Continuing Steps in Karate

I have been attending some silat seminars recently and, with my sensei becoming increasingly involved in learning silat, I have made myself some training knives. It seems a waste to go to a seminar and then not practise the techniques or principles learned - a waste of money, of my time and of the instructor's time. So, at the last silat seminar we did some golok (machete) work - no "techniques" as such, just basic stances, basic cuts and some djurus/flow drills with the basic counters to the basic cuts.  At the seminar I only had a stick, which is less than optimal as it is hard to get the correct feel of blade direction through the air. So, after looking at some of the goloks that others had at the seminar, I made a couple out of 12mm plywood, with polypropelene rope handles. They are modelled on a machete I used as a teenager to hack through blackberry and ragwort on my parents' property.  The blade length is my fingertip-elbow length.  They are a little l...

One of the perennial questions in the martial arts is "What is chi/qi/ki?"  Does it really exist, what does it do, how does it work? There have been a few posts on this topic on forums I frequent, and I'm posting here an expanded response I made on one of them. I identify different ways of defining ki/chi/qi. Ki that is a visualisation aid or metaphor for what the body is doing ("sink your ki into the ground", feel your energy shoot along your arm and out your little finger") I have no problems with as they can, depending on the person, aid in getting the correct technique or feeling better than, say, explaining something in anatomical terms.   Personally, I sometimes visualise a flowing, glowing line in my mind's eye when putting on certain locks and holds; it helps me get the correct bits in the correct place with the correct rhythm, but it's a way of mentally processing what I should be doing, rather than a causative factor. Ki as a direct an...