RW

even then if you try an eye gouge and the other guy moves his head you'll break your fingers

How's your nukite conditioning like?

Thanks for your replies guys. I agree with both, and that adds to my point... I am incredibly curious about nukite, from a historic perspective. How could it have been regarded as a viable technique, from a historic perspective? 1) Like wildbourgman, you have to put A LOT of time, effort and training into it just to make it a viable attack (let alone a particularly powerful one). I am sure several karate masters from the years of yore trained their fingers to the point where they could nukite through a watermelon... but wouldn't that time have been spent more wisely perfecting other punches, kicks, elbow techniques, etc? 2) How reasonable is it to expect the hands to actually condition enough to use it? Turns out that the fingers themselves don't have any muscle, they move because of the tendons (really, I was surprised, but it's true, I looked it up). 3) Even with a perfectly conditioned hand through years and years... isn't it a very high risk technique? If you miss a tsuki or uraken or testsui or the like, the downfall is you leave yourself open to attack. If you miss a nukite (including hitting the wrong target or getting it blocked) you will break your fingers! 4) This takes us to the point that sensei8 brought up: "nukite is NOT only used as one might imagine as a spear strike". For example, chances are nukite is meant to be a grab or a hold instead, like for example, this video: ).If that is the case, which it probably is, why do most schools out there just use it like a strike? In all, I am very curious from a historic perspective, and I feel that maybe karate inherited nukite from kung fu back when it mixed with okinawa te (for example, look up kung fu's beginner kata wu bu quan, it clearly has nukite in there)... but maybe it was meant to represent a REAL spear in kung fu? Just a wild theory...

red belt? What's your style again. Kempo, but what kind of kempo?

What do you think of nukite? I have more to say about this, I just want to hear your thoughts first and then I will elaborate...

I feel the Gi and belt defines traditional martial arts for the average person. Many people would not have walked into a dojo and inquired about a trial lesson or whatever had karate not had Gi/belts. We know karate is much more than that, but from a marketing aspect, the gi/belt is a powerful marketing tool.

woohoo! congratulations!!!

solid post! How do you envision kata based kumite?

I don't think so. Picture a typical kata: Zenkutsu dachi, gedan barai uke, half moon step forward, still zenkutsu dachi, left hand hikite, right hand chudan tsuki. Maybe at some point you are in kiba (or shiko) dachi, doing a yodan tsuki, followed by neko ashi dachi shuto uke. Now picture your typical kumite. No half moon steps, no zenkutsu dachi, no neko ashi dachi, no kiba dachi, no hikite, you're not going to do a classic age uke during sparring... you get the idea. The moves you pull in a kata are different enough to translate into kumite muscle memory. Now, if you're doing shotokan sparring and then take up kyokushin on the side and spar, it may end changing your shotokan sparring (or the other way around), for example.

Ah, gradings, I hate them. I don't feel that a certain quota of people (or even any people) must fail in order to make the school more legit: - If your instructor feels you're prepared for the test, which means you know all of the required material, there should be no reason you will fail the test, since it's a fact you know it already. - If your instructor invites you to test even though you don't know the material then he's setting you up for failure. My main issue with testing is that who gets to test is so subjective: - For example, in my kempo school it was well known that "sensei A'" 's students got to test very quickly, while "sensei B" ' students tested almost 2x as slow. I think it's cow poop, since in the end of the day your belt is as valid as that of the students who test 2x as fast, it just makes you look like you're "the slow progressing guy". - after 3 years at my kempo school, it suddenly decided to become a mcdojo. It took me 3 years to become a brown belt, and I became a black belt at 4 years in. I was considered in the top 10% of the students at the dojo, by the way. After year 3, when the dojo became a mcdojo, a bunch of white belts were warp speed promoted to green within 6 months. Now they're brown belts (within 1 year of having joined!) and chances are they're going to be blackbelts by their second year. This total cow poop, and these students are really unskilled too. - Oh, these new unskilled students were made "assistant instructors", meaning they're basically free labor. They have substandard skills, poor fitness, they have been doing kempo for 1 year and they were still made instructors and a fancy instructor (red) belt to conceal that they're green or brown belts. They feel they're hot stuff and don't take kindly of real black belts, especially real black belts like me going to the dojo because we're not part of their dumb clique. I you wonder why I keep going to this kempo mcdojo it's because it wasn't always a mcdojo and I was already a brown belt when it went downhill. I ended joining a muay thai gym 1.5 years ago just to get real martial arts training, but I stayed in the kempo place too because I miss katas and the kempo place gives me a connection to the more traditional martial arts world and I get to practice my old karate kata there too, let's just say the martial part went to my muay thai practice and the art part went to kempo .... but going back to the question, grading/belts made my school a mcdojo.

The way I see it, you learn to swim by actually swimming, you learn to drive by actually driving, and you learn to walk by walking (when you're a baby). Learning how to fight is exactly like that, you learn to fight by fighting. The problem is fighting is bad for you, legally and from a health and physical integrity perspective, so it's best not to fight. So the next best thing is to practice an art or sport that might prepare you as best as possible without doing the real thing. The issue with that is even the most realistic competitions might not prepare you for the real thing: for example, a well known professional MMA fighter (Falcao) got into a fight with someone at a gas station in Brazil. Long story short, despite his awesome MMA prowess he got knocked out because some dude hit him with a wooden board: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_y859xp0vac I don't know what this says (I don't speak Portuguese lol), but you get the idea. Sure, Falcao was outnumbered 3 to 2, and sure, one of the guys had a wooden board... but that's the idea, a real fight is rarely a fair, no weapons, 1 vs 1 endeavor, and the fight will probably devolve into situations that your art doesn't practice with resistance (e.g. eye gouges, groin kicks, improvised weapons, etc), outside of compliant drills. So in short, I don't really feel that confident LOL

Respectfully, I think that you may be missing something here, higher ranks than you should never be considered "Superior" but rather, your senior. And addressing dan grades by their rank title as it were, is part of the culture of "Traditional karate" which acknowledges your time and dedication to the art. Just like many other formal institutions, military, government, academia, etc. Now, how that person acts and treats you is a completely different deal. If you prefer the more casual environment of a MMA gym then that's fine, but understand that a tradition dojo and a MMA gym are offering completely different experiences. Just check out some of the MMA forums and you will soon pick up the vibe that they have compared with a karate one like KF forums. KF is by far the best forum (of anything) I've seen in the WWW, not just MA. I don't know why but the vibe here is very friendly, yet casual and relaxed. As you can tell I like it here

I enjoy most aspects of traditional martial arts, 99% of them. The whole "this guy is your superior and you got to address them with a special reverence" thing is one of the few I don't. If you join an MMA gym, for all you know you have a guy who will debut in bellator or the UFC next month and you don't even know it, your only interaction with him is when he walked up to you, drenched in sweat and said "hey bro, are you still hitting that bag? Mind if I use it?" or when you sparred and you had no idea how good he was because he went easy on you because he knows you're not part of the fight camp. There's something awesome about knowing some guy sharing the gym with you, maybe even kicking the bag next to you is good enough to get into the UFC or whatever, yet he is down to earth enough that you'd never know how good he is until he is literally on TV.

I saw the link in your webpage and came across this: https://www.karateobsession.com/2019/06/the-scissor-wedge-throws-of-tachimura-no-naihanchi.html This is AWESOME. I am so excited to read this, naihanchi is one of my fave katas, I can't wait to drill this... thanks!

I used to wonder about this until I cross trained with Muay Thai. Part of my MT training starts doing rounds on the heavy (muay thai) bag, which is longer than the boxing one and moves less. It is very easy to damage your wrists if you don't wrap your hands correctly, wear the right gloves, and even then, your technique must be good or else you'll damage your wrists anyway. Imagine hitting such a heavy bag full force using a nukite - that's a recipe for broken fingers. What about a shuto uchi? Not much risk of injury there, but you won't have much effect on the bag (trust me, I tried). What about a haito? If you use a traditional haito (ridge hand), you won't do much damage either and your knuckles tend to squeeze against each other, and the wrist feels unstable. The only strike I could do full force vs the heavy bag was the tensho (palm) strike. Another issue I found is that punches can be thrown without telegraphing much, while for some reason the angle in which one would throw a shuto uchi or tensho seems a bit telegraphed to me. Coming to think about it, did we see many haitos/shuto uchis/nukites at full contact karate matches?

RW, the really short version is that, back in early 2001, I was thinking up ideas for websites, came across this name, had a friend (still my friend) who was into the martial arts, he thought it was a good idea, and so I did it. From there, it's just a lot of day in, day out attention to keep things rolling forward in a friendly, respectful, productive way. Thanks again, Patrick os!

Pinan sandan? Funny enough, every time I hear people discussing kata they don’t like, I see Pinan sandan mentioned more than any others. I never realized it until I kept seeing it, but it’s my least favorite too. I’ll amend that, it’s my second least favorite. My least favorite is easily Gekisai Sho. I don’t have any dislike for Pinan sandan, it’s just that I don’t like it as much as the rest. Gekisai Sho is a different ball of wax though. It’s a shodan (sometimes nidan) kata in Kyokushin. It never felt like a black belt kata to me. And the fact that everyone in Kyokushin and the offshoots that do Gekisai Sho think it’s Miyagi’s kata. Nothing can be further from the truth, no matter who says so (unless it was one of Miyagi’s students saying so). It’s Mas Oyama’s kata. yeah the hands-by-your-hips thing isn't too cool, IMO

This message spoke to me. I usually hate internet message boards. There is so much hostility and trolling. You guys are such a nice, civilized, and mature (yet friendly) community. And most important to me, you make me feel comfortable enough to ask the martial arts questions I don't trust anyone enough in real life to ask (e.g. like how I dislike some schools that teach made up kata). Funny story, I found this place years ago out of pure chance. I forgot what I wanted to ask, but I assumed that "there must be an online forum (now called message boards!) for karate... a... karate forum? let me enter that as a URL!) I've been able to share my martial arts journey in a way with all of you, and that is something quite special. How did karateforums.com start, anyway? It must be such an intertesting story.

I am so happy I tested for shodan late last year - I don't think I'd have been able to justify training at home and still qualifying for shodan testing, nor do I think there's "remote shodan testing". Because of COVID I had to quit my muay thai training - for now -, there's no way I am going to go to the gym and breathe the indoors air with other people who are exhaling hard since they're exercising, even if we're all 6 feet apart. I am not going to the (kempo) dojo either, but I am having remote lessons, doing kata remote is feasible, unlike remote padwork, remote heavy bag work, etc. I shadow box solo at home so I don't get too rusty in muay thai, but it's clearly not the same.

Pinan Nidan Pinan Shodan Naihanchi (Shodan) Rohai Shudoso

--- This is fascinating. Thanks so much guys. I am so intrigued by this kyoku kata. If I search for pinan/heian/tekki, etc videos, you will find hundreds. But Kyoku kata seem almost unknown in the world of youtube? How come? My friend does like in the west coast, by the way.

thanks Devin!!!

I was talking with a friend of mine who still does karate (whereas I quit, but then began doing kempo later on). We found out some differences when talking about kata, for example, my style called a Kata Naihanchi Shodan, while his style called it Tekki Shodan. His dojo taught a kata but mispelled the name (they write it down Yossno, while the real name is Yottsu No Kata), so we even thought his school made up a whole series of kata but it's a real kata that also exists in other styles. Anyway, my question. There is ONE kata we cannot conciliate. It's not in my style, or in any other style I can think of. Have you ever seen this kata? What is it's lineage? Is the name in this video a mispelling and that's why we can't find it? :

That sounds like kempo. So say you break off from the ATA form "Joe's Taekwondo", then you end creating made up forms like "rising demon tiger" and 'combination 42', which you just created. This is pretty much kempo. Can that stuff really be called taekwondo? What is the value of learning a kata that Joe made up last year (or 10 years ago) because he broke off from ATA? If Joe gave you a black belt, are you really a TKD black belt?

I'd add Mas Oyama (Kyokushin) and the guy who began full contact karate, which later became kickboxing (Joe Lewis?) and also whoever brought Muay Thai to America