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...

This is now a multi-part series.  You can find Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 here I have been doing a lot of seienchin (seiyunchin) lately - it's my kata of the month, and one that I've identified as needing a bit of work on anyway. This is the first in a series of posts on how I view seienchin; the principles it contains, the applications that can be associated with/extracted from it (both those I have been taught, and those I can find); the mechanics of performing it and how it compares with other kata. The aim behind these is for me to explore and learn a bit more through the writing of these posts, so take them for what you will - my musings on and exploration of something I don't know much about (yet). So… Seienchin, as I understand it, is unique amongst the non-tensho/sanchin goju kata because it doesn't have any kicks in it.  Like sepai, sanseru and shisochin, it does not finish with mawashi-uke/tora-guchi; but it does finish in neko-ashi dachi, the...

Recently (the last year or so), I started doing something different when effectively applying a technique.  I would get an image in my head of how the technique should feel - mostly as some sort of flowing line, combined with sensations along parts of the line.  Depending on the technique, there might be loops, a fulcrum or two, or branching or steps. It's very weird, but whenever I do the technique with that image in mind, it almost always works exactly as it should.  Now, when I am learning techniques, I try and work out what its image should be, and I find that doing so allows me to pick it up quicker - If an image looks forced or doesn't hang together, I tend to find that I'm doing the technique wrong. Mental imaging as a way of helping to understand and guide the body through a technique is something I have seen mostly mentioned with regard to kata practise, where one is often exhorted to imagine they are being attacked by opponents, and to work out how the movem...

I had the good fortune to attend a 2-day seminar this weekend with guru Maul Mornie of Silat Suffian Bela Diri.  It's a Bruneian martial art and mostly weapons-based. This weekend, we did knife-knife, knife-hand and machete work.  It was my first time working with machete (apart from my teen years hacking acres of blackberry) and although we didn't progress much beyond the fundamentals with it, I still found it fascinating. We started Saturday with an hour and a half of basic drills - the basic cuts with a knife (over/fore, back, thrust), and the basic defenses against those attacks.  These formed the basis of the rest of the seminar. It was interesting to me that all basics began as knife v. knife.  Everything we did for the seminar (even the empty hand v. knife) went back to this basic premise.  It was also interesting to my uneducated viewpoint (I have done bugger-all knife work before) that the knife was never used to block/check/intercept the incoming kn...

Now that I've been going for a couple of months, my thoughts and attitudes to daily training are changing.   Organisation of time is so important - without my weekly schedule, I would waste each session by frittering away my time wondering what to do next.   But more organisation is needed within session.   Without someone else to motivate me, I need to break my sessions down in more detail so I can actually get maximum benefit from what I am doing.   How to push myself well beyond my comfort zone without anyone else there (either to push me by direction, or through competition) is still problematic to me. One side-effect of my daily training is that I find I now have the time to iron out flaws in what I am doing; a change from only training a few times a week, where I am mostly concerned with learning new things.   One thing I am trying to avoid, however, is doing to much of anything on autopilot - I am attempting to train mindfully.   This is having a f...

A brief update on my New Year's Resolution to train at least once every day of the year.  Well, I have failed.  Not miserably, but I missed training on Saturday. In my defense, I did 6 hours of gardening - shifting soil and mulch, pruning and mowing; and then went out for dinner and a movie.  However, I knew that this was going to happen and didn't plan around it (Actually, I had intended to get up around 6:30 to do some taiji, but my youngest had me up at 1am and 4:30am, so that fell through). So, I have done 74 of a possible 75 days so far - still on track to top 360, and I should break 300 days without any problems.  I know at the start of the year, I thought that would be acceptable, but now I'm in the rhythm of daily training, I will be disappointed if I don't get to at least 350 days.