Shizentai

I used to when I was younger, but now not so much. I actually accumulated so many karate t-shirts that I don't wear over the years that I made a queen sized quilt out of them recently.

Word. Besides, for me to try to be "better than" someone implies I'm playing the same game, which is not my style.

But not fcarrot cake. That is as wrong as pineapple on pizza. Carrot cake, pineapple pizza, fruit curry, these are all life's good things. I have never had a slice of cake that I didn't like

Being one's own donor, how cool! I wonder how one of his kidneys was spared, since he should have the same genetic backdrop in all 3 of them. I'm going to guess that the answer lies somewhere in the land of epigenetics. How fascinating! Physical condition and lifestyle do have documented effects on the progression of the disease for some people, particularly in terms of blood pressure control and hydration. But you are right, the difference between PKD patients is substantial in terms of how much effect these changes can make. It's really only the lucky slow-course folks like myself who even get the option to make long term diet and fitness choices. Once function is down below a certain point, the progression is an unfortunately accelerating positive feedback loop. I've never gotten to speak to another person from a PKD family about their experiences though, so it's super interesting to hear about how things are for other people like me. As for my backwards heart... Most people's hearts have a large, muscular left side that pumps blood to the body, and a smaller right side that pumps blood to the lungs. However, my small body combined with the resistivity in my lungs due to breathing problems means that my right side is actually bigger, because it takes more force to oxygenate my blood than to pump it around me. I've been told this is not a problem, just something unique.

Wow! Small world! Yeah, I'm 4th generation Autosomal Dominant PKD myself. The only living members of my family with it are my dad and my two sisters. Dad got a transplant back in 2007 though, and is doing awesomely! Neither of my sisters nor I have faced the worst of it yet. My kidneys are probably in the best shape of the bunch, not sure why, perhaps because I have always had abnormally low blood pressure (at the doc last week it was 103/62, which is really good for someone with PKD, since it causes hypertension). I think you are right on the money about seemingly conflicting age of diagnosis for AD PKD. Because a healthy person has more than 2x the necessary kidney tissue to function, you wouldn't expect that you'd detect a decrease in kidney function for a PKD patient until more than half of your kidneys had already been destroyed by the cysts. Those are some big cysts at that point. An ultrasound can pick them up long before that point, but most people don't get kidney ultrasounds for fun. It seems like a good idea that you got a diagnostic ultrasound. I'm 32, and when I was your age mine were already 2.5cm in diameter each and too numerous to count. Even so, I've been told that I'm on a slow track course of the disease, and if I play my cards right, I may not even require a transplant until my mid-70s. Given this, even if you have PKD, it sounds like you are unlikely to be on a time course fast enough to require a transplant, unless you expect to live to over 100. Still, I'm not a medical doctor. If you really want to put that nail in that coffin, you could always get genetic testing. As for the hypermobility, not everyone gets it, in fact not even most people with PKD get it, but PKD patients have a higher probability than normal folks. The way my doctor described it, cystic disorders in general (not just PKD) tend to have high co-morbidity with connective tissue disorders because they often arise from an abnormality in the production of extracellular matrix. I consider myself lucky though. I'd rather have trick joints than IBS or brain aneurysms. My heart is...well, backwards (?) but so far as I know, that is unrelated.

Well it looks like I will indeed take my 3-dan exam in June. I filled out a ton of paperwork, and now the serious class attention begins. Tonight was awesome training. I am missing some skin on my back and I almost had to use my inhaler towards the end, but other than that I am feeling pretty good about life. I agree, cake eating for the win.

You are not alone. I have polycystic kidney disease, which means that I will eventually need a kidney transplant, and I must avoid hard hits to the kidney area, lest I expedite that process. The same mutation that causes this condition causes the ligaments throughout my body to be more lax than they should be, which means that I dislocate joints easily. Just since December I've dislocated my left elbow, my left thumb (twice), and two toes on my right foot. Toes and feet are indeed rough. There's no way to rest them, so healing takes a lot longer. Probably the worst injury I've had was a broken T12 though (caused by my spine bending backwards further than it should have, and my chipping off the process). When I was a kid I always had braces on my feet and wrists, and would just sit on the side in PE class. I always had a bit of discomfort. I thought that was as good as it got. It wasn't till high school that I found my way to the dojo. Since then I've built up a lot of core strength and have helped take the strain off of my lax joints with about 20 extra pounds of lean muscle. It makes a world of difference in my quality of life.

I don't mean to keep going back to English vs. Japanese, but words are such powerful things! We can argue all day about "blocks", but while the English translation of "uke" as "block" is conceptually accessible, it is not the most linguistically accurate translation. Technically "ukeru" means "to receive." "age uke" is therefore just a strategy of receiving/dealing-with a strike by raising your arm upwards. Again, it's not that we're 'modifying' the "block" it's that the concept of "block" is a mistranslation imho. but I digress... The interesting thing to me about age uke is how versatile it is. Even by just altering the timing of the waza and nothing else, it can be shifted from force-on-force, to defecting the force, to even pulling your opponent off balance by grabbing and pulling to your hip on the recoil. By changing the length of time I have contact with my opponent's jodan attack, and the target along the arm of my uke, I can alter whether it is a strike to the arm or a push sending the shoulder out of alignment. I use plenty of age-uke permutations on a regular basis. I agree with you that I don't tend to like using age uke force-on-force against a very strong opponent while I am facing directly forward while in shizentai. However, most people don't fight facing forward in shizentai either, so I kind of feel like this is not a major loss to my practical karate tool kit.

I think you've all got the wrong impression. It's not that I'm feeling pressured to test and I am unprepared or something. It's been almost 10 years since my last test. I can take it anytime. I'm fine with that. The problem is that sometimes it seems like it's not physically possible for me to test. I've actually tried to test twice last year, but was told that it would be better in another region or at another camp, since I'm not really from there.... even though those people saying that were the same ones who told me I was ready to test in the first place! It's more like, how shall I put this, It's like being at a party where everyone has a plate of cake but you, and all the people you talk to want to have the same conversation "Why don't you have cake? Someone should really give you a piece" but no one offers you a slice. It just makes for a frustrating situation. Meh, life goes on though. It's not the biggest problem. I could just continue to not compete or test, it's just that people always want to talk about that cake with me, and it's hard to not want a slice of cake sometimes.

My job has me moving around a lot. As such, I spend a lot of time training in a lot of different dojos, which has been both a blessing and a curse in many ways, especially when it comes time to tests or competition. For the past several years I dealt with this by just avoiding either. Keep it simple. Focus on training. However, and here's the hilarious part, moving between dojos within the same organization seems almost more complicated than between. Because now I am back to competing, I am being chastised for not competing for team selections, which I am not being invited to because no one considers me from their region. Similarly, I keep getting told to test, but under whom I should test is unclear, since everyone considers me someone else's student. For all its joys, this wandering life sure gets old sometimes. Here's hoping I get my dream job and can settle down, have a nice stable dojo life, maybe put a makiwara down in the yard of a house I own. Any other ronin karateka out there?

While it's true that they were only applied to karate when karate came to the mainland, both jutsu and do predate Funakoshi's life. Either way, I'm not sure I see why this matters to my case, I only argue that conceptually the terms are worth thinking about in comparison to "martial art," which I will explain, is a newer term still, at least in how we use it today. Skeptics welcome. I'll elaborate. Funakoshi never wrote the words "martial art" in his book because he never wrote a book in English. I assume you are reading the Kodansha English translation of Karate-do Kyohan (though correct me if I'm wrong). Let's see if I can find the date of the English translation in the front cover. Ah! "1973" Yep, it was right in the middle of the rapid rise in popularity of the term "martial art." So why did the translator write "martial art" if Funakoshi never wrote "martial art" ? Well, it is hard to directly translate many abstract concepts between English and Japanese due to the extreme differences in language nuances between these highly distant language families. Translators often make the necessary decision to favor more commonly-used terms over more literal translations. Translations, just like original texts therefore vary with the times. This is how we end up with what we have here: a 1070's English translation of a 1930's original text book. This is nothing new. Take, for instance, Beowulf: banhus (lit. bone house) -> "body" -but I digress- The problem with assuming direct translation of the term "martial art" to how it was originally written by, say Gichin Funakoshi, is that off the top of my head I can think of at least three terms that get commonly translated as "martial art" when converted from Japanese to English (and yes, he was writing in Japanese for a Japanese audience when he composed that book, so it's a fair assumption). I'll list them here, though this is not an extensive list: 1. budo, 2. kobudo, 3. kakutogi (I'd write them in Japanese so you could see kanji, but board rules, I'm not allowed) Do these things mean the same thing? Absolutely not, but they all get called "martial art" in English for lack of a better familiar option. My whole reason for bringing this up is not to start some sort of one-ups-man-ship with "what term is older" so much as to point out some ways in which our thinking can be changed without us even knowing it. The words we use are powerful, and thinking in depth about them is important, but it's also important to remember where these terms come from, and where they don't come from, before burning them as holy incense for too long. By the way, if you'd ever like to look up frequency of published term use over time, google has a free tool for that, at least since 1800: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=martial+art&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cmartial%20art%3B%2Cc0 ***edit*** Fyi, I just looked up the Japanese version of Karatedo kyohan as well, using my university library server, and Funakoshi discusses all three of these concepts I mentioned at different times in his book (budo, kakutogi, and kobudo).

It's a fair question. I think to each their own on this, but I got my black belt my first year of college, so in many ways it marks the separation between childhood and adulthood for me. It also was kind of like a passport for me. The meaning of colored belts vary a lot across schools, but once I got good enough to make shodan, I was handed a piece of fabric akin to a "high school diploma" in that it is fairly universally accepted. As around age 19 I started moving a lot (long story), my black belt along with a smile and a good bow gained me entry to advanced classes in a variety of dojos and organizations here in the US and abroad.

It's interesting that you are going to fewer belts, makes sense to me. It seems like ranks tend to trend the other way (rank drift?) either by adding on to the top end (25th degree black belts) or on the bottom end (0.125 white belt stripe). Taking the time to re-calibrate makes sense every now and again.

I agree most wholeheartedly with Brian!! Now, there's the dictionary definition, then there's the MAist definition; oftentimes, they're both worlds apart!! Yes, I agree with that. I'm not a fan of the dictionary definition of what a Martial Art is. It obviously wasn't written by a Martial Artist.Agreed. Let us also not forget that the term "martial art" is a relatively modern and entirely western term, having been used by English speakers mostly after 1961 to describe the "exotic" and increasingly popular eastern fighting arts that already had more accurate unifying descriptors that make reference to ultimate point of training them (do, jutsu, etc.). In effect, 'martial art' is only used as a unified term for all fighting styles right now because it has social inertia. What gets called a marital art in English therefore isn't inherently meaningful because this is an after-the-fact descriptor of a culturally diverse and differt-goal set of fighting practices. To the OP: There is karatedo, there is karatejutsu. Learn the difference, and it will lead you to the answers I think you are seeking.

I think there have been many faith-restoring moments in karate for me over the years, but none more so than when I realized how important stability is to a person's well-being. I was 19 when Katrina slammed the gulf coast, taking everything in my life at the time along with it. Growing up in a gulf-coast city, this was not my first hurricane experience. Evacuations were like snow days to us as a kids, so I didn't expect anything more than a few days off from class. It probably wasn't until the third night I spent in that truck stop that I realized I was homeless. I didn't want to keep watching the TV. I wanted to do something, but everywhere I was being told to "just sit tight." For lack of another idea I started doing kata. The more kata I did, the more I realized that no matter what I lose in life, no one can take my karate away from me. You can take away everything else, but so long as I am alive, so is my karate.

This is a very good question! I am at a very different position in this equation than you are, being that I am typically neither the most high-ranking nor the most senior member of my dojo where I train (I have trained for 18 years, but at my dojo many have trained for over 40 years). However, I encounter these kinds of self-inflated beginners often, and I say that they are all 'beginners' because if a person is trying to boost their reputation in the dojo by establishing dominance over someone as easygoing and superficially non-threatening as me, they generally are pretty bad at karate and are looking for the lowest bar they can jump . Out of respect for those who have more experience than I do, I usually try to do more listening than talking in the dojo, and am fairly polite to everyone, since I dislike the picking-on-lower-rank thing that some people do in their clubs. Some beginners misinterpret my politeness as weakness, and as such, attempt to disregard my words when I do offer advice. .... I actually kind of love it when this happens, because I feel like I get an excuse to let loose a little. -for the betterment of the kohai! You know sensei8, this has been a theme I've always enjoyed in your posts. I couldn't agree more! I'll cite an example of one beginners' class I taught at my college dojo to demonstrate how I deal with this kind of thing. I was conducting a fairly standard introductory class, nothing out of the ordinary. The big idea of the class was standing, moving, and using basic hand techniques while in back stance. One 3-week old white belt (about 6' muscular 19-year-old guy) chimes in "It makes literally NO sense to stand this way!" me: "It is hard at first, but it gets easier. Keep trying!" him: "No, I mean that you're wrong. It's so much easier if I stand like this!" me: "That's a different stance, but it doesn't work for these techniques, so we're not going to practice that right now." him: ~"Maybe it just doesn't work for you."~ me: "Okay... How about you stand your way with knifehand block, and I'll stand my way, let's see who can push the other person's arm to the side. Ready?... Go!" -he hit the floor -he stood up, put his arm back on mine, he hit the floor -he stood up, ... paused, then put his arm back on mine. He wobbled when I pushed, but didn't fall over. him: "See! It works my way too!" me: "Nope. Look at your feet." He was standing in a very good back stance the way I was trying to teach it to him.

When people say this, I find they often have killing someone in mind as the "true test." Because killing other people for the purpose of "testing a technique" is generally illegal in most countries on earth, no martial art is exempt from this you-never-used-it argument, at least not taken to the extreme. Still, I've used plenty of waza to protect my life and well-being without having to take someone else's life, or ever even come close to doing so. So I do use them. So there. My ukemi saved me in a traffic accident. My kihon training has strengthened my muscles enough to give me relief from my joint condition. And, yes, only when absolutely called for, my full-contact gyakuzuki does in fact work to knock my opponent down, and my rear naked choke can put a man to sleep, no problem. Tried and tested in real life, not in kumite. For crying out loud, there is no need to think of hurting someone else as the ultimate goal! Just get yourself a safe way out of there. Good night sir.

I think it went well, hair and all. The groin was fine. Today I'm seeing photos showing up on social media, and they look pretty decent. I ended up doing self defense, kata, kihon, and basic kumite demonstrations along with my dojo mates. It went nicely, even some nervous beginners got up and did a very nice job despite some apparent nerves. I'm really glad for them. There were shouts from the crowd. I think everyone was in high spirits by mid-day and the weather was just perfect. I promised myself I wouldn't spend too much money, but I caved and got myself assorted candies and teas, gyudon, takoyaki, yakitori with some Asahi, and a wall scroll for my kitchen with various sumo kimarite on it. Fail. What's a festival without crazy amounts of eat drink and fellow karateka though!? (for those of you who may not know, I am a big fan of ozumo. Go Tochinoshin!)

Indeed, continuously learning forms is important. Let us never become stale and put one on a shelf. For that reason, I'll answer in a tier system: I can perform 27/27 standard shotokan kata without messing up the order of techniques while in a group. I can perform 22/27 shotokan kata at a basic level of competence, confidently, alone (katas that I simply don't practice enough: jiin, meikyo, wankan, gojushiho-dai, tekki 3) I can perform 19/27 shotokan kata to a level that I feel is "good" (taikyoku 1, heian 1-5, tekki 1 & 2, bassai dai, bassai sho, kanku dai, kanku sho, enpi, jion, jitte, gankaku, hangetsu, nijushiho, unsu) I have a total of 14/27 katas that I feel are "competition-ready" (heian 1-5, tekki 1, bassai dai, bassai sho, kanku dai, kanku sho, enpi, jion, gankaku, nijushiho) I have 8 favorite kata that I do just for me when I'm alone, because they make me feel happy (hangetsu, heian yondan, tekki1, kanku sho, bassai sho, nijushiho, gankaku) Gankaku is new to two of those lists, a couple years ago it used to be on my most disliked kata list, but thanks to the support of some really good friends I've been able to find some deeper parts of it to appreciate.

I didn't get much chance to speak with my uke before we got called up in class to demonstrate, so I just went with whatever made sense at the time. In general it worked out nicely, but I got told that what I was doing looked too much like other maritial arts. Sorry! They have so much in common!!! In reality, I was just doing select kata bunkai that I find very practical. Apparently enpi is aikido, and bassai dai is judo. My senpai wanted more hair pulling and groin striking. Poor uke. I will make it look realistic, but will be extremely careful. It looks like we will be performing both Saturday and Sunday. It should be fun. In general though, getting back into the dojo after 1+ month alone is always interesting. A lot of good habbits get forgotten, but some bad ones too. Someone asked me to do unsu and I actually landed the jump without a problem for the first time. This was entirely unexpected. I guess I did lose 10 lbs carrying batteries up the sides of mountains for the past month. Maybe I just needed to lighten the load a bit to get the right lift.

I've been out in the forest again for a month, and just when I get back to town this week I find out that one of my kohai has volunteered me to do a self defense demo at a festival this weekend without me knowing about it. Said kohai has also volunteered himself as my uke, so I forgive him. I think it should be fun, but now I'm brainstorming, since time is short. This got me thinking: What makes a self defense demo good in your opinion? What makes for a bad self defense demo ?

I train in all kinds of outfits when I am alone. I've even been known to do kata in my knee-high snake boots when I'm in the field. When I worked in the butterfly garden, I used to do kanku-sho staff work while mopping the floor. A day at the beach isn't the same without kata in wet sand in a bathing suit. I feel like a gi, as I see it, is for other people. I show that I am part of a particular dojo with my patch, that I have a black belt, etc. What's inside is all that matters to me.

Yes, but there is nothing to infer unless you ARE savvy. It's like pointing at a hawk and saying "that's a bird." It's not wrong. It's a hawk, and it's a bird. Both are correct, and there is no obligation to stipulate that it is a hawk if you're talking to someone who doesn't know the word "bird" yet. A "layman" now and what a "layman" was 65 years ago are very different. While the video is very technical, the voiceover was clearly aimed at an American audience that was not very savvy. Americans had to be told why they should care about karate in the first place, before they could be expected to listen up long enough to learn about the different ryu and organizations. This was the former, not the later. Despite your obvious disliking of shotokan (not sure why), it is karate. Similarly, if someone was doing wadoryu and called it karate in a documentary, they would also be correct for doing so. Are you're suggesting that shotokan should not be called "karate"?

As others have said, the first few seconds of the clip actually says "Nippon Karate Association," or "JKA," which was the largest shotokan organization then, and is now still among the largest inside and outside of Japan. So actually, it does stipulate. Funakoshi was opposed to the use of the term "shotokan" as he believed in keeping the styles of karate more connected and easy to train across, the way it was when he was a young man training in Okinawa. "Shotokan" was therefore used much more after his passing in 1957. This video, if I'm not mistaken was among those made in the mid 1950s by the Japan Karate Association. This video was, I believe targeted at a broader international audience, as the JKA under Nakayama was in the process of planning for an international expansion project (the International Shotokan Karate Federation, ISKF). Kyokushin was founded by Oyama in 1964. Therefore, it's unlikely any videos from this time period reference Kyukushin just yet. I mean, what about this video is immodest? It's basically just saying "Men and women both practice karate. Sparing and basics and forms exist." It's not shamelessly promoting shotokan over other ryu. It was just made by the JKA... so why would they show anything other than JKA karate, which is shotokan? It seems to me that the targeted audience of this video are 1950s Americans who didn't know a judo chop from kung-fu grip. First things first: "Karate = from Okinawa" "There are kicks and punches and blocks"

Starting your own club, Danielle, is a great idea because you've got everything required in making it a great success!! Your Student Body will be very fortunate in having you as their instructor!! Indeed! Go for it!! Ossu! My resolutions this year are simple: 1. Actually take that sandan exam that I've been dodging for the past ....6 years They almost got me in 2017, but I managed to duck testing long enough to finally make my sentei flow the way I wanted them to, and to test some new kumite ideas I've been working on in secret for the past 5 years that I took away from competition. I feel calmer now, sturdier now, albeit with a longer recovery time as I age. I think I'll give it a go.