ShotokanKarateAZ; A Shotokan Karate Blog by Joseph C. McDaniel

Let Me Know How You Like My New Shotokan Karate Website!

2011-07-14T12:00:00.000-07:00

Recently, I've started blogging on a new platform called WordPress.

It's a little more complicated than Blogger, but it's also a more powerful platform than Blogger.

I like the templates that WordPress has available, as well; let me know what you think when you take a look at my new Shotokan Karate Website!

Shotokan Karate E-Dojo

2011-07-12T08:03:00.000-07:00

I have started a new blog on the Wordpress.com Platform, to see if I use the greater power and flexibility of that blogging platform to share Shotokan Karate with more readers.

Take a look, and see if you like the design and the posts; it's still very new, but I'm happy with the initial version of my new Shotokan Karate blog.

And I hope you like it, too!

A Short Self-Defense Class with Sensei Shojiro Koyama, 8th Dan, JKA

2011-06-28T10:59:00.000-07:00

No, you don't get to see the video.

Loyal readers will recall that I have the privilege of studying privately with Sensei Shojiro Koyama, of which privilege I am absurdly proud.

Recently he called a break to basics and kata, and said he was going to teach me a self-defense lesson.

He prefaced it by telling me that in Japan, policemen are often highly trained black belts in Judo, Karate, and Aikido (in that context, please read "Angry White Pajamas", because it is wildly entertaining and instructive, simultaneously).

He continued by pointing out that because they are highly trained martial artists, the police in Japan tend to believe that they can use their martial arts techniques on knife-wielding bad guys.

And he concluded by pointing out that many such superbly-trained Japanese Policemen then die as a result of knife wounds, because knives are very effective tools for letting the life out, and bad guys don't attack in the ways that a trained martial artist attacks.

Bad guys never learned how to attack correctly! As a result, when the frenzied stabbing starts, the technique (really, non-technique) is one that has never been taught to the bad guy in a dojo, and no defense was learned for that non-technique by the policeman.

The conclusion of this short discussion of self-defense against a knife is pretty simple. Don't try to defend, empty-handed, against a deadly weapon in the hands of a determined bad guy, because your odds of success are not good.

If you can interpose a chair, good. If you can interpose a chair and poke the bad guy with the legs of the chair, good. If you can swing a chair into the bad guy while you are repeating the mantra, "Feets, do yo' stuff!", all the better.

Generally, a contest of armed verses unarmed men does not turn out well for the unarmed man. Or woman. So don't enter into that contest unless there is literally no other choice.

End of lesson.

p.s. consider trying this for fun: put on a fencing mask, and give a magic marker to your buddy. Bet him you can keep him from dotting or streaking your t-shirt with the magic marker, and bet him enough to make it interesting (unless that would be illegal in your jurisdiction, of course).

The point of the exercise is to see if you can keep your torso from being dotted or streaked by a fully motivated guy of similar size and build.

And if you are that one person in a million who can keep the t-shirt clean, take a look at your arms, and ask yourself how deep the cut, and how fast the bleed-out.

And remember, it's just for fun; make sure there's a medic present at all times, right?

A Nice Karate Demonstration with Sensei Kanazawa and Terry O'Neill

2011-06-28T04:16:00.000-07:00

I like karate demonstrations. This one is a little quirky, from my perspective, because it's narrated in Russian, but the punches, strikes, kicks and throws do not require much translation.

Sensei Kanazawa won the first big Shotokan Karate Tournament in Japan by besting Sensei Enoeda (who is now sadly passed away), and he has fun in this demonstration.

The impressively brave Terry O'Neill assisted Sensei Kanazawa in this demonstration, which must have been a little difficult for him; Terry was himself a remarkable kumite competitor until a knee injury ended that part of his karate career.

How the Japanese Improved Okinawan Karate

2011-06-20T15:23:00.000-07:00

I have read much about the ways that karate degenerated when it was adopted and modified by the Japanese.

Many writers who have studied with Okinawan instructors have waxed ecstatic about the ways that the pure version of Okinawan Karate beats that silly Japanese stuff all hollow.

Maybe true, maybe not. I've seen great exponents from both traditions, and both of those, after all, are offshoots of Chinese Martial Arts.

But Okinawan Martial Artists were more effective after Japanese domination for one simple reason, which was discussed by Funakoshi in his autobiography.

After Japanese domination of Okinawa, the wearing of the traditional Okinawan hair arrangement, a sort of top-knot, was forbidden. Gichen Funakoshi writes about how difficult it was to shear them off some schoolchildren in Okinawa.

But long hair (and, for that matter, beards) have always been great handles for hand-to-hand combat.

Which is why Philip of Macedon and his son (a guy named Alexander, remember?) told their troops to keep it short.

So after the Japanese took over control of Okinawa, they provided one gift to local martial artists, even if it was not intended as a gift.

And you can see how effective the use of the topknot grab was, because it shows up in bunkai to most of the kata!

Rare Karate Books Online: A Gift from Charles Goodin. And Thank You, Charles!

2011-06-07T09:49:00.000-07:00

I like Christmas, and one reason I like it is the gifts! I particularly liked that Merlotte's Bar and Grill Mug, by the way.

But I ran into a gift recently that left me amazed, because it is so valuable, and because the gift is so generous.

And that gift is the free, online rare karate book and monograph collection on Charles Goodin's Hawaii Karate Museum Blog.

Some gift, neh?

Is Naihanchi the Perfect Martial Art?

2011-05-28T13:42:00.000-07:00

I love practicing the Tekki Kata. Donno why. Just do.

And I've written recently about them, and the fighting techniques embedded in them.

Now, Rob Redmond has a great Shotokan Karate Blog, and you should read every single post he's written. You may not agree with him, but you'll learn a lot about Shotokan Karate.

One of his suggestions is that the best martial art for real fighting might well be one that's composed of all the techniques forbidden for competition in every other martial art!

I thought that was smart, as well as funny.

And then I considered the Okinawan Karate Masters who indicated that Naihanchi had everything you needed to know about fighting.

So let's think about Naihanchi/Tekki Kata for a moment, and consider which techniques are embedded in it, and are also prohibited in all martial arts for competition.

On the one hand, you've got elbows to the head, while you're grabbing his head for target control. Check.

Arm breaks? Check.

Hair grabbing, neck crank? Check.

Smashing your opponents knee to do structural damage to it? Check.

Head butt and eye gouge and bite? Implied in the kata, I think, so check.

Finger breaking? Yep. Check.

Choking and neck breaking? Check.

Head snap taking your opponent to the ground? Check.

Forearm smash to the back of his neck? Check.

The one thing I don't see anywhere in the kata bunkai is a groin attack.

On the other hand, there's a nice response to your opponent's wrist grab after you attack his groin!

Naihanchi is not for the faint of heart!

It looks to me, by the way, as though it's among the very best kata for applications that start after the perp has rung your bell with a roundhouse right sucker-punch. It teaches moving from the clinch to counter-attacks more clearly than any other kata I can think of today.

Remember, boys and girls, running away from a fight may make people laugh at you, depending on the neighborhood.

But they're going to laugh at you anyway once you get your front teeth knocked out, right?

So run if you can. If you can't, consider the techniques in Naihanchi for self-defense, unless of course they're illegal in your jurisdiction. Always obey the law.

Looking Pretty Doesn't Win Fights

2011-05-28T13:17:00.000-07:00

See, if looking pretty won fights (or even sparring matches), the world would be a lot nicer and more predictable place.

But no. Looking pretty when you fight doesn't win fights, and the world is not nice and predictable, and fighting is particularly unpleasant and chaotic.

Back around 1964, before most of you were born, I started taking fencing classes from a world-class instructor. There were other kids in the class, and all of them were far better than I was in basic technique and form, because I'm a little coordination...challenged.

But after we had picked up the rudiments of lunging and parrying and beating and disengaging as solo drills, we started actually "fencing" with each other. We were so bad that calling it fencing is far too kind.

But I really envied one of the guys in class because he had a natural talent for fencing; his lunges were perfect. His parries were beautiful.

And I beat him every single time we fenced, even though my technique looked like poop, and his looked like Errol Flynn in Robin Hood.

I had simply stumbled upon a technique that worked for me in competitions, and it clicked.

It was a simple beat, disengage, lunge combination. When I slapped his foil (which moved it out of line) he frantically over-corrected and threw it further out of line on the other side. Which left an opening in his guard through which I could drive a truck. Or, in this case, a foil.

I used the same technique decades later (rapiers, instead of foils) in some competitions in the Society for Creative Anachronism and a couple of other living history groups, and it worked against most of the people with whom I fenced ( not all, of course).

See, in martial arts, you have a combination of skills that are developed over years, and you have to decide which of those skills and techniques you want to develop, and whether you want to do well in formal competition for trophies, or in self defense on the street, or just self-defense against aging (you can't win, but you can draw out the fight, which is itself something of a victory. But, hey, if Thor couldn't beat Old Age, nobody can!).

Watch boxers and it will be obvious; some boxers imitate Cassius Clay, and drop their hands to taunt their opponents, and get away with it! Some stay buttoned up, and do very well. Some use a funny guard with their left hand down and their right hand up, and do well with that.

Marital arts classes do a lot of things; they expose you to a lot of different techniques, and depending on the art, they may also teach your warm ups and strengthening and flexibility and timing exercises.

But if you watch competitions between very good competitors in any martial art or system, including MMA, you'll see that simple techniques work, and complex techniques often don't, and that everybody has a pet technique or three.

The reason that world-class competitors have a relatively small bundle of techniques that they actually use in competitions is that they have found, through unpleasant trial and error, that some techniques that they have learned don't win for them!

And you don't win in world-competitions with a hundred techniques that you know. You win with one to five techniques that you've mastered.

p.s. If your martial art doesn't involve contact, you'll want a remedial contact course somewhere along the way. In the same way that people react predictably when you beat their blade to the side in fencing, they respond predictable to a blow to the solar plexus.

Some drop their arms a little and lean forward a little, some a lot. But just about everybody has a reaction, and that reaction is often the beginning of a combination that will finish that fight. But not in their favor. Note that you'll want to develop your ability to take a blow, but that's a topic for another day. Don't stand in front of moving cars to toughen yourself up, or do anything else stupid.

One of Sensei Funakoshi's senior students, Shigeru Egami, was so unhappy with the lack of stopping power of the punch he used to strike the solar plexus that he wrote a book about his frustration and his solution. And he came up with a pretty good solution.

A different solution is known by many boxers who hit people for realsies all day long: if you want to stop somebody with a shot to the solar plexus, the most effective angle of attack is up, as in uppercut.

p.p.s. some of this discussion relates to controlled sparring matches; some to real fights. The two are completely different. If you don't know the difference, never get in a fight, and run away in every case. Mind you, running away from a fight is normally the best martial arts technique available.

Some martial arts, on the other hand, may be useful when you are vic and the perp has already rung your chimes with a sucker punch. The primary marital art used by perps, by the way, is simply getting in close enough that your reaction time is no defense whatsoever.

And I know that this is obvious, but you won't be looking pretty, with snappy, good-looking techniques, once the first sucker punch has landed. Hopefully, you will have developed some version of the clinch so your head will clear enough that you can begin a defense (which means offense, once the other guy has belted you five times).

And your teeth? Well, try to find them on the floor after the flurry of sucker punches and your successful defense. And you may well be able to re-implant them if you act quickly, says Mayo Clinic!

Funniest Version of Road Rage That Didn't Get You Killed!

2011-05-25T21:48:00.000-07:00

Road rage is quite real.

Maybe it's a function of breathing in carbon monoxide mixed with lead-laden particulates.

Maybe it's that you're using mostly small muscles to pilot your car, and your adrenaline can't get burned up by the use of large muscle movement, as it would be if you were sprinting or jogging.

But it can turn ordinarily mild-mannered folks of all sorts into quite dangerous people indeed. With I.Q. levels below that of a newt.

Here in Phoenix, we have a special sort of road rage, fueled by 120-degree temperatures in the summertime. And you need to keep very careful watch for cars with the windows rolled down (indicating that they don't have air-conditioning in their car).

If you make a driver with no air conditioning even slow down when it's 120 degrees in Phoenix, you take your life in your hands.

Now, martial arts or self-defense classes or boxing expertise are unlikely to help you a lot during episodes of serious road rage. Either one or both of the participants will have a weapon (remember that tire irons are perfectly good weapons, as are big flashlights, small flashlights, screwdrivers, and wrenches; putting it a different way, cars are almost as full of weapons as kitchens).

And it may sound like I'm kidding about this; I'm really, really not kidding.

What you need to do is to be aware of the point at which you are tipping into irrational anger, and dump the contents of that entire Super-duper Size Slurpy down your back so that the shock can make you lucid again.

Anybody, apparently, can have a sudden loss of I.Q. when hit by a wave of adrenaline; a former prosecutor named Dan Gukeisen was recently sentenced to five years for manslaughter committed with a knife. And that's a former prosecutor; if he can suffer a lapse in judgment, there are few mortals indeed who are capable of perfect self-control.

There's nothing funny about going over the top emotionally and either starting a fight or getting stomped by somebody who has himself gone off.

And I just watched a comedian named Ben Bailey talk about road rage. It was hilarious!

It was also sobering; this guy is a game show host, and he depicts the experience of road rage brilliantly, having experienced it. While being a televised game show host. With two contestants in the back seat!

Another part of the story which was interesting was the entry of his posse on the scene; you should always expect that the six-foot six-inch guy you think you can take has a bunch of buddies with him.

And that at least one of them will have a pistol.

Tekki Kata: Worthless? or Priceless? And Some People Call it Naihanchi.

2011-05-22T15:28:00.000-07:00

Opinions differ.

Choki Motobu, who was never a shrinking violet when it came to brawling, said that Naihanchi contained all that you needed to know about fighting, and that it was a martial arts system (!) no longer practiced in China, only in Okinawa.

Rewind: Tekki as a martial arts style, or system? That's kinda big talk, you know?

Kentsu Yabu said "Karate begins and ends with Naihanchi".

Gichen Funakoshi, the founder of Shotokan Karate, spent a decade practicing three versions of this kata under one of his principal instructors, Itosu Sensei. Clearly, Itosu Sensei thought that Naihanchi was a pretty useful training exercise.

Iain Abernethy says that this kata is deep, and that it constitutes a "complete fighting system". When Iain Abernethy says that a kata contains a complete fighting system, I take notice; he's a very smart guy, and generous with his vast knowledge.

Now, some folks have suggested that this kata was designed so that you could fight with your back to a wall, or on a narrow strip of dry land between a couple of rice paddies. And some folks are terribly concerned with the precise way the hand is angled in performing the kata, and some may insist that their version of a stance is the only usable stance.

I, personally, do not give a rat's keester exactly what variation of the kata is being used in training, as long as it contains the fundamental information encoded in the kata. For that matter, if you look at the early kata books by Sensei Funakoshi, you will see higher stances than those used in Shotokan Karate today.

To get an idea of the practical ways that Tekki Shodan (the short, simple, bland, boring kata, right?) can be employed, you might want to watch this short video posted by Iain Abernethy, a Wado Instructor who has spent a career studying and teaching bunkai:

Note: the above short video is a commercial for a dvd, and if commercials for great products offend you, I'm deeply and terribly sorry. Myself, I recently ran across the little commercial.

I'll be ordering the dvd...today.

And here's another take on the bunkai to Tekki, or Naihanchi, or whatever you want to call it, by a gentleman named Didier Lupo. His version of the kata is closer to mine, and he looks like he would be happy to explain his version of Tekki to anybody who wants to learn it from him. Putting it another way, he looks like a tough hombre:

And I haven't been able to track down a source for Sensei Lupo's dvds, or I'd have a buncha those, as I have a buncha Iain's.

You can never be too rich, too thin, or have too many kata dvds, right?

Teaching self-defense is an integral part of karate.

Karate was, at one point in Okinawan History, a brutal and brutally effective variety of self-defense taught in secret on a one-student one-teacher basis, and really not a sport or a meditative practice or a health and longevity exercise.

In order to make it a little more acceptable to the genteel Japanese on the mainland, the folks who introduced karate to Japan from Okinawa downplayed the vicious and nasty techniques embedded in the kata. Much of that process had already been accomplished when the Heian Kata were taught to schoolchildren in Japan.

Come on; if you're teaching a system of mostly-calisthenics to schoolkids, are you also going to show them how to use those pretty exercises to break arms, choke each other into unconsciousness or death, while you demonstrate head butts, biting and eye-gouging techniques?

That would be a big fat no.

These days, most traditional karate classes in the United States are just as reticent about teaching the nasty stuff, because parents like to sue, and a lawyer's gotta eat!

On the other hand, even when I was a kid I was able to check out a copy of "Kill or Get Killed" from the Phoenix Public Library, and I thank God to this day that it was sort of boring, with all that text, and that the techniques didn't look nearly as exotic and interesting as the kata in George Mattson's Way of Karate, or the wildly athletic techniques performed by Sensei Nakayama in his double-breasted suit and tie.

And it's good not to teach kids horrifyingly effective ways of killing and maiming with their hands.

If I'd been pushed around at Emerson Grade School, and responded by clapping my classmate's ears, tripping him and jumping up and down on his neck, I might have eaten alone in the cafeteria even more often!

So when you look for self-defense instruction, who you gonna call?

Well, you could do a lot worse than looking at Mark Hatmaker's little paperback book, "No Second Chance".

I have seldom read a book about self-defense that had more practical information and advice than "No Second Chance".

I like the fact that he recommends running as a major self-defense tactic (in this context, remember that tiny classic, "Strictly Street Stuff").

And I like discussions by Hatmaker that set up a pretty good decision tree for folks confronted with bad guys. Hatmaker has strong opinions, based on statistics, that running is best when confronted by a bad guy with a gun, and that fighting like a cartoon tasmanian devil, or a psychotic housecat, is appropriate in many situations.

There is a "deer in the headlights" effect that overtakes many people who are targeted by bad guys, and it's very powerful, and very dangerous. That deer/headlights thing can turn a bodybuilder or a long-distance runner into a stationary punching bag.

Reading a book like "No Second Chance" may help someone live, who would otherwise have died, if they had failed to think through their responses in advance of an attack.

The book has a nifty selection of targets and body weapons and techniques that will be familiar to most martial arts enthusiasts; the important part is the text, which applies clear thinking to self-defense issues.

This is not only a good book for an experienced, but civilized, martial artist. It's a good book for an ordinary civilian ("table-grade beef to a bad guy") who never thought about being the target of a bad guy.

And trust me on this one: when you are targeted for a physical assault, or a robbery or a rape or a murder, it's a little too late to do introspecting. Because you'll be doing a lot of thinking ("Oh my God, is this really happening?") that will paralyze your ability to act.

And you don't want to be paralyzed when a bad guy calls you out.

You want to be running. Or turning instantly into one of those really bad cats on the TV Show.

But don't break the law when you defend yourself!

p.s. there's a phrase I've heard in connection with getting into fights: "Better to be judged by twelve than carried by six."

Sadly, decisions you have to make when under pressure of the threat of imminent death may well also be analyzed in the cold light of day in a courtroom; and you may be judged according to standards that were developed by people who have always had armed bodyguards.

All you can do is the best you can do, and death is pretty final.

Just remember, I told you again and again, never break any law whatsoever.

p.p.s. some folks close to me have been raped, robbed, beaten and left for dead, or jumped by groups of guys and kicked nearly to death, or targeted for murder by some kids who needed to make their bones to join a gang. But one thing about folks who have been through that once is interesting to me. My friends in that category have NO PROBLEM listening to their instincts and leaving a place of business, a restaurant, a shop, a party, or sitting with their backs to the door, or taking any other action that they feel will reduce their chances of a repeat performance.

Also note; if you think you can take your oppressor, and feel pretty tough, make sure you check the immediate vicinity for his buddy with the knife.

Just a thought!

Why All Those "Knife Hand" Blocks in the Kata, If We Don't Use them in Sparring?

2011-05-20T09:42:00.000-07:00

I've got news, junior. They aren't blocks.

Blocks don't work very well in self-defense. A bad guy who means you ill gets real close, smiles, then unloads on you, and you see the little blue stars on the black background before you see his punch/headbutt/elbow.

Remember: bad guys don't want to spar, and they don't want a fair fight, or that man-mountain with a "born to kill" tattoo wouldn't be picking on poor little fragile you!

Bad guys want a victim, and a crushing victory. Watch "Once Were Warriors", a very good movie with a fight scene that's very short, very brutal, and close to real, although there's still some warning given before the fight starts. Note that all the critical elements of a real fight show up there: alcohol, pretty girl, sticks (although the pool cues aren't used in this particular movie fight), and a conflict over who gets to decide what music is playing.

But if "knife hand blocks" aren't really blocks, and if we don't often use knife hand strikes in sparring, why do knife hand techniques show up with such remarkable frequency in Shotokan Kata?

Well, because the four little "knife-hand blocks" at the end of Heian Shodan, which also show up with great frequency as you move to the big-boy kata, are darn near a complete fighting system all by themselves.

That's right. The knife hand block is a virtual Swiss Army Knife of fighting techniques. It's not a beginner's technique, although a beginner can use it.

And if you throw in the "knife hand attack" that shows up in Heian Yondan, and you know how to use it, you may have learned much of what you were looking for when you took up martial arts in the first place!

Bear in mind that knife hand blocks, although you won't be blocking much with them, can be used as defenses once you've gotten cracked, and are still standing, and need to interpose some arms to buy time to clear your head.

But to start getting an idea why the "knife hand block" sequence shows up so often in all Okinawan Karate, watch this short video by Iain Abernethy, a Wado Instructor who loves his art:

I Have Been an Unwitting Billboard for Mixed Martial Arts

2011-05-15T15:16:00.000-07:00

When I need clothes, I want them to fit. And I work about sixteen hours a day, so I have no clue, and care less, about fashion.

On the other hand, I need to look okay when it's time for Marius to make another video.

So I go to the local Men's Wearhouse, because everybody there knows your name, and they all know exactly how to fit lawyers, and doctors, and CPAs, oh, my! And the quality is good, and the prices are fair.

So one day I was getting a new jacket, or tie, and I saw a stack of t-shirts on the "clearance" table; and they were kinda interesting, and kinda weird-lookin', and they had designs that ranged from sort of Goth-y (with skulls) to sort of historical (with medieval helms).

And I saw that they had previously been very, very expensive. For t-shirts, anyway.

Now, I'd never heard of the brand before, but I like a bargain as well as the next guy, so I bought a stack of 'em, because the price ("clearance") was right.

I wore one to a lunch the other day, and a martial arts buddy of mine said, "So which MMA School are you training in these days?"

The brand was "Extreme Couture", and apparently named for Randy Couture, a very good MMA competitor who recently lost to a Shotokan Exponent.

Here's what's funny, from my perspective: I take my obligation not to get into fights very seriously. I don't wear Shotokan-printed t-shirts because I don't want to tempt some poor dumb sap to call me out: "You're wearing a Karate T-Shirt! Karate is for sissies!"

I prefer letting my silver hair do the fighting for me, and letting young competitors open doors for the old guy instead.

And I find it slightly ironic that I made a fashion faux pas that made it more likely that I'd attract the attention of excessively competitive folks than not.

Well, I can still wear 'em to work in the garden: the artichokes won't care!

Don't Let 'Em Grab You!

2011-05-08T16:57:00.000-07:00

There are too many defenses in self-defense books and classes against grabs, and the techniques that are taught are too time-consuming and complex.

They seem to assume that a bad guy has appeared from a Star Trek Transporter, and when he materializes, he's already latched onto your shirt or jacket.

That doesn't happen, of course. The bad guy, in an ordinary situation, has to walk up to you, stand close to you, maybe push you, and finally grab you. If you interrupt that sequence, you may not need dentures in your old age.

For one thing, it's a good idea to maintain distance, using any technique whatsoever, because if he's too close, your reaction time is not up to the task. If a boxer gets hit with a jab when he knows that's the technique that his opponent will throw, that alone should teach you that blocking a shot, or slipping, or avoiding, won't work when the opponent is too close. Period. Full stop. Buy new teeth.

You can look at a technique called "The Fence", because it makes a lot of sense to me. And Geoff Thompson is very experienced, as you can tell from that video clip, and he's a smart, analytical guy.

The reason I think it's a bad idea to permit yourself to be grabbed if you have any choice in the matter is because of what comes next!

If somebody means you harm, and he grabs your shirt with both hands, you're already done for! You have zero defense against the upcoming head butt, because you won't see it coming, because he's already in position, and his tactile feedback acts like radar for targeting his attack. So he's in control, and can't miss, and you are out of control, and can't defend.

When a bad guy grabs your shirt, the very next thing you'll see is not his face, talking to you; it's little blue stars on a black background, because he's smacked you with his fist (or head or elbow) about five times.

Ditto wrist grabs, of course.

Mind you, in a dust-up, somebody might grab your wrist if you're slow coming back from a punch, or simply out of position, but the entire kata Hangetsu is designed as an answer to the question, "what do I do when my opponent has grabbed my wrist and keeps hitting me in the head again and again?" It answers a few additional questions, of course, like "what do I do when an opponent grabs me from behind, in addition to rear head butts, rear elbows, and stomps on his foot?"

What motivated this tirade? Well, I was simply reminded that a lot of self-defense classes start with a grab to your lapel, lapels, neck, wrist or belt. And the presumption is that will now intelligently defend yourself from such a grab.

The problem is that the grab is the attack, and there is no time for thought or discussion between the grab and the need for you to take a little ride in the ambulance.

Because there is NO INTERVAL OF TIME between a lapel grab and a head butt, or a single hand lapel-grab and a punch to your face.

It's a simple sequence, and it works like this: grab, blammo!

With no comma.

p.s. clever readers will understand that it makes no difference at all whether your bad guy is a trained martial artist; once the double hand grab to your lapels is locked, your particular bad guy may decide to use a head butt, a hip throw, a knee to your important parts, a "sacrifice" throw, or anything else in his tool box. The tool of choice is usually the head butt, because a bad guy really doesn't want to spend the time to learn a difficult martial art technique requiring practice, and because he doesn't need it!

The head butt will do just fine, thank you.

Good Book About the Practical Application of Martial Arts

2011-05-08T16:15:00.000-07:00

I recently read "Martial Arts Techniques for Law Enforcement", and I liked it very much. The author, Mike Young, is not a virgin teaching sex therapy.

He has been a deputy sheriff for the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department for a couple of decades. And he's taught a lot of classes.

More importantly, he's had an opportunity to experience what works well, and not so well, on the street as a cop.

Now, cops are attacked a lot, and therefore they have a lot more experience in real self-defense than anybody except bouncers, which whom they may be tied. Cops, however, get to deal with folks who are more troublesome, dangerous, and more heavily and frequently armed than bouncers do. Putting it another way, if bouncers can't handle the problem, they call the cops!

Mike Young is smart, and he's studied a lot of different approaches to dealing with combative opponents. He has also worked at finding ways to avoid killing them, when possible. He does not complain about the paperwork, but I suspect that is at least one consideration.

"Not killing" is an important consideration. Military combatives, like the Fairbairn System, consider killing an opponent a perfectly good outcome, and sometimes an exceptionally good outcome! Police Officers often go to remarkable lengths to avoid killing or injuring civilians, and they sometimes pay the ultimate price for their restraint. And God bless them all for their heroism.

Now, non-cops and non-soldiers get to defend themselves, depending on the jurisdiction. My take on self-defense in Great Britain is simple; you might as well beg your opponent to finish you cleanly, because if you're successful in defending yourself against your opponent, you'll then go to jail on some theory or another, period.

So if you're unlucky enough to live in such a jurisdiction, just give up and let the bad guys flatten you, and dance on your flattened corpse. Sorry for your bad luck, buddy! Better luck next time!

In any case, know the specifics of the law of self-defense in your jurisdiction and any such jurisdiction you visit, and never break the law.

If you read Mike Young's book, you'll have a pretty good idea what techniques might be useful for your practice sessions.

Bear in mind that when he trains recruits (and recruits to any police force are typically big and strong and healthy and not bookworms, right?) he challenges every class that if anybody in class can knock him out, he'll buy 'em dinner.

He's five nine, weighs 155, and hasn't bought any dinners yet.

If you study Shotokan Karate, and you want to know how to adapt the body mechanics you've learned so that you can predictably defend yourself without causing undue harm to your opponent, this is a good read. Chapter 17 will also look familiar to you.

In Chapter 17, Mike discusses some one-hand defenses he developed to control a suspect while holding a gun, for use when the circumstances don't justify ventilating the suspect. You'll see a couple of techniques that take an opponent off his feet, reliably and predictably, without causing him to die. Unless he has an eggshell skull, of course, but remember that it's always better to be lucky than smart.

And you already know those techniques, even if you don't know it, because they're embedded in the syllabus of Shotokan!

Mike also discusses a sort of "universal counter" to a bad guy rushing you, and I was surprised to read about its effectiveness; and then I thought it might work so well for Mike because he's huge. But he's not.

So I'm going to go practice Mike Young's not-at-all-secret-technique for defense against an attacker rushing you with punches, and see if I can develop a little "zip" in that technique; I particularly like the idea that, according to Mike, it has stopped 'em all, and produced no lasting harm to any of 'em.

Is it News When a Convicted Murderer Tries to Punch Out the Prosecutor?

2011-05-06T10:27:00.000-07:00

I'm a bankruptcy lawyer in Arizona, and therefore I'm pretty busy at the office right now.

And recently I read about an attack on a prosecutor by a convicted murderer, right after the trial was over.

I was conflicted when I read the article, because I couldn't decide whether to discuss it in my karate blog, or my Just for Lawyers Blog, or my Health Blog (because not getting mugged is a part of my personal Live to 120 and Die of Nothing in Particular Plan).

But what surprised me the most was the lawyer who was blindsided was a former cop.

Generally, cops don't get blindsided in Courtrooms as much as ordinary lawyers.

Cops expect to be blindsided!

Now, could a study of karate have helped this particular lawyer and cop? Well, apparently he didn't need a lot of help, after he weathered the initial cheap shot.

But it is a reminder; there are bad guys, and their tool box is limited. Sucker punches are at the top of that tool box. And sucker punches work fairly well.

Can a Shotokan Trained Black Belt Succeed in MMA? Well, Maybe.

2011-05-02T20:58:00.000-07:00

I could be a smarty-obi about this, but the answer fairly obvious by now.

Randy Couture is a remarkable MMA contestant, although he is a little long in the tooth.

He can hit and he can grapple and he can fight.

And Lyoto Machida is a Shotokan Karate exponent, and he's also trained in BJJ. And he can hit, and grapple, and fight.

And, apparently, he can also kick!

p.s. don't try this at home, kids! If you get in a fight at the Dew-Drop Inn, and you start with a kick to your opponents head, you tend to wind up on your rear end down in the cigarette butts and spilled beer. That's because the ability to kick to the head and win against a serious opponent is a post-graduate skill. If you haven't done it a few hundred times sparring, don't consider doing it for realsies.

Eventually, I'll Release this Bowstring Properly!

2011-04-14T21:02:00.000-07:00

While I certainly don't deserve the honor, I am permitted to take two private classes with Sensei Shojiro Koyama every week.

And I don't take adequate care of my conditioning, so I don't benefit as much as I could from those classes; I waste a certain amount of time wheezing, and we spend class time stretching and warming up. In fact, now that I think of it, I think I'll ask him if I can stretch and warm up on my own, so I don't lose precious time that I could be learning technique from him.

Tonight we spent about two minutes on the heavy bag, and that suggested to Sensei that I might be ready to learn a different way to put "zip" into a punch, a strike, a block, or any hand technique.

So he started showing me how he, at 75, is able to generate techniques that are blindingly fast and remarkably powerful. And he's not a big guy.

And because he's not a big guy, he's spent a large amount of time getting his techniques to work brilliantly with no particular weight and without bulging muscles.

He's shown me these techniques previously, but now he seems to think I might actually be able to learn how to make them work, little by little.

And if I ever get it right, I'll write about it or make a video, which would probably work better.

Bear in mind that there are a lot of ways to make punches and strikes work well, and Jack Dempsey talked about a lot of them in his book "Championship Boxing". Note that his book appears simple, and artless, and is actually remarkably sophisticated. And the Chinese Martial Arts have names for more different kinds of power transmission in punching than I can ever remember; and Dr. Yang Jwing-Ming discusses those in many of his books, including Tai Chi Theory and Martial Power.

The sort of power transmission I'm currently trying to learn from Sensei Koyama is a sort of a whipping movement, which makes perfect sense and is easy to understand in connection with strikes, like a backfist.

It is dramatically more difficult to explain, or apply, in connection with an ordinary jab or right cross.

But I'm very, very happy to be working on these techniques now, although it's going to set back my kata training as I try to apply them, and as I think too much, and goof up even the simple sequence of movements.

And when we were training on the heavy bag, Sensei would say after some punches, "Yes! That's it!" or some expression of disappointment.

And I, of course, couldn't tell the difference between a good hit, and a bad hit.

I was reminded of Eugen Herrigel, studying with his Kyudo Instructor, who kept trying to get the release of the bowstring accomplished in the correct way.

And could not, for the life of him, understand why his instructor would approve one bowstring release, and not another.

So It's NEWS When a 63-Year Old Gets a Shodan?

2011-04-12T10:02:00.000-07:00

My paralegal, Heidi the bankruptcy angel, sent me a link to a news story about a gentleman of 63 years old who had attained a first-degree (shodan) black belt in his style of karate.

And I thought that was nifty, and I was particularly happy that the student in question wanted to continue to gain his nidan, because some students quit because they've attained the goal their ego set for them: a black belt!

What surprised me about the article was simply this: it didn't seem like news to me.

More like another day at the dojo!

Because I think karate is a particularly good exercise for health for your entire life. Mind you, you have to use your head.

If you were 60 or 70, and you wanted to learn boxing, that would be great; but you wouldn't want to work in a gym that specialized in full-contact, can't walk for a week after training 18-year-old boxers; their needs are different from those of a grown-up.

And besides, they heal far faster!

But a dojo with a Sensei who is smart enough to be able to gauge the difference in exercise-tolerance in students, and who permits his geriatric students to pursue more kata than kumite (sparring); well, that's a dojo that will help with flexibility, strength, coordination, breathing, circulation, balance, and a lot of other characteristics that make aging a lot more fun!

There's Self-Defense, and there's Self-Defense; and Choices Have Consequences; Daniel Gukeisen Convicted of Manslaughter in Stabbing Death of Tempe Resident

2011-04-08T15:26:00.000-07:00

Recently a Phoenix Bankruptcy Lawyer named Daniel Gukeisen was convicted of manslaughter.

According to the news stories I've read about Mr. Gukeisen, who was well-established as a bankruptcy attorney and was a former prosecutor, he heard noise outside his residence late at night, and he went outside to confront the gentlemen.

Apparently, a knife was involved, and a stabbing occurred, and now a conviction for manslaughter has been handed down by a jury.

I suppose it's easy enough to second-guess anybody's judgment, and hindsight is always 20/20.

But if I hear a noise outside my house that makes me seriously concerned in the future (and it's happened in the past), instead of walking out the locked door with a flashlight (which I have done), I may be more inclined to call 911 (the emergency number for the police in Phoenix) and ask them to shine their patrol car's light on the subject.

Advantages of that course of action might include not spending a lot of my life in stripes.

I don't look good in stripes. Of course, at my age, the pattern on the cloth may make less difference than it did when my hair was a different color!

Here's a link to one of the articles I have written about the unfortunate Phoenix bankruptcy lawyer Daniel Gukeisen, now convicted of manslaughter in the fatal stabbing death of a Tempe resident.

Charles Goden Has A Karate Blog, and Talks About the Karate Museum in Hawaii

2011-04-01T08:26:00.000-07:00

I recently ran into a very nice karate blog published by Charles C. Goodin (the Karate Thoughts Blog).

It discusses kata, the Hawaii Karate Museum, rare books about karate, alternative kata practice techniques ("unzipping the kata"), the importance of basic kata, and a lot of other nifty topics.

Go. Browse. Enjoy.

You can thank me later.

p.s. it occurs to me that somebody ought to do a "Gutenburg Project" with all of the rarest karate books in the world. That is, scanning the books, and posting those that are out of copyright on the internet for all the world to enjoy and read. I'll give that some additional thought.

Makiwara! Iron Geta! Heavy Bag! Video Camera! What's Wrong with this Picture?

2011-03-31T21:07:00.000-07:00

Well, nothing much, really.

Recently Sensei Koyama has taken to video taping (I guess there's really no tape; everything is digital these days) some of my kata during training sessions; then we talk about the video after class.

He is far less brutal than I am about my performance, in part because he's pleased that an aged guy who spends time being a bankruptcy lawyer during the day is still willing and able to work on kata after working to scrape off debt all day.

See, there's no way to soft-pedal the criticism of a video; either your knee is bent the proper amount, or it's not. Either your timing is correct, or it's not.

And mine; well, as often as not, not!

But I'm slowly improving, I think. Bit by bit, as Sensei Koyama says.

So today's observation is that a video camera is a remarkably useful addition to the makiwara, iron geta, heavy bag, and mats.

Here's a second observation, and it may just be me.

See, memorizing kata has never been very, very easy for me, but as an obsessive-compulsive kinda guy, I eventually got the hang of things after doing a kata a few zillion times.

Recently, Sensei Koyama has been extremely generous in teaching me; I've picked up the sequence of movements for Tekki Sandan, Tekki Nidan, and Nijushiho.

Nijushiho was an interesting challenge, because it has a bundle of movements that you'd expect to find in a Goju-ryu Kata, and it has an odd embusen.

Putting it a different way, I was so lost on the first day that...metaphors fail me. Suffice to say that my aged white head didn't want to embrace the alien movements.

Enter a second reason that video is a useful training tool, and I kicked myself for not doing this previously.

I discovered that if I watch a kata a few hunded times, I get parts of it pretty well. My muscle memory isn't there, but simply watching a magnificent karate exponent perform Nijushiho a lot made learning it a snap.

Now, I know that this is obvious. But I'm old, so cut me some slack.

And if you're young, and uncoordinated, you can use that trick to pretend that you were born with a knack for memorizing kata movements by the simple expedient of letting the kata wash over you a lot of times.

You'll pick up the sequence and the timing; at least I did.

And as the saying goes, if I can do it, anybody can do it.

AND ANOTHER THING: you have not seen me post videos on Youtube.com of me performing kata or basics or sparring, and you likely won't. Shotokan is a mature art, and there is a wealth of video instruction on the internet. Some of it is on this very blog!

But another reason that I have little enthusiasm for posting my progress is that the world is apparently full of true marital art experts, who are far superior to beginners like Sensei Nakayama and Sensei Kanazawa and Sensei Enoeda.

And when I read comments from the keyboard warriors of the world under those videos, it has what we in the law biz call a "chilling effect".

What I may wind up doing is posting videos of my inferior kata performance at some point when I'm a little more competent (gimmie five years more, okay?), just to demonstrate that Shotokan is a pretty good martial art for those who are no longer young.

We'll see. The jury is still out on that idea.

Bas Rutten Bar Fight and Jail

2011-03-27T16:27:00.000-07:00

Jail is sometimes a consequence of bar fights (which, after all, is a better consequence than death), and apparently Bas Rutten has decided to modify his behavior a bit; and since he is a smart, very funny guy, I applaud his decision, and wish him the best.

Shotokan Karate and Self Defense vs. "Lethal Street Fighting"

2011-03-27T16:09:00.000-07:00

I love listening to Bas Rutten, who is funny, smart, and fights well.

He's also honest, and on his video "Lethal Street Fighting", he demonstrates that honesty by explaining that he doesn't know a lot of great unarmed defenses against a knife.

My take on that is simple; there are darn few effective unarmed defenses against a knife, and track shoes come to mind as one of the best. Bear in mind that police officers are trained to understand that a perp with a knife can close the distance and stab the officer faster than the officer can draw and fire two rounds at center mass; that's sometimes called the 21 foot rule.

But today's discussion isn't about knives, exactly; and recall that you'll generally know that your opponent has a knife when you are already perforated extensively, because bad guys who have been to Bad Guy U. and taken good notes know that you don't wave the knife around before you use it on the Innocent, Unsuspecting Victim!

Instead, I'd like to contrast the approach that Bas Rutten takes in his video to self-defense to the approach taken by Rob Redmond, which is a good deal less flamboyant. Note that I do recommend buying the Bas Rutten video, because it highlights radically different approaches to self defense than you will hear from your Shotokan Sensei, particularly if your Sensei is somebody like Rob Redmond (who has outlined what I think of as the correct views of self-defense generally, and the correct view of Shotokan Self-Defense specifically).

Bas Rutten's video might well be titled, How To Defend Yourself After You've Done Everything Possible to Ensure that You Will Get into a Fight in a Place Where Fights are Very, Very Common. As he sets up the scenarios for his self-defense video, he starts in a bar; his first module discusses the use of objects in the bar as weapons.

Note that being in a bar is itself probably a poor idea from the perspective of self-defense; the combination of alcohol, short skirts, and pool cues has generated more fights than most other environments.

Mr. Rutten postulates situations in which a bad guy has insulted your wife or girlfriend, and then discusses interesting ways to break the leg of the insulting individual.

I'm not an expert on issues relating to criminal law, but my uneducated guess is that some jurisdictions might take a dim view of that leg-breaking activity.

Now, there are two different ways to defend yourself and your family; one is simply not taking your family to bars named "Eddie's Bucket of Blood" or "The Lay Dentistry Emporium"; they don't need to have those names. They could be called "Mom's Relaxation and Supper Club", but if all of the vehicles parked outside are Harleys, that could be a sign that you ought to find some other place to hang out.

Just a thought.

But watch this short, funny compilation of "Lethal Street Fighting", and you will learn several things: 1) Bas Rutten is a really funny, likable guy; 2) Bas Rutten has been a bouncer, and has been in a lot of fights, and has found techniques that work for him; 3) Bas Rutten takes for granted that you will take your family to bars where people routinely trade insults and knife attacks and kicks to the groin and knee, and do God Knows What with the tabasco bottle when their victim is unconscious, and 4) for Bas Rutten, a bar fight is just another day at the office.

That alone is a reason to buy the dvd, because watching somebody discuss fighting with you, as though you're his wingman going out drinking with him, provides useful information that you didn't need to pay for at the emergency room.

I don't want to disagree with any part of Bas Rutten's approach to self-defense. One of the most valuable items of information on the dvd comes at the very beginning, and I won't spoil the surprise; but Bas did a good service by pointing out something that we should all remember when a Bad Guy squares off with us, or a Bad Guy in Good Guy disguise moves inside our reaction-time zone.

Frankly, that initial throwaway bit may save your life; so the video is not a waste of time, especially because of its entertainment value.

You get to decide what technique you want to employ for self-defense; I like the approach to self-defense that Rob Redmond discusses on his great Shotokan Karate Blog.

And, frankly, the techniques of Bar-Fight-Do taught by Bas Rutten seem extremely practical and effective to me. And Bas demonstrates a greatly underestimated self-defense technique that looked like it would work first time, every time!

I just think I can win every bar fight in which I find myself by a simple expedient: not going to bars!

Also note: the need for self-defense comes also to people who have done everything right, and who just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time (for instance, they're in a post office and a guy with a machete shows up and targets them and only them).

But the "maniac with a machete" scenario, while something that can happen, is statistically far less common than a drunk in a bar with a tabasco bottle.

Should Battered Women Study Shotokan Karate to Batter their Husbands?

2011-03-20T16:34:00.000-07:00

Uh. No.

Really, really, really no.

There is a movie in which a woman uses a martial art (Krav Maga) to kick the heck out of a guy who'd worked her over. It was emotionally satisfying, and Jennifer Lopez is a pretty good actress, and her trainer taught her some pretty spiffy looking moves.

And it's a movie, not reality!

Now, I think everybody should study Shotokan Karate, because it's good for what ails ya.

It makes you more flexible, stronger, better-coordinated, and healthier. You get to meet nice people in the dojo, and you get to learn a traditional martial art, which can sometimes be effective against unprovoked unarmed violence (and less frequently, against armed attack).

That's part of the problem with battered wives and Shotokan Karate. It's an art. It's a Do, not a Jutsu.

Now, before I continue, let me say this: never break the law, ever. That's a bad thing. Determine the law in your jurisdiction, and never stray, period.

That said, there are additional reasons, besides the law, that a woman shouldn't try to slug it out with a guy who smacked her around. One is a practical problem.

Guys are typically bigger, and stronger, and full of more testosterone than women. You heard it here first.

Because of that, men are typically better fighters than women.

I'm a guy, and I'm stronger and more testosterone filled than many men. And I'm also smaller and weaker and less testosterony than many other men.

And if a seven foot tall guy grabs me and beats me up without provocation, do you think I'm going to take some extra karate classes and go back to the biker/pro-football player/spetnatz bar and call him out?

That would be a "no".

Now, anybody can get their rear end handed to them in a fight.

And anybody who goes up against somebody twice their weight, twice their height (which translates into reach), and twice their nastiness is kinda asking for a bad day in intensive care (as opposed to a Bad Day at Black Rock, one of the first movies in which a karate-style knife-hand makes its debut).

So one practical problem is that even if a woman has a high degree of ability in a marital art, she is typically at a disadvantage against a man twice her size and weight and nastiness.

So what should a battered wife do?

Maybe the same thing I'd do if somebody beat the living thingamajig out of me for no very good reason.

Find allies and a safe place to heal!

A battered wife in Arizona will find a lot of institutional and legal support, and there is some chance that some time in the slammer may be useful for hubby/boyfriend/first date.

Now, some guys have a screw lose, and that's both sad and true.

I once had an acquaintance who was a nice lady with a stalker, and she had no clue how to deal with him.

Fortunately, her dad was former FBI, and when daughter moved to the city where Dad lived, the spontaneous visits from the Crazy Guy stopped as soon as Dad had a talk with Crazy Guy. My guess is that the talk was punctuated with visual aids that involved little purple stars dancing on a black background, but I have no actual knowledge, only speculation.

Do I think women are weak? Heck, no. Who do you think defended the castles when the Crusaders went forth to rescue the Holy Land?

On the other hand, slugging it out tends to cause repeat engagements. Guys who are humiliated in a fight may well have a psychological need to even the score, or more.

And that's a bad thing.

So in addition to seeking allies among the police, my thought is that a battered woman should also seek out other battered women who found strategies that worked for them. Then take their advice. Consider whether "leaving the moron" might be the best possible strategy advised.

After all, if you want to get a particular result, and you can find somebody else who got that result, it can shorten the learning curve remarkably.

That said, if you're battered and you want some self-confidence back, Shotokan Karate is a pretty decent place to work on your physical self-confidence.

Knowing that you have some tools in the toolbox, like a remarkable side-kick, or a fantastically fast elbow, or a front snap kick that often scores in contests is a good thing for self-confidence.

But I know something that I learned from tough guys who are really tough, not keyboard warriors; any weapon is better than no weapon at all.

And this is also true: no weapon or technique works at without the will to use it.

And on this topic, Shotokan Blogger Rob Redmond has, as always, two useful bodies of thought: one is about self-defense (and I agree with every single thing he says about self-defense), and he also talks about women who have been battered who embark on the study of Shotokan Karate.

And his post is full of wisdom, Grasshopper. No kidding. Read it.

In general, fighting is a poor way to try to deal with relationship issues.

The Japanese Tsunami, Japanese Culture and Shotokan Karate

2011-03-14T09:14:00.000-07:00

There is a tragedy playing itself out in Japan; a natural disaster of gigantic proportions has stuck the country.

The sea has not always been unkind to Japan; it owes its existence to the "Divine Wind" that destroyed the Mongol invasion fleet from China.

But nature has been unkind to Japan recently, almost as unkind as World War II, which saw the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

And World War II was unkind to karate; it destroyed Sensei Funakoshi's beloved dojo, and killed many of his students.

So when he was old, Sensei Funakoshi conceived his greatest work; sending forth karate missionaries to the dark corners of the world to spread the Gospel of Shotokan Karate, and of Japanese Culture. Gichen Funakoshi believed that Shotokan Karate was a perfect vehicle for spreading the benefits of Japanese Culture to the world.

It's hard to criticize his logic, because Shotokan Karate is well-established in backwater sites like...Phoenix, Arizona! And Sensei Koyama was trained, among others, by Sensei Nakayama, who was trained by Sensei Funakoshi.

Students of Sensei Funakoshi have opened their own dojos, and they also teach Shotokan Karate in Arizona.

Now, don't get me wrong. I love Western European Culture. A lot.

But Shojiro Koyama is my Sensei, and my constant companion during my years of philosophical explorations was The Essentials of Zen Buddhism, so I have seen the best of Japanese Culture.

Is it perfect? Well, is Western European Culture? The answer has to be no.

Does Japanese Culture have admirable qualities?

Let's do a quick reality check: if Los Angeles had been the target of one of the worst earthquakes in history, with a side dish of Tsunami, would there have been rioting and looting?

And now let's go to Japan; earthquake with a side order of Tsunami.

Rioting?

That would be "no".

Kangeiko 2011: Be There or Be Square!

2011-01-22T14:20:00.000-08:00

Kangeiko means to train in the coldest part of the year, which is usually in February.

The Arizona Karate Association is holding its Kangeiko training on February 18, 19, and 20th at the Phoenix Central Dojo.

Go to the Official Website of the Arizona Karate Association website to read more.

What, you're still here?

p.s. Yeah, I know; we in Phoenix, Arizona believe that it's cold when our soda pop doesn't evaporate instantly when we open the can. But it's cold by our standards in Phoenix in February. German tourists, of course, are sunbathing while we're shivering!

Andre Bertel Posted Some Videos!

2011-01-15T17:10:00.001-08:00

I really like Andre Bertel's website, and I'm pleased that he just posted a bundle of videos.

Enjoy!

The Top Ten Shotokan Karate Blog Posts, Chosen by You!

2011-01-08T08:10:00.001-08:00

These are the posts that have gotten the most views. Enjoy!

Karate Gi Reviews for Shotokan Karate in Phoenix, Arizona-During Monsoon Season!
Some dojos are more traditional than others. When Sensei Shojiro Koyama began teaching in Phoenix 44 years ago, he was a lowly 4th degree bl...
Shotokan and Wado Karate Bunkai and Iain Abernethy
Shotokan Karate has a good characteristic: it takes about a decade of steady training under a very good instructor to become competent in th...
Bunkai for the Karate Kata Jion
The Karate Kata named Jion used to look boring to me. It has no flashy techniques, no extreme athletic excesses. But Sensei Koyama decided ...
Karate Gi Review Marathon; my 1968 Tokaido Gi vs. my Meijin Gis, part II
Okay, so I decided to take another look. My 1968 Tokaido gi is still in great shape, after being worn and washed under horrific conditions ...
Real Fights vs. Kata in Karate
Let's start with definitions, because good definitions make good conclusions, like good fences make good neighbors. In my dictionary, a re...
Police Combatives Compared to Shotokan Karate; Why Fighting With Police Officers is a BAAAAAAAD Idea.
I have the honor of counting several police officers among my friends. And they are heroes, each and every one. Their job description involv...
So You Lost Your Fight With the Cop. Duhhhhh. Now What'cha Gonna Do? Painter Jitsu? 52 Blocks?
It is predictable that no matter what martial art you study, you will routinely fail to win a fight with a cop. We've covered that previousl...
The Correct Use of Shotokan Karate Kata
Let's clear this up once and for all. Is the correct use of Shotokan Karate Kata as a demonstration technique, for simple show? Or is it a...
Shotokan Karate vs. Defendu/Defendo, All-in Fighting, and Scientific Self-Defense (the Fairbairn Syllabus); World War II Combatives
CAUTION: THE SYSTEM OF WORLD WAR II COMBATIVES DESCRIBED IN CONNECTION WITH THE SYLLABUS OF CAPTAIN W.E. FAIRBAIRN TAUGHT DURING WORLD WAR I...
Part of the Fun of Training Shotokan Karate in Phoenix in 114 Degrees
And no, the heat is currently not a dry heat. This is Monsoon Season in Phoenix, and if your gi doesn't wick, that's a bad thing. On the...

Biting for Fighting

2010-12-30T09:45:00.000-08:00

First, never bite in a fight; bad guys get tattoos in places that aren't as clean and hygenic as the Blue Dragon Tattoo Parlor. And therefore, they are more likely to harbor blood-borne diseases than ordinary folks.

So biting them may kill you, you know? Eventually.

On the other hand, if you are trapped underneath a 300-pound gorilla who is drooling, sweating, and yelling, "Gonna kill ya, boy! Gonna kill ya, boy! Gonna kill ya, boy!", you may want to calmly and dispassionately balance the possible long-term risks of blood-borne diseases against the certainty of immediate death.

Your choice, of course.

Now, the idea of biting frankly never crossed my mind in connection with martial arts, because, well, I was studying martial arts!

But even excellent martial arts instructors like Morio Higaonna, in his Goju Ryu Bunkai Series of Videos, discussed the biting applications embedded in Goju Ryu Karate Kata.

And yes, that surprised me a good deal.

In addition, James Painter, who I have discussed previously, explained in his dvd the way that biting can be applied in real fights, and my strong impression is that he speaks as one who has some real-world experience in this area of knowledge.

A lot of real-world experience, actually.

And he believes that biting in a particular way can have an effect on the inner state of an opponent, including the opponent's willingness to continue to fight. I think it has something to do with "chi", but I could be wrong.

And Paul Vunak, who is very knowledgeable, discussed the specific technique that he believes may be most useful when pinned, in one of his "Street Safe" Videos.

And he believes that if you apply the technique correctly, it could function well as an escape-from-underneath tool, because your three-hundred pound opponent would levitate when you released him.

Now, I am not going to discuss the specific techniques of biting in a fight; I have above discussed the opinions of experts, and you should consult them if you believe your biting skills need, well, sharpening.

Biting is the most common way that animals defend themselves, because the teeth of many animals are very effective weapons. By comparison with a lion, of course, humans are toothless.

And a police dog bites with about 750 pounds of pressure, I'm told, and a pit bull about twice that. Or so I've read.

By comparison, human bites have a series of limitations; one is that you have to be very, very close to an opponent to bite them.

Your opponent may, on the other hand, have chosen to be very, very close to you!

If there is no other option, you may want to have that last-ditch technique in your toolbox; the Chinese apparently plugged it into their tiger-style forms, and you will hear that fact from Mario Higaonna if you choose to do so.

Biting is a technique that I would never recommend to anyone, because if it works, you'll be sued by Nine-finger Jack for his loss of job as a lathe-operator, and if it doesn't work, you might have made him angry, you know?

But if I am ever unlucky enough to be waaaaaaaaay too close to an opponent, and have less strength, stamina, and technique than that opponent, and I hear the ever-popular chant, "Gonna kill ya, boy" coming from very, very close, I might be glad that I'd screened the materials referenced above.

After a careful, dispassionate weighing and balancing of potential health risks, of course.

Merry Christmas Eve! Here's a Flash Mob Singing Handel!

2010-12-23T09:57:00.000-08:00

And you're right: this has nothing whatsoever to do with Shotokan Karate.

I just liked this video!

On the other hand, I suppose we could put together a flash mob that does "Kanku-dai", because that kata is very pretty.

I'll think about it.

SHOTOKAN TOURNAMENT COMING! 46th Annual WSKC Saturday October, 23 2010

2010-10-16T16:33:00.000-07:00

46th Annual WSKC Saturday October, 23 2010!!! That's the Western States Karate Tournament, and it's the 46th Tournament in the series.

BE THERE OR BE SQUARE!

Look on the RIGHT hand side of the webpage for information.

No, your other right!

Here's a link to the site to sign up!

So You Lost Your Fight With the Cop. Duhhhhh. Now What'cha Gonna Do? Painter Jitsu? 52 Blocks?

2010-10-03T17:10:00.000-07:00

It is predictable that no matter what martial art you study, you will routinely fail to win a fight with a cop. We've covered that previously. And that's how it should be.

But suppose you didn't read my post about not fighting with cops, or you got caught with a sawed-off shotgun?

And suppose you wanted your Day In Court, until you got it?

And suppose you got nice striped jammies and were sent to a place where you got all the green bologna you could eat, and the other kids there didn't want to play nice?

Putting it another way, what if you get sent to The Big House and you don't know how to fight?

Well, you shouldn't have to fight in prison if you don't want to, because when you're sent to jail, you should either be getting rehabilitation (which doesn't work) or education (which normally doesn't work) or punishment (which seems to work on some folks, and not on others; but the punishment should be consistent, which means that the prisons should be so structured that you don't have to fight. But that's just my opinion).

Now, I haven't been to jail or prison, but some people I know who've had the pleasure tell me that they had to learn to fight there. I know another gentleman who used all the techniques in How to Win Friends and Influence People and became lifelong buddies with his mates and jailers (but that was a low-security prison, and the people there were pretty nice guys, who mostly didn't know how to fight).

If I had a buddy who wanted to learn to fight for realsies, I would not suggest that he try to learn Shotokan Karate in the two weeks prior to his incarceration. Because Shotokan Karate is a wonderful system, and provides good-quality exercise, conditioning, and self defense, but it has a very long learning curve! You'll recall that I see that as a benefit, not a detriment.

I don't know James Painter, but he seems like a very smart, very tough guy on his video (which is called ROCK & ROLL PRISON FIGHTING SYSTEMS). He also seemed like a very nice person, which shows that some people can take whatever life gives them and turn it into lemonade.

James concluded that his traditional martial arts experiences were of limited utility to him in prison fights, for a lot of reasons.

For one thing, there were no weight classes, time periods, referees, or rules.

In fact, fights in prison were remarkably similar to, you know, real fights!

So there was James, in prison on a sawed-off shotgun beef, and he says he didn't know how to fight for real, even though he'd studied a lot of martial arts.

What to do? What to do?

Well, the Spanish have a proverb, which I learned from the movie Zorro: when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.

And James Painter found Skip, and the rest is history.

Now, James Painter is an articulate guy, and a good teacher. He expresses himself well, and talks about the requirements for a prison fighting system. For instance, it should require essentially no time to learn, because a con has no time to study. It should be effective, because otherwise, why bother? It should require little to zero practice, because few prisons have good-quality dojo. It should require little equipment, because those pesky guards shake down the cells at irregular intervals.

You know the Theory of Convergent Evolution?

Yeah. Neither do I.

But it seems to me that the Fairbairn Syllabus has a lot in common with Painter Jitsu, for obvious reasons. Similar requirements, because neither one involves the luxury of a long learning curve, and neither one involves the use, primarily, of weapons, because the whole reason for learning the system is that you don't have the use of your primary weapon system! And each system needs to be effective, first time, every time.

I'm not going to give away James Painter's techniques, because he earned 'em, and you wouldn't believe that they'd work if I told you, because who am I?

But I watched his video, and I became convinced that about half of the techniques he taught, with virtually no practice, could end many a donnybrook, leaving you on top. Mind you, the techniques might make your stay in prison longer, because they are not very nice, sweet or polite techniques, no matter how effective they may be.

I'm not at all certain about the other half of the techniques he teaches, but my theory is that if you go to a seminar or watch a video and learn ONE technique that's gonna go in your permanent toolbox, you got a bargain.

This video has at least five and maybe as many as ten techniques and variations that you might wanna have in a bad situation, and those techniques require no practice to maintain, nor athletic ability to implement. And I had not seen some of them previously, and I've been reading and studying this stuff since my arm was broken for me in 5th Grade!

Actually, one of the techniques he applies in his video against an assailant using boxing techniques is implied in Yang Style Long Form Tai Chi Chuan. I always wondered how that move was used!

The techniques on his video that I don't much like are those that seem to require substantial practice or substantial agility and athletic ability.

The rest require nothing but watching his video, and yeah, I suggest you watch it. Never use the techniques to defend yourself or others, of course, because you may live in a jurisdiction where self-defense is illegal, especially if it's effective.

But if I found out that I was going on an unplanned, all-expenses-paid vacation to Green Bologna Heaven for some period of time, I would probably want to do two different things.

I'd want to re-read How to Win Friends and Influence People.

Some places, you just wanna make friends!

And I'd seriously consider buying an intensive series of private classes from Mr. Painter in Painter Jitsu, because the learning curve looks short. And his system looks very effective.

And in Green Bologna Heaven, maybe Priceless!

p.s. There is a much-rumored, written-about, speculated-upon but never-seen prison fighting system that goes by the name of 52 Blocks. I would have liked to have discussed it here, but I am unaware of anybody who actually teaches it, and have not yet found much more than speculation about it on the internet.

If somebody knows of a dvd explaining and teaching such a coherent system, I'd love to watch it and review it and compare it to Mr. Painter's style.

p.p.s. I read some folks talking on the Internet who seemed to want to question whether Mr. Painter had actually been in prison, and whether there really was a Skip, and similar issues. Here's my vote: it makes precisely no difference whatsoever. Actually, if Skip didn't exist, that would make Mr. Painter even more extraordinary, because that would mean he had invented a bundle of interesting techniques and stuck 'em them together to form a system. The only relevant line of inquiry, at least in my book, is this: are these techniques effective, and can they be learned in the time it takes to watch them?

And I'd give fully half of 'em a thumbs-up in both of those categories.

Oh, yeah. Mr. Painter's dvd is cheap as dirt; seems like a bargain to me. It is absolutely not a "me, too" kind of martial arts dvd. That is, Mr. Painter does not start by saying, "This is how you make a fist", or "First you must break your opponent's balance".

Finally, the sorts of techniques Painter teaches are absolutely, positively inapplicable to MMA competitions, or any sorts of friendly competitions, sort of like The Fairbairn Syllabus.

Police Combatives Compared to Shotokan Karate; Why Fighting With Police Officers is a BAAAAAAAD Idea.

2010-09-19T16:14:00.000-07:00

I have the honor of counting several police officers among my friends. And they are heroes, each and every one. Their job description involves jumping in front of bullets for our sake, and I appreciate every single day that they get up and go to work.

Many of us have difficult or stressful jobs, and we whine frequently about them. I certainly do!

Few of us have jobs in which sudden, violent death is a daily opportunity.

But police officers have a unique view of fighting, utterly different from that of a hobbyist, or even of a professional martial artist (and that includes professional boxers). Depending on whether they're a beat cop, a motorcycle cop, or a detective, and depending on their geographic locale, they have the opportunity to observe and experience actual, factual fights far more often than the average bear. Four times a day, for instance.

Sometimes they get to watch as a bad guy swings at their head with the usual roundhouse right. Sometimes they get to separate a couple of guys fighting, and then the former combatants decide that they have found a common enemy! Sometimes a cop gets to stop a wife from getting beaten down, and while the cop is cuffing the perp, the wife is banging on the cop's head from behind with a cast-iron skillet.

Remember, a soldier gets to engage in hand-to-hand combat, but only if something has gone horribly wrong, and he's out of weapons or ammo.

For a cop, a violent fistfight with a guy with murderous intent who outweighs him by a hundred pounds of muscle means that Wednesday afternoon has arrived at last! Wonder what's for dinner?

So the perspective on fighting is different if you're a cop. For him, or her, it's a job! Or an ordinary part of the job, in any case.

That's just not true of ordinary civilians or military.

So cops have developed coping mechanisms for dealing with fights, and with the probability of a fight.

Recall that most ordinary, sane people, who are not drunk as skunks, or insane with sorrow or rage, do not usually make a decision to fight with a police officer, because duhhhh.

That leaves the chemically impaired, the nutjobs, the terminally bad and bored, hubbies or wifies who have poor verbal coping mechanisms, and hard-core bad guys who will do anything to avoid going back to the joint. Or to entertain themselves prior to going back to the joint, where they know they will end their days. So might as well have fun right now!

Police Officers do not welcome fights.

Fights may require paperwork.

And fights can and do damage cops, and they know that. All of them bear some souvenir from a struggle with a perp that went sideways and required quiet time to heal.

Now, a cop goes into a donnybrook with certain advantages, although certainly not enough advantages for my taste. I'd give the poor guy a howitzer, a bazooka, and a fifty-caliber machine gun, but I don't run things.

A cop is authorized to use force on the job when it is justified, both by law and internal procedural rules.

Since an officer has to make the decision frequently, the officer is able to do that without the mental dithering that assails the rest of us ("Gee, he sure looks like he's going to swing at me! I wonder if I should try to talk him down. Perhaps if I offered him my wallet or an apolo..." BLAMMO!).

And he can tell the signs that a slugfest is about to ensue, because he's had experiences when he failed to do so and woke up wondering what day it was and who was President.

And he has training, ranging from excellent to lousy. And he will normally put on gloves that will protect his hands from blood-borne pathogens, because this is a job for him. In exactly the same way that a medical doctor will put on gloves for intrusive exams, or an electrical worker will pull on non-conductive gloves.

For their jobs.

Let's go back over this: a police officer has had a lot of experience with fights, and he has some training, and he is authorized to use force to protect himself and others.

So when the perp swings and misses, or swings and hits, and starts swarming toward the officer's sidearm, the police officer doesn't take it personally.

Remember, all that means is that it's Wednesday!

So then the officer pushes the perp back (or himself back, if the perp weighs three hundred pounds of steroidal muscle) and acquires a tool from his tool belt in order to complete the particular job at hand.

GET IT?

To a cop, the altercation is just a day in the office, and part of a job. He (or she) has tools for the job, ranging from a baton to a Taser to the cuffs to a sidearm.

And they are just tools; he uses them exactly the way a carpenter uses a square, or a hammer, or a saw.

What's the job? Then we use this tool, or that tool. Or the other tool.

In the same way that a cowboy, for instance, will use tools like a lariet to control a calf, and spurs and bridle to control the horse. Or a doctor uses a tool like a hemostat to control bleeding.

That is such a completely different mindset from the general public that it took me until now to understand it.

The only time in my adult life that a steroidal, neck-vein throbbing man-mountain ever squared off with me I was lucky; he didn't swing much, and I didn't die much.

But I was fully switched on; there's nothing like the dawning realization of a threat of immediate, apparently unavoidable violence with somebody thirty years younger and fifty pounds heavier to get your blood pumping!

Trust me on this one. And I learned interesting things about my own autonomic responses that you can't learn in a tournament or a friendly sparring session.

But recently I have come to understand this: a policeman has an advantage over most perps because he has no ego at all involved in the fight. He doesn't care if his buddies think he's tough (by the way, he is).

He doesn't care about the esthetic qualities of his baton strike; he cares about whether the blow to the perp's leg caused the termination of an immediate threat. He doesn't care if his shot with the Taser makes him look like a cowboy; he cares whether it stops the attack upon him or the civilian vic.

And because it's just a job, he just does it, and he's very, very effective at his job. Or hers, as the case may be. And pretty efficient, as well, just as a doctor becomes efficient at stopping bleeds during surgery. After a little practice, you know?

And there are a lot of different approaches to the specific techniques of Police Combatives, because they aren't religious beliefs-they get tested a lot on the street; there are a lot of different ways for a doctor to stop a bleed, as well, including hemostats, pressure, chemical powders, and electro-coagulation. And those are just different approaches to doing a job, like the toolbox available to police.

And policemen don't exactly practice a martial art, like karate-do. Police Combatives is a jutsu, because whatever they're trying to do out there, it ain't to look pretty, or become enlightened, or do calisthenics to improve their flexibility or strength or endurance.

They're just trying to make sure that when the shift is finally over, they make it home at night.

Here in Arizona, sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't.

And may angels sing them to their rest when they don't make it, and may God make His face to shine upon them.

Because if anybody deserves it, they do.

Real Fights vs. Kata in Karate

2010-08-07T09:44:00.001-07:00

Let's start with definitions, because good definitions make good conclusions, like good fences make good neighbors.

In my dictionary, a real fight

1) is not voluntary. If you can walk or run or snivel or apologize away from it, and you fight anyway, it's not a real fight (note; this doesn't suggest that you can run away from a fight and leave your poor mother/sister/wife to the whims of the evil bikers, because sometimes you gotta fight, period. Don't wait until you've received your first head butt, right? Which means don't let 'em get that close!);

2) involves two guys who are really trying to take each other out. A status fistfight at the local bar, where everybody knows your name, doesn't count as a real fight. That's because neither guy is trying to kill or maim the other guy, since they know there will be consequences (there are always errors in calibration, of course, but the perp generally didn't mean to kill the vic in those circumstances, which is cold comfort to the widow);

3) does not involve pajamas or referees, and normally does not involve bare feet, although there are those occasional beach blanket slugfests;

4) does not involve an altercation between two martial artists trained in the same style. In specific, it's not a boxing match, a wrestling match, or a karate tournament, although all of those can result in major injuries or death. But they're still just plain clean fun compared to real fights. Note that in sparring matches, there are feints, and those work on other guys trained the way you were trained. Feints are, generally speaking, invisible to guys who didn't get trained the way you did. If you do a shoulder fake with a non-boxer, he doesn't see it, and a conditioned response does not result, and your head gets taken off at the shoulders by his untrained giant roundhouse right hand;

5) does not involve sixteen three-minute rounds, or any other time periods. Generally, a real fight is very short. One guy (the vic) gets clipped by a right hand and he goes down. One guy (the perp) jumps up and down on him twice. Total time, seven seconds. Note that Jack Dempsey, who had a buncha experience in real fights as well as being heavyweight boxing champion, pointed out that the longer a real fight lasted, the better chance that you had of getting hurt, so it was important to wrap up a real fight fast. My guess is that Jack Dempsey is a source of valuable knowledge in the area of real fights, given that he had as many real fights as most guys had lunches.

Now let's look at karate kata. They are defined, in contrast to real fights, by

1) a totally predictable outcome, and the complete absence of chaos (unless I'm performing a Kata for my Shotokan belt rank exam, in which case anything goes);

2) pajamas, judges, smooth polished floor, and bare feet;

3) the performance of a sequence of techniques which somebody strung together at some unspecified time in the past in order to pass along functional defensive and offensive techniques to those who came after.

Now, here's the secret, which has become less secret over time: kata are very useful.

They aren't useful in that "I'll practice my kata a thousand times and then win in sparring tournaments everywhere" sort of way.

Kata won't help you learn to spar.

Sorry, you heard it here first.

Kata may help you survive; they are not designed for sparring, they are designed to help you survive in the context of a real fight with a non-martial artist who is unloading on you big time.

Note: if I'm wrong, it won't be the first time.

Note: I'm not wrong. Of course, I didn't think I was wrong before, but this is different.

Okay, a kata in Shotokan Karate is generally a complete fighting system in condensed form: just add sweat.

If you want, you can quibble that the Heian Kata (formerly Pinan Kata, and still Pinan in some systems) don't constitute a complete system; but, as usual, you are wrong, Grasshopper!

You just have to look at the five Heian Kata as one kata. Satisfied? Ditto Tekki.

It's easy to see how a kata like Kanku-dai, the longest kata in the Shotokan Syllabus, might have within it a complete fighting system. It's a little harder with the Tekki Kata.

But Choki Motobu referred to those kata, and more, as "systems" of fighting, and he was a pretty smart, and pretty tough, guy. And according to tradition, he normally practiced only the Bassai-dai and Tekki kata, and they worked just fine for him.

And when you watch the Iain Abernethy Bunkai-Jutsu series of dvds, you will come to understand that each of the major kata contain a complete system of fighting, and at the very least, contain answers to various pressing questions like, "what do I do now that the bad guy has grabbed my forward wrist and is punching the heck out of me with his right fist, owww, owww, owwwie?"

Now, if Shotokan is a complete system of fighting, and if each of the kata in the Shotokan Syllabus contain a different and complete system of fighting, what does that mean?

Well, it means that there's a lot to learn, if you want to learn it.

The syllabus of Shotokan Karate clearly includes kihon, basic technique.

And frankly, if you only practice kihon for twenty years, you're likely to be a pretty fell fighter.

But wait! There's more!

There's also Shotokan sparring, which is sort of a brand-new martial art built by Sensei Nakayama.

And it's a lot like old bare-knuckle boxing, with kicks and sweeps added in for fun, and a lot of safety rules (like "not in the face! not in the face!"). Shotokan sparring does not include some of the throws used in old bare knuckle boxing, which were among the most punishing techniques in that really rough sport.

But Shotokan sparring is a darned effective martial art. If you are a consistent tournament winner in JKA Shotokan Karate Tournaments, you're probably a pretty good fighter.

Are you Superman? No. Will you fight well if somebody hits you very hard from behind with a skateboard? No.

But you can protect yourself from fast, straight punches, you can move, and you can generate powerful and fast kicks and punches; and that ain't bad for starters.

But the Shotokan Syllabus contains an entire universe of fighting technique in addition to sparring techniques (including all the throws shown in the Master Text, and more), and the real magic is in the kata.

So find a kata that you love, and figure out the bunkai. As of today, there are a fair number of bunkai videos about kata in the Shotokan Syllabus on the Internet, particularly on youtube.com, and if you start with Iain Abernethy's dvds, you can't go far wrong.

Once you have dug out the applications to the kata that you love, practice that kata, with those applications in your mind, about two million times over the next twenty years.

Why the kata you love? Well, because if you don't love it, you won't do it!

And throw in all the supplemental exercises on the makiwara and heavy bag and double ended bag you like. Can't hurt, probably do some good, you know?

And when I said "can't hurt", you knew that wasn't true, right?

p.s. my model for a "real fight" involves two guys. Bear in mind that a real fight may, after the initial passage-at-arms, involve everybody in the joint, including very pretty Japanese girls with very pointy shoes, who will kick you again and again in the head. See "Angry White Pajamas" if you don't believe me.

So don't get in fights in bars, and if you do, don't. Get the heck out of Dodge. You do not get a raise in pay for winning a fight in a bar. You do not get a pay raise for losing a fight in a bar. So don't spend your time getting in fights in bars.

p.p.s. there are studies which seem to indicate that drinking alcohol in moderate amounts may extend your lifespan a bit, if you are not predisposed to become an alcoholic.

There are also studies that indicate that if you spend all your time in a bar with pool tables and pool cues("means"), pretty girls with very few clothes and lots of tattoos ("motive"), your chances of getting sucker-punched and hit with a club ("opportunity") go up rather dramatically.

Church socials. Church socials, I tell you. Much, much safer.

Oh, sure, the hand-cranked ice cream can give you diabetes. But it takes a very long time!

And you can burn off the ice-cream sugar and carb calories doing lots of kata!

p.p.p.s. You do understand the conclusion here, right? Practicing the right kata in the right way can help improve the chances that you'll survive a real fight, although it will not improve your sparring even a little bit.

p.p.p.p.s. My model of a real fight involves two guys (a "fair" fight model, even though the bad guy will outweigh you by a hundred and fifty). I do not include in my definition of a "real fight" a contest at arms between one guy and two guys, or one guy and three guys, or one guy and four guys. Because with very few exceptions, that is not a fight. It's a massacre.

Probably final p.s. I have a buddy who is a remarkably tough guy. He was once beaten and stomped at a construction site by a dozen guys, after one sneaked around to his back and nailed him with a blackjack while he was distracted by a guy in front.

He is not in the least shy about moving so that people are not behind him. He doesn't care if people around him think he is eccentric. He simply didn't like that painful experience, and is willing to to anything that it takes to prevent it from happening again.

Which makes a fair amount of sense to me.

The Correct Use of Shotokan Karate Kata

2010-07-22T22:04:00.000-07:00

Let's clear this up once and for all.

Is the correct use of Shotokan Karate Kata as a demonstration technique, for simple show? Or is it an aerobic exercise, a little like windsprints? Or is the Shotokan Kata Syllabus a complete library of multiple systems of self defense techniques, kept intact as an encoded memory device to help keep multiple generations of karate teachers aware of the techniques that formed the core of their system? Is its proper use similar to shadowboxing in western-style gloved boxing? Or is every single kata an efficient way to transmit a complete system of fighting, without omitting important techniques? Or is the kata most properly used as a series of health exercises, a little like Tai Chi, but friskier? Or are the kata spiritual exercises that can be performed to change your internal state, like a cross between Tai Chi and seated meditation?

Well, yes.

Part of the Fun of Training Shotokan Karate in Phoenix in 114 Degrees

2010-07-15T21:04:00.000-07:00

And no, the heat is currently not a dry heat.

This is Monsoon Season in Phoenix, and if your gi doesn't wick, that's a bad thing.

On the other hand, just down the street at 20th Street and Camelback Road, there's a place that teaches "Hot Yoga"; there, you pay extra for the heat, you know?

Summer Camp Coming up Fast, in Cool Payson, Arizona!

2010-07-06T21:14:00.000-07:00

Below I've copied the info about the Arizona Karate Association's 31st Summer Camp; and here's a link to the official website of the Arizona Karate Association, so you can sign up!

Enjoy yourselves; it'll be fun!

31st Annual Summer Camp 2010

2010 Western Region Summer Camp Payson, AZ

Friday, July 16, 2010 Please download -- > 31ST ANNUAL WESTERN REGION SUMMER CAMP.pdf

We are holding our Annual Summer Camp again this year in Payson from July 16-18. As you know, Payson’s beautiful scenery has much to offer, especially the breathtaking views from its Mogollon Rim. Our training this year will take place at the Tonto Recreational Center near the Casino on the Indian reservation, the same as last year.

What is the difference between regular training and Summer Camp? In the Dojo, standard classes are one hour per class. Training at Summer Camp is normally two hours each class, morning and afternoon.

We begin each day by meeting at 4:30 a.m. for a session of meditation at a random beautiful location just outside of Payson. This activity, although not mandatory, is well-worth your participation, as it teaches mental and physical self-control in addition to time management. It helps you find that peaceful place inside you. There are so many personal benefits; you must experience at least once to know what you may be missing.

After a day’s exercise, students can drive back to their accommodations on a road that can be rather tricky to navigate. Therefore, after each session of training you will need to recover your strength. Rebounding from fatigue is an important subject of the camp; I will teach you how to rebuild your strength as well as how to breathe with a technique of Chinese origin called Kiko.

As in our Winter and Spring camps, some students from Mexico want to join us, and are returning for Summer Camp because they are interested in its program. Our itinerary includes both a Kyu and a Dan Exam. So by all means, please attend and enjoy this training.

I will see you there.

Shojiro Koyama

SPONSORED BY:

SENSEI SHOJIRO KOYAMA &

THE ARIZONA KARATE ASSOC.

JULY 16 - 18, 2010

TONTO APACHE RECREATION

CENTER

PAYSON, ARIZONA

2010 SUMMER CAMP SCHEDULE.pdf

Shotokan Karate vs. Defendu/Defendo, All-in Fighting, and Scientific Self-Defense (the Fairbairn Syllabus); World War II Combatives

2010-07-03T13:21:00.000-07:00

CAUTION: THE SYSTEM OF WORLD WAR II COMBATIVES DESCRIBED IN CONNECTION WITH THE SYLLABUS OF CAPTAIN W.E. FAIRBAIRN TAUGHT DURING WORLD WAR II ARE MILITARY COMBAT TECHNIQUES. NEVER USE THEM, BECAUSE YOU WILL HURT SOMEBODY A LOT. EVEN IN THE HANDS OF AN UNTRAINED CIVILIAN, THE FAIRBAIRN SYLLABUS CAN CAUSE SERIOUS BODILY HARM AND DEATH. CONSULT LOCAL LAW TO DETERMINE WHAT IS PERMITTED UNDER THE LAWS OF YOUR JURISDICTION IN THE WAY OF SELF-DEFENSE. YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE TO UNDERSTAND THE LAWS OF SELF-DEFENSE AND THE AUTHOR OF THIS ARTICLE TAKES NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR HARM TO YOU OR OTHERS IN CONNECTION WITH THE TECHNIQUES DISCUSSED BELOW.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Some people know more than you do. Listen to them.

So says the "Most Interesting Man in the World" beer commercial, which make me laugh uncontrollably; in fact, the Most Interesting Man in the World also has a comment about appropriate techniques for use in self-defense.

Well, if anybody ever knew a lot about fighting, and sorted through techniques that worked and didn't work, that would have been Captain W.E. Fairbairn, who assembled the techniques and the syllabus sometimes referred to as the system of "World War II Combatives".

As an aside, the Germans pooped in their pants when they became aware that the good guys were training in the Fairbairn combatives techniques, and they gave Fairbairn the supreme compliment of publishing a book of counters to the Fairbairn syllabus.

Captain Fairbairn was given a task that was simple. But not easy. His mission impossible, if he agreed to accept it, was to turn everyone in Great Britain, starting with the Commandos, and then the various armed forces, and then the civilian population, into trained and brutally effective hand-to-hand combatants.

In about an hour. Maybe a week or two, if it was the commandos.

Now, that's not a project that would be given to just anybody. And Captain Fairbairn wasn't just anybody.

His flyleaf biography points out that he was the first foreigner (their word, not mine) to be awarded the "Black Belt Degree" from the Kodokan. And was then awarded Second Dan.

You think that took moxie in 1931?

Uh, yeah.

He also studied Chinese Boxing. And everything else.

He also assembled and trained and managed the first Swat Teams, called "Riot Squads", in Shanghai, where he had been beaten and left for dead by a gang of Triads; I think that was a motivating factor for him in studying various forms of unarmed and armed offense and defense.

Still, even if you know every variety of attack and defense (and there's nothing new under the sun, kiddies), the real challenge is how to decide what to teach troops going into harm's way in World War II.

And the decision making project is a huge one, primarily because they needed to be very effective at killing their opponents during World War II because, well, it was war, not cricket!

Apparently it was somewhat difficult to get the British past the whole "fair fight" kind of mentality, and into the "killing by attacking the attacker" point of view.

Recap: Captain William Fairbairn, after thirty years service with the Riot Squads of the Shanghai Municipal Police, which he trained and organized, was tasked with turning farmboys into professional killers, with their hands, knives, sticks and firearms.

And then with turning the postman back home into a professional killer; and the milkman, and the waitress.

World War II was special; read about it sometime.

So the obvious difference between Shotokan Karate and Defendu, the Fairbairn system, was the syllabus, which in the case of Shotokan Karate is gigantic, and in the case of Defendu in its most refined form a maximum of thirty-one unarmed techniques, and in all about forty-five techniques, because unlike modern Shotokan Karate, it did teach the use of weapons (including the Smatchet and the F-S Fighting Knife, which was really more of a killing knife than a fighting knife), and the use of sticks or even umbrellas as weapons.

But Fairbairn went further, and suggested that instead of learning the thirty or so unarmed techniques adequately, the combatant learn about ten very, very well.

He did not teach breakfalls or groundfighting to troops going to war, for reasons that seem well thought-out to me. He understood breakfalls and groundfighting very well, thank you, because he was a second-dan Judoka, of course.

But here's the primary difference between the Fairbairn Syllabus and fighting system, and the Shotokan Syllabus: the philosophy and purpose of the discipline.

In Japanese terms, Fairbairn taught a Jutsu, and Shotokan teaches a Do.

And Shotokan has developed as a martial art with a defensive philosophy over the years, based partly on the translation of the one of the maxims known as "The Dojo Kun", which includes "Refrain From Violent Behavior".

And Defendu is certainly violent behavior, which advocates pre-emptive attacks upon an opponent when you believe yourself in danger. The Fairbairn fighting system is almost the definition of violent behavior!

And that, as you certainly noticed, is the other massive philosophical difference between "There is no first strike in karate" Shotokan, and "do unto others first and fast and worst, then get out" philosophy of Defendu.

As an aside, note that Fairbairn wrote several books. They included a book of self defense for women, a book about self defense in wartime, a book primarily aimed at policemen and civilians in moderately safe environments (that book includes more defensive and restraining techniques, which Fairbairn thought had less place in wartime).

Fairbairn points out, as to restraining techniques, that if you try to take an enemy combatant captive, he will resist to the fullest of his ability, and that you will first need to soften him up with blows to make him decide that capture beats the alternatives (in the same way that getting older beats the alternatives).

So there you have two bodies of fighting technique that are close to endpoints on a line.

Shotokan takes a very long time to achieve competent performance of the syllabus, and there are a lot of exams along the way to test proficiency, with judges. Defendu takes very little time to become proficient, and the only test of your performance is whether you come back home with your shield or on it.

Shotokan, as a traditional style of karate, teaches kata as a part of its syllabus, and a lot of kata at that. The Fairbairn fighting system and syllabus teaches exactly zero kata, and instead teaches only the handful of offensive techniques chosen by Fairbairn (note that his choice of most favorite techniques changed over time, because he had the luxury over 30 years with his Riot Squads to teach and find out what worked well and what didn't work. The "Rock Crusher" Technique, for instance, didn't make the cut in his more mature work).

Note, again, that I said "offensive techniques" when I addressed the Fairbairn fighting system; there are no defensive techniques to speak of, because the entire orientation of the system is to attack the attacker.

Shotokan is a Do, and wants to make you a better person in some ways, although Rob Redmond contests that assertion, and Rob Redmond is very smart; Defendu, as a Jutsu, wants to make you a more effective offensive fighter during war, and to do so as quickly as possible.

Shotokan has warm-ups, strength exercises, and techniques for self-defense. Defendu has techniques that you are instructed to use without warning when you are being questioned by Germans and need to escape, and no warm-ups, strength exercises, or stretching exercises.

Shotokan is primarily designed as a discipline for a settled, well-lit, controlled environment with referees and rules and uniforms. Defendu is designed for chaotic, unpredictable environments and broken ground, not polished dojo floors and bare feet.

And Shotokan gave up the practice of weapons (wisely) when it became clear that General MacArthur thought that subject populations like the Japanese shouldn't practice with weapons on his watch. Defendu takes the overall position that if you are empty-handed and unarmed during a violent confrontation, something has gone very, very wrong indeed.

The path of Shotokan Karate, which has given rise to many competing systems, all of which are quite similar to it, and Defendu, which has given rise to competing systems and complementary systems, are parallel paths that do not converge.

Both have similar and sometimes identical techniques, and both involve physical conflict.

But one is for practice in civilian life, and is designed to make you healthy, strong and flexible, with good wind, based on practice over your lifetime, and generally to teach participants to avoid actual fights.

The other, Defendu, is designed to permit you to survive behind enemy lines, and if you happen to kill an enemy combatant in the process, good on you!

And the syllabus of Shotokan Karate includes many of the techniques of Defendu, which makes sense.

But Shotokan doesn't use most of them in free-sparring exercises, for a simple reason: somebody would get seriously dead if those techniques were used in Shotokan sporting contests, which is why they are not.

There is an interesting variation in the uses of the Shuto (knife hand) in Defendu; Fairbairn advocates that it be used in a downward stroke, and an outward stroke, but never to strike with the palm-up edge-of-hand.

I don't know why he advocates as he does, but I'll try to find out when I get a Round Tuit, and I'll get back to you on that.

I have embedded a few videos of Defendu being taught both by modern instructors and also in ancient military training films. The ancient military classes on film will look funny to you, I suspect, and they look a little funny to me, as well.

But that doesn't mean I'd want to get in a fight with the guys in the funny looking black and white videos below, back when they were saving the world for real, as opposed to talking about saving the world, which some people apparently like to do.

And, seriously, while one of the videos involves guys in fatigues wearing masks, understand that espionage was one of the weapons of war during the Big One. And since they were training guys for behind the lines work, they didn't want to advertise who they were training.

And here's a U.S. Training Film showing similar approaches to hand-to-hand combatives:

The "Chin Jab", favored by Fairbairn, is taught by modern combatives instructors who know their stuff. Here's Kelly McCann, who discusses Fairbairn's version of the technique:

Here's the late, great Carl Cestari, who knew more about World War II Combatives than anyone else after Applegate passed; sadly, he's teaching now in a dojo in the sky. If you can get all of the old Carl Cestari dvds, you really, really want to do that; while the production values of the old school Carl Cestari DVDs is lousy, the information is incomparable. His later seminars on DVD are also very useful:

And here you see Carl Cestari, again, teaching a variation of the chin jab:

And here's Carl Cestari teaching the "Tigerclaw" technique, also a Fairbairn favorite:

This Karate Blog Doesn't Like Straw Man Arguments Very Much; The "Shotokan Stances Are Too Low" Straw Man Argument

2010-06-20T15:30:00.000-07:00

One rhetorical device used in arguments is referred to as the "straw man", and you'll be able to tell when you see a straw man argument in action when somebody ascribes a quality to the opponent, and then criticizes that opponent for that quality.

Here's a pretty decent example: there are people who clearly know better, who criticize the stances of traditional Shotokan karate, suggesting that people can't fight or spar well from such low stances.

Now, that's just a silly argument, although it's a true statement of fact.

Because when you look at videos of Shotokan Karate Tournaments, you'll see that nobody is using one of those very low stances, because they're not fighting stances!

They are stances for training, not fighting!

Remember, Shotokan Karate is a carefully graduated sequence of exercises that produces a predictable result, which is a martial artist who is flexible enough, and strong enough, and can move freely enough, to execute techniques in the syllabus of Shotokan (which includes just about everything!) easily and without, you know, falling down!

So now you know what a straw man argument is, and you know that it's being used whenever somebody (who usually knows better) suggests that Shotokan stances are too low for sparring and fighting.

Because that's not what they're for!

And, yes, every now and then somebody makes that argument, and even causes it to show up in print. On the internet.

Oh, well. People do what they do for the reasons they do 'em, and they keep doing 'em, and no amount of fact can dissuade somebody who wants to believe that his style is the only true way!

Myself, I kinda like Shotokan Karate because it's easy to see (from the other students in class) about what I'll be able to do in another ten years or so, and that works for me!

Now, if you want to watch a Shotokan stylist discussing stances for purposes of fighting or sparring, here is Lyoto Machida doing exactly that!

A Karate Blog Can Only Do So Much, You Know?

2010-06-19T17:51:00.000-07:00

I've been having fun with this karate blog for the last couple of days.

I finally figured out how to plug in videos, and there is a wealth of video material about karate and martial arts, so I get to have guest instructors like Sensei Nakayama appear at this virtual dojo, and Sensei Nakayama is available to teach 24/7/365, which is very good indeed.

I also have a platform for my opinions about traditional karate, Shotokan karate, supplemental training exercises, and my opinions about the efficacy of Shotokan karate, Tai Chi and Aikido and boxing and MMA and wrestling and the Fairbairn techniques as self-defense.

And that's fun, particularly when I remember the mere five books (six, if you count the two-volume set twice) that were available to me when I started my martial arts travels after a rough year in 5th Grade at Emerson Grade School in Phoenix, AZ.

But don't think that mere knowledge can help you in a situation requiring self-defense skills; you are going to need practice of some kind, and the more the better, because your mind may remember pictures you see on the internet, but your body remembers what it has practiced.

One of my next projects is to contrast short learning-curve technique sets with Shotokan, which has a technique-rich syllabus, and a very long learning curve.

Critics of Shotokan karate suggest that it takes too long to learn the syllabus.

I agree that it takes a long time to learn the syllabus in Shotokan; I'm still working on it, and I will be for the next twenty years or so.

Since I enjoy the training, the extended and extensive syllabus is a feature to me, not a flaw.

But for no other reason than fun, I plan to discuss some short-learning curve technique sets, including the Fairbairn Syllabus, and a version of Prison Fighting Techniques on DVD that impressed me (actually, about half of the techniques impressed me), and the LINE System used for a while by U.S. Marines, the combatives systems (similar to Fairbairn's) taught by the great, late Carl Cestari and five or six other shorter-learning-curve self-defense systems, and contrast them with Shotokan.

And I'm interested in the current version of Krav Maga being taught in Israel, so I'll take a look at what's out there, because it gets field tested on a daily basis in a way similar to, but far more extreme than, mixed martial arts.

So there's more to come, and we haven't scratched the surface of Shotokan, at that!

Shotokan Karate, and Whether Karate is an Effective Martial Art

2010-06-19T14:18:00.001-07:00

I'm going to screen the four-dvd set by Lyoto Machida, because, after all, he is a life-long Shotokan student who had done very well indeed in the unbiased, intense experimental training ground of mixed martial arts.

Once I get my dvds, I will screen them, and I will tell you how well I liked them in this very karate blog.

This much, however, is clear.

Not everyone who studies Shotokan Karate is going to be a world-class competitor and tough guy, anymore than a young lady who takes a year of ballet will be a ballerina starring in Swan Lake in a professional ballet company.

Not everyone who studies Shotokan Karate will have the abilities of Sensei Nakayama or Sensei Funakoshi or or Sensei Tanaka or Sensei Koyama (I got to watch Tanaka demonstrate when Sensei Nakayama brought him to our class with Sensei Koyama at Arizona State University; Tanaka's a pretty serious guy. And that was a more interesting class than the usual class. Kinda like a visit from the Pope, if you're Catholic).

And that's just common sense.

If you are a serious practitioner of any martial art, you spend a huge amount of time in training, conditioning and practice; waaaaaaaaaaay more than a recreational practitioner.

One reason boxers are such effective fighters, in general, is that they are filtered at the both the front end and the tail end; those who are not tough enough to endure the training because they have glass jaws and low pain tolerances are shaken out. At the other end, those who want to have what we generally refer to as normal lives, with a predictable paycheck, drop out.

That leave very highly motivated guys with high pain tolerances and cast-iron jaws and guts who run five miles a day and lift weights and do a million sit ups and hit themselves in the face, and you can teach techniques to guys like that, or not, and they'll still be very tough guys.

But if you take a wimpy little guy who weighs 135 soaking wet, and he trains twice a week in any traditional martial art whatsoever for a period of twenty years, and you toss him in a ring with Mike Tyson or Mourad Oumakhanov, he will become a floor ornament very quickly.

Big, tough guys tend to beat little fragile guys, all other things being equal.

Martial arts in any context are about trying to make things more equal than physics and biology would otherwise dictate.

And you get out of a martial art what you put into it.

So if you practice an esthetically pleasing martial art (Tai Chi as taught most places in the United States) from a non-combative oriented instructor in a Parks and Recreations Class, and you take one class per week for five years, and you become pretty good at the long set, you probably ought not expect to be able to hold your own against a Golden Gloves boxer, who has bled and sweated and suffered several hours a day over a decade for his art.

Getting used to having somebody trying to knock your head off is probably pretty good preparation for a situation where somebody is trying to knock your head off, you know?

In that context, it's also good to recall that in the good old days, formerly known as "these trying times", kumite in Shotokan Karate was essentially without rules-that is, one guy said "hajime", two guys fought like crazy, then everybody went to the hospital. Ditto with matches between Universities in Japan. Made the Japanese hospitals very busy after University Clubs had their gentlemanly matches.

In any case, Lyoto Machida has studied Shotokan Karate for almost the entirety of his life, and he indicates that he worked hard at that, as well as his grappling study. I'll be interested in what he has to say about karate as an effective martial art.

Because in his hands, it clearly is an effective martial art, you know? And he says that's because of his discipline. I tend to believe him:

"Karate can make you Stiff and Rigid"; Yes, If You're Doing It Wrong!

2010-06-19T13:37:00.000-07:00

A gentleman named W.R. Mann has written extensively about traditional karate.

He doesn't think a lot of it, but he's very smart, and he's very experienced, and he writes very well; and therefore his thoughts deserve attention.

One of the dozen or so criticisms of karate he argues is that practicing traditional karate can make you stiff and rigid.

I certainly agree that it can.

Huh?

Well, I've already written about the thing that all martial practices have in common, that being trying to teach the correct balance between tension and relaxation.

So one traditional style of karate, Goju-ryu, is famous for working to make you so stiff and hard that you can barely move, in the practice of the first Goju-ryu kata, Sanchin.

But ultimately, if you persevere in your study of Goju-ryu, you turn into Morio Higaonna, and you hit like a cannon and move smoothly and with relaxation when you are no longer young.

The reason I use Goju-ryu as an example of traditional karate and stiffness is the syllabus of Goju-ryu tries to make you stiff in the beginning, and then builds the correct balance from there; and in exactly the same way, Tai-chi Chuan builds excessive relaxation in the beginning, and then puts some starch in the techniques when you become a little more advanced.

And how about my instructor in traditional Shotokan Karate, JKA 8th Dan Shojiro Koyama?

Well, now we're moving in an area where I have both knowledge of facts, and preconceived ideas and prejudices, and they work like this: Sensei Shojiro Koyama is a very smart guy. He realized early in his practice that he wanted to be a little faster than most folks, so he's always emphasized speed and "whipping" movements in his practice and his teaching. That is, relaxation in technique is a special interest in his dojo.

The good news here is that my opinion isn't evidence, but the magic of motion pictures means that I don't need to be a good witness!

So please take a look at Sensei Koyama, and you can judge for yourself whether karate makes you flexible, strong, coordinated and healthy. At 73 or so, when this film was made:

Is Karate an Effective Martial Art for Self Defense? One Article Says No; and I Say Yes. Everybody Has an Opinion about Karate! Even this Karate Blog!

2010-06-19T00:37:00.000-07:00

Well, what's karate?

There are differences between karate styles, but karate is a graduated series of exercises that are designed to produce students who can defend themselves, using either techniques associated with sparring (if the attack is at distance) or techniques embedded in the kata (if the attack is up-close and personal, or if it involves weapons).

Does karate contain the most effective series of graduated exercises for unarmed self-defense?

On that issue, opinions differ.

As a matter of fact, on that issue, tempers flare!

Now, I know some guys who could use karate techniques to defend themselves against Sherman Tanks.

But some folks believe that only mixed martial artists, or boxers, or wrestlers, or Gracie guys can fight, and that karate guys can't.

Now, I know that some karate guys can fight, and they fight well. Both at distance, and up close and personal.

But I ran into some well-written articles that takes the position, roughly speaking, that the study of karate is a waste of time.

For now, here are the articles: and remember, I disagree with them!

And remember, the core of the argument that's being made below is the definition of "traditional karate". I'll be talking about the arguments in them one, by one, by one, over the next few weeks.

But the guy writes well, you gotta give him that, even if you disagree with his conclusions!

And if the link gets broken, the article I'm talking about is written by W. R. Mann, and the topic is why traditional karate is useless for self-defense.

Is Karate Dying?

2010-06-18T08:42:00.000-07:00

Uh. No.

Why would I even ask the question?

Well, because a lot of other folks have said it, and published it.

I have to respond initially that any reports of the death of karate have been greatly exaggerated.

Now, is karate today exactly the same as karate in Okinawa two hundred years ago?

Probably not, exactly. Except some places.

But living things grow and change.

In Okinawa, teaching karate was done in secret, and typically in very, very small classes. Of one student, for instance.

But in order to teach karate to large numbers of people who had never seen it before, new strategies were in order.

Remember, neither Sensei Funakoshi nor Sensei Nakayama had the internet as a tool.

So the strategy of sending real, live instructors to many countries to teach large classes was about the only game in town.

And it worked beyond the wildest imagining of anyone in Okinawa two hundred years ago.

Was the entire body of knowledge transmitted to the entire world?

I doubt it; but that process continues today.

Yet Another Nifty Website with Bunkai of both Shotokan and the Higaonna Lineage Kata

2010-06-18T08:19:00.000-07:00

Remember my comment about martial arts information overload?

That's okay, neither do I.

But I ran into another nifty online kata bunkai resource; it's called Shitokai.com, and it has a segment with some nice visual discussions of the bunkai of a lot of kata studied in Shotokan.

Now, at some point I expect to say that I don't care what the bunkai of the kata may or may not be, but right now I'm collecting bunkai the same way many people collect fishing lures, or postage stamps (Those were things used before e-mail. Never mind.).

And my current plan is to spend tomorrow reviewing the bunkai of Shotokan Kata that are located at Shitokai and include them in my Shotokan karate blog.

After all, you can never be too rich, have too many watches, or too many bunkai.

Am I right or am I right?

p.s. thanks and a tip of the karate hat to Rob Redmond, blogger of 24 Fighting Chickens fame, who pointed me to the Shitokai website in his post!

Sparring DVDS to Improve Your Chances of, You Know, Winning!

2010-06-17T06:49:00.000-07:00

I remember sitting in the Phoenix Public Library in the summer after my fifth grade year at Emerson Grade School on Palm Lane in Phoenix, Arizona; there was a gigantic, incredibly heavy plaster and cheesecloth cast on my right arm, and my right elbow and right wrist were bent at a 90 degree angle, because the doc had experienced a little problem in getting the jagged ends of the broken radius and ulna to stay in alignment.

So turning the pages was kind of a sinister project, you know?

My fifth grade had been slightly more eventful than the years prior and afterward, because an eighth grader I didn't know from a hole in the ground had decided, one lunch hour, to give me an impromptu lesson in vocabulary, and judo. Specifically breakfalls in judo. Or what happens when you don't know breakfalls in judo.

For instance.

He'd taken a judo class or two at some local club, and apparently was having one of those days when the only way to make himself feel better was to find somebody who was a nice, safe victim.

I fit the bill. A head shorter, thirty pounds lighter, stammering, and scared of my personal shadow, I did just fine.

That is, I was the object lesson showing the results of leverage, momentum and gravity when he used an outer reaping throw to demonstrate his judo expertise.

I was not a voluntary partner in the demonstration.

Now, that event gave me several things; a broken right arm (no breakfall classes? not good!), an abiding interest in health, healing and longevity, a lifelong interest in martial arts (particularly breakfalls, which have saved my life several times since I learned them), and a strong interest in avoiding environments in which I might become an involuntary demonstration partner.

At the library there were just about five books on self-defense and martial arts. There was George Mattson's The Way of Karate, which rocked my world.

There was a two-volume set about Judo, which I already knew was effective, and I dearly loved those books. One volume taught throws, one volume taught groundwork in judo. And Oda knew a lot, and was generous in what he taught.

There was an illustrated (with line drawings) self-defense book compiled and published by Sports Illustrated, and I've never been able to find it again; I doubt the reality could match my memory. But if any reader finds that book, which would be an old paperback published by Sports Illustrated on the topic of self-defense, with line drawings as illustrations, I'd love to see it to compare it to my memories.

And there was "Kill or Get Killed", by Rex Applegate, an encyclopedic volume that was way over my head. While it contains some of the most effective martial techniques known to mankind, it's probably good that I didn't like it as much. Those techniques, used on the playground at Emerson, would have led me down a road terminating at, oh, Folsom Prison.

Students today are have much more to chose from and review in learning about self-defense and fighting.

I recently screened the first two volumes of Winning, Competition Karate
by Yukiyoshi Marutani & Hideharu Igaki.

Here's all you need to know about it: first, I couldn't tell what style the authors had trained. Maybe Shotokan, maybe something else. I've been too lazy to track it down, although I'm certain that information is all over the internet and probably on the DVD jacket.

Second, the DVDs that I've looked at in this series are nothing short of brilliant and remarkable. The production values are very good, but why would you care?

When you watch the approach these guys take to traditional karate sparring techniques, and you learn from them, you will get better at what you do. For these guys, sparring and teaching sparring in the context of karate tournaments is just another day at the office. They are professionals.

If you want to watch how the grown-ups do it, this is a series you need.

And seriously, when I think about the wealth of information that is available today on the internet, I'm almost glad it wasn't around when I was a kid.

Information overload would have set in, and I would have given up on the topic entirely.

Today's Rant About Rules, and Contact vs. No-Contact Sparring

2010-06-16T18:17:00.000-07:00

It has been suggested that you fight the way you train.

Based on that theory, pulling punches in sparring is a bad idea.

On the other hand, if you spar long enough, with the best of intentions, and if you are also the best and best-trained karate athlete on the planet, you will hit your opponent. Eventually. Hard.

Because if you're moving in for a punch at the same time he's moving in for a punch, you're shooting at a moving target. In both cases.

And it's really, really easy to miss when you're trying to nearly hit a moving target.

From this inaccuracy of perception, broken eye orbits, broken noses, broken jaws and teeth rolling like Chiclets across the floor are born. Not to mention the issue of unconsciousness.

There are a lot of ways to deal with the issues of fatigue, sparring, and concussion.

My vote is for headgear that's protective enough that you can go to the office the next day, and hand protectors robust enough to protect against a healthy fist clash.

Will we all decide to go there and sing Kumbaya when we arrive?

Probably.

Here's why: this is far from the first time that head protection in a martial art has cropped up as an issue.

In fencing schools all over Italy, folks derided the sissies who started to wear masks while practicing fencing, suggesting that a real man could, you know, control his blade.

And yes, that's exactly what they meant.

But subsequently, fencers in schools which routinely required the wearing of masks did far better in competitions.

Why? There were two reasons.

First, the fencing-masks-mandatory fencers saw their opponents more clearly, because they still had binocular vision, and were not nicknamed "Lefty" or "Squints".

Second, the fencing-masks-mandatory fencers spent more time with a non-compliant opponent and a rapier in their hands.

That is, they could practice more and more enthusiastically without concerns about inconveniences like bleeding, blindness and death.

Now, I'm a lawyer, so I can argue any position at all, because that's what they teach you to do in law school. At least I think that's what they teach in law school; it was a long time ago.

But some things just make sense.

If you can go full bore for as long as your cardiovascular system holds up, you can get used to fighting when you're wheezing for breath like a steam engine. Like when you get popped good in the solar plexus.

If you have to be in perfect control or somebody's gonna get hurt, you have to stop sparring early in the day so that nobody gets rolled out on a gurney.

So history is on the side of my current position, which is that Shotokan sparring would get better with a healthy dose of head protection.

Wanna watch me argue the other side of the proposition? Just for laughs? Here goes:

The argument that holds the most water against protective equipment goes like this: if somebody is used to wearing headgear, he'll be scared and awkward when he's actually presented with somebody who really wants to knock his head off.

The counter to the counter is simple: anybody who isn't concerned about his safety in a real fight is dumb as a stump. A real fight isn't a sparring exercise with referees. And a guy who's got a hundred hours of full bore sparring time is much better prepared for real fighting then somebody who has to stop when he starts to lack perfect fist control, or else risk damage to himself and his partner if he continues.

None of this discussion matters, of course, because I'm nobody special; but ultimately, I expect that folks will decide to wear head protection for exactly the same reason that mats are universally used in judo randori.

It makes such obvious sense.

I Wonder if I Can Make This a Home Page for my Shotokan Blog So People will Have Contact information for the Dojo

2010-06-16T12:13:00.000-07:00

The Arizona Karate Association Dojo is located at 6326 N 7th St, Phoenix, Arizona, 85014-1544; Call the Dojo at (602) 274-1136! Or see the OFFICIAL website of the Arizona Karate Association - and remember that my Shotokan Karate Blog is only an unofficial blog, with no ability to speak with authority on any karate-related subject.

I'm just a student. Give me another twenty years of training, maybe then I'll have actual opinions.

And remember, never ever hit anybody or kick anybody, because you might hurt them or yourself!

Very Nice Article in Asian Times About History of Karate and a Karate Seminar in Okinawa

2010-06-14T07:46:00.000-07:00

Here it is: enjoy!

Two Things I Hate About the Rules of Shotokan Sparring

2010-06-13T21:10:00.000-07:00

I don't like two things about Shotokan sparring.

Both of them are outcomes of the rules of sparring, and the way those rules are enforced.

In theory, there is supposed to be no contact, or light contact, in the punches. And traditional Shotokan schools use little in the way of protective equipment, because Sensei Funakoshi tried that approach and discarded it (mind you, he had leather and horsehair to work with; material technology has come light-years since his experiments. He discarded protective equipment because it was so heavy and bulky that it interfered with correct technique in sparring, so he, and Sensei Nakayama, simply adopted a no-contact rule).

On the other hand, I've seen matches in the finals at international competitions where competitors were knocked flat as pancakes by punches that sure looked like intentional full power shots to yours truly. And the punchers in those cases were awarded a full point.

I have a bit of trouble with that. Perhaps there should be a different sort of Shotokan competition, where full-on contact would be the actual rule, rather than something that was sometimes rewarded by judges and referees, and sometimes not.

There's another thing that bothers me because, even though it makes perfect sense under the current rules of sparring, because it makes sparring a much less effective preparation for actual fighting.

It's the dreaded "turn-away"; you've seen it. Somebody will come in sparring hard, finish his attack combination, and then quickly turn his back on his opponent to deny the opponent a legit target for a counterattack.

The only problem, of course, is that if you practice Shotokan attack runs and then immediately turn your back in a real fight, the bad guy will play a Gene Krupa drum solo on the back of your head, which is a perfectly good target on the street, if not during a sparring match with referees.

Now, I'm not a senior officer of any official or unofficial Shotokan Organization; but it would sure make sense to me if there were a rule about contact that was enforced consistently; I don't care what the rule is, but if it's a sport, it probably ought to have actual rules that are consistently enforced, you know?

Either get everybody to agree that when they step onto the floor that full-contact shots to the face are fair game, or not. Simple, neh?

Note that Mas Oyama schools are perfectly happy with full contact kicks to the head, but not full contact punches. And the Oyama boys are happy to play with full contact shots most places other than the head. So it's not as though full contact is impossible in any context.

And western boxing, a pretty darn good martial art itself, allows full contact shots. So we know that it's possible to design rules that permit full contact shots to the face and head, with appropriate protective equipment.

Or with no protective equipment; old-style bare knuckle boxing was a mixed martial art that included punches to the head and face and body, as hard as you could manage, and throws! On the other hand, afterward the participants looked like they'd been in, you know, a fistfight!

My personal vote is that we start wearing fully protective headgear and make some contact permitted, as opposed to wearing no protective headgear and making full contact sometime rewarded, and sometimes punished.

I'm only ranting about this issue because it would make too darn much sense to have a set of consistently enforced rules about contact, you know?

And it would make even more sense if there were a rule preventing intentional turning away as a way of preventing counterattacks in matches in Shotokan Tournaments. Because it's really, seriously dumb for any set of rules in a martial art to encourage what would be suicidal behavior if it happened during a real slugfest on the street.

Here's Another Nifty Shotokan Karate Blog, by "magpie"

2010-06-07T21:19:00.000-07:00

I recently stumbled on another nifty Shotokan Karate Blog, called Shotokan Karate-art of the empty hand.

Here's what I like about that blog: everything.

The author has nifty videos, nifty analysis, and nifty bunkai.

Overall, nifty stuff!

He also talked about a list of the top ten sorts of violence that show up, at least in the United Kingdom.

I liked it a lot, so here it is, courtesy of magpie, a smart Aussie:

In 2004 using Home Office statistics, CCTV footage and witness/victim interviews Jeff Nash published a paper outlining the most common forms of attack in the UK, he found that following were the most common Habitual Acts of Violence;

1. One person pushes, hands to chest, which is normally followed by the pushee striking first, to the head.

2. A swinging punch to the head.

3. A front clothing grab, one handed, followed by punch to the head.

4. A front clothing grab, two hands, followed by a head butt.

5. A front clothing grab, two hands, followed by a knee to the groin.

6. A bottle, glass, or ashtray to the head.

7. A lashing kick to groin/lower legs.

8.A broken bottle/glass jabbed to face.

9. A slash with knife, most commonly a 3 to 4"lockblade knife or kitchen utility knife.

10.A grappling style head lock.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now, the next thing to think about is this: which of the kata we practice has the best bunkai for use against 1 through 10 above?

I plan to track down a few other "top ten lists" of habitual violence; I've seen a few before, and they are not identical to the list from the U.K., although they are similar.

You are unlikely to be attacked with martial arts-type techniques in the outside world, because a bad guy has to practice those sorts of attacks, and bad guys hate to practice; so you might as well prepare for the attacks that actually show up in the world outside the dojo.

And the kata do contain defenses against precisely these sorts of attacks, not leaping reverse back kicks.

Old Fashioned Punches Work, Apparently. That's a Good Thing!

2010-06-05T17:05:00.001-07:00

I have previously addressed the issue of the superiority of punches over throws.

And, of course, when compared to each other the winner is...both!

Although it has been suggested by experts in the field that it is dramatically easier to throw an opponent after his ki has been rearranged with a head butt or a left hook.

But I had an opportunity which I will follow up in the next week or two to talk to an expert on actual, factual fighting, not the stuff involving referees.

You see, cops see stuff we've only started to see because of cell phone video cameras. Bouncers probably get to see more fights in total, but those are almost all fueled by the explosive combination of alcohol, pool tables and short skirts (those darned Scotsmen cause a lotta fights).

Although bouncers also suggest that roundhouse right punches start many a fight

Cops get to see it all, including the privilege of being attacked by women who aren't kidding. After all, one of the best quality rookie mistakes is breaking up a domestic dispute and NOT planning on wifie with a frying pan, from behind.

Still, in my first seminar on real fighting, I've heard the following: men predictably attack with a roundhouse right punch to the head, and are very often deterred by one (1) good punch to the snoot, because everybody likes to fight until they get punched in the face.

Doesn't apply if they're high on stimulant drugs, which reduce their perception of pain, or if they're psychotic or, sometimes, if they're drunk enough.

Obviously, the generalization that men routinely attack with a roundhouse right does not always hold true. But it comes up so frequently in the literature, and so emphatically from the expert on civilian violence I recently polled, that I have to believe that preparing for roundhouse rights ought to be a very large part of a martial artist's daily routine.

A second teaching from this experienced cop is that women fight differently than men, and that another particularly good rookie error is trying to restrain a woman by holding her wrists, for instance, because she'll hurt you. A lot.

Women claw the face and gouge the eyes, and attack the groin, or so I'm told.

Apparently I have chosen the right profession in becoming a bankruptcy lawyer. The probability of physical violence is much lower in offices where coffee is the strongest drug present, and after twelve hours in the office, the draw of pool tables, pitchers of Bud, and even the short skirts, is somewhat resistible.

And if I see a "fight" at the dojo, it involves referees, so it's really a spirited contest between athletes, rather than an effort to injure anybody. Accidents happen, of course, so I have seen Shotokan punches work very well, by mistake.

Note: a well-known and widely read expert on mixed martial arts, Mark Hatmaker, has written a book that applies scientific method to the following question: if we examine about 700 mixed martial arts bouts, what techniques end those contests by knockouts most frequently?

I won't keep you guessing, and ultimately I'll give you chapter and verse. But the winner in causing knockouts was: good old fashioned punches to the head, usually the chin and jaw.

Now, if both a seasoned cop, who's seen it all, and Mark Hatmaker, an incredibly well-studied martial artist, both suggest that simple punches have great effect in both real fights and mma contests with fairly few rules, that makes me happy.

Because Shotokan Karate has a great deal in common with old bare-knuckle boxing, and practices more punches than anything else.

And the exercises of Shotokan, including the five-step sparring that I practice far too little, should be of some use in developing effective defenses (like, interposing your arms, for instance) when you've gotten hit, or are about to get hit, with a roundhouse right.

P.S. While we have just celebrated Memorial Day in the United States, which honors those who have died in service to the United States in her armed forces, it is always good to remember that policemen die to keep us safe. They know a lot about fighting because they've all lost fights and learned from it; Fairbairn was himself a cop, and was beaten nearly to death by a group of Triad Thugs. Good news was that he lived, learned, and taught.

But here in Arizona, we're acutely conscious that the thin blue line is all that keeps us safe, and the line is stretched thin, in what has become the kidnapping center of the United States.

And as our police, like Police Lt. Eric Shuhandler, are murdered by cowards, other heroes step in to take their places.

And God bless and keep them all, and may angels sing them to their rest when He gathers them home at last.

So What Do We Remember on Memorial Day?

2010-05-31T12:15:00.000-07:00

This guy said it better than I could:

Last year, just before Memorial Day, I was in a meeting with an attorney who, although born, raised and educated in the United States was completely clueless as to what Memorial Day was all about. Despite being highly educated and easily more intelligent than myself, she believed Memorial Day was a day to remember any and all lost loved ones.

In discussing everyone's plans for the upcoming holiday, I commented that I didn't have any plans other than being sure to put our flag out and to remember all those that had died so that we could be there that day. She responded that her and her family would be remembering her aunt that had passed away at an early age. I was somewhat confused and asked if her aunt had been in the military. She responded that her aunt had not been in the service. I replied that Memorial Day was really about remembering those who have died in our nation's service. She responded confidently that Memorial Day (she emphasized "Memorial" as if this would make it clearer to me) was about remembering everyone who has died. I just silently nodded and tried to hide my disappointment and disbelief.

Let's get one thing perfectly clear. And, on this there is no debate. Memorial Day is a very specific well defined day of remembrance solely for those who have died in our nation's service. It's not even about honoring those that are currently serving in our armed forces. That day is Armed Forces Day which was just held on the 21st of last month. And, this most sacred of all days, certainly isn't about remembering some aunt who never saw the inside of a barracks or held a rifle and who didn't selflessly and heroically lay down her life so that the American people could enjoy the freedoms that are the envy of the world.

Sure, you can celebrate the weighing of people name Chris or Christine on December 25. You can celebrate everyone's birthday on January 1 and you can celebrate how much you love Doritos on July 4. It's a free country. We're not going to chop your head off as happens in some other countries if you don't toe the line. But, if you want to be right and show some respect for those that paid the ultimate price so that we could sit back and be dumb, fat and lazy if we so choose, then you'll spend a few minutes today remembering those who have died in our nation's service. Ideally, you will take a few moments at 3:00 p.m. (local time) during the "National Moment of Remembrance" to pay your respect.

This Is Memorial Day in the United States

2010-05-31T09:51:00.001-07:00

This is the day we honor our fallen heroes, who died so that we could live in safety and freedom.

General George S. Patton was a tough, smart guy, who said: It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.

Karate Kata Bunkai Techniques I DO NOT LIKE, Part I: The Fishhook

2010-05-19T08:05:00.000-07:00

There is an interesting anecdote about a 6th Dan Judoka who had his head handed to him by an Okinawa Karate guy.

The techniques that the karate practitioner used included foot stomps (sounds good), hammer fist (no problem), and the fish hook.

I don't like the idea of the fish hook.

Sticking your fingers or thumbs into a mouth to pull on a cheek to control an opponent may work, but you might just get a finger bitten.

Off.

And these days, there's no telling whether penicillin will kill whatever lives in the mouth of the tattoo covered bad guy you just fishhooked. Note that I have friends who are covered with tattoos, who are not bad guys, and one good friend who owns a tattoo parlor. Hey, capitalism is good.

There's a nice article describing the legendary judo vs. karate slugfest written by Iain Abernethy. In it he mentions the Shotokan version of a kata in which the fish hook is one of the bunkai.

But of the various techniques that I'd like to practice to perfection, the fish hook is low on my favorites list.

Right along with the dreaded finger up the nose trick, which I will discuss further next time.

Why Is a Roundhouse Right Punch a Superweapon in a Bar Fight?

2010-05-16T12:18:00.000-07:00

In the age of cell phones that double as movie cameras, folks who never saw violence in their lives (lucky people) now get to see drunken brawls on youtube or television shows that show people behaving badly while under the influence.

I recently watched a drunken altercation in which the aggressor used exactly one technique, the roundhouse right punch, again and again.

And won the fight hands down.

Now, why would that technique get used so often and to such good effect?

Well, the most primitive version of the punch requires no training at all, and it carries a fair amount of body weight behind it.

It's also aimed in an arc that terminates in a target-rich environment.

If the roundhouse right punch hits the neck, well. The temple? Well, that's a good target also. How about the jaw? Now you're talking! The base of the skull? The back of the neck? That bump behind the ear? The ear itself?

Any one of those targets are perfectly good fight-enders if they get hit real hard.

Also note that the aggressor isn't picky about the striking surface he's using. The first two knuckles? Sure! The forearm? Atta boy! The inside of his fist? Okay, boss! A buncha knuckles? Whatever!

And if the aggressor is strong, and energetic, he isn't firing off one roundhouse punch; he's firing ten.

So if one misses a little, oh, well. Another one coming up!

And since the aggressor is chock-full of adrenaline, he's putting all he has into each shot. And since he's not targeting a tiny little nerve plexus known only to Tibetan Monks, he's gonna hit something that's gonna hurt.

And remember that the aggressor isn't a trained martial artist. He only knows one technique, so he isn't confused by wondering if he should change up, or feint, or bob or weave, or do a little shuffle.

He's just trying to put his victim away for the count; he wants to win!

And speaking of the vic, he was half out when he got hit by surprise; so his ability to mount a spirited defense is now fifty...oops, forty...ten...zero per cent of what it would have been in a fight that started at ten paces with referees.

After punch number one, which is as often as not a sucker punch, or a punch delivered from such short range that it was inside the vic's reaction-time zone, the rest of the story may be short and sour.

One reason that boxers do better in those environments than normal folks is that they are used to functioning some on autopilot while they wait for their heads to clear after their bells got rung. And boxers have been selected for "hard heads"; those with glass jaws and glass heads wash out very quickly.

And the trained response of a boxer to being beaten is simple in the extreme, and it's often very effective; he grabs and holds on for dear life.

He clinches.

It doesn't sound pretty, but whatever keeps you from falling down and getting stomped is a good technique, you know?

After his head clears, he has a better shot at continuing, and maybe winning, the fight/ambush.

Which is one reason a saloon warrior wants to finish things fast.

In fact, everybody who has spent serious time trading percussive techniques with strangers suggests the following: it's good to finish it fast, because it ain't gonna get better, the longer it goes. You may slip; his buddies may join in; he may discover he's losing and pick up a steak knife.

The Shotokan Kata have bunkai that address this situation again and again; those are the lovely, artistic-looking opening movements of many kata, like the opening movement of Kanku-dai.

That looks like a formalized flinch to me.

Remember, the chances are that the bad guy is very close, so you aren't going to be able to block anything. The kata understands that, and provides a simple, fast, effective all-purpose interposing technique to get something between you and roundhouse rights number two through ten.

p.s. If you read all the above and didn't figure out the most important part of the analysis, that's okay; I talk too much. Here's the skinny: the real reason that the bad guy wins so often is that he hits first. That reduces the ability of the vic to respond to the second through the tenth shots. The vic has trouble escaping because bars are generally not spacious, and the footing has been chosen specifically by the bad guy to make it hard on the vic, because the bad guy is the one deciding when the fight starts, and where it starts, and what the rules are going to be.

And there aren't any rules.

p.p.s. One of the other really good techniques, when you can use it, is not to be in places where there are a bunch of folks who have nothing to lose. If you don't have a job you have to get to tomorrow, you don't much care if you go to jail tonight. If you aren't married, you don't have to explain why you drained the bank account. For bail. If you're drunk as a skunk, you don't care if you do have a job or a wife.

So in general, avoid places with a high concentration of those who are drunk as skunks, or places where folks just have more or less nothing to lose.

Makes 'em a lot less picky about how they decide to entertain themselves, you know? And if rearranging your face like you're "Mr. Potato Head" appeals to 'em, well, everybody needs entertainment.

And I don't know where entertainment shows up on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, but it's gotta be right up there.

Advantage: Striking Over Grappling Arts! Or is it the Other Way Around?

2010-05-12T18:34:00.000-07:00

There are some issues that will never be settled in opinion, because they can't be tested under laboratory conditions.

One of those is whether striking arts are better, or grappling arts are better.

Those comparisons are a little like the analysis of a hypothetical fight between Superman and Green Lantern. Not very meaningful in the real world, period.

For one thing, all the serious combative approaches to martial arts, as opposed to sportive approaches, are combined arts, not exclusively percussive or throwing arts.

And by the way, the whole boxing vs. judo thing has a HUGE literature starting a hundred years ago! Some questions just won't die, which also means that you're unlikely to find a meaningful answer, ever.

Now, I study Shotokan Karate, which has as components a bunch of kicks and punches and strikes and sweeps, and uses a couple of throws as well.

On the other hand, the KATA of Shotokan karate contain GIGANTIC bundle of martial techniques that span the gamut from soup to nuts.

Sportive Judo is similar to Shotokan in that the sporting aspect of Judo are highly-controlled and have plenty or referees and white pajamas. But Judo has a wide and deep syllabus, including a bunch of striking techniques that Sensei Kano imported from his friend, Sensei Funakoshi. In fact, Sensei Kano at one point contemplated making karate a subdivision of judo.

The one thing that is kinda nice about habitual happenings of violence is this; you're ordinarily not going to be dealing with another martial artist, and when I say martial artist I mean a Judo black belt, a Golden Gloves boxer, a college wrestler, or other folks who have very highly developed skills.

One thing is true of folks who are very good at all of the sportive approaches to martial arts; those sportive approaches also give the practitioner a heck of an advantage in a real fight. Won't guarantee a win, of course, because the BG may have a knife or a gun or just be very good with a head butt or a roundhouse right.

But all martial arts are very, very useful in developing skill sets that can be used to advantage in real fights. Particularly when you're used to working against a non-compliant opponent.

And this is clear and obvious; if a wrestler or a judoka or Brazilian guy gets a good grip on you, you will, not may, go for a ride that you didn't really plan to take. And the destination is likely to be a place with a purple background with many, many pretty stars.

On the other hand, the one advantage that striking disciplines have over grappling disciplines is this: they don't have to grab first to put you in dreamland.

Now, in most dust-ups, that's a distinction without a difference. In a fight with ordinary guys against experienced martial artists, the duration of consciousness of the non-martial artist is likely to be measured in milliseconds.

That's not a really meaningful distinction, and you should always cross-train, just because.

But why do non-martial artists win fights, then? Because they do, you know. Often.

And they often use EXACTLY one technique, the roundhouse right punch.

They just use it early and often. And it works, with remarkable frequency.

The only consolation is that their right hand, after the fight, is going to feel very, very bad.

p.s. One reason that I like the fairly ugly, fairly clumsy kata named Gankaku is that it has a series of answers to the question, "what the heck do I do now that this guy has grabbed my forward wrist and is raining down shots on my poor little face?"

Seems to be a good answer to have in your pocket for those days when nothing seems to be going right, you know?

p.p.s. Actually, I will answer the question I left unanswered today, which is "why do non-martial artists win fights, both with marital artists and non-martial artists?"

One of the answers, of course, is that one of the better martial arts is to be twenty-five years old, weight three hundred pounds, have a high level of aggression and a high pain tolerance, and know how to throw a really good roundhouse punch again and again and again.

But that begs the next question. Why would a trained martial artist get hit with a roundhouse right when he KNOWS that's what the guy is most likely to throw?

And that's a topic for a different discussion.

Robust Karate Techniques in the Kata; Refined Karate Techniques in Kumite. Therefore, Study Bunkai!

2010-05-12T07:54:00.000-07:00

This is obvious, but it's particularly clear to me after an involuntary kata bunkai dvd orgy I recently enjoyed while my back was out.

Note to self: it's perfectly okay to go to the Spring Retreat and put in a million hours of intense workout. But it's dangerous to bend and twist around to get that last dust bunny. Lesson learned: do not get in fistfights with either chimpanzees or dust bunnies.

Lesson learned during bunkai orgy: the techniques normally used in sparring in Shotokan are vigorous, blindingly fast punches (usually with the front of the fist) and kicks (usually front snap kicks above the waist) and the occasional sweeps. There are a number of cool fakes, which are intended to draw a trained response. Fakes don't work in real fights, because you aren't fighting a trained martial artist, or at least, not one trained in the same style.

The techniques in sparring are very useful when a practitioner is in great shape, and in a fair fight, with referees. Shotokan sparring constitutes a new martial art created by Sensei Nakayama, and like all martial arts, it gives a sportsman an opportunity to compete in a sport under rigorously controlled conditions. It gives him an advantage, as well, when the situations of a real-world fight are similar to those in a tournament.

That is not frequent, according to the experts.

Fair fights do not happen much in the real world, of course, because a bad guy (BG) is looking for a victim (vic), not a sparring partner, fair fight, or a trophy. Unless you consider your watch, pens, wallet or wife a trophy. And some guys do, I know.

Now, here in Arizona, the state government has passed the most enlightened personal gun carry laws since George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, so there will be, of course, a reduction in home invasions and in personal violence for a simple reason: BGs prefer an unfair fight, and don't like danger in their jobs any more than the next guy. And BGs will have guns no matter what the law says about them.

But you may live in a state that hates equalizers and the Constitution, and prefers that you live in hope when you dial 911. That's fine. Cops are heroes, one and all, but they take a while to show up because they're human and bounded by the laws of time and space. And BGs know that and factor that in, so good luck to you, my friends.

But back to karate technique.

The techniques used in sparring are not the most effective techniques in self defense.

When I spoke to a cop friend a week ago (and cops get to see more real-life violence than anybody else except bouncers, and cops are trained observers) he confirmed my belief that in the United States, fights normally start with a roundhouse right or a right hook of one species or another, delivered from real close or from a blind side.

That is also the observation of former bouncers who publish.

Getting real close ensures that the punch from the BG is not stopped by a block, because the technique is delivered inside the reaction time zone.

The kata provide a large selection of what you do after you get hit the first time in a fight, as well as a large selection of preemptive techniques when you know a fight is going to start.

All of the openings that involve moving your hands up at the front end of the kata, like Kanku-dai and Heian Four? Formalized flinch responses after you've been hit the first time. And then counters, to permit the pacification of the BG, or at least a reduction in head trauma to you over the first seconds of the fight.

When I say there are a LOT of techniques stored in the kata (and when I talk kata I am thinking about the kata of both Shotokan and Goju-ryu, because they're both repositories of a mass of useful techniques, and many of them constitute complete martial arts in themselves), I can't begin to express my admiration for the data-packing skills of the karate kata engineers.

I will revisit this post again, but here's the comparison, for those of you taking notes: the techniques taught for sparring are generally fakes, punches, front snap kicks, and some sweeps.

The techniques taught in the kata are responses to sucker punches, sucker punches and kicks, elbows to a trapped head, head cranks, arm bars leading to head punches or palm heels, knees to thighs and groins, head butts, bites (most butts and bites are oral tradition; you won't see a toothy snap in a kata, although there is one backward head butt in the Goju-ryu kata), eye pokes and gouges, collarbone breaks, ear grabs leading to head smashes on the ground, and throws followed by stomps to the head. And some chokes.

In general, bloody mayhem. And for my Brit friends, here that's not a swear word; it's simply a description.

So for trophies, sparring is wonderful. Note that sparring also teaches distance and timing and speed and develops endurance and some pain tolerance, and some sportsmanship. Sparring is very good.

And for sucker punches delivered to your head by BGs, or tackles, or groin kicks, or the other few dozen commonly encountered varieties of civilian violence, there are the techniques encoded in the kata.

Dust bunnies bad.

Kata good.

p.s. please don't confuse my admiration for the ingenuity of the kata designers for admiration for violence as a problem-solving technique. They did a great job. But if you're in a dust-up, you've been remiss. You shouldn't have been in that bar, because, darn. And you shouldn't have been hitting on his wife, because boyfriends'll beat you up, but husbands'll kill ya (the wisdom of Pancho Willis).

And you should have seen the signs that the BG was about to attack you, like asking for the time under the public clock, or asking for a cigarette in a no-smoking zone, or staring, or that little pulse on the side of his neck.

When you see somebody trying to work himself into an emotional state to overcome his aversion to violence, help him out by leaving or going to talk to the bartender or the bouncer or a cop or...oh, yeah, leaving.

The time to use the kata techniques, in general, is when you are the subject of an unprovoked attack that you didn't see coming, and the prospect of dying from a beating is greater than the prospect of dying after you go to jail.

You use the kata techniques when the prospect of going to a nice, safe jail sounds like a soft, warm, fuzzy and happy option, as compared to dying from that beating you never saw coming.

p.p.s. It has been said that violence never solved anything. That is demonstrably nonsense. Read the history of Carthage, which ended abruptly at the hands of the Romans. Violence is simply a lousy way to solve problems, with lots of bad side effects, including death. But it is demonstrably effective, which is why after Pearl Harbor, the United States entered World War II. And it is the reason that a study of violence, and the defenses to violence, is a sensible area of study.

Shotokan is TWO, TWO, TWO Martial Arts in ONE!

2010-05-10T17:50:00.000-07:00

And it really is.

When Nakayama Sensei began the process of making Okinawan Karate friendly to the cultural values of Japan proper, karate changed even more than it had previously.

Previously, Okinawan Karate was primarily a close-range martial art for defense against commonly occurring acts of civilian violence, and it was, well, pretty brutal, as well as effective.

Really effective.

When you watch the bunkai of Goju-ryu, for instance, you get a pretty good idea of how brutal a martial art we're talking about. Head butts, bites, fishhooks, breaking arms, gouging eyes (out. did I mention out?) and bouncing heads off of the paving stones were pretty normal techniques that were encoded into the databases that were the Goju-ryu kata. And the Shotokan Kata, for that matter.

If you go slightly to the left and a little up, you can watch the bunkai of Wado-ryu, which has preserved a bundle of the same kata studied in Shotokan.

I recently re-visited a Shotokan kata in Wado clothing; the kata is Seishan in Wado, and Gankaku in Shotokan, but it's the same kata.

Iain's dvd explaining (and explaining and explaining and explaining; this guy never quits!) the bunkai of Gankaku is remarkable.

There is a consistent improvement in production values as you move along the list of his Bunkai-Jutsu series of dvds, but who cares?

The important thing is the information on the dvd, and that is far beyond first-rate.

Watching ALL of the bunkai that flow clearly and logically from the kata makes it obvious why Okinawan Karate Masters usually studied only a couple of kata.

Because most of the kata contain within them a complete martial art of self defense.

Now, the reason you get TWO martial arts when you study Shotokan is that Nakayama Sensei invented a new one. It's a pretty good one, too.

That is the martial art designed for dueling, starting at extreme distance, and with white pajamas and referees.

It is a wonderful martial art.

The punches and kicks have been optimized for speed and power to such an extent that a good student of Shotokan can hold his own in a dust up if he's trained with such a result in mind.

And when I say that, I mean that if you've been training punching and kicking techniques and you've never hit a heavy bag, you're in for a fast and brutal education when you hit somebody for the first time, I think.

The lightning fast, powerful but not over-committed punches and blocks and kicks of Shotokan are useful self defense tools, because they are a little like similar techniques in boxing; they put body weight behind the percussive technique, but the body stays balanced during the dust-up.

And while Shotokan does not normally use body toughening techniques, it does use arm clashing exercises, and after a while, those desensitize the practitioner to some sorts of impact.

So a Shotokan student has techniques something like those of boxing in his toolbox.

But wait! What happens when he gets older? Don't those techniques slow down?

Well, some; they're still better kicks and punches than the other guys in the nursing home, but they don't have as much smoke on 'em as they used to.

And that's when the wide new vista of bunkai open up!

Because the bunkai of the kata that a Shotokan student has practiced for twenty years is not for show, although it can be used for a spiffy demonstration.

And it's not primarily for cardiovascular development, although it can be used for that as well.

And it's not primarily for coordination and balance and flexibility, but it's good for that also.

What it's designed for is very effective self-defense.

Now, somebody wrote a book called Five Years, One Kata. I haven't read it yet, because I liked the concept and the reviews but not the price tag.

On the other hand, having reviewed the dvd from Iain, I now have an opinion, although opinions are like armpits (everyone has a couple, and some stink!); my opinion is that, left to your own devices, you'll never, ever figure out all the cool bunkai just by repeating the kata.

Ain't happening.

Which brings me to a conclusion point; I believe that before you pick a kata to study in depth for five or ten years, you owe it to yourself to review the Iain Abernethy kata dvds, and the dvds by Morio Higaonna (particularly the bunkai dvds in his Encyclopedia of Goju-ryu Karate Series- volumes 8, 9 and 10).

Because there are WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too many applications for anybody to become effective, if he's trying to learn and practice them all.

After all, how many different defenses do you need to a double hand grab to your shirt?

I think the correct answer is just one.

One that works.

p.s. Like many of the thoughts I've had about Shotokan Karate, this one owes a debt of gratitude to Rob Redmond, who has the best Shotokan Karate blog out there; his discussion of the makiwara vs. the heavy bag is the best discusion I've seen on that topic, and made a believer of me.

p.p.s. While I wander, I really have a point here; no, really! The point is that each of the major Shotokan (or Wado or Goju) Kata have a huge number of practical, effective, brutal bunkai. But you can only carry around just so many techniques that you are actually able to use effectively. So when you get serious about wanting to practice karate for self-defense, you're going to want to pick out the kata that has the largest number of techniques that appeal to you personally.

And then you'll practice those techniques, both in kata form and with a partner.

Lots of practice.

And then you'll have a supplement to your dueling techniques that is effective in a lot of additional situations.

p.p.p.s On the other hand, you could always build your own kata from your inventory of favorite self-defense techniques, like Bill Bryant did.

Karate Camps and Retreats are Like High-School Reunions. Except that Everybody Can Still Walk.

2010-05-02T07:39:00.000-07:00

Several facts are now of record, and official.

One is that I have a certificate from Japan, suitable for framing, which functions as my "diploma"; it attests to the fact that I have earned a first-degree (Shodan) black belt in Shotokan Karate, as taught by Shojiro Koyama, 8th Dan, JKA.

Another is that I am, officially, the clumsiest guy in the Southwestern States and Mexico.

And on the other hand, my blood circulation is much better than it was before I came back to classes with Sensei Koyama. I know that because Sensei Koyama trotted me up before the assembled multitude at the Spring Camp, and pointed out that my face, red as a beet, suggested that my circulation was far better than it had been when I resumed training a couple of years ago. He was, as always, correct.

Circulation of blood isn't much, as distinctions go. I might have preferred "most improved", or "most likely to make Nidan", or even "Mr. Popularity". But at my age (60), I'm delighted to take what I can get.

And actually, I'm delighted that I got my certificate at all; there were ten Shodans awarded recently, and three Nidans. We were privileged to perform our kata (before the assembled mulitude, as well) prior to receiving our certificates.

For me, that part of the event was very Japanese. I pretended I hadn't goofed up a movement in my performance of the kata, and they all pretended that they hadn't noticed.

The event framing my certificate ceremony was the Spring Camp.

It was wonderful.

I may be a little biased, of course.

One reason I thought it was wonderful was that I was able to survive it without falling down, or soiling my beautiful Sunday-go-to-meeting Made-in-Japan Tokaido Karate Gi, or throwing up immediately after class. My pre-hydration project had been successful.

And since the Camp was jammed with excellent karate-ka from multiple countries, including Mexico, I was able to watch a lot of other folks with much greater skills than my own, which is both inspiring and depressing. I got a chance to say, "I could that! I just need another year or two of practice, and I can do that!"

I also got to say, "Nope. Twenty years more practice with the best karate instructor in the world, and there is no chance in heck that I'll ever be able to do that!"

Self-knowledge is a wonderful thing.

And speaking of self-knowledge, I am now aware that my basic technique has improved greatly, and my most basic techniques are starting to resemble actual karate techniques instead of mere aimless flailing of the air.

And I have also reached the conclusion that I must, if I am going to progress beyond nifty basic techniques and kata, start attending group classes again, even if only once a week. If you are going to learn to dance, you need a partner. If you are going to learn to block and spar, you need a partner.

You also need multiple partners, so you don't develop what, in ballroom dance, is referred to as "one-partner disease"; that is, you want to be able to "read the tells" in a foxtrot or samba with a tall or short partner, or be able to block a jab from a tall, short, skinny, fat, fast and slow partner, which involves reading their tells, as well.

Another great thing about a Karate Spring Camp is that you get to see other geriatric karate students you've known for many years, almost like a high-school reunion. Some have kept up their skills as though they'd never left. Rich, for instance, can control distance in sparring exercises like a champ, even after a thirty-five year layoff.

And there are a couple of brown belts and young black belts I hadn't seen in a couple of years who've been hard at training in the interim, and they've made huge strides in developing their basic techniques, and their punches were amazing.

And the advanced students remained...you know, advanced! Watching Sean and Joe sparring made me say two different things. One was "I need to ask them for pointers when I'm ready to start getting serious about practicing sparring techniques".

Another was, "I don't think I'll want to dump a beer in their laps just to find out what happens next."

Finally for today, I am impressed that I survived all those hours of instruction in a room with the big kids.

I am also impressed that there is such a spirit of cooperation and mutual support in the classes. It is almost a paradox that in a room full of people with supersonic punches that can easily break bones, there is so much concern for gentleness in training. The Senior Students, of course, test each other, so they can both progress. But that testing is in the context of development of technique, not ego gratification.

It is very easy to progress in a class full of advanced students who want to help you reach your potential, as opposed to classes full of folks who want to make sure you never develop to challenge their position in the food chain.

I've attended karate schools with both approaches, and I know which one I like better.

Rob Redmond's Book about Shotokan Karate Kata is Priceless. Really.

2010-03-27T21:23:00.001-07:00

Rob Redmond is an advanced Shotokan Karate student, and a fine writer.

He wrote an excellent book about the kata of Shotokan Karate.

You need to read it if you're a student of Shotokan Karate, because he has invaluable insights into the nature and benefits and performance of the kata. And you have to read the book to appreciate how much he thinks about the topic.

The title of the book is "Kata: the Folk Dances of Japan".

Rob wrote the book, and it lived on his remarkable Shotokan Blog, 24 Fighting Chickens (and again, no, I don't know why he calls it 24 Fighting Chickens; but he can call it anything he wants, because it's one of the best Shotokan Blogs on the internet).

Then he took the kata book off his blog, and made it available for purchase. It was a little pricey, but it's worth a ton, because of the quantity and quality of information in it.

And now he has improved the book by making it My Favorite Price.

While you can still buy a hard copy of the book, you can download a pdf of the book for free, here.

So the book is priceless.

Really.

One-stop Shopping for the Shotokan Syllabus, Again.

2010-03-27T19:15:00.000-07:00

Since the inception of Shotokan Karate, instructors have yearned to produce a complete, comprehensive exposition of orthodox training and technique.

And we know that, because Gichen Funakoshi himself wrote books, finally including Karate-do Kyohan (The Master Text) in an effort to achieve that goal.

And Sensei Nakayama undertook a quest for the same Holy Grail. In his case, the efforts included the early 35 millimeter films in black and white, with subtitles; it was a good effort, given the resources he had, and the level of training of his students at the time.

And he bettered that early effort when he had the chance, with a series of videos that have since morphed into dvds; and of course also with the "Best Karate" series of books, which were one of my major references many, many years ago when Sensei Koyama taught karate at Phoenix College and Arizona State University, as well as his dojo on 7th Street in Phoenix, where I make my pilgrimage every week in the hope that someday he will be able to turn even me into a passable student. At the time, the "Best Karate" series was the sine qua non of orthodoxy in Shotokan Karate, prior to the sad death of Sensei Nakayama, when Shotokan Instructors worldwide schismed like Protestants.

But the quest for one central repository of orthodoxy ("orthodox" really just means "straight" as opposed to "crooked", hence "orthodontist"; but I digress) continued after the death of the head of the Japan Karate Association.

I have previously commented on a simple, inexpensive attempt at that goal by Sensei Kanazawa, which is carried on Amazon. That three volume set is an excellent reference, particularly because you can see all of the Shotokan Kata on one of the dvds.

And I recently had an opportunity to screen the five-volume set of dvds (as well as the rest of the basic technique that defines Shotokan) authored by Kanazawa's opponent in the first All-Japan Karate Tournament, Sensei Keinosuke Enoeda.

It is, in a word, orthodox. Really, really, orthodox. And excellent. Really, really excellent.

And I strongly recommend it. It gets the full five popcorn tubs, or five karate gis, or five stars, or whatever else makes sense in this context (five kuro-obi?).

The five-volume set contains the essential techniques and kata of the Shotokan system.

The production values are excellent. The technique of Sensei Enoeda is very good. His assistant, who demonstrates about half the kata and basic techniques, is Sensei Ohta.

Frankly, Sensei Ohta is a kata machine. He demonstrates remarkable technique, and zero ego. His basic technique is not good, or excellent, or fine; it is flawless. His relatively unsung contribution is one of the various reasons you need to buy this series of dvds. The production values are great, and the price/content/quality ratios are excellent.

Anyone who has an interest in Shotokan Karate owes it to himself to buy this series; while it may be a bit depressing at times (and no, you will NEVER have technique as good as Sensei Ohta. Give it up. Release your tears. It ain't happenin'.) because of the amazing, remarkable and, well, perfect technique demonstrated here.

The one major hole in this series is the bunkai, or application, sections that are scattered after the kata.

Now, there has been a remarkable amount of ink, or electrons, or photons, poured out in connection with bunkai. A fair amount has come from me.

So please understand that while I absolutely sing the praises of this series as a resource demonstrating and explaining the syllabus of Shotokan Karate, the bunkai exhibited here would, in general, get you seriously killed if you ever tried to apply it on the street.

For bunkai, you will need to cut and paste from Iain Abernethy's astonishing Bunkai-Jitsu series of dvds (get them; get them now. You must have them. Really. Otherwise you are dancing, not practicing kata; and don't snivel to me that he's a Wado stylist. I know it, but the kata are the same kata, you goofball!), and the excellent Encyclopedia of Goju Ryu dvd series by Mario Higaonna, of which I have previously spoken.

If you have this series, or the similar three volume set by Kanazawa, and you supplement those with the Abernethy and Higaonna bunkai sets, you will be well on your way to as complete an understanding of Shotokan Karate as you are likely to get without going to a dojo.

And if you're going exclusively to group classes, with the best Sensei on the planet, you still need this five volume set entitled The Master Text by Keinosuke Enoeda, simply so you can watch what you were taught in class when you were stuck behind that tall guy, or so you can watch it in slow motion and see that the foot swivels on the ball of the foot sometimes, and sometimes the heel.

It matters, you see.

p.s. notwithstanding the quality of the instruction in The Master Text DVD by Enoeda, and the excellent prices and excellent information and technique and production values, there is this small irritant: the first ten minutes of all five volumes contain a commercial trailer for the dvd "Enoeda, the Legend". You have to fast forward through it every time you want to watch the content. On the other hand, that's a very small price to pay for the very high quality technique in this series.

p.p.s. there are other reviews of this dvd series , and they are also overwhelmingly positive, although there is not much objectivity in them, either. But you can believe me, because I don't have a dog in the fight. These are excellent dvds, and the price is absurdly low for the quality and quantity of information.

The Unified Field Theory of Karate Bunkai, Part II

2010-03-14T11:31:00.000-07:00

I love it when I'm right. Doesn't happen all that often, but it feels good.

Here was my hypothesis: the kata of Shotokan karate, Wado-ryu, Shito-ryu, and Goju-ryu are all databases of self-defense techniques. They were not, in Okinawa, primarily spiritual exercises or aerobic exercises.

They were lists of how-to-kick-behind exercises. With variations, of course.

And the fundamental self-defense techniques encoded in all of the kata of those karate styles are and were the same, because there are only so many effective self-defense techniques against commonly-encountered attacks (like roundhouse punches, tackles, eye/throat/groin grabs, and kicks to your huevos rancheros).

And I was right!

Not just right. Really, really, really right!

How do I know?

Well, it might have been possible to keep the real bunkai secret when karate moved uptown from poor oppressed Okinawa to rich oppressing mainland Japan, as has been suggested by some writers, but it's hard to keep info down on the farm in the age of the internet and dvds.

So, for instance, there are bunkai dvds available for sale to anybody who has the price on the Dragon-Tsunami website, and one of the guys who knows more about the bunkai of Goju-ryu kata than anybody else in the world has made his knowledge available there.

Mario Higaonna has been described as the most dangerous man in Japan in a real fight by Don Draeger, who was himself a little on the scary-guy side. But that's not important. What is important is that Mario Higaonna studied with the guy who studied with The Guy in Goju.

And I recently had the pleasure of screening for the first time the last three volumes of the dvd series, The Encyclopedia of Goju Ryu, by Mario Higaonna.

And the three volumes I watched were swell!

In fact, Mario Higaonna reminded me of another master of bunkai, Iain Abernethy. Both appear to be very nice guys, both have deep and wide knowledge about bunkai, and you can tell that they're teaching because they're talking.

Some guys who do dvds are stingy with their knowledge. Not these two.

And Iain speaks for Wado and Shotokan and Shito because the Itosu lines of kata are taught in those styles, and Higaonna speaks for Goju, which has a different buncha kata. Note that Shito uses a buncha kata from both of those styles.

But we can now all be friends and sing Kumbaya around the campfire.

And that's because it doesn't matter if the kata are different.

The fundamental information contained inside the kata are substantially the same.

And that makes sense, as it should.

The cities in which karate grew up have grown together. The Big Guys who taught karate in Okinawa all studied with the same masters, or students of the same masters.

So everybody knew what self-defense techniques were encoded in the various kata.

And since the purpose of kata was to preserve effective self-defense techniques from loss because of memory lapses, the kata of all those styles contain the same bundles of self-defense techniques.

And that makes sense. Because there are only so many common attacks, and there are only so many common, effective defenses that were being taught in back rooms in Okinawa in the days before Funakoshi took Shotokan karate uptown.

But don't believe me (and, sadly, so few do!).

Get yourself every dvd made by Iain Abernethy and take a look at the bunkai he teaches (and teaches and teaches and teaches; he has more energy than a potful of jumping beans)on his bunkai series, and you'll say to yourself: I knew those kata were good for something!

And then get the last three dvds in The Encyclopedia of Goju Ryu series, and buy yourself some popcorn.

You're going to enjoy the show.

Because there are, certainly, differences in emphasis in the self-defense techniques being taught, from time to time. And there are small stylistic differences (Goju makes more use of shiko-dachi, while the others favor kiba-dachi, for instance. Big deal.).

As a practical matter, on the other hand, if you were to study only the self-defense techniques demonstrated by Abernethy and Higaonna, with all the wrist grab defenses, and defenses against punches, and defenses against tackles and bearhugs and headbutts, you'd have two classes that mirrored each other very closely.

By the way, all of the dvds produced by the two men are wonderful. My favorite so far in the Encyclopedia of Goju Ryu series, so far, is volume 8. It teaches a couple of angles in connection with the rising block and downblock and an upper level punch in Gekki Sai Kata that were very, very interesting to me. And there are a couple of small points that Higaonna doesn't even mention, but show up in the demonstration, like stepping on his opponent's foot before the technique is executed.

I would not, I think, want to toss a cup of saki in his face, or dump fertilizer in his beanpatch just before harvest-time. He looks like a warm, supportive, helpful guy, who practices how to grab faces by the eye-sockets and chin, to pull those faces down into elbow strikes. Sort of a "bowling ball grab", if you will.

So no barfights with him, thank you very much!

And Iain is cut from the same cloth; he is very concerned about safety in practice, because it's so clear to him how to be, you know, unsafe! My favorite in his Bunkai-Jutsu series is also Volume One, which discusses the uses of the Heian Series of Katas, which contain a sort of Swiss Army Knife series of self-defense techniques.

So get your dvds and your popcorn, and watch in amazement as you see how similar all of the kata applications are, and how effective they are as self-defense techniques.

And you'll also figure out (heck, Iain tells you outright!) why there are SO DARN MANY defenses against wrist grabs in the kata. When I understood it, I slapped my forehead and said, and I quote, "Duuuuhhhhhh!"

If You Don't Read Rob Redmond's Blog, You Are Missing Out!

2010-03-06T11:24:00.000-08:00

Okay, some people are funny.

And some have been there, and done that.

And some are smart.

Rob Redmond is one of the above.

I don't always agree with him, although I absolutely, positively subscribe to his belief that the karate kata are databases of self-defense techniques, and in that I am also in agreement with Iain Abernethy.

But I just looked at a blog entry about karate practice entitled "Your Karate Practice is Not Noble".

I agree with him.

I would have violently disagreed thirty or forty years ago, but I may be smarter now. Maybe just lower testosterone levels. But now I agree.

Now, Gichen Funakoshi would have disagreed. He actually, factually, did believe that the practice of karate would improve your character, and Sensei Kano believed the same thing about the practice of judo.

But the practitioners of boxing have since the Victorian Era and before taken the position that boxing would improve character.

And that, I think, is probably not the case, either.

The Unified Field Theory of Shotokan, Wado, Shito and Shorin Karate Kata Bunkai

2010-03-06T10:36:00.000-08:00

I have a theory.

It's not original, of course.

But my theory is that the martial arts guys in Okinawa talked to each other. And they slugged it out with each other, and the loser went away after taking lotsa notes.

And when they had a chance, they'd take a quick vacation over to China, find a local master, learn whatever they could, and come back as the new local expert with the magical new secret techniques (which rapidly spread among the local martial arts cognoscenti, because two guys can keep a secret, as long as one of them is dead, you know?).

I have another theory, which I picked up by listening to guys who are smarter than me, like Rob Redmond and Iain Abernethy. That theory is that the kata in all the major styles of karate are actually databases of frequently used techniques for self defense in civilian settings, mostly without weapons.

Now, you may not like the word databases, and you may prefer the word memory aids. I'm pretty easy on this stuff.

Now, here we get to my most scary and controversial theory: I have a theory that all of the major kata taught in all of the major styles of karate encode exactly the same body of techniques.

And it's a substantial body of technique, at that.

If you watch Iain Abernethy's dvds (and I think you'll be missing out if you don't), you'll see that the kata contain, encoded within them, armlocks that look a lot like Aikido techniques, striking techniques (duhhh) and throwing techniques that look like those in bare-knuckle boxing and in judo and in wrestling. And chokes and locks and gouges.

There are, after all, only so many ways to fight seriously with empty hands, and throws, strikes and punches and kicks, and chokes and locks are sort of the only ways to do that. Well, there are bites, but do you really need a kata and a Sensei to teach you to bite? Really?

Of course, there's also that mind control stuff, but that only works above sixth dan, you know?

Back to my theory: I think the various teachers in Okinawa were teaching self defense, not dances or theoretical, philosophical and religious exercises. And not sporting techniques, because the entire body of what they were teaching was ILLEGAL. So they didn't have All-Okinawa Karate Tournaments, you know? So they didn't much need the kata to address sportive applications of karate, since there WEREN'T ANY in Okinawa!

And the reason that the kata look different from one another is that different guys will make different choices as to which techniques work best for them.

The best ordinary-language discussion of this process is probably found in a tiny, short book entitled "Strictly Street Stuff", by a really cool geriatric named Bill Bryant.

If you're not a stuck-up martial arts horse's patootie who believes that his art is the only true way, you'll love that little book. If you ARE a stuck-up martial arts horse's patootie, you'll HATE the book, because there's nothing mysterious or exotic about it. It just talks about defending yourself, and how Bill came to believe what he believes, and how he trains. Period.

That book is entertaining, but my personal hallucination is that the author of that book, Bill Bryant, did EXACTLY what the kata originators in Okinawa and China did: he strung together movements from his favorite self-defense techniques against roundhouse punches, headlocks, tackles, grabs leading to headbutts or knees, attacks with knives and clubs, and that gave him a nifty little exercise he could do on his own, without a partner, to reinforce his muscle memory and make him better able to defend himself after he was smacked without warning and was watching those funny little stars on the nice black background.

My own extra credit project: I have watched most of Iain Abernethy's excellent dvds about bunkai, and if you don't, well, what a doofus you are!

And I am about to receive, from the Dragon-Tsunami website, several application dvds in the "Encyclopedia of Goju Ryu" series.

I'll get them today, I expect, based on the AMAZINGLY good customer service at Dragon-Tsunami (no, I'm not an owner, nor do I get a kickback; but most customer service is so bad, I want to reward the good stuff!).

My expectation is that the bunkai in the various advanced kata in Goju will be AMAZINGLY similar to the bunkai in Wado demonstrated by Iain Abernethy.

Because there are only so many useful ways to defend yourself from a headlock, or a tackle, or a roundhouse punch, or a kick to the enchiladas, or a head-butt attempt, or a grab to the shirt which will be immediately followed by a head-butt, knee to the groin, or throw (note to self: don't let other people grab your shirt very much. Really.).

I will keep you posted on the results of my intellectual exploration, and the status of my theory after I have more data.

But if the bunkai of Wado and the bunkai of Goju are remarkably different (that is, if they don't simply show ordinary, common sense defenses against ordinary, frequently encountered street-type attacks), I might be surprised!

Really. It could happen.

Bas Rutten has a Self Defense System; Compared to Shotokan Karate

2010-02-27T14:13:00.001-08:00

Okay, there are a lot of self-defense and fighting systems on this planet. Apparently, all giant primates are a little frisky and like to mix it up sometimes.

And fighting, because it's chaotic, is only a little receptive to the idea of systems, which rational humans would like to impose on that chaos.

Why would I suggest that? Well, armies have a strong motivation to teach effective systems of unarmed combat along with armed combat. And most do have some sort of module on hand-to-hand or close-quarters combat.

And the nature of the training given to soldiers in various countries over the last century or so (which we can study by reviewing manuals and talking to instructors) is different, country to country, decade to decade.

If fighting without weapons was an easy subject to make rational and linear, that would have been done already; we'd just look at the manuals left to us by, say, Alexander or Julius, and we'd know exactly what worked best.

In fact, Gladiators provided an early area of experimentation to see what worked best against what. The Romans were nothing if not practical, and adopted weapons and tactics from all of their military opponents. The "Roman" short sword was actually the Celtiberian short sword, adopted by the Romans after they noticed how effective it was when used against Romans!

But all of the systems currently in use on the face of this globe are the result of decisions and choices made by one person.

Bruce Lee sort of had a system, and there are books about that. It took an interesting approach to the issues of self-defense and fighting. I do get a kick out it that he used Shotokan techniques as a straw man in his arguments, ignoring the fact that what he was critical of were simply training techniques, not techniques for use against opponents. And I have read that his kicking techniques were strongly influenced by Kanazawa, although I can't recall where I read that.

The system that was developed in Okinawa was changed by decisions and choices made by Sensei Funakoshi, and those were further adapted to make them more desirable to a Japanese population by Sensei Nakayama. And in Shotokan Karate, therefore, there was more emphasis on basic technique, kata repetition and beauty and athleticism, and a system of sparring the would be safe enough (that is, ineffective enough in causing damage) that it could be practiced by college students at Japanese Universities without causing those pesky deaths.

College Deans may like tough stuff, but dead students don't pay tuition.

And Shotokan is a system, but the system is not yet fully integrated. It produces students who, at the end of an extended learning curve, can kick and punch with great speed and power, but who often are not trained in absorbing a punch, and who may not have fully grasped the relationship between the kata and self-defense, even though there is a LOT of useful self-defense information encoded in the kata.

But that's a quibble. Shotokan is a wonderful system, and has this advantage: it can be practiced with relative safety by a wide range of people of various ages and conditions, and it provides a fairly safe environment in which to learn useful skills, and those skills are imparted in a system that provides gradual levels of increased difficulty as the student becomes ready for them.

There are other systems, with various degrees of utility in the world, and some are well thought out, and some less well.

I'm fond of the minimalist system that Fairbairn taught commandos and troops during World War II.

It was so effective in causing injuries and death that the British High Command stopped teaching it to most of its soldiers soon after the War was over. Soldiers, being young and high spirited, tend to get into fights with each other over ordinary dominance issues. Those using the Fairbairn techniques on each other produced high levels of, you know, death, with a side-dish of deafness, broken necks, and the ever-popular broken bones that happen during serious hand to hand altercations.

On the other hand, the Fairbairn system wasn't designed to be a system of spiritual development, or for physical culture. It was designed to make farmboys into effective unarmed combatants in a few hours of instruction, and it left out anything not relevant to that goal.

A smart and funny gentleman named Bas Rutten, who distinguished himself in mixed martial arts competitions, has also developed a system.

It strikes me that his system, as taught on his dvd entitled "Lethal Street Fighting", has a good deal to say for itself.

Mind you, his system seems optimized for people who are young, male, weigh 200 pounds and more, and are six feet plus. There is a too much punching in his system for my taste, because in self-defense and street fighting, even professional boxers break hand bones, which makes continued merriment much more difficult. At least, I've heard from my cowboy boxer friends that when they punch and their hand goes "crunch", it slows 'em right down.

But let's be fair.

I've already said that all systems are matters of choices made by the person who builds the system.

Bas Rutten put together a bundle of techniques and ideas that he thought would be helpful to folks who were involved in fights in bars, for instance, and he clearly gave that scenario a lot of thought.

That's partly because of his time as a bouncer.

Now, his decisions about fighting are not identical to mine, because I'm old and relatively fragile. I don't like the idea of using too many punches in a slugfest, because my bone structure isn't as robust as that of a pro boxer or a Bas Ruten.

But Bas does discuss the use of the palm heel as an alternative to the fist when attacking a hard target like a chin, and that's good thing, I think.

In addition, Bas assumes a basic level of competence in his students. He does not provide fundamental instructions in punching or kicking in his dvd. That's probably a good thing, because this is designed to be a stand-alone dvd.

In fact, overall, it appears to me that his dvd has a good number of ideas that non-bouncers might not consider, including the fact that most people in bars are fairly, you know, drunk. So that their attacks are somewhat slower and more imprecise than others, and their center may be a bit wobbly.

His confidence is clear, and that's a good thing. Having confidence in your techniques is absolutely necessary in a physical dust-up, and one way to build such confidence is to learn techniques.

The approaches that Mr. Rutten uses are not very pretty. Let me put it another way. He does not care a rat's patoot about whether somebody else would think his technique optimizes the transfer of power from his hips to his target. He just cares about the effect his technique has on his opponent, almost as though he were a boxer.

That's particularly clear in the choice of kick to the groin that Mr. Rutten teaches on this dvd. It's not very pretty. But it looks as though you would probably rather not experience it zipping up into your huevos rancheros.

There is a good amount of practical advice that rings true on the dvd; he suggests that grappling on the ground in a bar is a good way to get your head used for target practice by your opponent's buddies.

He also suggests that he's not very comfortable in dealing with knife attacks, although he demonstrates some approaches using a bar stool as a weapon.

But most smart people seem to agree on one point: fighting empty handed against an assailant with a knife is not a good way to live to be 125, unless your birthday is going to be occur in six seconds, and you're already 124.

Another practice pointer he suggests, based on his experience as a bouncer, is that when talking to a guy who may open up you, it's good to take a "Jack Benny" type stance, so that your hands are up in a non-threatening way, and you can pick up incoming punches or head butts easily. He also suggests that when in the Jack Benny posture, you drop your chin so that an unexpected head butt injures your opponent instead of breaking your nose, cheeks, and teeth.

All in all, the dvd is as entertaining as it is informative; an experienced martial artist will probably not benefit vastly from the dvd, but it'll keep him laughing anyway, because Mr. Rutten is funny and entertaining in his demonstrations.

A novice marital artist who wants some insight into the various reasons to avoid both cowboy and biker bars could benefit greatly from this dvd.

Does Practicing Shotokan Karate Kata Make You Better at Shotokan Sparring?

2010-02-27T08:10:00.001-08:00

I think, in general, the answer would be no.

Sparring depends on skills associated with a polished wood floor, four referees, bowing, and points awarded after mostly bloodless confrontations against one actual opponent, when that opponent is trained in the same sport with the same rules.

Kata are designed as databases of information that can be passed down through generations of karate students, each kata containing answers to the question: what do I do when my opponent has grabbed my gi with both hands and has not yet butted me with his head, thrown me, or kneed me in the enchiladas? Or similar questions.

Many kata have answers to the question, what do I do when my opponent has hit me once, and I'm seeing little purple stars on a black background, and the percussion section is playing inside my head?

And that's because those are the sorts of attacks that occur in the world.

Obviously, there are a lot of different attacks that happen in the outside world. The sort of attack you usually WON'T see is a flying double front kick, or a roundhouse kick to your head. Or, for that matter, a double punch combination starting at fifteen feet away after the bad guy says, "Okay, we're in a fight now. Here are the rules. Put up your dukes!"

Normally, you don't see a bunch of referees in a real fight, or a nicely polished and sprung hardwood floor, or people in white pajamas.

In fact, you don't see anything, because the bad guy has moved around to your blind side and belted you with a beer mug, pool cue, chair, or, in a place that's deficient in easy to grab weapons, his fist.

Or you'll see a bad guy distract you, by asking for the time, or asking for directions, and then you'll notice that you've been grabbed to control your targets, and you'll get to go for a ride, or inspect his head at very close range, or wonder whether you'll be able to father children in the future.

The kata provide answers to those sorts of questions, not "how do I get points when my opponent feints to my stomach and moves his foot skillfully around to touch my head with a skillful roundhouse kick?"

There is a very nice book called "Strictly Street Stuff", in which the author, who is well experienced in getting hit and returning the favor, discusses how he assembled his own kata, or PDF (personal defense form). It's just a shorthand version of defenses against the attacks that author expected to run into in the future, because he'd run into them in the past.

One mystery I had contemplated for years was this: why do the kata provide so many answers to wrist grabs? That didn't seem practical to me, because nobody grabs wrists much in the beginning of fights.

Iain Abernethy answers that question in one of his brilliant bunkai series of dvds, in which he points out that real fights are nasty, messy, unpleasant things (check). And that in those unpleasant affairs, if your opponent can effectively gouge your eye, or grab and crush your throat, or grab and squash your tamales, the fight is going to be over quickly (check).

He goes on to point out that nobody at all is going to ignore any of those sorts of attacks, and that in each and every case in which a thumb is being ground into an eye, the grindee is going to grab the wrist of the grinder, really hard (check).

Hence all the reactions to wrist grabs in the kata (Aha!). The kata don't waste time with the obvious (in a real fight, people do bad things to one another, specifically including gouging and grabbing and crushing and twisting the soft parts) and the normal and universal response to those attacks is to grab the wrist of the offending hand; so the kata just encode what happens after the wrist is grabbed! Which will happen in a real fight, because at some point in a real fight, somebody is going to take a grab at his opponent's soft parts.

Note: kumite will make you better at dealing with "challenge fights", the sort that show up when one guy says, Your mother dresses you funny! Or similar but more intense phrases. But while the skills you learn sparring are optimized for a one-on-one confrontation, bear in mind that those turn into two or three on one situations with remarkable speed.

So, whenever possible, just give him the mustard! Don't make him fight you for it!

And no matter what you may believe about your skills, which may well be superhuman, when you get whacked on the back of the head while you're facing the guy you think is your opponent, you may have a bad day.

Hence, THE ULTIMATE MARTIAL ART: not being there!

Although, I'm told, sometimes you're just unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time (note: no, bad luck has nothing to do with it if you're inside a rowdy cowboy bar dressed like a c.p.a. and whoopin' it up, or inside a biker bar dressed like a cowboy and having waaaay too much fun. Just don't do that!).

If you are unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, you'll need to make difficult decisions for which you will later have to answer in Court, if you're lucky.

So wear good running shoes, and be in the right place at the right time!

Although those Church Socials can turn nasty in a heartbeat, right?

Is Karate a Religion? Does It Push Zen Buddhism? Do You Have to be a Zen Buddhist to Study Karate?

2010-02-20T17:48:00.000-08:00

Yes, no and maybe.

Most people in the United States practice a number of disciplines that at one time or another or one place or another had religious overtones, or were a parts of religious practice.

The most obvious is Yoga, which is related to Hinduism, which is a religion practiced by many people in the world. Tai Chi is said to be related in a similar way to Taoism.

In the United States, Yoga is practiced, to a large extent, as a gymnastic exercise to improve health and flexibility and balance. Not as a religion. Some, a very few, practice Yoga (and there are several different schools and divisions of Yoga, from Hatha Yoga through Raja Yoga) as a part of their practice of Hinduism. And good on them all. I've known some Hindus, and liked 'em all.

In Okinawa, karate wasn't part of a religious observance. It was a way to bust chops, both with and without weapons. And it was practiced in secret because it was, you know, illegal!

Then karate moved uptown, from the poorest prefecture of Japan to the big time in Tokyo. There the names of the kata were changed to make 'em sound more, you know, Japanese. And the practice of karate was changed to make it seem less, you know, violent. In Shotokan Karate, weapons practice ceased, although that had been an integral part of karate practice in Okinawa (note: General MacArthur didn't much like a subject population practicing at war games with weapons on his watch, because he wasn't dumb).

And Karate, along with new names for Kata and a removal of its weapons practice, also got an overlay of Zen Buddhism, kinda like KenDO and JuDO and AikiDO.

Now, a discussion of Zen is way outside the scope of my tiny little blog here. To get a fairly good understanding of Zen, take a look at the wonderful book Zen and Japanese Culture, by D.T. Suzuki.

That overlay of Zen in Karate is invisible to most Americans, and for that matter most Japanese. But all of the Japanese martial arts have it to one degree or another, because they are "do" (the Way) rather than "jitsu" (the technique).

Now, you can practice either Yoga or Karate without any reference whatsoever to any history or religion or background, but knowing it gives you a little more perspective on the way they're both taught.

And if you ignore the Zen overlay of either Judo or Karate, and you happen by accident to attain enlightenment during your martial arts practice, you'll probably just take some Rolaids and hope it goes away soon.

And I'm sure it will!

Summary: if you are a Christian or a Jew or a Hindu, you can safely practice karate without much concern about Buddhist Doctrine. Buddhism is, after all, almost more of a therapy than a religion. In general, Buddhism is concerned with suffering and its cause, desire, and the cessation of suffering by managing desire. So Buddhism really doesn't have a lot of sharp corners to scrape up other religions. And Zen has even fewer, because it take several hundred pages of reading until you feel comfortable that you might have a foggy guess what Zen is even about! On the other hand, I understand that Soto Zen followers believe that seated meditation has great virtue, and Rinzai Zen followers really want to figure out what sort of sound one hand makes when it claps.

When I was much younger, I really, really wanted to find a certified and demanding Buddhist Roshi to teach me by way of the Koans. These days, I think that would be far too much work. Practicing my kata is hard enough!

p.s. many years ago, after an all-day meditation session at a Zen Buddhist Temple, I asked how long until sitting folded up like that didn't hurt any more. A senior student kindly told me with a smile, "Oh, it always hurts. But after a few years, you don't care anymore!"

Here's a Demonstration by Sensei Shojiro Koyama, 8th Dan, JKA

2010-02-20T13:17:00.000-08:00

So you wonder why I say I'm one very lucky karate student?

Well, here's my instructor.

So He's a Wado Instructor! I Can Overlook That!

2010-02-20T12:46:00.000-08:00

There's this guy. His name is Iain Abernethy.

I've talked about him previously in this blog.

Now he's started generating podcasts.

He has great good sense, and a great practical approach to martial arts.

He has an encyclopedic understanding of bunkai in karate, and the kata he's discussed in his dvds are, of course, a part of the Shotokan syllabus.

You really, really need all of his dvds.

You and I are lucky. We can watch and study with the best martial artists in the world on dvds, and that's very cool.

In my humble opinion, Iain is one of the most knowledgeable martial instructors in the world, and if you don't buy his dvds, well, there are more for me!

And, yes, I have purchased most of them, and I was delighted to discover today that Iain has generated podcasts, AND HE PRODUCED MORE DVDS!!!!

Woo-hoo!

In particular, he's generated DVDs entitled "The Pinan / Heian Series: The Complete Fighting System" and I can't wait to buy them! After I watch 'em, I'll tell you how cool they are.

Why do I know they're cool? Because I have almost all of his other dvds, and they are too cool for school!

Advanced Karate Techniques! Elementary Martial Arts Techniques! Who Says?

2010-02-20T11:13:00.000-08:00

Every now and then (often, actually) I see books that talk about advanced judo techniques, or secret techniques, or fundamental techniques.

Ditto with videos.

And often those books or videos are part of a series; you know, the entire syllabus of SomeKindaMartialArtorOther on 16 dvds!

Here's the deal: there are no advanced techniques.

And here's a surprise: there are no beginner's techniques.

There are techniques.

And when people organize anything, they put them together in a particular order.

So in Judo, students start with breakfalls, then throws, and after they get their Shodan or Nidan, they pick up the striking techniques that Sensei Kano picked up from Sensei Funakoshi. So in Judo, striking techniques are for advanced students!

And in Shotokan Karate, the usual syllabus is almost always the same: students start with kata (the Heian Katas, one through five, to be specific) and then move to Tekki Shodan, and so on through the kata syllabus, while the student learns the basic variations of kicks and punches and blocks.

And so to many karate students, throws are advanced techniques, because they're going to learn those after they move through the kicking and punching and blocking syllabus, if at all. Note that a buncha throws are encoded in the kata, but in some schools, they aren't taught much.

And to an Aikido student, snapping fingers and biting and gouging is....an advanced technique, because he's never going to hear about that or see it in class! For that matter, in many Aikido classes, students are never taught a defense against a left hook, which I suppose makes a left hook....an advanced technique!

There is a nice series of books put out by a student of Bruce Lee, and those end with a book entitled "Advanced Techniques".

HERE IT COMES: a technique is only advanced because it's put at the end of the training syllabus by the teacher who designed that syllabus. Got it?

Putting it another way, there are no advanced techniques.

There may be difficult techniques, but that doesn't make 'em advanced, at least not in my book. The fact that some movements, like a reverse jumping back kick over three automobiles, shattering five concrete blocks while in the air, is a difficult technique from an athletic perspective doesn't make it an advanced technique.

Let's try it again: there is a huge body of martial arts technique out there in the world, available to anybody who can read or use a computer and watch youtube videos.

The techniques range from punches and strikes of every possible sort, to throws of every possible sort, to gouges and breaks and bites.

No kidding, I watched a video once that purported to teach "advanced" biting techniques. You heard it here first.

So here's my official position, and its worth what you paid for it: there are EXACTLY no advanced techniques in any martial art. There are techniques. There are percussive techniques, there are locks, there are chokes, and there are throws and takedowns. None are advanced.

There are very experienced folks (not me, remember) who will also tell you that really knowing three techniques is far, far better than sort of knowing a thousand.

Now here's real wisdom: nothing I've said above matters one little bit!

What matters is that you find yourself a good teacher (I've got mine, thank you) and that you study and practice.

That matters.

And stay out of biker bars. If you MUST to go into a biker bar to make a phone call, don't. Walk the twenty miles out of your way, because getting in fights is a bad idea. And it is most likely that you will find yourself in a fight if you have found a way to combine alcohol, women, and pool tables.

Instead of going to biker bars, go to dojos. Compared to most bars, which often have women, alcohol, and pool tables, dojos are very safe places, even if there are lots of highly-trained women there. People in dojos want to punch you, kick you, throw you, and maybe choke you.

But they don't want to hurt you!

Andre Bertel is One Nifty Shotokan Karate Teacher! And You NEED to Visit His Shotokan Karate Blog!

2010-02-20T10:13:00.000-08:00

I've mentioned Andre Bertel previously here in my little Shotokan Karate blog.

He had the privilege of studying directly with Sensei Asai, a Shotokan Karate Master. Yeah, with all capital letters.

Really.

All of the advanced Shotokan masters moved in somewhat different directions after they had absorbed the syllabus of Shotokan, exactly the way that some boxers focus on mobility, some on power, some on evasion, and some condition themselves so they don't care if they get hit.

My impression is that Sensei Asai thought it might be a good idea to get out of the way of attacks, and it might be better if the guy who was striking at him wound up looking at the sky and contemplating the error of his ways.

Hence, the really, really cool techniques that Sensei Bertel teaches in this video.

Now, if you're a beginning Shotokan student (and by the way, I certainly am), you probably don't understand that Sensei Bertel's techniques, which look like a love child born of Karate and Aikido, with a marriage conducted at some later point in time by William Fairbairn, are all implied in orthodox Shotokan Karate.

In fact, you might say that all of Sensei Asai's techniques are ultra-orthodox, because Sensei Asai was for a time the head of the Japan Karate Association.

But orthodoxy is only important sometimes and in some places. If someone wishes to rearrange your face, it is little defense to tell him that you practice only the purest and most orthodox of techniques.

On the other hand, if you sweep aside his technique, stun him with an inner arm to his vagus nerve, and gently place him on the ground to contemplate the errors of his ways, you get to keep your nose in the center of your face!

And that might be a good thing, depending on your feelings toward your nose.

NOTE: I have a friend with vast medical knowledge, which I lack. If you practice any martial art, you'll get a broken nose, EVENTUALLY. I don't care what art you practice, noses are wimpy. I was told (and I don't know whether it's accurate) that when you go to the emergency room with your broken nose, you want to ask them to let you wait for a plastic surgeon or an eye, ear, nose and throat specialist. The reason is that you're more likely to get a repair that doesn't involve a deviated septum, whatever that is.

ALSO NOTE: In Okinawa, the birthplace of karate, there were a lot of teachers and a lot of styles. It was normal practice to study multiple styles and to study with multiple teachers. There is no disloyalty in studying as much as you can in as many ways as you can, from books, to videos, to live classes. On the other hand, if you are studying techniques with conflicting techniques, that can scramble your synapses.

For instance, the idea of keeping a shoulder UP to guard against counters shows up in some boxing classes; the idea of keeping shoulders down so that power can be generated properly is standard in karate classes. There is no real contradiction there (boxers pop their shoulders up at close range when they might get countered, not at greater distance when it would slow down their punch), but you may be confused.

In fact, if you're like me, you'll just stay confused!

The Gi of Many Colors; My White Pajamas Are Not Angry

2010-02-19T07:18:00.000-08:00

Okay, I know white isn't exactly a color. But remember your color wheel from art class? White light has all the colors of the rainbow in it, and you can tell that when you split them out with a prism.

Or something.

Sometimes when I do stupid things, I get bad results.

But remember, Grasshopper, it's better to be lucky than smart.

Last night I flew out of the house (my last client had taken more time than usual) and zipped to the dojo for my private class with Sensei Koyama.

To discover that I had two gi tops, and no gi pants.

After a certain period during which I experimented with vocabulary use and abuse I had not practiced since I dug ditches for Pancho Willis, I decided that the only thing to do was to wear my fairly loose Levis, with all the stuff pulled out of my pockets, and put on my gi top, and my obi, and make the best of it.

Sensei Koyama did not point, jeer, and guffaw, which had been a small possibility.

Instead, he went into his office and brought out a brand new size six made-in-Japan-not-made-in-China-thank-you-very-much Tokaido Karate Gi, the Gold Standard of Karate Gis.

When it comes out of the wash, I'll be able to let you know its specific type (I think it's a heavyweight, traditional fit size six).

It was an absurdly generous gift, and I, of course, don't deserve it. On the other hand, a karate student of my mediocre ability doesn't deserve to study with an 8th Dan, JKA, but that's a discussion for another day.

So at this point, when the gi shrinks the 5 or 10% that I expect (that's normal for a new cotton gi, by the way), I will look like a big kid karate student.

Actually, there will come a point in another two or three years when I'll look like a big kid karate student: they have black belts that are sort of falling apart at the edges and turning gray, and their wonderful Tokaido Gis (made in Japan) are just beginning to show some wear.

The question, of course, is whether I'll be able to perform techniques like a big kid karate student.

And that's a question that is most certainly for another day.

For today, I'll tell you that my initial inspection of The Gi suggests that there has been no reduction in quality in Tokaido Made in Japan Karate Gis over the last 40 years or so. My first such gi is still around for comparison, and the fit and finish appear quite similar.

The number 10 blue-white cotton material used in the Tokaido made in Japan Gis is much of what sets them apart from all others. There are a fair number of gis that have excellent designs (often borrowed from Tokaido! Remember that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery) and excellent construction, but few glow in the dark and levitate like the original and still the champion.

I will let you know how my newest gi acquisition compares to my other gis, and how it stands up to my primitive washer and dryer (someday, I have to replace them; they are constructed from chipped flint, which may let you know how old they are) and how well it wicks sweat during the summer.

Here in Arizona, during the summer, the wicking of sweat by a karate gi is a survival characteristic.

What Do Shotokan Karate, Gojo Ryu, Judo, Aikido, Tai Chi and Western Boxing All Have in Common?

2010-02-16T19:46:00.000-08:00

It's pretty simple when you think about it.

All of them are in search of a correct balance between relaxation and tension in the muscles during movement.

At the two ends of the spectrum are Tai Chi Chuan (closely followed by Aikido) and Gojo Ryu Karate.

Tai Chi and Aikido start with exercises designed to promote complete relaxation during the execution of martial techniques.

The first and fundamental kata of Goju Ryu, Sanchin, is performed with almost complete tension in all the muscles during the blocks and thrusts of the kata.

Now, for any movement at all to take place, there has to be SOME balance of tension and relation; complete rigor is found primarily in dead bodies, and seldom in live ones. Complete relaxation is found in bodies prepared with curare for surgery, and there's not much muscle tension in such bodies AT ALL, and they don't move around very well, either!

But the ability to execute an effective punch, kick, or throw is dependent on finding the proper balance. Too much tension, and the punch is wooden and slow. Inadequate rigor at the moment of impact, and the force doesn't penetrate the target.

As you study further in Tai Chi, you run into the Fast Set, which looks a lot more like an ordinary karate kata. As you progress in Goju Ryu Karate, you run into a syllabus of kata that are somewhat like those in Shotokan Karate.

In boxing, there are no kata, because they aren't needed; there are very few techniques in boxing, so no "memory device/databases" are needed there. But the same issue shows up: if a boxer is stiff, his jabs and hooks and straight punches are slow and ineffective. If a boxer can't stiffen his jab at the end of that punch, it accomplishes little.

Figuring out how to balance relaxation and tension is universal in martial arts; upon occasion, Sensei Kano would contest, and one of his opponents was remembered saying that playing judo with Kano was like fighting with an empty gi. But when Sensei Kano was ready to throw you, you felt it.

While Tai Chi is at one end of the spectrum, and Gojo Ryu Karate is at the other, all of the disciplines in martial arts share the same koan: how do you learn and teach the proper balance of stiffness and relaxation?

The answer, of course, is simple.

Very carefully, Grasshopper!

What I've been learning in my studies with Sensei Koyama is exactly the above. He is aware that he is able to transmit energy with blinding speed for one reason; he's utterly relaxed until he isn't.

And in another twenty years or so, I expect to be able to do some of the things that Sensei Koyama can do now, with a complete absence of effort.

Yeah, you're right. Another thirty years.

Okay, okay. Fifty.

Another Interesting Exercise, and a thought about Boxing vs. Shotokan Karate

2010-01-02T14:32:00.000-08:00

Shotokan Karate is all about exercises. The basics are drilled in exercises for your entire life as a Shotokan Student.

The Kata are exercises, and so is one-step sparring.

Recently my back went out, and I had an enforced opportunity to study three great books a buddy of mine had given me for Christmas. They are wonderful, magnificent books.

One of them is American Combat Judo, by Bernard J. Cosneck. One is Championship Fighting, by Jack Dempsey. And the third is back on the bed, and I'm not going to go pick it up and check it because my back is out today.

But when I looked at page 32 of American Combat Judo, I was reminded of a technique called "the arm drag"; a wrestler uses that technique to get behind his opponent.

Now, we all know from the reports of bouncers and police statistics that the fight is likely to start one way, and it'll often continue that way for the entire length of the fight.

That is, the bad guy will get nice and close and try to use a roundhouse right to hit you in the head. The reason he wants to be close is because he wants to be inside your reaction-time range, so that you can't effectively see and respond to the bad guy's technique. He uses a sloppy, slow, and very powerful roundhouse right because he's used it a lot in the past, and it's worked well for him. It may well be his only technique, but he has a lot of confidence in it.

All variations of that approach by a bad guy in a bar are referred to as "a sucker punch".

Here's an exercise that I may want to add to the days when I'm not training with Sensei Koyama.

I have a partner square off, nice and close, and his job is to swing for my head, and my job is to try an arm drag to get behind him. Seems to me that after we dance for a while, he should get to try any sort of punch he wants with either hand, because you can apply an arm drag to either arm. The defender only gets to use the arm drag, and does not apply any offensive technique.

After all, once you're standing directly behind your opponent, you ought to be able to think of some effective way to end the fight, no?

Then we swap.

Did I mention that I'd be wearing a head protector build like a tank? Him too, I suppose. And did I suggest that we'd both be wearing fist protectors (sort of like expanded foam boxing gloves, but smaller in diameter).

Seems to me that there would be relatively little opportunity for injury, and a good deal of opportunity for practical benefit.

Because if you can learn to get behind an opponent when he's really trying hard to hit your head, that might be a good thing to know.

Seems to me you could potentially end the fight without hurting your opponent very much if you were standing right in back of him.

And that would be good, too.

p.s. I first looked at Jack Dempsey's book, Championship Fighting, when I was in grade school. It's gotten much, much better since then. Or perhaps I've gotten smarter. It's hard to tell.

For a Shotokan Student, it's a useful excursion through the world of a related but not identical way of hitting opponents. There are areas that an orthodox Shotokan Student will find moronic, like Dempsey's choice of striking surfaces on the fist. But in Okinawa, serious students of karate sought wisdom from many teachers (remember that Funakoshi himself studied with multiple teachers)and multiple sources.

So understanding the mind of a very, very serious western boxer is probably a good idea for students of Shotokan Karate.

Just a thought.

p.p.s. while a Shotokan Student might well disagree with Mr. Dempsey's opinion of the best part of the fist to use to punch an opponent, it is entirely possible that after three rounds with Mr. Dempsey, his opinion might expand a bit. The historical evidence suggests that Jack Dempsey could hit like a freight train. A really, really big freight train.

Now, again, we aren't comparing apples and apples when we compare punching by a boxer with a gloved fist to punching by a karate student with a naked hand.

But the experience of punching with bare knuckles is just different than punching with a glove; at least, those who have done both say that. And one interesting sidelight on bare knuckles is this: in old style bare-knuckle matches, the boxers were schooled to use a vertical fist for their left jab. The idea was that the configuration of a vertical fist without a glove fit the configuration of a naked face pretty well.

NOTA BENE: if I am very fortunate, I will never get to find out whether my opponent's vertical fist to my face, or his horizontal fist to my face, does more damage. Some people know how to hit, and with them, even an accidental punch can break the bones of the face. I've seen it several times, and each time, the result involved a surprising amount of blood or breakage.

Probably final p.s. Somebody who gets in lots of bare knuckle matches would have an interesting appearance after a while, since you get hit if you box, bare-knuckle or not. Picasso nose, cauliflower ear, and full dentures, I would think. I may try to find some illustrations.

Jump Up and Spin Around and Come Down in Back Stance. Right.

2009-12-18T15:37:00.000-08:00

Sensei Koyama is busily filling in large gaps in my training.

While he's teaching me Tekki Sandan, he also started me on Empi this week.

At a given point in the kata, when I had captured my imaginary opponent's groin and throat in each hand, Sensei Koyama indicated that the next movement of the kata involved jumping up in the air, turning 360 degrees, and landing in a knife-defense/back stance.

Since he told me to do it, I did it.

Now, when I say it did it, I don't mean I attempted to do it, and then fell down saying "owie, owie, owie", which is what I personally expected.

I mean that I actually did it.

I don't know who was more surprised, Sensei Koyama or me.

I think he'd momentarily forgotten that he was teaching a sixty-year old couch potato, and he was just doing what he would have done with anybody else (that is, anybody who doesn't creak when it rains).

Now, there may be lessons in this experience. One might be that Shotokan Karate, as taught by Sensei Shojiro Koyama, is a pretty effective tool for developing balance, strength and coordination, even in couch potatoes.

Or maybe being an 8th Degree Sensei, JKA, permits you to work miracles in teaching.

I'll get back to you when I figure it out.

Do Not Get in a Fist-fight with a Chimpanzee, Even if you Study Shotokan

2009-12-18T15:10:00.000-08:00

They do not fight fair.

I watched a scene from the safety of my couch. A couple had brought a birthday cake to their pet chimpanzee, which was safely inside a cage.

Three other chimps, who had made a break for it, came walking toward the couple, and one started beating his chest and making noises. One bouncer, who wrote a great book on the topic, calls this behavior "woofing" in humans.

The lead chimp (and chimps, full grown, are between 180 and 200 pounds, and between four and eight times as strong as humans)bit off her thumb. Not "bit" her thumb. Bit her thumb, and detached her thumb from her hand.

She started screaming (I would have started much earlier, I think) and her husband (hereinafter "the hero") came to the rescue. Sort of.

He shoved her under a table.

He confronted the chimpanzees.

The lead chimp started by gouging out his eye and biting off his nose and lips. His partners in crime bit his genitals and butt.

Did you know that if you bite through the sciatic nerve, the legs won't work anymore?

Well, makes sense, I suppose.

We learn several useful lessons from this nature show.

The first is simple: "Do not fight with chimpanzees. Unless you have a shotgun. Preferably an automatic shotgun. A fistfight with a chimpanzee is a perfectly good proposition if you start shooting with your automatic shotgun when you first see the chimp."

The second is more subtle, and not likely to occur to a Shotokan Karate student.

Biting is a useful tool in all-in close quarters fighting.

I do not recommend it generally, but it shows up in the literature, and one exponent of biting as a part of self defense in prison does suggest that once you bite your opponent's finger off, he is unlikely to want to continue the friendly sparring match.

Another instructor suggests that when you are pinned under an opponent and no other technique will free you, you wrap your arms around your opponent, and start chewing a small piece of whatever is currently shoved into your face.

The purpose of grabbing your opponent while the chewing continues is to prevent him from simply jumping to his feet, and then using those feet to tap dance on your head.

Instead, the instructor suggests, if you hold onto your opponent for about seven good long seconds while you are chewing, when you let go, your opponent will levitate off of you in a panic to escape.

Now, these days there are a lot of blood borne diseases out there, and that's a strong argument against biting.

But chimpanzees do it.

And if you figure that your life expectency with biting and a blood borne disease is likely longer than without biting, but crushed to death or worse, perhaps it's a viable part of your toolbox.

Myself, I try to restrict biting to celery. That reduces blood pressure, by the way.

Don't be Muggable Mary! Unless You're a Police Decoy, Of Course

2009-12-02T07:29:00.000-08:00

Bad guys on the street are not sportsmanlike. You heard it here first.

They are shopping for victims, not for sparring partners. They are not looking for a fair fight; they are looking for easy prey.

So the easiest way to avoid being a victim is to avoid seeming to be easy prey.

Bad guys who have been interviewed have indicated that they, exactly like wolves, look for vics who are unsteady on their feet and seem disoriented.

Here's the lesson for the day, which I received about twenty years ago from the only native-English speaking cabbie I've ever encountered in New York City: walk fast, don't smile, don't look up at the buildings, and don't do "anything stupid, like carrying your wallet in your wallet pocket". He added that binoculars or a camera around your neck might just as well be a sign that said, Please Mug Me Now, Because I Want it BAD! He also pointed out that if I scanned everybody else around me and I was the only one with neat pens and watch, being elsewhere was a good idea.

Some people just walk like victims, and therefore have either a bad day every day in a big city, or have a great job as a police decoy (spelled "bait"), like Muggable Mary.

Here's the lesson for martial artists: thank your Sensei politely every day of your life that you are not mugged, because you will not in general be saved from being a vic by your lightning-like technique, but instead by your balance, orientation, and the obvious center when you walk.

Summary: when you are in a big city, you need to walk places from time to time. During that time, you are part of the big smorgie of vics, as you present yourself as a potential vic. You want to fail your vic audition. You can often do so by walking balanced and centered and oriented.

Note that the vic audition is a little different in cities that permit concealed carry of firearms by civilians. And there are fewer happy perps in those cities.

London has recently become a much better city for muggers: the politicians in London and England generally have recently banned katanas and big knives. One can only wonder why politicians in England are so compassionate to muggers and BGs generally. If you guarantee that victims are without weapons, that makes it a lot easier to pick your vic with confidence. And if you're a BG, you don't CARE that there are laws against weapons. You'll have one anyway, because you're a BG! Note that in Australia, a country that should have known better, when guns were banned, home invasions went up 40%.

p.s. even if you don't look like a vic most of the time, you may be able to improve your chances of being chosen in the Great Vic Audition that happens on your streets everyday. You can probably up the odds by walking out of a restaurant loudly saying, "Oh, God, I'm so full I can't walk!" or by leaving a bar and shouting to your friends, "If I had one more drink I'd swim home!"

Generally, eat less and drink less when you're out in the world, because, Smile! You're on Candid Victim!

Kicking in Shotokan Karate, and Kicking for Self Defense in General

2009-11-28T17:12:00.000-08:00

Most kicking in traditional, pre-Funakoshi Okinawa, including kicking in the Okinawan versions of the kata, were low kicks.

That makes some sort of sense to me. For actual self defense, kicking high is just a bad idea, according to experts (and recall, dear reader, I am not; but I do read their books!).

As karate became "Japanized", and turned into a discipline with more sporting applications, higher kicks became a more popular part of the syllabus.

One reason that high kicking is seldom the first choice in self defense is simply that it requires constant practice to stay capable of kicking fast, hard and high.

We humans use our hands everyday for a wide range of activities, but our feet tend to be used almost exclusively for locomotion, unless we are football players or Savate students, or, for that matter, karate students.

It is instructive to recall that the old, street-fighting oriented versions of Savate (French kick-boxing) involved very low kicks and a variety of hand strikes that were primarily slaps (but that may have been because French Law punished a strike with an open hand in a different way than a strike with a closed fist).

It has been suggested that the grandfather of modern Savate was a fighting system found by French sailors in the French colonies in Asia, where kicking was a common form of striking (very small men can reclaim their balance after a kick far more easily than big guys; and big guys can hit hard enough to reliably knock about an opponent with their fists. You heard it here first, from the King of Obvious).

So, do high kicks have any application in self defense?

As with everything in self defense, the answer is probably certainly "maybe".

There's a wonderful book written by a bouncer in which he points out that the combatant in his bars who was about to go down to the floor is predictably the guy attempting a martial arts type kick.

The same writer indicated that he was nearly kicked silly by a Korean stylist who had studied and practiced with fanatical seriousness.

Hence the "maybe".

If you have the inclination and the time, every day of your life, to practice kicking for a while, and you have some amount of innate talent, you may well be able to generate very good speed and power with your kicks, and do so with no warmup.

Some killer-diller effective karate competitors I knew who studied with Sensei Robert Trias did very well indeed in karate tournaments, and used only two techniques with frequency: a back-fist to the opponent's head to draw up his guard to expose his midsection, and a skipping-in side thrust kick off the forward leg to strike the midsection of the opponent. Follow ups, when needed, were a high roundhouse off the rear leg and finally a straight right.

The power of that somewhat eccentric front leg side thrust kick, because it had a locked hip and the weight of the body behind it, was impressive. I practiced it for an hour every day for one summer, and could move the three-hundred pound bag very well indeed when I weighed one-thirty-five.

That was then, by the way, not now. I suspect that if I devoted an hour a day to kicking training, my kicks would be much, much better than they are now, and much better in very short order indeed. The learning curve on kicks is much better than with hand techniques, at least it is for me.

That still leaves the question, if you are going to invest an hour a day in training, are kicks the best way to invest that time?

My limited personal experience with kicks is that they work well in a controlled sparring environment, and that most real confrontations are much too close to permit high kicks (that doesn't include the ever-popular cowboy boot stomp on the instep, which ends fights pretty well, I hear; and I've also heard that a cowboy boot directed at a shin can break it with a high degree of predictability, when directed to the inner front of the shin, where there is zero padding).

But Chuck Norris, who appears to be a very nice man and a darn tough guy at that, with a lot of spirited interactions in his history, suggests that the reason he uses high kicks in movies is that they're....movies! Not real fights.

Which, in every case, should be avoided. Okay, you don't need to avoid movies. But the other.

One of my next posts, by the way, will direct my gentle readers to a wonderful website from Australia which discusses the history and development of Savate, its techniques and uses, and the historical activities of the criminal element in France, which used a series of nasty and effective hand to hand techniques to immobilize their opponents, the better to empty their pockets.

As best I can tell, out on the street, bad guys are not looking for opponents for a spirited test of one martial arts style against another.

They are looking for victims.

Hence, the wisdom of avoiding biker bars, bars with pool tables and girls who frequently say "Let's you and him fight!", and areas where, when you look around, only you have a nice watch on your wrist and a nice pen in your pocket.

Because you may have one idea of a good time, and the patrons in those bars may have another, which is antithetical to a good time for you!

The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same

2009-11-27T11:14:00.000-08:00

While Gichen Funakoshi experimented with protective sparring equipment, that was later decided to be a failed experiment, and thereafter sparring was done wearing white pajamas and not much else. Over time, fist protectors came to be accepted, so fist on fist clashes wouldn't interfere with continued training.

Note that little things like broken feet and fingers were not expected to interfere with continued training back in the good old days in Japan, either at the University or at the JKA.

Abandoning protective equipment was probably a good idea back when Gichen Funakoshi was making decisions, because the padding that he had available to play with involved horsehair, leather and straw. There are some nice pictures of early padding in A Complete History of Shotokan Karate.

But now material technology has advanced dramatically. And now there is protective gear approved by the JKA.

That seems useful to me. My guess is that people will spend more time sparring if they can go to work the next day with their noses intact (the most common injury I've seen in sparring has been a squished, smashed, or broken nose, because the nose is rather fragile, and if you spar long enough, somebody's nose will go East for the winter. Or West).

I spent a fair number of years, and hundreds of hours of my life, practicing techniques for competition with simulated broadsword and shield.

When that sport was first brought to my city, we practiced with essentially no protective equipment except a steel barrel on our heads, and a cup between our legs.

The bruises that arose from sparring with heavy rattan sticks (we didn't use steel swords because life is good, and death is long) were remarkable and impressive, and it is a testament to the recuperative powers of youth that I still walk.

On the other hand, practice sessions in the old, pre-armor days with sword and shield were fairly short, and were often followed by the oral administration of systemic anesthetics like Budweiser.

Now that excellent quality armor is available, players who practice sword and shield with the Society for Creative Anachronism can practice for hours without pain or injury, and the quality of their fighting is greatly improved over the old days. The Budweiser, I'm told, is still used liberally as an anesthetic after training, and to assist in re-hydration.

My guess is that guys who spar karate, if they can spar without injury, will be able to keep it going longer, and improve their ability to spar greatly.

Now, will that translate directly to better self defense, or a faster race to Zen Buddhist Enlightenment?

Hard to say. Sparring is pretty sweaty and grubby, but it's very much unlike real fighting. But it is similar to the long-distance phase of mutually agreed on combat (essentially, guys fighting to show off for girls, or for dominance, or for simple ego gratification).

But real fights get really ugly really fast, I'm told, and I believe that. And the techniques involved seldom include gentlemanly fisticuffs for more than a few seconds.

But as I've suggested before, western boxers are very effective martial artists because they can practice their techniques with non-compliant partners for extended periods, so their distance perception and timing improve dramatically. And there's also this: a fistfight for a western boxer is just another day at the office, because he's so used to the distance, angles of attack, and the effect of hitting and getting hit. A boxer also has a good idea how to deal with an opponent who has obtained a momentary advantage, by tying him up, which is a useful skill, I expect.

If karate students want to be able to apply their art in self defense situations, one way to improve their skills will be to spar with protective equipment.

And another way, of course, is to practice non-percussive martial techniques, like the grappling approaches in judo and related arts.

On the other hand, that's pretty sweaty and grubby training. Dealing with somebody's armpit in your face is less fun than it sounds.

But I've also read that the more you sweat in training, the less you bleed when you fight.

Sweat? Bleed? I want to get a really good pair of track shoes, for self defense purposes. Running is unpleasant in Phoenix, Arizona, especially in the summer. But so is sweating and bleeding.

Dojo Kun on Youtube.com; Sure are a Lotta Different Accents!

2009-11-24T09:49:00.000-08:00

At the end of class in traditional Shotokan Dojos, the "Dojo Kun" is recited in Japanese.

It's a little like the words to the "Star Spangled Banner", because the advanced students have it engraved on their spinal cords, and it bursts from their lips when they lead recitation.

The rest of us are sort of along for the ride, kinda like the folks at a ball game pretending to sing "The Star Spangled Banner". Yeah, I know. You know several of the words.

No problem.

I'm still a baby Shodan, and even though I started training a very long time ago, I'm along for the ride when it's time for the Dojo Kun.

Sensei has been having me repeat the kun after him at the end of my private classes, and now I'm so embarrassed at not knowing it by heart, I've printed the phonetic spelling if the Japanese words and stuck 'em up on my home office desk, so I can repeat them in the morning when I'm waiting for my heart to start beating (caffeine is great stuff!).

As always, Rob Redmond has an interesting take on the Dojo Kun and it's meaning on his great blog, which you must read to get a broader view of Shotokan Karate from multiple directions. You don't have to buy his view, which is alternately loving and cynical, but you'll have the benefit of a ton of vicarious experience without the bruises that went with the actual, factual experience if you read everything he's written. And read every word, because it all has value.

Getting back to the Dojo Kun: it's all over YouTube.com.

In a LOT of different accents. That is, it's recited in Japanese by a lot of Japanese speakers, and by a lot of non-Japanese speakers. In India. In the United States. And from all over.

Which tells me that Gichen Funakoshi was a busy little guy during the period from the beginning of his real work (when he was only 77 years old, and was forced to start over) to his death at 88.

Turning an esoteric training discipline which had been outlawed and taught at night in secret to a very, very few people over a long period of time into an international phenom in the lifetime of just one man (it all happened during the lifetime of Funakoshi's student, Nakayama, who was able to oversee the project of shipping karate missionaries from Japan to the rest of the world) was a remarkable achievement.

It is an interesting study to watch the discipline of Shotokan Karate, which was brought to Japan from Okinawa by one man (at first), and which was then spread during the tenure of one man (Sensei Nakayama) break into so many competing schools after the death of Sensei Nakayama.

But Shotokan, as codified in mainland Japan, has always been a series of exercises and training techniques. Those exercises and training techniques have been spread around the world, and now the world owns them.

Those techniques have been adapted, added onto, combined with other bodies of technique, and the overall goals of Shotokan and Gichen Funakoshi (including the export of Japanese Culture and the study of Zen, which is implicit in non-tournament-oriented Shotokan Karate) have been made manifest in places as disparate as Tokyo and, well, Phoenix, Arizona, United States of America.

Overall, I think that Sensei Funakoshi would be happy to see the wild and explosive growth of his child, Shotokan Karate.

He might have some reservations about Ninja Turtles, but perhaps not.

p.s. It's almost funny to read about Sensei Kanazawa, who was formally cast out of the body of orthodoxy, when his training techniques came to include additional dimensions. Almost funny. Not actually funny, just almost.

p.p.s. For those of you who were just born to Shotokan, bear in mind that Sensei Kanazawa was the winner of the first big Japanese karate tournament, and held demi-god status in the karate universe for an extended period. Actually, he still does! And I've reviewed a three-dvd set by Sensei Kanazawa that you really need to get if you study Shotokan. And no, I don't get a kickback.

Kickback is sort of a funny word in the context of karate, I suppose.

p.p.p.s. Shotokan groups that have broken away from the Mother Church have often suggested that Japanese Instructors have required excessive percentages of monies from examination fees, or dues, or similar funds. Or that non-Japanese Instructors were promoted more slowly or were otherwise treated poorly.

Fortunately for me, I don't care! All I care about is getting to train with my Sensei, and the rest of the issues have little importance to me.

Not Even Enough Common Sense to Die

2009-11-14T16:20:00.000-08:00

It is commonly thought that common sense is a virtue.

I believe that the world has been shaped primarily by people who had no common sense whatsoever. That is, folks who were so blind that they didn't recognize that their goals were clearly out of their reach.

One such individual was the Father of Modern Karate, Gichen Funakoshi.

As I continued exploring "A Precise History of Shotokan Karate", I was struck by a passage reflecting that when Sensei Funakoshi was 77, his dojo had been burned by the firestorm bombing of Tokyo, his son had died of tuberculosis, his base of students had been killed in the war, his beloved wife (from whom he had been long apart) had passed away, and his country was defeated, dispirited, and destroyed, and he was living on a diet supplemented by seaweed because food was very hard to come by.

Now, in that situation, I would simply have had the good sense to die. Easy, tidy, no problem. Not only a simple solution, but always effective, as well! And some other karate instructors took that practical route.

Sensei Funakoshi, on the other hand, had no such good sense.

He took a licking and kept on ticking.

After he was a child of 77, he presided over the founding of the Japan Karate Association, helped teach a new generation of instructors and students, set standards for the kata (remember that all of the kata were held primarily in memory, and the individuals who owned that memory had generally had good sense; they were dead)and developed the definative sourcebook for Karate, still used today, Karate-do Kyohan.

Oh, yeah. He also had a plan to send out "karate missionaries" (my phrase, not his) to the far corners of the world to teach both karate and Japanese Culture.

So he did.

I can only shake my head in wonder and amazement at his ability to keep on keeping on.

On the other hand, the other folks who have shaped the world have generally been folks with no common sense at all.

Like Sensei Funakoshi.

A Precise History of Shotokan Karate is Coming to Me!

2009-11-11T14:39:00.000-08:00

I will be receiving a copy of the newest edition of "A Precise History of Shotokan Karate" very soon.

I just ordered it from the same place I get my tropical weight Meijin Karate Gis, and their customer service is superb, so it'll probably be waiting for me as soon as I get to the house tonight.

I'll keep you posted.

UPDATE: It's arrived, and it's beautiful. It must weigh twenty pounds. Beautiful book, beautiful photos. I've barely skimmed it, but it's full of materials that I've never seen anywhere else. More to come!

Work on Foundational Exercises First, and Everything Else Follows

2009-11-11T13:53:00.000-08:00

During a session involving kicks in class, I pointed out to Sensei Koyama that I KNEW that I needed more home training, since the learning curve on kicking techniques is much less steep than that relating to blocks, punches and strikes. He had not prompted me on the point; that was just my own conscience talking.

Sensei surprised me by reminding me that the core exercises were just that. The essential exercises we do in class are those involving hip rotation, which generates the "juice" for all of the other techniques.

So his suggestion to me was that I work on those hip-rotation techniques if I wanted to practice more at home, rather than just kicking the air repeatedly.

He's usually right, you know. My guess is that he's right in this context, as well.

Now It's Official; My Belt is a Different Color

2009-10-30T23:09:00.001-07:00

Sensei Koyama has informed me that I have been awarded my Shodan (first degree black belt).

He then put me though a class that demonstrated, with no ambiguity, that I have a very, very, very great deal to learn. He was not at all unkind, but he clearly didn't want me to mistake my new belt for actual expertise, except in the formal exercises leading up to Shodan in the Shotokan syllabus, and there only to the level of ability required for the Shodan.

Sensei Koyama has also ordered a belt embroidered with my name, and "Japan Karate Association", in Japanese characters, from Tokaido of Japan.

I am very pleased. While I am sure I don't hold the record for slowpoke karate king of the universe, taking a leisurely 41 years to attain my Shodan does put me in a select group of folks who required a serious dose of remedial karate classes.

I am planning on attaining my Nidan (second degree black belt) in the year 3001.

Now I Know What the Shodan Exam Is Like, Up Close and Personal

2009-10-15T21:09:00.000-07:00

Tonight, after my private class with Sensei Koyama, he indicated that I would take a Shodan (first degree black belt) exam, because he knew I'd be out of town on business during the group exam that was coming up at the end of the month.

My partner was a fireman who was roughly the size of....this guy was GINORMOUS! He assisted me and I assisted him the in the semi-free-style sequence of the test, which he was taking as well. His schedule, as a fireman, is as eccentric as mine, as a lawyer.

The fireman was a very nice man, notwithstanding that whole mountain-that-walks thing, which he really couldn't help; can't beat genetics. So even though he could have punched through my blocks from several states away, he let me live during the two-man portion of the exercise. Good control.

Did I do a fine job during the exam? Uh, no. Not particularly.

On the other hand, any exam you can walk away from is a good exam. Remember, my primary goal is simply to keep studying with Sensei Koyama. So whether I get the official result that I passed, or that I failed, the difference will be a few grades of color in the belt that holds my jacket shut for another year or so.

Now, am I ever going to get good at this stuff? Well.

I'm not going to develop technique as good as Sean's, a sixth-degree black belt at our dojo; while he doesn't glow in the dark, he does levitate. And I'm not going to be nearly as good as Terry, who has inhuman abilities, and a fundamentally different approach to generating power than Sensei Koyama, who prefers whiplike techniques.

And Art, at the dojo, has been studying there forever, and while he has no knees at this point in his life, he has the ability to generate very, very powerful strikes and punches, based on the real secret of Shotokan: showing up for class with a remarkable teacher. His knifehand block is probably the most powerful I've seen.

On the other hand, while I'm not going to have abilities like the senior students at the main dojo, if I keep doing these exercises, especially the health exercises that Sensei Koyama has accumulated since before he showed up in the United States, I have a chance of being as healthy and functional at age 75 as Sensei Koyama.

Note: the exercises that he now does, which I'm lucky enough to be able to copy during class, aren't particularly orthodox. His version of "eight pieces of brocade", for instance, is darned idiosyncratic.

But you can't argue with results.

Why Don't I Have A Bunch of Photos on my Blog? Watch These!

2009-10-03T20:49:00.000-07:00

The reason isn't philosophical. It's just that I haven't gotten a Round Tuit. And all versions of technology are more intimidating when you're o...ol...not young.

Some bloggers do a better job than I do. Andre Bertel has great photos of karate that demonstrate a perfect stance and generally excellent technique.

Better yet, he has posted a bunch of videos on his blog, and if you don't go watch them, well, you missed out, didn't you?

The Importance of the "Kuro Obi"

2009-10-03T20:04:00.000-07:00

What's a "kuro obi"?

Well, on the one hand, it's the title of a pretty cool, historically inaccurate but really neat-to-watch karate movie! Some of the actors in the movie are in fact high-level karate students, so the techniques that are thrown are thrown very well indeed.

On the other hand, a "kuro obi" (which just means "black belt") doesn't mean anything special at all. It just keeps your pants up. Or really, your gi jacket closed. When it doesn't come untied at inconvenient points during class.

But the system of colored belts had no place in the history of karate in Okinawa, because it was a prohibited study! Nobody made a living as a karate teacher, because that would have been like posting a sign in front of your door that says "Illegal Drug Dealer" in the United States.

You might get a lot of business, but you'd also also be put out of business quickly by the authorities.

In Okinawa, students trained in whatever they were wearing when they made the trek late at night to study with their instructors. And they didn't brag about the study because, well, see the above.

When Sensei Jiguro Kano developed Judo as a martial art, he incorporated a system of belts that demonstrated rank. When he befriended Sensei Gichen Funakoshi, the father of modern karate, Sensei Kano passed on the idea of training in the white pajamas we call a "gi", and keeping the top of the pajamas closed with an "obi" (belt) which had a color that designated rank of a student inside the system.

Shotokan Karate is the style of karate I study, and it looks to Sensei Funakoshi as its founder, and therefore it uses belts of varying colors to designate the status of a student in classes at dojo throughout the world.

Does a "kuro obi" indicate that a student knows the entire syllabus of Shotokan Karate? Hardly! There are ten levels of the black belt in the Japan Karate Association ranking system. I suspect that the tests for the more advanced black belts include dematerialization and teleportation, but that's only a suspicion. But the advanced black belts all seem to do that sort of thing!

A "shodan", or first degree black-belt student, is the lowest form of life among real karate students. In fact, the general view of a new "kuro obi" is that he's now finally out of kindergarten, and he can now be expected to get serious about studying karate.

But the idea of rankings between students, and the idea of "senior" and "junior" students, is a little funny, at best.

Everybody knows the best student in a dojo. All the students in a dojo train in group classes, so everybody gets to see the level of technical expertise of the other students. And nobody has a particularly swelled head, because everybody has some techniques where they shine a bit, and a few that they do very poorly indeed.

Keeps everybody grounded.

In the dojo that I attend, there are students who are a couple of levels above the level that Sensei Koyama held when he opened the dojo many years ago, when he was fresh from the Japan Karate Association's classes. They are extraordinary students.

I've never asked Sensei Koyama about his training classes in Japan, and that reminds me I want to; there's a wonderful discussion of that dojo and the classes there in a wonderful book called "Moving Zen", which I want to re-read soon. But I get to talk regularly to an advanced Sensei who been there, done that, and has the t-shirt. So I want to hear about it. And about his discussions with Sensei Nakayama, who was one of Sensei Koyama's teachers.

But a black belt is one of a series of belts given to students of martial arts, and I suspect that the larger number of colors of belts is designed to give the student some reinforcement as he progresses through the syllabus. Previously in Japan there were two colors of belt, white and black (yeah, I took art classes, too. They aren't really colors. We all get that).

And receiving a black belt is the most important day of a karate student's life, and at the same time, nothing special at all.

After all, a student who stops studying because he's gotten a colored belt wasn't very motivated in the first place. And a low-ranking black belt is just a piece of cloth that holds a jacket closed, just the way that a high-ranking black belt is just a piece of cloth holding a jacket closed.

Now, does all the above mean that I won't treasure my "kuro obi", if I ever get one? Of course not. Does it mean that it's the end of my training? Gee, I sure hope not!

Because in the same way that seated meditation is the goal in Soto Zen, training is the actual goal in Shotokan Karate. Not breaking boards or a triple reverse upside down kick, or winning tournaments, or even self-defense.

Training is the goal.

And while that sounds dumb as a stump, it seems to work pretty well, because the goodies in karate (better health and coordination and strength and wind and flexibility and balance and friends in the dojo and increased confidence) are all a function of training.

So why do I train in Shotokan Karate?

Well, primarily so I get to continue training in Shotokan Karate!

Nifty Shotokan Karate Blogs from Everywhere!

2009-09-05T10:46:00.001-07:00

I have a blogroll on the first page of this blog.

And I recently found a very nicely done English Shotokan blog. It has a grid with many, many kata names, which names lead to many, many videos of katas. It's called the Selby Shotokan Karate Club Blog. That blog also has a bunch of video tutorials on topics including etiquette, makiwara use, stretching, and a bunch of other topics.

There was clearly a lot of work put into the project, and it is a wonderful addition to the online Shotokan Karate library. It's not the entire Shotokan syllabus online for free, but it's a very good start!

I've talked about a lot of other blogs previously, including one of the oldest and best Shotokan Karate Blogs, 24 Fighting Chickens, by Rob Redmond. As you will be able to tell the moment you start reading his blog, Rob is really, really smart, and has opinions. Some. A few. Many of which make remarkably good sense, when you read the intense analysis he brings to Shotokan issues which I had always taken for granted. His analysis of makiwara use is perhaps the best on the internet.

And a student of Sensei Asai, Andre Bertel of New Zealand, has a great blog as well.

And the next time I get a Round Tuit, which I badly need, I will discuss and link to about twenty others on the Net.

You know, there was a point in time when international karate simply didn't exist; karate was a closely-held secret on a tiny, impoverished island where weapons were not permitted.

Then Sensei Funakoshi had a thought, which he expressed in the last few pages of his autobiography.

And karate missionaries went forth into the world!

They seem to have done a very good job indeed. Shows the power of thought.

Of course, the idea that Phoenix, Arizona, which was just a wide spot in the road when I was growing up, would have been favored by fortune with Sensei Shojiro Koyama...that was just good luck on our part.

The Makiwara and Heavy Bag

2009-08-26T07:50:00.000-07:00

Outside the dojo are a couple of makiwara, the punching boards that karate students use for the same reasons that boxers use heavy bags.

And there's also a nice heavy bag.

Sensei Koyama walked me out of the dojo and put me in a stance and had me start hitting both of them last night. This is the first time since I re-started training a couple of years ago that he's instructed me on the use of the makiwara.

I had taken a shot at the makiwara and the heavy bag a couple of years ago when I started my long-interrupted training again. Two years ago, it didn't work as well as it did last night.

Knowing that I had not kept up makiwara training, and sensitive to my years and profession (I routinely get in fights. With mean, nasty envelopes. Or heavy books. And normally I win, but not always), Sensei Koyama had me punch the makiwara and the heavy bag with the palm of my hand.

I know he didn't want me to tear the skin on my knuckles and start to fear the makiwara.

That'll be for next time!

I did a lot better than I expected. My palm didn't skitter off either the makiwara or the heavy bag, and a fair amount of the energy that I was trying to transmit made it into the makiwara and into the heavy bag. And I didn't fall over backwards. Very often.

I look forward to working with both of those supplemental exercises more in the future. If I find out the secret to getting the most out of the exercise, I'll pass it along.

And Sensei Koyama has pointed out to me that it's not a critical exercise for many purposes. You can do training for health in karate and never touch a makiwara.

My guess is, however, that for self-defense, it might be helpful to develop the ability to strike objects without injuring your hand. And according to the literature, the makiwara develops that, over time, but it's important not to overdo at first.

Some writers (Rob Redmond, of 24 Fighting Chickens fame, for instance) believe that the makiwara is inferior to the heavy bag as a punch development tool. And I'll link to his post on makiwara training when I'm not late for work.

Since I am a relative beginner, I have the luxury of doing exactly what Sensei Koyama suggests, which saves me from all kinds of internal stress.

It's very nice not to need to re-invent the wheel. Since Sensei Koyama has been there and done that, and is 75 and looks 55, I'm going to see if I can get the same results out of karate that he has (in specific, using it as a fountain of youth, which has worked very well for him!).