Current mood:

calm

The ideal..
..physique for Karate is this, apparently:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IG1X8Ouu-GU

Great video, albeit a bit older. I wish I could find some on Matsubayashi-Ryu. Goju is for monsters, powerful but a bit too contrived for my liking.

I found this:
http://kata-reference.com/index.php?style=5 reference, but no sequential documentary.

So I thought, at some point I should consolidate these links and then I thought, why not blog? Its been a while anyway. As usual, this entry will have too many divergent links for public consumption, but then again..who cares?

I have been trying to find the BBC series that profiled each martial art, that was aired 3-4 years back. It was covered by a lady. There was also this bald Danish guy, a 5th degree black belt who covered a similar series on National Geographic, but I keep getting confused on which one was in which series. The ones on Kungfu, Kalarippayatu, Okinawan Karate, Capoeira, Muay Thai were stupendous in that order. They also covered Tae-Kwon-do and Iranian wrestling. The Okinawan Karate section had this one Japanese policeman practice shoving on a coconut tree. I would just kill to get my hands on that one. So if someone knows the right links, please point me to it.

The one on Kalarippayatu that I could find http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZZYl2IUKbo is close, but not as good as the one I saw in the TV series. The BBC version had a spectacular chuttuval (metal-foil-sword) fight.

Tae-kwon-do stands out in my memory, since I saw it in action. Back when I was 12, a friend of mine, a green belt demolished this 6-foot rowdy(who always had his way) in YMCA with side kicks when he tried to bully his way in, for a TT game.
I vaguely recollect Tae-kwon-do, in the series, but anyway I was pointed to some excellent videos by Richie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4j1w--TjqVY,
which I use as the standard reference for all kicks.

I don't remember if ju-jutsu was covered. The video on Gracie-Ju-jutsu which I passed around to a few friends is the best I have seen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVCKEbiEJNc&feature=related
A must see, just to see the 91 year old GM move. As Django says, I wish I was that fit 'now'.

I saw some good ones on Silat, a Malaysian art recently, but haven't tried looking it up on youtube.

One thing I can tell after seeing all this..
..Don't ever ever pick a fight with anyone. You never know who knows what.