Continuing Steps in Karate

Doing is easy, learning is hard.  In the martial arts, the teaching structure can too easily convince the student that how they are taught is how they should learn.  The act of participating can be confused with the act of learning. The Shorin-ryu practitioner, Pat Nakata highlights this issue in a recent post on Charles Goodin's blog, where he talks of the difference between training, and training to "get it right".  How we are taught or shown something is not necessarily the best way for us to learn it, or to learn from it.  Learning is ultimately intrinsic to the individual, and not something that can be delivered by anyone else.  I see this in my own profession of secondary education; in a classroom, students can all too easily fall into the trap of thinking that if they copy something down, they are learning.  It comes as a rude shock to their system when they find in an exam or applied situation that all they learned to do by copying, was how to co...

More and more, I see (or have pointed out to me) similar techniques across different kata.  They are not all identical, but have the same intention or principles behind them. Some of the ones I have encountered recently are: Head/neck grab and crank: saifa, sepai, seisan, sanseru (seienchin as well, but not in the tradition I am training in) standing arm bar: seienchin, saifa, shisochin different standing arm bar (I've forgotten its name): kururunfa, sepai escape from rear bear hug: shisochin, seienchin, seisan guardian opens and closes the gate: saifa, seienchin, seisan, kururunfa, shisochin, hakkucho escape from front bear hug: kururunfa, happoren, shisochin leg takedown: sanseru, kururunfa, tensho (with interpretation) shoulder wheel throw (kata garuma): kururunfa, shisochin front strangle escape: seienchin, shisochin, happoren There are plenty of others, too.  It raises the question: Why have so many kata, if there is so much overlap?  But that's a questi...

February is the month for me to concentrate on sanseru and tensho kata.  So, here is me performing sanseru, shot early last month. For those who know this kata, you probably notice several differences in performance.  The most notable (apart from my general poor form) are: two punches per step at the start.  This is the variant we commonly practice, but we also have the more traditional option of the single punch as well "steeple" blocks before all the kicks the separation of the two mae-geris in the first section into a kansetsu-geri, finishing of one application sequence, and then a mae-geri, starting off the next application sequence shifting the stance up to maintain distance and balance between the feet when doing the elbow/punch arms out (I did them more up than they are meant to be.  It's ok though, when practising the technique with a partner, I hold them properly - I'd get punched in the face otherwise) when doing the two cross-arms, drop into shiko...

I was having a conversation about the effectiveness of traditional blocking techniques the other day on the blitz martial arts forum ( here ), when something that I should have realised years ago dawned on me. The goju blocks (and those of most other styles of karate) move towards the centreline with the first arm, and then away from the centreline with the second arm.  The first arm intercepts and deflects attacks to the centreline, and the second hand disrupts and clears.  This works just fine for straight attacks, but is just as effective against non-linear attacks.  It also ties in beautifully with a double-hip motion and angling of the centreline away from the target to gain added speed, power and control. As I said, bloody obvious, but just something I'd never thought about before.

Well, that's January gone, and 100% success in training! Some of the things I noticed this month were: finding time to practise.  On almost everyday there was a period of time (usually after dinner) that I could put aside for training organisation is king.  Even though I didn't always stick to my weekly training structure, it gave me a framework to guide me and keep me on-track.  No training session felt like a wasted opportunity core-strength work.  Pushups, crunches and kettlebells.  I feel better, and my movement and efficacy of techniques is smoother and improved. half an hour is often not enough for changing or examining something.  When I was working on saifa this month and, having identified things that needed fixing, I started working on them, half an hour felt empty and unsatisfactory.  Longer sessions of an hour gave me the mental and physical "space" to work on it properly.  The shorter sessions I felt were better for bag work, o...