The concept of martial arts have fascinated me ever since I was a child. Since I was a short, skinny late bloomer, the idea of using brain and cunning to defeat a 
larger, stronger bully was obviously very attractive. Sadly, I never really got into it. Dr. Sexy knows both karate and kung fu and can whip a mean nunchuku, so he persuaded me to join him in one session at his kung fu class. Real kung fu isn’t what you see in the movies; no slo-mo, exaggerated flying kicks and headbutts. Everything is done with quick short jabs. I was impressed, but didn’t go back.
Still, you can’t help but be captivated by the graceful dance-like movements from a martial artist. The Discovery Channel has posted Flash video excerpts from their upcoming documentary, Xtreme Martial Arts. Take a look, I think you will be impressed too.
Dude, I saw this series last night. I wasn’t too happy with it. Way too much hype…too little science. True, the martial arts was cool (I really liked the guy who did the katana kata) and the rendering of the fighting skeletons was interesting (for the first few minutes). But being a traditionalist, I like my karate looking like karate. Not some gymnastics program. I was also quite interested in seeing how the tai chi sword measured up against the katana in a “sparring” match. however, I strongly dissagree with the narrator’s comments that the tai chi sword is primarily a jabbing weapon. A much better show is the martial arts series on the history channel. At least they’re talking to the old masters adn introducing people to the art in a more realistic way. But I can’t help to notice that Kung-Fu is not on the program.
BTW, Greg. I never knew you were really interested in the martail arts…I would have taught you myself if you told me =:).
I was also not very impressed with the show. They focused too much on making it “cool” with its quick takes and choreographed MTV-like teasers. I would have loved for them to have used the CG sequences to show, in slow motion, how each move is done. The only time they seemed to do this was explaining how a martial artist can chop a concrete block in two (a combination of having a conditioned, toughened bone structure and precisely focusing one’s blow onto the brick). Otherwise it was more like a sci-fi Van Damme movie than an actual education piece.