Dojo determination : An old dog trying to learn new tricks

Going into the Dojo on Saturday, I felt better than I have in a while.

Starting with the warm up, I managed the whole of that.  It included doing a backward breakfall and shrimping, followed doing a forward breakfall and cover.  I could never do forward rolls at school, and am not much better now, but this old dog still wants to try to learn new tricks.

To me it looks awful, but judge for yourself: My Sensei says I've made some progress with my forward breakfalls. 

Then came Mokosu and the formal opening.  Next week is grading, so we went into punches, receiving, kicks and other fundamentals.  For the first time in ages I managed to get through almost all of this, though I was struggling for breath a little on the last of the kicks.

Then it was on to Kata; As the next grading is the first at which I will need to perform (Naihanchi Shodan), this was more intensive than usual and included specific group tuition followed by performance.  I was a little disappointed with the performance as it was too rigid, with not enough flow 😐, but I know that is because of nerves and trying too hard.  Hopefully it will be good on the day.

Next came light sparring:  Kicks and punches, kicks, punches, kicks, punches and open hand strikes.  These were all done with different partners, and here I need to make an apology and take stock of my punching. I have instinctively started to hook upwards inside the guard when punching and it resulted in a couple of head shots to my training partner who was shorter than me.  So apologies Shell 😐😐, I need to adjust my techniques accordingly.  On the other hand, I seem to be getting the hang of open hand strikes, so not too bad.

The final part of the lesson Kihon kata on the pads, I need the first four for the next Grading, so I was doing one to five.  My kicks were certainly much better than last week. ☺☺
We also had a quick photo session for the end, for a group photo and kicks.   Plenty of hard work and some fun, a few lessons learnt and for once I felt overall I did myself justice.  Good session, and thank you too to Sensei Graham, as well as our regular Sensei, Ben and Alison 👊👍👍☺☺

Kata, Drills and Triangles, with a little bit of Tai Chi style

Saturday in the dojo was an interesting session, I learned maybe four things about both myself and my karate and they weigh out 50 - 50.  On the positives, I think my health is improving again, and my control in pairs is improving ☺☺.  On the negatives, I need to be pushing myself again and my kicking after exertion becomes very ragged 😞😞.  However, the big idea plus that made the lesson for me was the idea of triangles, I suppose it had been there all along, but the penny dropped when we varied a regular drill later in the session ☺☺☺.

We started with a regular warm up, but since I had been warming up for 10 minutes or so whilst watching my son, maybe I didn't need to attack it quite as much and it told shortly after when we did a form of circuit training:
Jump stepping in and out of rope ladder steps, receiving pad strikes using jodan uke, running round the outsides of a cone circuit, receiving pad strikes with tudan uke, forward rolling break falls, followed by mai geris to the pads  to close the circuit.

 I ran out of stream at end of first circuit, and my kicks were ragged as a result. I sat out most of the rest, but was encouraged to rejoin, so did last half of circuit with better kicks though still not brilliant,  so this is where I picked up the two negatives mentioned earlier: my ragged kicking after exertion and not re-joining without encouragement 😞😞.

Then it was time for Mokosu and formal start to the lesson, which opened with paired work with different partners.  This included:

Light sparring in various forms, including kicks and punches, kicks only and punches only.
Paired continuous contact drills, including taking the inside, gripping and breaking grip, gripping and breaking then striking
Paired Kicking drill, receiving right mawashi geri, left mawashi geri, right mawashi geri catchi, right mawashi geri step back, return mawashi geri

This is where I found that I was definitely improving my control in paired work ☺☺.  Was definitely so much better in the sparring and the kicking drill, well at least I thought so.

Then we were on to Kata - including Naihanchi Shodan tai chi style to open, I did performances of  Naihanchi Shodan and Naihanchi Nidan (which I was corrected for performing too slowly, oops too much Tensho and not enough of this kata 😞).  I went through forms of Naihanchi Sandan and Pinan Shodan, after which the higher grades did performances of their kata required for grading.

Then it was back to an old favourite to close out the session:  The Quadrant drill (single person practice shown here)

What we did in this session was the Quadrant drill with variations, using an expressly triangle form to receive and counter, explicitly to the part of the drill with hammer fist followed by two hooks.  It was there all along I suppose, but   the transition from receiving to striking with the forearm or elbow seems so simple when explained this way ☺☺. Another variation was that after head butt, the agressor finishes with a shoulder barge which the other partner had to avoid.

All in all, another excellent session of the dojo, with the big plus being that I realise my my stamina seems to be improving ☺☺☺☺

Two 90 minute sessions, no time outs ☺☺

I definitely enjoyed last weekend's training.  Two 90 minute sessions without taking timeouts ☺  Still can't do the warm ups full on, but I do have some limits, due to age and over enthusiasm.  Hey ho, the results of growing old disgracefully; refusing to lay down and accept my lot ☺☺☺

On the Saturday, apart from the warm up, we went through:

Tegumi drills - including hooking hands; a more advanced hooking hands, jodan uke / punch drill;.
take punch, back slap to rib, slap to face, hammer fist to arm, hammer fist to face;pushing away and turning drill
Conditioning
Kata
Pad work - drills, including jodan-uke, tchudan-uke, gedan-uke, cross, jab, cross punch combinations.

On the Sunday it was a bo kobudo lesson, with guest Sensei Darren and Luke:

Warm up
Kihon katas
Sushi-no-kon, starting to learn the kata
Two person drills

Thoroughly enjoyed and thank you to my teachers and fellow students, for making two great days ☺☺

What Karate lost, when it lost it's teeth.

Although Karate today is a relatively new Martial Art, it's roots lie in much older practical combative techniques.  However, it's effectiveness in this direction was firstly reduced by Itosu Anko for introduction into Okinawan schools, and the likes of Funokoshi Gichin for it's introduction into the Japanese mainstream of martial arts.  This was confirmed as the desired route of progress for Karate at the "meeting of masters" in 1936.   Apart from the Itosu Anko part, this is all documented is a conversation published by Iain Abernethy:

How did we lose the Bunkai?

This was to try to give Karate a future at a time that it was losing popularity, but resulted in budo versions that were superficial in fighting content.   The intervention of World War two just about completed the job, as again indicated the article, because many of the old masters passed away during the conflict, including Motobu Choki.  The ones that were left mostly continued to espouse the budo version of th art, and most of the documentary evidence which survived was of those styles.  So the practical content was mostly lost.

One of the few honourable exceptions was Motobu Choki, who first in 1927 (Okinawan Kenpo - Karate Jutsu: Kumite <Motobu / Shahan>) and then 1932 (My Art and Skill of Karate <Motobu / Quast / Motobu>), took time to provide some documentary evidence of what he felt was being lost.  This included:

Use of Makiwara
Paired drills
Kumite

Apart from saying why they were important, he even provided evidence of the paired work he was referring to, plus photographs of the techniques.  According to Iain Abernethy, he was only one of two people known to do this, and the other person's work appears to have been lost. 

 In the two books, you see descriptions of how to receive and redirect stikes, to open up your opponent for your own strikes.  Plus you see techniques that are undeniably effective but were removed from Budo karate such as knee strikes to vital areas and strikes and grabs to the groin.  Here are a few examples, 

Where your opponent punches with his right hand, move slightly to the side, receive and redirect with your right arm (soto uke) and strike with your left fist.  The picture below shows a body strike, but can also be done to the head.

Image from: https://romanwestfehling.wordpress.com/2013/09/03/kihon-kumite-und-kata-die-3-saulen-des-karate-do/



Where your opponent grabs you from behind. drop your weight and open your arms slightly (ala Naihanchi Nidan), twist slightly and stretch behind, to grab your opponent's testicles.

Photo’s from Iwai Tsuko’s “Motobu CHoki & Ryukyu Karate 2000, page57 (read from right to left). Description from “Motobu Choki – Karate My Art”, translated by Patrick & Yuriko McCarthy, page 100. - via attached link

Other drills included trapping both arms and executing a knee strike to the groin; blocking and trapping the right arm with the left, stepping in with the right leg and grabbing the testicles, or striking to the ribs with the right elbow; etc.

It was this kind of practice that was lost to Karate by the introduction of the budo forms, and in part due to the intervention of World War II.  In conclusion, as a result Karate had lost many of it's teeth.

Nerd life: A potted summary of the development of Modern period Karate

  Prior to Ankho Itosu and his introduction of Karate into the Okinawan school system, Tiy, or with acknowledged Chinese influence, Tudiy, was a fairly private affair.  The forms taught seem to have some kind of standard roots, but which were then varied by individual practitioners and their families / friends / students over time.

At the time that the newly named Karate went public, there were three regional "groupings" identified, around which various styles were said to be based "Shuri-Te", "Naha-Te" and "Tomari-Te".  The latter seems to have been more an acknowledgement of the influence on trade of Karate, rather than a specific group of styles, as Tomari was the main port of Okinawa.  Okinawa has a rich history of trade (legal and otherwise) in the Asia-Pacific bowl, and many of the influences of what ended up as Karate, would have centred around that port.

Okinawa served as a gateway for trade to China for many hundreds of years, so influences on Karate would have been possible from any of the trading partners; China, Siam, Japan, India, Indonesia, etc.  Which probably explains why similar moves can be found in Karate to the native styles of the other Countries.  However, the blend that became Karate, was mostly an Okinawan distillation of internal and external influences.

So when Karate emerged into the daylight, the key styles of Shuri-Te and Naha-Te were Shorin-Ryu and Goju-Ryu.  The purer forms of Shuri-Te consisted of blended Okinawan Kata, whilst Naha-Te were  heavily Chinese influenced, as the base Kata of Goju-Ryu is Sanchin.  This is directly descended from  the Fujian White Crane style of Martial Arts (Quan Fa / Kung Fu).  KishimotoDe is a style of Shuri-Te Karate that pre-dates Ankosu Itosu, and includes Naihanchi, Passai and Kuskansu as base kata, so it is safe to say that these are original Okinawan blends.

Anko Itosu seems to have introduced the Pinan family of Kata, plus Naihanchi Nidan and Sandan into the base Shorin-Ryu kata list, which was the main family of styles of Shuri-Te Karate.  This was a part of the introduction of Karate into the Okinawan education system in the early 1900s.  Motobu Choki identifies other truly Okinawan blended Kata as  Chintoh, Chintei, Wanshuh and Roh-hai.  

The potential benefits of Karate for school education and possible military indoctrination were recognised by the Japanese, and in the 1930s, Karate was introduced to the Japanese mainland.  Gishin Funakoshi, a student of Anko Azato, was successful in introducing a watered down version of Shorin Ryu, including a large part of Itoh Ankosu's syllabus, into Japan as Shotokan.  A lot of the individual Kumite strikes were removed for safety, and so Karate essentially lost a lot of it's teeth at this translation.  Goju Ryu managed to be exported "as was", but wasn't as popular as Shotokan in Japan.   Motobu Choki was invited to demonstrate his version of Okinawan Kenpo (his preferred term rather than Shuri-Te or Tomari-Te), but his emphasis on Kumite wasn't what they wanted (broken bones and individuality wasn't what they were after).

Shotokan also made it to the US prior to WW2, Hawaii anyway That, coupled to the respect that the Americans developed for the fighting skills of the Japanese, I believe led to the massive popularity of Shotokan Karate in the Western world after WW2.  From this developed the world of Sports Karate, which will feature in the next Olympic games in Japan.  There is room in the Karate world for all forms of our shared love, but all the branches need to acknowledge the differences of their roots.  

From a personal point of view if time travel were possible, it would be interesting to see what a  modern sports Karateka and Motobu Choki would make of one another ☺

I am beholden to Noah Legel  for the inspiration for this blog. 🙏🙏🙏

Dojo blues

The cold and damp don't agree with my conditions and I'm still suffering from the cold / minor chest infection.  It kind of gives me the Dojo blues because I get frustrated with myself only being able to get to 70 to 80% of where I would expect to be 😕 From a health point of view however, the workouts do me good as I get to sweat out some of the cold, etc.

On Saturday our warm  up included some different core exercises on our backs.  Then it was on to Kata, and I now perform Naihanchi Nidan as my highest known Kata 😋.  After that we went through fundamentals, and with one of our other Sensei there, that was enough for one of our white belts to grade  to yellow belt 😋

Then it was on to drills:
Punching out of a situation - feet, knees, sitting, on our backs
Naihanchi drill in pyramid form. Do element one, then elements one and two, then elements one, two and three
Pull hands down; pull down, jab; pull down, jab, back hand punch
change partner and add three elements
head butt; head butt, knee; head butt, knee, opposite knee
change partner add final three elements
backhand slap; backhand slap, elbow; backhand slap, elbow, drag and neck take down
Full drill: Pull hands down, jab, backhand punch, headbutt, knee, opposite knee, backhand slap, elbow, arm drag and neck take down.

Finally it was on to Kumite, I only managed 1st out of three before I got winded, but session certainly helped health wise. 😋  Earlier in the week I had managed to attend another class with the same intent, that class was small so we worked on Kata and Bojutsu.

Earlier on the Saturday, in his class my son got to perform Pinan Shodan all the way through for the first time 😋 His practicing at home has paid off, and he was one happy boy, who got plenty of encouragement from his Sensei too 😋😋

Stuffed up Saturday: Kata, Kumite and Knives

One of the problems with my conditions is that I am prone to getting somewhat wheezy and spluttery in cold, damp conditions and Saturday was a perfect example.  So my time in the Dojo was the perfect way of sweating out a minor chest problem.

We started out with break falls plus warm up for 10 to 15 minutes, which I struggled to get through, but you have to keep on going.  Then we observed the usual formalities of the Dojo and time to clear the mind. Kata came next.  Naihanchi Shodan in single moves, then doing the  Kata with phrasing, to emphasize the combinations inherent within.  This was followed by performance, with the instruction to concentrate of the phrasing over speed.  Kata with intent is also a good way to work up a sweat 😊

The next part of the lesson was Kumite plus pad work.  We started off with two short sessions of sport Kumite (light to medium contact) punches and kicks, then kicks only, with different partners.  This was followed by pad work on punching out of a situation: Standing, kneeling and from the ground.  Finally we went on to structured Naihanchi based Kumite with different partners.  About half way through this, all the sweating paid off and I started to really enjoy the lesson 😊😊

The final part of the lesson was the really fun part.  Our Sensei had got hold of training knives which flash and sound when sufficient contact is made to indicate a serous wound.  We went through a series of exercises with these:

Short range push off and run,
Medium range push off and run
Elbow trap head strike, run (these three with the attacker drawing the knife)
Escape from knife to throat (Deflect, trap, forearm strike, knee, forearm and push away)
We also practiced the last as a drill in pairs.
As well as being serious, these drills are fun 😊😊😊

The end of the lesson was warm down Kata and the full formal ending.  For me, an excellent  and much needed workout and great fun.  Thank you all 😊😊😊😊

Monday Night Fright Night - featuring the Nerd

I promised my son I would do another Monday night training session, as he gets to train with the adults as well if we do that.  As it is half term, seemed like the perfect time to do it.  as there is grading next weekend for at least one of our Dojo, it was always going to be an attention to detail session.

After the warm up and formal opening, including Mokuso (silent thoughts, a technique I find useful in real life), we started with Kata.  We did all the Naihanchis and all the Pinans, and got to watch Passai Sho (black belts only).  Everyone got to do the step by step versions of the Katas, then performance up to what they know.  I felk confident enough to perform up to Naihanchi Nidan this time.  My son absolutely loved it, as he had never gone past Pinan Shodan before😊😊.

After Kata,we went on to fundamentals - punches (jodan, chudan, gedan) , receiving techniques (jodan, chudan gedan) , kicks (mae, yoshiro, yoko, mawaishi geri), followed by tsuki, shuto and uke.  As with the Saturday lesson, I tried to do as much of this  as possible fully, the only element I held back on was the quantity of "tsuki"  in the generic section, so I could complete the "uke" section. Currently the last elements aren't in our grading syllabus, but that might change, so it is important to practice all of them.

After that we went through all of the kihon katas, done both right side and left side, 20 in total done this way.  The grading syllabus only includes the right side, so this is the first time I had performed any of them on the left hand side 😊😊. I am gradually becoming more familiar with them, but get a little muddled on the middle ones.  To help me out, I went over them with my Sensei to document them for an aide memoiure.  Below is the full documentation of our kihon katas for the first time by me:

Kihon Kata

Shodan

2 punch combination, Mae Geri

Nidan

Mae Geri, 2 punch combination

Sandan

2 punch combination, Mawashi Geri off front leg

Yondan

Mawashi Geri off front leg, 2 punch combination

Godan

Right Mawashi Geri (land in front), left Mawashi geri (land in front), reverse punch, jab.

Rokudan

Ashi uke, jab, cross, Mawashi Geri

Nanadan

Mae Geri (land in front) right jab, back kick

Hachidan 

Mae Geri (land in front), back kick, reverse punch

Kyudan

Shuffle, backhand forehand punch, shuffle, backhand forehand punch, right then left mawashi geri, spinning kick

Judan

Shuffle, backhand forehand punch, shuffle, backhand forehand punch, right then left mawashi geri, hisa geri

I definitely favour the left hand side versions, being left handed, but I will get there.

After that, we had a couple of short bouts of light to medium kumite.  The first was punches and kicks, and the seconds was kicks only.   At the end of the first session, I had a bit of a panic as I had taken at least one punch to the ribs, and landed a kick on a block, catching an older bruise. With the pain and ragged breathing, it gave me a fright, but I managed to shake it off and rejoin in the kick bout, taking back over from my Sensei, who had filled in to allow my training partner a full go.

All in all, another enjoyable lesson 😊😊😊😊  Thank you very much to my Sensei, son, patient training partner and other dojo members for putting up with me as I plod along.🙏