The Right Bike for You

Want to buy a bike but don’t know where to begin? Maybe a friend of yours recommends getting a certain bike, while another biking buddy insists that his bike is the best choice for you. Who do you listen to? How about neither? What you need to do is sit down, relax and figure out what your priorities and preferences are to determine what bike is going to work best for you. Here are some points you will definitely want to consider before you pick out your new set of wheels.

What’s Your Riding Style?

Start by asking yourself why you want to ride to begin with. Is it for exercise? Do you want to fly through the air for the thrill or the sport of it? Where are you going to ride? Through city streets or back road trails? Once you define your style of riding, it will be easier for you to choose the kind of bike you need.

There Are a Variety of Bike Options Available

Although there is a multitude of bike styles, the following are some of the most popular:

Mountain Bikes: These are durable bikes you can take off the road. Mountain bikes have fat tires, comfortably wide handlebars, and low gears for easier navigation of hills.
Road Bikes: If you plan on doing long rides, pavement riding, this is the bike for you. Road bikes are built for speed, have thinner tires and handlebars, and are overall, much lighter in weight.
Hybrid Bikes: This type of bike combines the features of mountain bikes and road bikes. Hybrid bikes are perfect for those who want to experiment with all styles of riding.
Cruisers: These bikes are generally one speed and are constructed for literally just that—cruising.
Comfort Bikes: These are specialty mountain bikes or hybrids that offer more upright riding and softer seats. These bikes are essentially designed for riders who desire more comfort in their ride.
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Using it in a real fight:

Many pressure point systems focus a lot of attention on where and even when to hit. Where to hit is important but it should not be the first priority. It doesn’t do you any good to know where to hit if you can not manage to hit there in a real situation when you need to save the life of yourself or a loved one.

One of the basic problems shared by many people who study pressure point hitting is that they are unable to use their knowledge in a real fight. My personal belief is that if you can not use your self-defense art in a real situation then you are wasting your time. One of the basic problems is that in a real fight the action is to fast for the average person to hit a specific point or area on an attacker even if the thought crosses their mind to do so and because the targets are constantly moving the situation is quite different than the way most people practice pressure point hitting in the kwoon or dojo. Also, when adrenaline kicks in fine motor movement tends to diminish to less than 40% of what it is normally which means that it is very difficult to hit any one half dollar sized spot on another human being with any accuracy and most pressure points are smaller than a half dollar. Another problem is that many people are what are called non-responders or partial non-responders (I have personally seen indications that this is more than 1 out of 10 American people) to pressure point attacks and if a person is under the influence of drugs or alcohol and they are out of their mind they won’t be affected by a hit or they won’t feel it until much later. So, although where to hit is a very important body of study, where to hit should not be your primary body of study unless you are seriously interested in acupuncture or the medical side of pressure points.

I believe that it is good to get exposed to as much as possible while focusing on really learning essential techniques that can be used in a wide variety of situations and circumstances. Learning (by which I mean practiced to the point of excellent proficiency) about 12 to 36 good places to hit along with 6 – 10 good entries is plenty for a beginning (first 3 years) practitioner. The 6 – 10 good entries should be versatile enough to handle hundreds if not thousands of different scenarios and the places to hit should be readily available on the average person most of the time. By engage I am not recommending that you strike first in a situation because if you seriously injure or kill the attacker then you may have serious legal problems and if and when it is found out that you hit them first you may have actually broken the law (according to my attorneys), so, I always recommend to students and I recommend to the readers here that you should exhaust every possible option to escape and deter an attacker before engaging them. It doesn’t do you any good to win the fight and then spend the next ten years in jail. I consider my freedom to be a part of my reason for studying self-defense. Unfortunately, I have been attacked on the street over a dozen times. Because of my training method I have only had to hit a few (less than one out of three) of those attackers. All of the fights where I or a student has actually had to hit another person have been over in less than 30 seconds and most of them only lasted 1 to 3 seconds.
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To be a good athlete you must have good training practices. Training practices are more than just what you do on the track; they involve how you live your day to day life.

Coaching – Seeking out someone with more experience then you is always a good idea. There is no sense re-inventing the wheel when someone has already tested several methods and can save you a lot of time leading to greater effiency in your training.

Since it was created in 1882 by Kano Jigoro of Japan, Judo has become one of the most popular martial arts in the world. It is quite a rigorous and physically demanding sport, appearing in several major international sports competitions. As a result, when partaking in judo training, it is important that a high quality judo uniform, or gi in Japanese, be worn to avoid tearing and damage.

Judo uniforms are generally constructed out of 100% cotton, bleached white. Cotton is the best choice for breathability. Care should be taken when laundering, as most judo uniforms are not pre-shrunken and will shrink up to a full size from excess heat. Therefore, washing in cool water and air drying is highly recommended to avoid shrinkage.

There are three pieces to the judo uniform: the jacket, the belt, and the pants. The jacket is quilted with a thick pliable collar and wide sleeves. Two short splits are on either side of the hip, which are reinforced with extra cloth. The jacket is secured with a belt, coloured according to level, wrapped tightly around the body and knotted. The pants feature an elasticized drawstring waist with wide legs to allow for movement. In areas where there may be a lot of friction or stress from pulling, reinforcement at the seams and additional padding is vital to prevent damage. These include the shoulders, collar, knees, and crotch of the pants.
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