Hi,
my name is Stijn, I'm 21 years old and I'm from Belgium, Antwerp.
I have been practicing Jiu-jitsu for about 7 years (since I was 9 until 16). I absolutely loved it, but had to stop beyond my will and regretted it for a very long time - I never stopped training by myself at home though. Now that I'm a bit older and can make all the necessary arrangements myself I've decided to start again.
I also started practicing with martial arts weapons a couple of months ago (bo, sai, tonfa, bokken, etc...), chucks being my favorite weapon of all - mostly because you can keep it going!
Other than that I play the guitar (about 5 years now - metal!) and study IT.
I've been following topics here for a while now and learned a great deal about chucking. Especially the tutorials by Kriztov and Yetibutt helped me figure out the basics and some really cool tricks
For now I'm using foam chucks, since possession of 'real' ones is completely illegal here (I think it's even easier to obtain a gun here than it is to get a pair of nunchakus...go figure). After I get better with these (read: drastically reduce the number of times I hit myself in the head
) I'm going to make one of our broomsticks magically disappear and will suddenly be in the posession of some decent chucks, hopefully
I never showed any interest in martial arts weapons until now because I have always resented the idea of using a weapon against an unarmed person, still do.
Why did I change my mind about using weapons? Simple: because I now see it was very shortsighted of me to think one could only use weapons like that in a fight. For example, I don't think I've ever seen someone break out a pair of tonfa's in a bar fight
practicing with weapons like this teaches you a great deal about yourself, your body and about minding your surroundings (I think we all learned that one the hard way
), which is why I find them more intriguing every day. I guess I've finally learned about the "art" in "martial arts" there
Also, I absolutely love a good beer!! Which is very convenient since I live in belgium...
My favorite beers right now (maybe you've heard of some of em): Tripel Karmeliet, Rochefort 8, Duvel, Kempisch Vuur, EKU (this one's actually German), and Hopus.
Looking forward to getting to know all of you and learning from you!
Cheers!
Stijn
...hehe...nunchucks...
