which is still not much karate.
Except for the stance, footwork, and kicks, I suppose.
90: What? Gerard Gordeau isn't enough for you?
95: Everybody wing chun tonight.
re: 101
In one of those convergent evolution things, savateurs use their feet to block kicks. Using traps with the sole of the shoe, etc to jam kicks. I've seen the same technique taught in Wing Chun classes, and I'm sure they are quite independent. Neither has borrowed it from the other.
You guys sound like a bunch of Republicans.
106: I'm sure that's right. And actually, that kick to the inside of the shin with kind of a step, in combination with a simultaneous punch, also happens in Wing Chun. Convergent evolution of shin-kicking!
Although, presumably knowing both, Bruce Lee went for the savate version, so point to savate on that one.
This always happens.
"Well, in Bong Wa Bong we have a kick that does this."
"Hey, Bong Wa Bong stole that move from Guatemalan Beastfoot."
"I remember doing that kick in my Pari-Mobilier classes. This guy said he also learned it in Unagi Karate."
Perhaps all these obscure disciplines are virtually the same!
re: 101
If you mean this kick:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibnOXUi0QTE
Yeah, that's a chassé lateral, with a step.
Perhaps all these obscure disciplines are virtually the same!
How many different ways to kick a guy in the shin can there be, really.
109 is awesome. I counter your Unagi Karate with my Tae Il-Hamachi Do!
Haw hee haw [waxes moustache]....
Also, the Machida dude's sense of timing and distance reminds me of epee.
How many different ways to kick a guy in the shin can there be, really.
In Hapkido there's a move where you kick with the instep of your back foot whit your guard up as you close.
P.S.: Machida's style really looks like the guy from Karateka. Who knew a martial art could so closely approximate an Apple II game?
For some reason I seem to be immune to the charms of the Wii, etc. I think the last video game I played was Pong.
For some reason I seem to be immune to the charms of the Wii
One can only assume you have not played Mario Kart.
re: 115
Yeah, same kick is in savate [again with both 'linear' pendulum like forms and a slightly diagonal 'stepping' form but the mechanics are essentially the same]. More convergent evolution again.
Ugh. I have/had* a similar problem. The knee never actually went out of joint, but if I fell down wrong it would sure feel like it.
I thought for a long time that my "trick knee" merely felt like it was going out of joint until one day it went out and remained convincingly out of joint long enough for me to recognize, oh, yes, that's over there on the side of my leg rather than up the middle, huh. What's most annoying about the "trick" is that it is as likely to go out completely randomly while I'm doing strenuous standing around idly as when I'm engaging in activities one might associate with exercise.
And in case anyone was wondering, Jose Canseco went down in defeat to the 7'2" Hong Man Choi, tapping out to strikes about as quickly as you'd expect.
121: he hurt his trick foot, too.
What about his trick head? <insert video of homerun bouncing off of Canseco's head which I can't find because MLB lawyers are poopyheads>
OP: my last visit doctor visit but one was all about standing still in various circumstances, which I cannot do at all. I failed miserably, tumbling this way and that and being caught by various clinic-folk. They all said "oh, your balance is very bad!" and I said "yes, it is" and from this I learned that doctors have giant machines for fooling people into thinking they are tipping over when they aren't.
(I did not read the thread, and I am in France, and may have drunk two bottles of wine. It remains to be proven.)
Also, oh, hi, that was me! I'm in France.
Just watched Machita-Evans. Damn. That was pretty damn one-sided.
125: Does being deaf affect your inner ear as well?
127- it can, but in my case does not. Or more exactly, the things that cause deafness also often cause other inner ear problems. My balance issues are special snowflakes and seem to be more brain-related than ear-related, although also related to the cause of the hearing loss.
One can only assume you have not played Mario Kart.
Or Zack and Wiki. Or Super Mario Galaxy.