Month: July 2018
The National Black Arts Festival is an Atlanta festival that celebrates the art, music, and culture of people of African descent. The family friendly festival is scheduled from July 6-15 and includes activities such as literary, musical, and theater performances, fine arts exhibits, and an international market. Although a few events are ticketed, many of the activities are free.
The main weekend of the festival is July 12-15, with many activities taking place at Centennial Olympic Park in downtown Atlanta. Festival attendees can visit the International Marketplace, which will feature artisans from all over the world. Offerings will include paintings, sculpture, clothing, jewelry, and other items. In past years exhibitors have come from such diverse places as Jamaica, Haiti, South Africa, Senegal, Ghana, Brazil, Canada, and India. The kids will be entertained at the Childrens Educational Village. This years theme will be Destination Africa and Beyond. There will be musical entertainment all weekend from the concert stage. Local and international chefs will be giving cooking demonstrations at the Publix Healthy Cooking Pavilion. Attendees can learn to prepare healthy and balanced foods as well as enjoy tasty samples. All of these activities are free to the public.
Several other free events are planned during the festival. City Gallery at Chastain will present JOuvert: At the Devils Playground, featuring the work of Jamaican born photographer Radcliffe Roye. The exhibition, which celebrates the 50th anniversary of Jamaican independence, will run from June 14-July 28. An artist talk is planned for June 30 from 1-3pm. Pre-registration is required for the talk. Jah Music- A Celebration of Traditional Jamaican Music, featuring the Tallawah Mento Band, will take place on June 24 at the Auburn Avenue Research Library. The program is scheduled for 3-5pm, and pre-registration is required.
There will be two free screenings of A Raisin in the Sun at the Southwest Arts Center. This will be the original film version of Lorraine Hansberrys play starring Claudia McNeil, Sidney Poitier, and Ruby Dee. Screening dates are July 6, and a special screening for seniors and students on July 11.
The Hagedorn Foundation Gallery will host an exhibition of intimate photos of Michael Jackson by his personal photographer, Todd Gray. The Gray Room with Act 1 of the Performance Piece, Caliban in the Mirror is scheduled for July 6-August 31. The Coretta Scott King Book Fair will be held on July 11 at the Central Branch of the Atlanta Fulton Library. Attendees will meet award winning author Walter Dean Myers and award winning illustrator Michele Wood. The event is free, but pre-registration is required.
The festival also includes several ticketed events. Those events include a gala fundraiser and tribute to actress Ruby Dee on July 14. The play Guess Whos Coming to Dinner? will run July 10-29. There will be an exhibition of the art of Vivian Schuyler Key at the Hammonds House Museum and the exhibition Rise Up: Hale Woodruffs Murals from Talladega College at the High Museum of Art. A benefit event for the National Black Arts Festival, Slavery By Another Name: The Dialogue is planned for July 12.
Many people think that Real Gung Fu Power is the result of big muscles. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case. To fully understand the power we are talking about here we must change our fundamental notion of what a muscle is and does.
The purpose of a muscle is to to retract, and thus to make a limb or body part move in a certain direction, or become tense for some purpose. Thus, when somebody works his biceps so he can have a big gun, he is reducing his punching power. Punching power comes from working the muscles on the other side of the arm, the triceps, which cause the arm to go out, which is where you’ll find a punch.
The point is to figure out which muscle results in what action, and then to isolate and work those specific muscles. Want punches? Then do a slow punch and look at your arm and body.
Figure out which muscles result in the extension of the arm, which muscles support the impact of the arm, and so on. This will enable you to develop specific exercises which will cause you power in the punching muscles…which will give you harder punches.
If you want to really gain some punching power, try doing ‘punch ups.’ These are push ups where you don’t go all the way to the ground, you only go down six inches, then up. This isolates and builds the exact muscles which come in to play in a knock out punch.
Yes, you should develop other muscles and muscle groups, explore other variations of push ups, but concentrate a bit of your work out on punch ups and you will shortly be amazed at your growing ability to knock somebody out. You should explore this idea for places on the body where you might get hit. By this I mean some sort of wrestler’s bridge so you’ll have a thick and stable neck, or some sort of crunches for when you get hit in the stomach, and so on.
Now, the other thing you should be concentrating on is endurance. By this I mean you shouldn’t be growing a large, bulky muscle, for that weighs more, runs out of juice sooner, and is more awkward to move around. Instead, you should be growing dense muscles, muscles that are leaner and not fatter.
To do this you should cut the size of the weight you are working with (or just go to body calisthenics, which is my choice) and focus on how long you can do the exercise. Try for hundreds of repetitions of deep squats that take 3-4 seconds to complete (build the number slowly to avoid injury), or build up the number of pulls ups you can do into the hundreds. I’ll write more on this idea later, but for now, this should give you a good notion on how to change your work out so that you have maximum body endurance, the potential for lightening quick moves, and all the other things that go along with creating true Gung Fu Power.