Fonseca Martial Arts

USA Karate Federation Hall of Fame honoree and four-time Panamerican Karate champion John Fonseca teams up with three-time world karate champion Elisa Au Fonseca and a cadre of talented instructors to lead their charges through martial-arts and fitness classes that strengthen minds and bodies. Though the martial-arts program mainly focuses on shotokan and shito-ryu karate, the sensei also offers aikido, judo, Gracie jujitsu, muay thai kickboxing, and wing tsun classes. Bushy-tailed neophytes start at the beginning, learning the basics of their chosen form, whereas advanced students delve into such mind-focused arenas as chi energy training and personally apologizing to every punching bag they have ever hurt.
Instructors also lead fitness-centered sessions that build muscle and burn calories. Cardio-kick classes merge elements of martial-arts, boxing, and aerobics to form an ever-changing cardiovascular workout infused with heart-pumping kicks and punches. Boot-camps delve athletes even deeper into whole-body fitness by challenging them to nonstop military-style drills for a full 45 minutes, or approximately the time it takes to jump rope through an entire episode of Magnum, P.I..

3 reviews in English

I am very happy to give an enthusiastic 5 star review of  Fonseca Martial Arts!

When I was 13 I enrolled in the JKA shotokan karate classes at this dojo, I left Chicago to go to college and just got totally sidetracked by other activities when I returned.

Fast-forward 23 years and I see that at my daughter's new school (Hamilton Elementary) FMA is offering afterschool classes.  We signed her up, and I look more closely at the flyer and realize that FMA runs shotokan karate training out of several dojos, including this historic one (dates to the 60s!) on Belmont just west of Clark.

So remembering how much I enjoyed karate during high school, I signed up, and 3 months later I'm wondering what on earth took me so long.  I now go a few times during the week, and my wife, daughter and I all take the family karate class Saturday morning as well.

Like a reviewer below, the real benefit I get (and I hope to share with my daughter & wife) is not about turning into Bruce Lee as it is how you bring a new sharpness and clarity of focus into every aspect of your life.  The FMA website has a lot of great info, and the original Sensei, Shogiro Sujiyama, has some great background as well, at: http://www.jkachicago.co…

However it is worth noting that FMA offers classes in many martial art styles: Muay Thai kick boxing, Aikido, Judo, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and probably more I'm forgetting.

Some nuts and bolts about shotokan and FMA:

It's a traditional style, and although very physically challenging, if you come to the dojo mentally ready to train and to give your all, the teachers will bring out abilities and accomplishments you never knew you were capable of and you will find yourself getting in better physical and mental shape.

And the quality of the teachers can't be overstated here.  Each Sensei brings slightly different exercises to each class, and no two classes have been exactly the same since I've been back, which helps keep it fresh and we students on our toes.  They take every student's progress very seriously, and provide one-on-one assistance when it is called for, while also helping to impart confidence to students by setting up drills and exercises in small groups.

Oh, and did I mention John Fonseca and his wife Elisa Au Fonseca are both Olympic karate champions?  Seriously!

Now that I've had a few months to think about it, I am starting to connect dots and to see how my earlier training has manifested itself throughout my life in all kinds of positive ways.  I vividly recall how an old teacher would always stop students with the admonishment "Practice does not make perfect.  Only perfect practice makes perfect."  Sounds simple, but so many people focus on doing things quickly to complete them rather than doing things carefully and enjoying the process.

Karate training was immensely valuable when I started studying music seriously.  Having the discipline to sit down with a metronome and to learn phrases, rhythms, etc. properly slowly and in time eventually led to being able to play complicated arrangements at very fast tempos for a professional jazz band.  I am very glad to be both sharpening my own skills, stamina and discipline while being able to introduce these things to my daughter at a young (and hopefully impressionable) age

The FON router has arrived and is up and running

UPS delivered my FON social router today, and it is already up and running here in leafy Ruislip.
The router in question is in fact a Linksys WRT54GL wireless router (which uses a Linux-based open source firmware), running a custom firmware that handles the registration and payment processing for anyone paying to use the hotspot. The FON firmware also handles the provision of free access to anyone you have pre-approved. It also splits the wired and wireless parts of the router into two separate environments, thus ensuring security and (hopefully) preventing anyone connecting via the wireless FON service from accessing your own home Lan.

Setting up the router was extremely simple. I just connected it mo my existing Lan so it could access my broadband connection, connected to it via a WiFi-enabled laptop and registered it with the FON network. It was immediately up and running, though I have since gone and done some fine-tuning. Options I have tweaked include personalising the splash screen that hotspot users will see when they access the hotspot for the first time, and changing the broadcast channel from the default channel 11 to a less congested channel 7 (doing this also distances the broadcast range of the router from my existing wireless network on channel 10).

For now it is in a temporary location in my study (on the shelf where my new B will be going – once I find time to actually take it out of the box). However, I will be repositioning it later this week, once I have tidied up, to a better location in the study where I can maximise the signal range of the router.

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FONとNetiaがポーランドにおけるWi-Fiパートナーシップを発表

Mobile World Congress 2012

ワルシャワ、ポーランド及びバルセロナ、スペイン、2012年2月28日– 世界最大のWi-FiネットワークであるFONとポーランドで最大の通信会社であるNetia は、ポーランドで最大のWi-Fiコミュニティを生み出すためのパートナーシップを発表しました。
　
Neita FONネットワークはワルシャワ市内ですでに何千ものWi-Fiスポットを提供しており、今年の春までにはポーランド全体で10万Wi-Fiスポットを提 供する見込みです。これにより、NetiaユーザーとFONユーザーは世界中の500万以上ものFON Wi-Fiスポットに無料でアクセスすることができます。