The more reading that I do about martial arts, and traditional karate in particular, the more I want to train. That is not to say that I haven’t wanted to train more, already, but the feeling is certainly stronger. I find myself practicing and exercising outside of the dojo even more often, and when I am at the dojo I […]
There are many different ways to spar, but almost everyone who spars does so to become better at sparring. When sparring is the goal of a person’s training, then what you are training is a combat sport, but not necessarily a martial art. MMA fighters, boxers, submission grapplers–all of them train and spar to get better at sparring so that […]
A very interesting discussion started on one of Theodore Kruczek’s posts on the OKI website regarding people’s perception of traditional martial arts and how to change it. One of the things that I found interesting, and which ties into my previous post about people’s personal systems not needing to have names, was the idea of calling karate something else that […]
This will be a long post, so I apologize in advance, and let me preface this by saying that I do not think I am qualified to “create a style” or anything like that. This is just a collection of thoughts and observations regarding styles and systems. Anko Itosu, Shuri-Te Instructor Lately I have been thinking a great deal about […]
A standard balled fist The balled fist is a fairly standard tool in martial arts and it is a fairly natural method for forming your hand to strike someone. That doesn’t mean it is the only method, or even necessarily the best method. I would like to introduce two other methods–Shuri-ken and tate-ken. The word ken we know to be […]
Hanshi Doug Perry, Kudan (9th Degree Black Belt) Yesterday Hanshi Doug Perry came to the church campus that my dojo is located at to hold a karate seminar. He is a Kudan (9th Degree Black Belt) under Shuguro Nakazato, which makes him the highest ranking non-Okinawan in Shorin-Ryu karate, and he is the head of the Shorinkan for North America. […]
Last night in class we worked a lot of multiple attacker drills and a bodyguard drill, and I thought they were all very fun and useful. Before we started those drills, though, we wore ourselves out with jogging, calisthenics, bagwork and kicking pads (normally we don’t do running or calisthenics in the adult class so between that and being out […]
For quite some time I have been considering signing up for an amateur MMA fight in the Phoenix area–there are a couple different organizations that hold amateur MMA fights and I have had them bookmarked in my browser for over a year. Since the only weaponless martial arts I have only ever studied have been Okinawan karate and judo I […]
The equipment that Jason built for us has been working out very well, and I’ve decided to call it the EMB Station. While I was at the dojo today, I decided to take some nicer pictures of it to upload. This is probably the most pictures I’ve ever put into one post, so hopefully people with slow connections don’t have […]
One of the students at our dojo, Jason, is a metalworker at tbailey.com/construction/ by trade and a brilliant engineer, and he built us a custom piece of dojo equipment. This is a picture of it I took on my phone today (the only camera I had available at the time) but the makiwara weren’t attached at the moment. This kind […]
Last Wednesday during our Self Defense class for the kids, Sensei went into the other room while I warmed up the class and he set up a maze using big folding room dividers. Around blind corners he set Wavemasters (free-standing punching bags) like these: Sensei led the kids, one-by-one, through this maze to have them work on their awareness and […]
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