Never give up, never give in

The month of November, going into December you could say has been a testing one.   Work has been manic, having had to work the last two weekends and again this weekend, I have managed to train at least once a week, but sometimes that has been it in some weeks, apart from short snatches of kata or drills here or there.

Naihanchi Drills 0511

It has been somewhat challenging at home too, with the ups and down of mood and tension that goes with four people being at home all the time.  The separation needed doesn't always materialise and things can be magnified many times over as a result, but we have to keep on going.

Naihanchi after the lesson 0711

That said, I did manage to fit in a lesson with PJ Broomy at the start of November, and led to something a little different later on.  From my own dojo's perspective, we have been concentrating mainly on kata, the Naihanchi pad drills and fundamentals, mostly online due to the lockdown (all online for me of course).

More Naihanchi, drills and kata 1411

One of the signs that I, and fellow students of a similar grade, are making progress is that we have now started to be shown Naihanchi Sandan and perform it in lessons.  At the start of the Covid-19 crisis, my only kata to perform was Naihanchi Shodan, but zoom lessons have by their solo nature for practice have included kata as a strong element of our lessons.

Kata and Naihanch drills 1911

Our Sensei also keep asking us to provide performance videos of our kata, so that they can check on progress individually.  This has resulted in a good amount of feedback, which I like to think has gone a long way towards the progress.  Along with lots of practice of course.

2111 Lesson Part 1

One of the lessons we did, I videoed my part for the whole session, as a sample record of what we are doing and guess what, it was fundamentals plus the Naihanchi drills. The good thing about this is that it allows me compare what I do now against what I was doing when I started ☺☺☺

2111 Lesson Part 2

The good thing about that, is I got to realise the improvements I have made over time.  They are only small ones on a day to day basis, but over two or more years they mount up to quite a lot of progress.  As always though, there is still room for improvement.  That's an attitude I always want to keep, as nothing I do will ever be perfect.

2211 Lesson Part 3

Sometimes, when work is demanding and home life is problematic, an escape is needed.  Karate easily provided that during the summer months, with space in the garden to train and get away from all the other issues for a while, but then comes autumn and winter.  The weather isn't so clement and night draws in.

2111 Part 4

The first victim was kobudo, as space indoors even during the daytime, doesn't allow for the use of bo and nunchaku, the weapons taught primarily in our dojo.  Them the number of lessons I could attend dropped off, due to me having to work my full and sometimes extended hours, to meet project requirements and catch up on basics.  Due to family needs, the space available later in the day is far less than the earlier hours.

2111 Part 5

I found myself drifting back towards online life and gaming, which before karate had always been my release.  But it is nowhere near as mentally challenging or gives the self discipline and physical outlet I need to cope physically with my medical needs or mentally, to combat the current circumstances.  Fortunately a friend had inadvertently offered a lifeline.

2111 Kata after the lesson

When the "Karate Nerd in China" came out in December / January, I was an avid viewer, and the series piqued my interest in the "oldest kata" in karate, Seisan.  My lesson with PJ Broomy at the start of the month had me frustrated, because I couldn't join in directly with the kata part.  They do Tekki Shodan, but not as a part of their core, but they do Seisan.

Seisan, first part

PJ kindly shared a video of him doing the kata, with detail, so I set myself a challenge: To learn it.  I did this with a twofold purpose, it could be used as a breathing kata to add on to Tensho, that I already practice, and to know I kata I could do if I do another online lesson with PJ's dojo.  The history also fascinates me, so I think it will be the source of two further blogs: Nerd meets Practice and then a pure Nerd blog, in truth the first one is part way there.  That's another challenge, the mental stimulus.

2811 Kata cool down

So now I'm back to training more and today is the last weekend scheduled I have to do project work, so there is light at the end of at least two tunnels (the other is more personal, so not for here).  I have even gone back to the tai cho kata form of Naihanchi Shodan, inspired by Robey Jenkins, and added Noah Legel's Tensho to the mix for cardio and relaxation.

2911 kata - Naihanchi Shodan and Nidan, Tensho

So my motto has to be "Never give up, never give in" and I want to say thank you to my son Brendan, and my Sensei Ben and Alison for the source of determination and perseverance, and my online mentors, Robey Jenkins, Noah Legel and PJ Broomy, for the direction in how to adapt what I do ☺☺☺☺  Also, a big thank you to all of my extended dojo family (Hanshi Nohara, Senseis Craig, Darren and Graham, Elsha, Jack, Sam and all) for giving me the reason to continue 🙏🙏🙏.

3011 Rotating the strike

0211

Early morning lesson with PJ Broomy
Following along with a regular dojo class

0511

Kata,
Kihon Gata
Naihainchi pad drills #1-3

0212 Early Morning kata

0711

Kata
Kihon Gata
Naihanchi pad drills #1-2

1211

Fundamentals

Punches, receiving techniques, kicks, shuto, hisa-geri, uke
Kihon gata, combinations
Kata and performance

1411

Kick, punch called combinations, turns and combinations
Naihanchi drills 1 and 2 padwork
Kata

2111

Fundamentals, punches, receiving techniques. kicks, etc.
Naihanchi drill #1, elements and drill
Kata

0312 Kata Tai Chi Style

2811

Jamie Clubb lesson, sprawls, spear take downs, going to ground, knee control, breaking grasps, going to the back, etc.

3011

Kata
Rotation and elbow strikes, round the clock moving the nearest foot and round the clock with back foot as the pivot
Naihanchi drills

0312

Kata
The four basic kicks, turning ushiro geri on an uke, mai gei and mawashi geri in self defence
Naihanchi drill one with variations, including turning to get sight of a second attacker and being taken to ground on the knee strike and recovery.

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 ☺☺☺☺

Immunity (lack of) of the Stubborn

As I have said many times, I am stubborn and don't give in easily, but it doesn't make me immune....  Saturday in the dojo was a struggle.  On Friday, I had to admit that stubbornness alone wont get you through feeling unwell at times and went to see my doctor.  Now, I'm on steroids and antibiotics for a week 😩

With Sensei Ben out, not at all well, Sensei Alison took us through the last Saturday lesson of the year.  Can't say I was anywhere near my best and the lesson was a bit of a blur  We did at least four paired drills:

Hooking hands, 
Hooking hands combined with other elements (this is one I had forgotten)
Block elbow, clear, trap, elbow strike
Naihanchi Sandan opening drill - take punch to stomach, turn into Zenkutsu dachi, trap arm and pull, backhand to ribs, face slap, hammer hand to arm, hammer hand to face ( hitting pressure points)

Then there was  Pad work:

Mai geris {push kick version), 
Mawashi geris, left and right legs
Commbinations:  jab, cross, Mai geri, spinning back heel kick

Then Pad work in circles of 5, each taking it in turns on the pads, I can only remember the spinning heel and Mawashi geri elements of this,
Then some other pad work.

Finally we did some work on throws, including hip and sweeping throws.  

Don'r usually forget that much of a lesson, shows how under the weather I was 😩  Ho hum, but now it's holiday time.  Hopefully will recharge my batteries and come back fitter in the New Year. ☺☺  We rounded things off with a group photo, and all that is left is to wish anyone reading this a Merry Christmas and hopefully a good New Year ☺☺

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. 🙏🙏🙏

Potted Nerd: The Naihanchis

Naihanchi is the fundamental Kata family of my style, Shorin-Ryu.  Being one of the earlier Kata in the world of Karate, there are many different forms.  Where a style has only one Kata, this tends to be somewhat similar to my style's Naihanchi Shodan:

An example of this, but showing the degree of variation that can be found, is Tachimura no Naihanchi, as practiced in KishimotoDi (thank you to Noah Legel for introducing me to this style and Ulf Karlsson for making such a detailed video). Unlike most other versions of the Kata, this starts of to the left, rather to the right and, according to Motobu Naoki (translated by Adreas Quast http://ryukyu-bugei.com/?p=5358), this is may be a feature of the earlier form of the Kata, in the Koryū Shuri-te era (courtesy Andreas Quast article http://ryukyu-bugei.com/?p=4123#_ftnref10) when it was considered ti, predating the influence of Itosu Ankō.  The Chosin Chibana form of the Kata stems from lineage of Itosu Ankō.

The origins of Naihanchi are possibly Chinese, due to the long history of trade between Okinawa and China.  An article by Simon Keegan (https://toshujutsu.wordpress.com/2014/04/02/beyond-shorin-shorei-teaching-complete-karate/) Suggests that the source form may come from Taiwanese White Crane Boxing, known as Dan Qiu Ban Bai He Quan (Half Hillock, Half White Crane Boxing).  The form Neixi, contains the  same sweeping action found in the nami-gaeshi (returning wave) technique of Naihanchi and Neixi is pronounced Nohanchi in Fuzhou dialect.....

I tried to find a youtube video of Neixi but no luck.  I did however find a video of other forms of that style, the link to which is given below:

Fujian Half Hill Crane Boxing

Neixi isn't included[; but whilst my academic skills elude me here, in one one of the articles I read, there was the assertion that the Kata was based on a form no longer practiced by the originating style.

Naihanchi as a family, and Naihanchi Shodan of my style, clearly has a long tradition in martial arts, but apart from Shodan, the family also includes Nidan and Sandan, both practiced in Shorin-Ryu:

Chosin Chibana - Naihanchi Nidan

Chosin Chibana - Naihanchi Sandan

There are differing thoughts on the origins of these two Kata.  In the footnote of the article "

On the distinction between Shuri-te and Tomari-te" <http://ryukyu-bugei.com/?p=4123#_ftnref10>,translated by Andreas Quast, Gima Shinkin is cited as saying " in the Naihanchi kata he (Itosu Ankō) carried out a process of educational reorganization, which is why he divided it into three levels."  The Head of my own federation, Hanshi Koei Norhara, who studied in the lines of both Matsubayashi and Kobayashi Shorin Ryu, states in his book, "The Transformation of Tiy", that each was a Kata "invented by Itosu Ankō".

I don't think it likely that a definitive answer will be found, and all three are Kata are enjoyable to perform, but to me there seems to be more intent in Shodan than the other two.  Given that the Tachimura no Naihanchi Kata predates the work of Itosu Ankō, I think that the Nidan and Sandan Katas are his own work, but that is only my opinion. 😊

A Nerd post: Potted Karate Okinawa style.

A few posts I read recently set me to thinking as to what styles of Karate could be called Okinawan, or have definable roots that are Okinowan.   I was already aware that Karate is a relatively modern term, and that locally the teachings were originally referred to by the place of origin, followed by "Te" or "martial skills" in English.

So, originally there was Shuri-Te, Naha-Te and Tomari-Te.  I was aware that the form of Karate I study, Shorin-Ryu, had its roots in Shuri-Te, from an earlier post I did.  The family tree I ended up with (not formally verified, hence some of the "possible" links) is:

However, the styles derived from the other Te styles, I had not looked into.  A quick search of Wikipedia gave the following, which I have summarised in table format, for ease of comparison:

Village	Shuri	Naha	Tomari
Type of location	Capital	Commercial	Port
Root style	Shuri-Te	Naha-Te	Tomari-Te
Style most associated	Shōrin-ryū	Gōjū-ryū	No specific style
Cited founder	Chosin Chibana	Chojun Miyagi	N/A
Other  masters of root style	Sakukawa Kanga Matsumura Sōkon Itosu Ankō Asato Ankō Chōyū Motobu Motobu Chōki Yabu Kentsū Chōmo Hanashiro Funakoshi Gichin Kyan Chōtoku Mabuni Kenwa Tōyama Kanken Tatsuo Shimabuku	Arakaki Seishō Higaonna Kanryō Kyoda Jūhatsu Mabuni Kenwa Uechi Kanbun	Matsumora Kōsaku Oyadomari Kokan Motobu Chōki Kyan Chōtoku Nakasone Seiyu
Other related styles	Shotokan Shitō-ryū  Shudokan Shōrinji-ryū Gensei-ryu    Motobu-ryū	Uechi-ryū Ryūei-ryū Shito-ryu Tōon-ryū	Wado-ryu Motobu-ryū Matsubayashi-ryu Shōrinji-ryū
Main Kata	Naihanchi Pinan Kūsankū Passai Jion Jitte Rohai Chinto Gojushiho	Sanchin Saifā Seiunchin Shisochin Seipai Seisan Sanseru Tensho Kururunfa Suparinpei	Naihanchi (Koshiki) Eunibu Rōhai Wanduan Passai (Tomari) Chinsu Chinpu Wankan Wanshū Seisan Jumu Nichin Juma Ananku

I shouldn't have been surprised, but many of the styles seem to be derivative of more than one of the Te styles. Cross referencing the Tomari-Te based styles, most seem to be derived from Shuri-Te as well.  Matsubashi-Ryu, which Wiki gives as Tomari-Te, is definitely also a form of Shorin-Ryu. Wado-Ryu, which is cited as a Tomari-Te style, appear to have originated in Japan, founded in 1934 by Hironori Ohtsuka.

The ageshio web site:

https://www.ageshiojapan.com/okinawa-karate/styles.html

offers up Goju-Ryu, Shorin-Ryu (Chibana), Shorin-Ryu (Shudokan), Uechi-Ryu and Matsubash-Ryu as extanct forms of Okinawan Karate, which can still be studied in Okinawa.  I am sure this is by no means a definitive list, any more than the Wiki results are definitive, but it does give a marker of the styles which give a good representation of what Okinawan Karate is all about 😊