granitemiller

The warriors show is good too.

A good shot to the groin will end the fight, although there is a delayed reaction for about 30 seconds but once the pain kicks in the attacker is done.

18 is a lot! I have not done Hangetsu, and we include Gojushiho to your list. My personal favorite kata is probably Empi, although I am not as good at it as I would like.

The first episode was Apache vs. Gladiator and the Apache won. I liked the weapons analysis, however the combat scenario did not cut it for me. I mean if a Gladiator (someone who trains everyday for life/death battle and does nothing else) has someone down on the ground - the fight is over, that person dies. Same thing I think with the Samurai vs. Viking - yes there is a samurai superiority bias, but a viking had a shield that they would have used to block the strike and then the viking would have overpowered the samurai. Maybe they should have those weapons experts actually go at it to see what is really effective?!

Welcome to another Shotokan Karateka! Question - how many kata do you have to know for nidan, and what are they?

Not for sparring - but SD okay

I will check it out too

Hope the elbow gets better

I see your point here. I think that the concepts of fighting came first, and the methodologies came second, which then became incorporated into kata. It is a matter of preference, learning how to fight thru kata is a time proven method. Learning how to fight thru hands on training like MMA is another. Some roads are shorter, some are longer. I guess you need to decide where you want to go, and then choose the path to get there.

And thank you for the Spanish Lesson!

MMA training is very worthwhile and the practical knowledge it gives is great. They also work out very hard.

What I meant by '"crept" is that while Master Funakoshi made changes to the katas and so forth for the mainland Japanese, the old school Okinawan katas came back into the Shotokan schools on mainland Japan over the years. So "crept" here means "come back into". I looked up the Spanish and it said in the dictionary: deslizado but I am not sure if this is right. What you wrote "slow transition from one movement to another" is the word "creep", meaning slow movement. Crept is the past tense, and the way I used it meant that the old forms slowly came back into Shotokan. I should have used more standard English, sorry about that Espina.

What I meant to say from "school to school" is not so much within one school system (eg: Joe Smith school of MA in San Diego and Joe Smith school of MA in Los Angeles), but within two different schools of the same style (eg: Joe Smith school of MA in San Diego and Dan Fran Martial Arts in Toronto)-both of them Shotokan - you will see slight variations in the kata (eg: a hand drops lower in one than another at a certain place, etc).

RBSD training is definitely realistic and a lot is learned from it. MMA training is for sport and while somewhat realistic, it is not "realistic" in terms of using on the battlefield (I would never go to the ground exposing myself), although we can and have learned from MMA as well. I guess in the end no training is bad!

Yes, I agree, however it is interesting how the Okinawan parts have crept back in. My school uses Okinawan methods.

It was pre-war Japan - a time when the Japanese were overly-nationalistic (and mind you, it was not just them who were like this, but most of the world). Even today, mainland Japanese tend to look down on the Okinawan people. Funakoshi made other changes, such as changing the kanji for Kara from "China" to "Open", again to make it more appealing to the mainland Japanese (who were invading China at the time). He also changed other names of kata.

It is a mixture of both. The originator spent much more time examining and creating the moves then we realize. We live in a much too fast paced world, where everything is now now now. We also feel we are vastly superior to our past generations in all aspects. My point is that someone in the 1600's, or 1800's, spent a great deal of time creating these kata, and they are very intricate and sophisticated, if you take the time to really study them (for example: Tekki is NOT about someone riding a horse or standing in a rice field - study the bunkai and see how devastating it really is!), you will see just how genius these old timers were. They fought for real, it was life or death back then, which is a point I think we miss. In addition, there are just so many ways you can take someone who grabs you, strike them and throw them to the ground. Why do we assume we know better? Are we able to come up with something else, something better for this day and age? Absolutely. And we should be doing this! I am not stating that we are inept and can not come up with our own items for the here and now. However, we need to honor the past and also really learn what our past masters meant to pass down to us by diligently studying bunkai. If you have ever created a form, and really put time and energy into it (and not just make up something on a whim), you will understand more about what I am trying to say. I think that TTC just made a quick comment on my post and really did not think about it much. I am saying that we need to really learn what was passed down, and the "original concepts" are encapsulated within the katas.

Even kata within the same style (eg: Shotokan) will have slight variations from school to school.

I like that!

Yes, I agree. Kumite improves your skills by applying them against a non-cooperative partner who is also trying to hit/score on you.

Too sensitive!

But doesn't Jiyu Kumite, as well as ippon kumite, still have rules? I don't think anyone in class would throw an elbow strike at another's face full force intending to seriously injure the other, would they? So when you step out of a kata, you are basically stepping out of training for life/death situational training, and stepping into a rules based situational training, which is what sparring is.

Killer - I saw your posted Katas and got a laugh out of it, I just didn't comment.

I saw a show on Discovery on Indian Martial Arts. Mostly wrestling based. I think that when it went to China that the katas were started. I could be wrong of course. Within the Okinawan-China katas, I believe Bassai is the oldest, as there is a 400 year old (carbon dated) tapestry that has images of people doing this kata.

It is too simple to to make such a general statement like that.