Shizentai

I've had so many interesting floor memories in my time. For sure there were a lot of gym floors, especially the college clubs. Through a weird turn of events I ended up attending 4 universities in my 4 years of undergraduate schooling. In every one except for at my Japanese university we were on a wooden gym floor. I actually found the tatami in our training facility in Japan much harder to grow accustomed to. It's true! When training in a gym there can be any number of surprises. I once stepped in an unseen blob of PB&J from someone who had used the space before our prescribed time. Just the other week we were in a training camp, and someone got the idea to spread talc around, to make it easier to crescent step. It made for some surprisingly slippery entrances to the room. A common use floor is always like that though. We have what we have. There is a certain amount of variability in it. At one of the American Universities I attended we would get kicked out of the gym during the summertime. Instead we would train in the grass in front of the bell tower. This lead to a number of entertaining interactions with the terrain and passers-by alike. It was custom to have "grass gis" as we would call them: a single gi per person sacrificed to the gods of mud and slime, so that not all of our uniforms would look terrible through the rest of the year.

Unfortunately, I have to present at a conference the week before the Pan American Games, so I don't get that luxury. I am actually already sporting a black eye, funny enough, and not from free sparing either. It happened during a basic sparing drill where we were supposed to do 20 exchanges in a row, then counter. As I did the prescribed counter attack I got a bonus aiuchi punch to the face because my opponent made a mistake counting. Haha! I suppose the lesson learned is to always be aware or something like that. Still, these platitudes I tell myself based on hindsight don't help my current predicament. It wouldn't be so bad if I knew how to put on makeup, but I'm kind of new at this. Yesterday I think I did a better job. Today I am satisfied with making it look a little less dramatic.

Some jobs are understanding with MA cuts and bruises, but sometimes we need to be formal, present at a conference, or guide a lecture. Having visible bruises (especially something like a black eye) looks rather unprofessional in these settings. What do you all do to manage this?

Thank you for your kind words all! 🙏 The first couple weeks of team training was a bit rough. It was an adjustment going from being in the dojo 3 nights a week to now 5 or 6. There's also the added bonus of everyone suddenly hitting faster and harder. Now I think I've settled into a normal routine with it all though. I'm seldom the strongest on the floor, but I do tend to have better endurance than the average person, so it helps me get more training in.

I set two goals for myself this year: 1. get a tenure track position at a university 2. work on getting instructor certification My plan is to ultimately start my own university club once these two stepping stones are in place, especially once my career trajectory is less fluid. So en route to these goals I've been applying for jobs like mad, but I've also been attending a lot of camps and seminars and judging/examiner/instructor trainings the first half of this year. This has been my karate focus lately, transitioning from ranking up and competition to take more of a leadership role. Anyway, one of the camps I attended recently was the JKA WF America camp, which featured guest instruction from Master Ueki, Chief instructor of the JKA, from headquarters in Tokyo. I assumed because I can speak a little bit of Japanese, I got some nice critique and attention from Master Ueki. It is much appreciated! I also did better in the in-camp tournament than I expected. Maybe it was random chance, maybe because it wasn't my focus this time around, and so I had few nerves about it. It's hard to say --but here's the catch-- this camp's in-camp tournament was also the National Championship for the JKA WF America. ... and so at the end of the camp (mind you, this is still less than a month ago), my name gets called and I'm supposed to run up to the front of the gym. I was in a line of others who similarly didn't know why they were summoned. Then the announcement comes in "Give a round of applause for your qualifying US team pool." I think my jaw nearly fell through the floor. I tried and failed to make the US team in the past, when competition was more of a focus. When I spent so much time and effort trying, I was unsuccessful. Is it really possible that I managed to accidentally do it this year??? To make a long story short, yes. I am on the team. We will be competing in the Pan American games next month, and the training in the meantime is fairly intense. I have bruises on every limb. We'll see how this goes. Hopefully they didn't make a mistake. Hopefully I can be of service. More to the point of this thread though, I think there is something I do when I want a specific outcome too badly (i.e. when I want to win). I think I lose sight of the waza, and maybe even the love I have for what I do. I want to take this revelation and bottle it, to carry it forward with me as I mature.

I will do just that! Thank you!

Best of luck on the tenure-track job! I'm not sure what the market looks like in your field of study, but things are pretty flooded for mathematicians. Thanks Singularity! Right now it's seeming like even the small biology tenure track jobs are getting at least 150 applicants each. For that reason when I only made the short list for 1 of 10 jobs I applied to last year, I wasn't super surprised. I'm trying to get some manuscripts out and at least double my number of applications in 2019 to boost my chances. In the past week I've applied to 5 more positions, and I plan to submit two more applications today. Fingers crossed! One day at a time I guess. It would be really great to start my own university club too. Undergrads are my favorite group to train. Unlike little kids, every single one of them wants to be there and is ready to go at the beginning of class. Many students are also looking for the community and friendship that a dojo can offer. It can be an outlet for the stress university or graduate life puts on people. It's nice to have a place to diffuse all of that. I have many fond memories and lasting friendships from my college karate club(s). It'd be great to be able to start that somewhere new. I'd love to give more people a chance to experience this.

I have a different go-to menu depending on what my opponent is like. Factors such as their and my relative reach, speed, and taste for their own waza are all important. If I'm against someone who initiates with the same combos all the time, that makes my life easier. For people who tend to start out by throwing round techniques (hook punches, ridge hand strikes, back-fists, roundhouse kicks, etc.), I tend to either blitz up the midline with very linear strikes, or play it safe and use my right hand blocking their right attack (or left on left) to pull them too far into their own spin. For people who tend to lead by blitzing up the midline with more linear strikes, I take a 45deg angle of whichever side the strike is on to get to the back of their shoulder and I do something circular. If I get the timing and distance just right, I'll give a roundhouse or a sweep or a ridge hand at the same time as I step. Most importantly, I'm out of danger, and I can play that game all day. When it's my turn to initiate, I ask myself "what does my opponent expect me to do?" The answer to that question can have to do with previous experience the opponent has had fighting me, or perhaps what they are just used to seeing in general, or, if I'm lucky, some rash assumptions they'll make about me based on my appearance. I set up a trap, then give them something different. Sometimes it's rather elaborately planned. I'll practice a bunch of one technique in front of everyone when warming up, just so they'll think that is my tokui, but I'll use something different when the right moment comes. Sometimes I just let an idea come to me on the fly. So I guess you could say I don't have a tokui waza, but that's not really true either. It's just more like a choose your own adventure game.

This year I'm shooting pretty high 1. Get certified as a d-level instructor & d-level judge 2. Get a tenure-track faculty appointment 3. Start a university karate club I fully expect this to be a major challenge to do in my first year of trying, but here goes nothing!

Yes, I did it! I had four unexpected curve-balls: 1. I tore my rotator cuff in a sumo tournament about 4 months before the test so I had to do some quick physio to get back into shape. 2. The testing facility was actually at a really high elevation, which made everything super interesting with my asthma, but no attack, so all was well. 3. I had to spar my male senpai testing for 5-dan in the kumite section of the exam. 4. Only Ueki himself (head of the JKA) administered my test. Somehow it all worked out. Now I am just working on looking consistently like a sandan, not lapsing into nidan-level training when I'm tired. haha!

Lol, I was being open and honest when I said that I took a compliment about "being naturally fast" and let it go to my head. Then I explained that this compliment had absolutely no foundation in reality, as I found out this weekend. This was part of a 23andme wellness report that I did mostly to learn more about my ancestry. It's nothing weird. I also have not be dwelling on it. I just learned like two days ago, and basically only talked about it here. How is this dwelling? Paint me up to be a creepy obsessed person who can't take a compliment if you want, but that doesn't make it true. I'm not going to sit here and tell you all of the uncomplimentary things I've been called, because the list is very long and it doesn't much have anything to do with this topic. So you can't really infer whether I am someone who gets complimented more often than insulted. I think it's fair to say that I hear other people's judgements of me (kind or ill) pretty often. I'm small, love to laugh, and enjoy talking to everyone, so people tend to speak freely with me about whatever they are thinking. I think this is a pretty great privilege, even if I have to suffer some cruel words from time to time (again, I haven't mentioned any of said "cruel words anywhere in this post, this post is about compliments).

As a below-average weight female living in the USA, I get the unhealthy-body-image version of this "good genes" write off a fair amount, as if my genes are enviable because I look sickly thin. I hope it's not too horrible that when this happens I laugh and ask if they'd like to trade me for a kidney (since another super awesome card in my genetic deck is for autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease). I guess the grass is always greener on... someone else's body?

Oh no! It sounds like you'e had some bad experiences. Word.

Any time there's a new world record broken, or another Olympic games, the presses love a story about an athlete that goes something along the lines of: "Mike was always an active kid. From the time he could walk he was swimming, it's like he was born for it." etc... I suspect that a large part of the appeal of these stories is to make the masses feel OK with their lesser abilities relative to the person they are watching. We like to quietly tell ourselves that the only reason people get farther at a skill is because they've had a "head start" or a "special talent." We sometimes forget that every athlete we watch compete has spent a ridiculous amount of time practicing. When I was about 4 or so years into training karate, I started to hear the words "You're fast." Not "you've gotten faster" or "you've learned to be fast," but a phrase suggesting that speed was an inherent quality that I just possessed. Nevermind that I would get KO'd in dodge-ball in elementary school. Nevermind that every year during the 50-yard dash I would be in last place. I gobbled up the suggestion that I was just "fast" naturally, maybe because it made me feel special. 1.5 decades later I tend to be one of the quickest people among I'd say pretty much any dojo I visit. Fast reaction time, fast striking, turning on a dime, this kind of thing. Well ladies and gentlemen. Today I found out that I actually have no fast twitch muscle. That's right, none. I have two variant copies of a gene that blocks its production in my body. I am, by all accounts, physiologically non-ideal for sports that require sudden bursts of quick movement. That not only puts me in the bottom percentile among power athletes and sprinters, but also puts me in the bottom 20% of regular people in terms of predicted natural ability at these types of sudden-speed movements. While this discovery is somewhat funny, it does make a fair bit of sense when I think about my childhood experiences prior to starting karate. It also has made me even more proud of my training. Here I've been, for years, going into a formula 1 race while driving a Ford Fiesta... and I didn't even know! The difference between what is described on my genetics report and what I am like today, I suspect, can be attributed to one factor above all the others: training Perhaps this just makes me one more piece of paper in the file of "karate is for everyone" but I thought it was worth mentioning. It stacks up nicely with my old ankle braces and notes to skip PE. Hello, My name is Shizentai, and I am not a natural-born martial artist. Are you?

I've been training for 18 years. I know for sure that (at least after I've passed 30) if I want to have a good class, I need to stretch my legs But seriously, like good science is not just a collection of facts, I think good karate is more than just what you know, it's about how to interact with the unknown. It's a form of problem solving, a way of increasing productivity of reactions in a crisis.

I agree with you on never blocking a kick force-on-force. Still, in 18 years I have also never once broken a finger in training. I have learned to be in the right place at the right time with my hands. For me this means a closed fist at the moment of impact, but it also means letting your arm do a lot of the work, not the hand. I actually have a bit of a disability when it comes to proper nerve function in my hands (due a deformity in how nerves pass through my elbows). What that means is that if I get bumped a certain way, I temporarily lose the ability to move or feel my hand or hands. I find that if I keep my hands in a fist while sparring, then I have something useful to work with, even if it gets stuck like that for the duration of the fight. I've never found that closing my fist slows me down though. If you're generating all of your speed from the hand alone, you might be missing what the hip has to offer in the endeavor. I wonder if those open-hand finger-risk motions you like so much are just a way of cuing some coordinated movement. Maybe try video taping yourself and breaking it down. I bet if you focus on this kind of training, you can come up with a way to generate that speed without relying on finger-smashing hand movements.

You may want to specify that N >1 and E > 0 to ensure positive growth. A couple other cases could be interesting to observe: If 0 < N < 1 and E > 0, you'd have a decline to zero over time. If 0 < N < 1 and E < 0, you'd have positive growth, but this model only seems to apply with the high ups in government or major corporations. As per my original stipulation, it is an overly simplified equation (in other words, I left a lot out for sake of clarity of impact). Still, thinking logically, it seems unlikely that a person would have negative current skill or be able to apply negative effort over some unit time, at least as I have conceived effort to be actions taken towards self betterment. The minimum a person could have or apply respectively would be zero. so really, it would importantly be N ≥ 0, or E ≥ 0, although I agree it's unlikely that a person truly has 0 skill. Also, you are right, we did not agree upon what index for N or E should be used, integers & what not being my original intent. For this comment, I refer back to my original sentiment: Semantics are fun as heck, but I'll stop here.

Although overly simplified, I like to think of skill acquired over time as S in the following equation S=N^(E*t) where N is your skill level now, t is some length of time, and E is effort put in over that length of time. People tend to put too much emphasis on N. We think too much about the starting point, where we are now, even though it's the steps we take from there that matter the most. As a kid who had little to no obvious potential physically, I've luckily been free from the burdens of unmet, over-inflated expectations. It has been my great fortune to fly under the radar of most people until the right moment. edit: 400th post. ZING!

You beat me to it, hammer. Great to see you. Indeed, although just a brief nod, even this source recognizes the other military origin of the word in Japanese. It goes to show the power of the sound of a word. Regardless of whether words originated from the same place, in time things that sound alike influence each other in people's minds, given cultural contact.

There exists another, let's call it "hypothesis," for how ossu came to be in karate, and why it is particularly popular in Japanese karate: My friend who was in the Japanese Millitary for a number of years was made to whenever he encountered a superior on board his ship, stop what he was doing, salute and say "Ohayou gozaimasu" (=good morning) if it was the first time that particular superior was being encountered for the day. Because this had to be said very quickly as this happens often when you are low in the ranks, it effectively becomes a choir of "ossu" when someone important walks in the room. As modern Japanese styles of karate have taken on a lot of mainland-Japan cultural features, many believe this was one hold-over from mainland Japan's military culture. Now, what that means in an American dojo is anyone's guess, as both lineage as well as diverse contemporary influences (other ryu, local orgs., local culture, etc.) are at play there. Still, it is one hypothesis as to why "ossu" gets said. I agree that it gets overused sometimes, but I personally don't mind it.

I'm not going to lie, I've sort of been this person, although accidentally. After having watched pro-sumo religiously for the past 6 years, tentatively for the past 15 years, and after having trained martial arts in general for 18 years... I decided to just go ahead and participate in the US sumo open this year. I had never even so much as worn a mawashi before, and I was in the bottom of the lightest weight class. Even so, I didn't lose to everyone. Both my judoka friend and I each beat people who had trained in a sumo stable for over a year, both of us never having even tried the sport before that morning. I won't lie, I wasn't even considering the other people's feelings when I went up against them. I was just focusing on what waza I could think of try, what didn't work well, and what seemed to work nicely. I was by no means a ringer. I lost more fights than I won for sure, but it wasn't a complete shut-out, and I beat someone who was a good 30% heavier than I was. The only reason I had for not training ahead of time was that there are no sumo stables near me. Even so, it occurred to me after the fact, that maybe I should have taken into consideration the implications of my coming in and beating a beginner just starting to feel confident about herself. I hope she doesn't loose confidence. Anyway, all I mean to say is that sometimes this kind of thing happens. If you want him to learn his place in the dojo, just have him do some randori with intermediate to high ranks. I bet he'll figure out soon enough some areas where he needs to work harder.

Were you a trouble maker? LOL!! No, but you sure couldn't tell that by the torture pace he set...day after day after day after day. So you had a multi-day test?

Wow! That does sound like an endeavor! Thankfully I didn't have to break anything for my 3 dan. I just had to do kihon, kata and kumite on-demand. I was the only female testing for an advanced rank, so they had me spar one of the men testing for 5 dan. The hardest part of the test for me was that I had to do everything at 6600 feet elevation after spending the past month at sea level. Just one kata and I felt like I needed my inhaler. I arrived the day before the exam, so I didn't have time to get used to it. The head of the JKA (Ueki sensei) was administering the exam, so it was pretty cool to get to be tested by him. I really enjoyed his seminars as well. Hard as the test was, my nidan still remains the only test I've ever taken that took me to the operating room, haha! I came back from this with all of my connective tissue where it was before, so I consider this a success.

I've been MIA for a few weeks, but I am back, and with a 3-dan. The camp was great. I am tired. It got me thinking. What would you say is the hardest test (MA related) you've ever taken, and why?

I agree with what the OP's sensei said about stretching having two kinds: prepping for a workout vs becoming more flexible. I am absurdly flexible, to the point where it is a medical situation. My tendons and ligaments are quite lax and it's causes me a variety of problems. That being said, if I don't stretch for 10-20 min before I train I can still get hurt. This is getting more and more true as I age. Even if you have enough length in your muscles, tendons and ligaments to do what you want, your muscles can always become stiff and fatigued when you use them a lot. It's important not to jump right into quick snapping motions when they are in this state to avoid injury. I think more important than pushing yourself as far as you can possibly go in a stretch is focusing on activating the correct muscles when you do each stretch. For instance, when I spread my legs and stretch to the front, I can add extra length to my reach by curving my back a little, but what I really NEED to be doing right before class is slowly stretching my hips and lower back by keeping a straight back and bending at the pelvis. This helps my hamstrings and lower back out a lot (which I tend to get all bunched up). After doing this stretch entirely for the purpose of pre-class hamstring prep for about a year, I find that I can actually bring my upper body right to the ground now, laying the side of my face and my chest on the floor comfortably. SO, using this as an example, even if you are stretching just to protect your muscles form injury it can help you achieve more flexibility over time. It just depends on the situation. For me though, the former is the only thing I'm really after. I also really like doing some isometric stuff with my most problematic muscle groups (shoulders, ankles, etc.) before training. In any case, I wouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater on stretching. It is frustrating when the stretches that you need to get ready for training are not the ones being done in class, but you can always arrive early and work on those yourself using methods that work best for you.