Continuing Steps in Karate

This is a follow-up to my earlier post: What was the original kata? We know that kata have changed - even a cursory glance at youtube will show you the huge variety of ways that any given kata can be performed.  This appears to not be just a modern development, as even by looking at books from the 1920s, 1930s, 1950s etc... we can see that there have been changes to kata since then, and even at the time (compare, for instance, the earlier publications of Funkoshi such as Tote-Jitsu (1922) with his later publication, the Karate-do Kyohan (1931) and then with its re-working in the 1950s; or compare the two earlier works and their rendition of naihanchi kata with Motobu's Karate - My Art (1932)).  Even within the students of the same teacher, we can see variance that cannot all have been contained within what was originally taught (see the different schools of the students of Choshin Chibana, for instance - the differences in kata between Kyudokan and Matsubayashi-ryu are a good examp

Just a random thought - it's generally held that when turning, or changing direction in kata, the sequence is head-feet-hands.  But, what if the sequence finishes after the turn?  What order should it be then?   Some places where this does occur, or could occur, are in kururunfa with the west and east open-hand soto ukes; sanseru with the 4-directions technique sequences; and in seisan, particularly on the first 180 degree turn.

In the last fortnight, I think I have seen people use a variant of the phrase "kata are the textbook of karate" at least a couple of dozen times.  It is a claim that instantly gets a lot of likes on social media and generally has a couple of follow-ups such as "kata contain all the techniques", "kata are the bible of karate" and "everything you need to know comes from the kata".  Which sounds great and seems like a justification of doing kata as the primary mode of training. But. How do kata transmit this knowledge?  How are they a textbook?  Without interpretation or guidance from someone or something that understands the context of each movement sequence, they teach nothing.  The teacher and ancillary training - especially with a partner  provide the context and the understanding. The kata is there to support  the learning that takes place, not provide the learning. This isn't my idea, by the way.  Patrick McCarthy talks about it

This post is related to, but is not a direct follow-on from the previous post on the original kata. In my school, and within its parent tradition, many of the kata have different variations.  For instance, in the kata Saifa, there are two different starts, two different ways to do the first section and two variants on the turn/sweep/hammerfist that are not only different from each other, but from other traditions as well.  Similar (accepted and taught) alternate variations exist in sanseru, shisochin, suparinpei, kururunfa, sepai, and seienchin.  Some of these kata have only one or two minor alternatives, others have more, with varying degrees of difference. Why? And what does it mean for understanding the origins and purpose of kata? There are obvious advantages pedagogically for teaching only one version of a kata, particularly to large groups of individuals.  Having a standard approach for everyone and every time makes it easier for the instructor to not only demonstrate to th

How can we know that the kata we are learning is the original form? One of the things that we are told - often unsolicited - is that we should do kata exactly as we have been taught, because 'the old masters knew what they were doing' or 'we will lose the meaning of the kata if we do'. Leaving those two very leading assumptions aside (for now), implied in that is that the kata have been unchanged as they have been taught and handed down from generation to generation. But is that actually true? There is no denying that each kata had, at some stage, a starting point where someone (or someones) created it. At that point in time, there was indeed, only one version of the kata and it was undoubtedly the correct one. But who created it, when and for what purpose, is often difficult to determine. For some kata such as tensho, the gekisai and pinan kata, we do know who created them, when and have at least some recorded information about their intended purpose. So surely, th

Every so often I tape myself doing kata so I can review if what I think I'm doing is what I'm actually doing. Here's one I did a couple of weeks ag, and as usual, there were a few things I thought I was doing and wasn't, as well as a couple of things I didn't think I was doing, but was. But, since that was the point of the video, that's ok. One interesting point about this run-through was the difference in being able to freely move between stances on the soft, springy grass compared to the dojo floor - an excellent reminder to me to keep practising on different surfaces and with different footwear, as aspects of my normal footwork needed to be adapted for the grass. It is well worth making semi-regular videos to review progress and form; not to mention it makes for interesting and educational viewing when there are multiple years of videos to look back over. I have, for instance, videos of myself doing sanseru kata from 2010, 2015 and 2020, and whi

I have spent entirely too much time on the internet over the last 20-odd years, and entirely too much of that time on martial arts discussion boards.  Starting with e-budo.com back in the late 90s, I must have been either a member or regular lurker of all of the major forums and some of the not-so-major ones too.  Now, I still check out a couple of forums regularly (mostly Martialartsplanet.com), but most of my online martial arts fix comes from facebook where I'm a member of 8 different, active groups.  Funnily enough, some topics just keep coming up again and again and again and again.  Probably because one of the not-so-great things about the internet is that many people like to talk and don't actually listen to the other side; spouting off is more important (my view on that is that if you want to pontificate, don't do it in a forum, create your own blog to do it in! Forums should  be for exchanging ideas and holding conversations - not that they ever have been used that

Following on from the previous post regarding the dual nature of uke-waza, most beginning and intermediate students find it possible to stop or at least weaken the strength of an attack, although this may not always be consistently possible.  What they do find very difficult to do with any reasonable probability of success is also weaken or off-balance the opponent at the same time. From trying to teach students how to effectively perform and use uke-waza over the last few years I feel two of the major reasons are the shape  of the arm and the direction  of movement. Shape Most beginners and intermediate students, in my experience, hold their arms too compactly.  Their elbow is too close to the body, and the forearm is held at about 90 degrees to the upper arm.  This shape is easy to collapse when force is applied to it, and the lats and shoulder girdle are not activated, meaning that it is only the strength of the arm muscles that can be applied.  The feeling is of 'pul

For the last 7 years I have been attempting to 'translate' Ohtsuka Tadahiko's book "Goju Kensha Karatedo Kyohan", as he is the founder of the particular tradition I am in.  As far as I am aware, it has not been translated before into English, so this is the only way I can read it. I don't speak Japanese, but with a combination of Google Translate, Wiktionary, knowledge of the martial arts and its terminology, youtube videos to teach myself the basics of japanese grammar, and using duolingo to start to get used to the language, I have made a slow, intermittent attempt at turning 1970s technical Japanese into something vaguely comprehensible in the English language.   The original kyohan was published as a series of 13 booklets in the 1970s and then collated in a single volume in the late 1970s.  It was reprinted in 2009 with additional notes on the Bubishi and with the thirteenth booklet replaced with material on shorin-ryu kata from Higa Yuchoku (with

The purpose of the belt And I don’t want to rehash the old, old, old ‘joke’ about it holding up your pants (karate belts hold the top closed in any case). Why award a belt in the first place? What purpose does it have within the eyes of the awardee, their sensei, their dojo, their organisation, and outside their organisation? The individual The purpose of a black belt, in the eyes of the person awarded it, is the hardest question to answer. Each person will likely have their own take on it, depending on how they view the continuum of ranking in the martial arts, what preconceptions they brought into their training prior to beginning karate, and environment and the attitudes of their dojo and peers. So, I’m not going to discuss this aspect, as I will probably only project my own values onto others if I do. But it is an aspect that I think each person who is aiming for, or has achieved a certain level within karate needs to reflect on. For me, my personal opinion is the real arbite

What’s in a belt? A belt of any other colour would be so neat (with apologies to Shakespeare). It’s the perennial whipping boy of the karate internet - What is a black belt? What does it mean? They don’t deserve theirs! Our gradings are tougher than yours! How did they get their belt? You’re only an x-belt, what do you know? So why not add my 2-bob’s worth to the melting pot of vitriol, opinion and disinformation out there? What I want to explore, because I’ve been thinking about this a bit lately, is what the belt could represent and why it can vary from person to person. I’ve got no interest in rehashing the old chestnuts of its history/derivation myths; nor of how it meant so much more in the good ol’ days. I’m hoping to maybe tread down a less well-worn path or two. Who says you can have a black belt? In the general run of things, people don’t award themselves a black belt. (Yes, I know it can happen, but if someone does, then they’re probably someone to avoid. Make an excuse a

Sorry about that (not that anyone’s probably reading this anymore). It wasn’t intentional, just life and family and work came between me and writing my thoughts down on this blog. But I’m back now, as fortunately karate didn’t stop for me, even if posting about it did. So what has happened for me in the martial arts since 2011? I have graded three more times: nidan in 2013, sandan in 2015 and yondan in 2019. I have set myself year-training challenges of 300+ days of training in three different years and was successful twice (pneumonia during one year stopped me in my tracks though). I have been to a number of seminars in silat, my parent school of goju and other styles of goju, a Patrick McCarthy seminar (highly recommended, might I add) and visited briefly a goju dojo in Carlsbad, California (living in Australia, that’s more momentous than it might otherwise seem). I have also become an instructor with our group, assisting with colour belt classes and running black belt classes.