todome

That's your hamstrings. As a group they cross both the knee and hip joints, starting at the back of the pelvis and ending below the knee. Flexibility probably has something to do with it but that's not necessarily the only factor. Coordination and timing is huge. It's also likely you're more flexible than your defense mechanisms are allowing. Even though they're quite elastic, muscles have a way of refusing to go where they haven't gone before. Basic hamstring stretches should be a regular part of warm-ups. Some range of motion work to get your hamstrings used to finishing long will help. Good old leg swings would do the trick there. Don't push it too far, particularly when you're not completely warmed up. During kihon it's very helpful to concentrate on the recoil during kicks because one of the benefits of that is it keeps the hamstrings out of the picture until its their turn to be active. Also, don't worry about height until you've got a reasonable gedan mai-geri. That'll keep you busy while your hamstrings are adjusting to the new demands you're placing on them. A lame kick doesn't improve with height. If you're having trouble kicking gedan (groin, stomach) don't blame flexibility. You're probably just tensing up, dropping your knee and trying to generate power from the wrong places.

Why I do believe that you are correct. osu Thanks!

It's not the higher ranks I get bruised from. It's the middle kyus that get into smashing limbs together. It's quite annoying. Not so much that they're bruising me up, they clear up faster after a while btw, but I have to slow down. Good timing practice, I suppose but it's hard to concentrate when your partner is going whole hog and you're going 3/4 speed so you don't bowl them over. It's not so bad when they're attacking because I have control of the contact but when they're blocking if I don't slow down enough I'm finished before their block makes contact. I wouldn't have to slow down so much if they were putting all that effort into their tanden where it belongs and save the smashing for bubble wrap. It has a lot to do with technique. First of all keep in mind they're not blocks in the sense that they are counter strikes, although they can be as in the kiai age uke in heian shodan. In fact in Japanese they're not even called blocks. The word translates closer to something like "redirect". I tell the kyu grades its a game of catch, not smash. Another thing that helps is to remember that blocking is all about timing. You want to achieve kime at the very point the attacker's arm or leg is at it's most vulnerable, ie. while it's still moving. The fact their attack has to travel further than your block buys you enough time to pull it off. Try to play dueling kime with a senior belt and you will: 1) lose every time 2) absorb the lion's share of the forces involved yourself because they are better at it (ie, you'll bruise worse than they do) 3) annoy the crap out of them and make them speed up. At least that's what I do when I've had enough. They don't usually get the point but at least they're too busy leaning backwards to get a good one off (or, more likely, a bad one with too much shoulder to it).

Sounds to me like you're on the right track. When you check out a dojo always keep an eye on the senior students and ask yourself if you that's what you want to be like (not just technically) because they're the prime example of what the head instructor is turning out.

Shotokan has become quite fractured over the years. Find out which accreditation organization the school belongs to and, probably more importantly, which sports body because it will say a lot about what sort of kumite you'll be training to. If you have trouble researching the organizations themselves check back here. It'll ring somebody's bell.

Much better. Driving the knee through rather than swinging it around gave me a lot more control of the technique, not that it was perfect. The top-heavy/balance problem was a lot less likely to rear it's ugly head if I kept control of my hips and tanden throughout the action and didn't just try to salvage a decent hip tuck as I was landing. The by-product of the practice is I found a lot more control of the pivot leg stepping forward to kokutsu-dachi executing shuto, finding more positive energy out of the thigh as a reference point for generating rotational power, which is one of my weak points. My heels are killing me (I've got some callous issues on both feet) and my left hip is a little tired at the illiac crest from trying to decide whether the hips should be open or closed coming out of the crouch (going with open for now - I'll have to check with Sensei) so for now I plan to move away from empi for a while, making it my secondary advanced during self-practice, which I try to find around 5 hours a week for. Time to move kanku dai to the forefront for a while, starting with trying to apply some of the newfound rotational power to the turns.

Empi but probably only because I'm working on it (and I've got the sore heels to prove it ). A stable landing is always one for the bookies and I tend to land either with my feet out of line (wide) or top heavy tending backwards over the hips. This morning I actually overrotated a couple times. *shrug* At least it's a different mistake. I'm thinking it might be because I've forgotten to drive the right leg up close to the axis of rotation going into the turn. I remember from the last time I was working on it that things got all mushy and useless when I let it swing out wide. I'll let you know how it goes tomorrow morning.

IMO yes and no. Unless you've got the constitution of an athletic 18 year old a good session in the weightroom SHOULD drag on you for days. If it doesn't you're not working hard enough. Not that in the grand scheme of things this is necessarily a bad thing nor is crosstraining to be avoided at all times, just that if you're hitting the weight room keep its effect on performance on the dojo floor in mind. A good warm-up becomes a must and will buy you some time but there's no getting away from the fact that if you toasted your core doing deadlifts yesterday (which was the point of doing them in the first place) your oi-zuki isn't going to have the same pop to it today as if you didn't. Absolutely it can and will pay off later on down the road, particularly if you concentrate on improving muscle timing instead of just forcing those tired muscles through the same old same old. Just not today.

I'd say you're missing the point of kata. They aren't about memorizing individual techniques, they're about putting the series together in a coherent and purposeful way. The first move of Heien Shodan alone involves subtleties and demands enough understanding to keep a karateka occuppied for years if not forever. The first move is the springboard for the second, the second move offers feedback on the first and so on. It's the fundamentals the techniques draw out of the practitioner, not the techniques themselves, that will serve the karateka in an emergency situation. Anybody can memorize sequences. It takes a humble and open mind to learn from them what they have to teach. As long as your sensei's teachings are sound my advice is not to worry about the other 15 kata until the 11 he's prepared to teach you stop opening avenues to improvement.

Not everyone will agree with me but I find that doing weights slows me down. I don't mean the extra body mass gets in the way, just that doing them right takes its toll on the the muscles short term so there's a trade off when it comes to generating explosive power on the dojo floor. When I do a round of weights, which hasn't been for a while, it's usually for 10 weeks or so followed by a good month or so of plyometrics and medicine ball work concentrating on turning that newfound strength into something more suitable for karate. Compound exercises are the best. and if you're not doing squats you're not doing squat.

Wado distinguishing itself in a world without distinctions is far too Zen for me to take issue with. If you actually picked a pony instead of paraded Jedi mind tricks we might have had something to talk about.

You could leave out parts about how Wado "further distinguishes it self(sic)" for starters.

It would change the pressure at the ends of the metacarpals, stressing the epiphyseal plates. With palm push-ups the weight would be more distributed and it wouldn't surprise me if the radius and ulna offered greater surface area. I can see it being an issue.

It's not very likely anyone's going to walk into your range so you can just snap one off without moving your feet (if they've crept in past your jab, you're sleeping). On the other hand, a good shifting reverse punch attack is a must. It's not all that easy, either, but it definitely draws a line in the sand for you.

Hangetsu is an excellent kata for breathing. but... like I already said... if the stance sucks...

oops wrong thread but while I'm here, Nishyama always said that under Funikoshi he spent the first year punching from shizentia. Even if he was just making it up to make a point, he must have thought it was a point worth making.

Try to make a six-pack. Do it holding your breath and you'll feel the pressure build up. That's exactly what you don't want. Do it letting the abs push air out of your lungs and you'll find its not only faster but allows for a stronger finish. That's only part of the story. Although its fundamental to the art, breathing really is an advanced topic because the role it plays doesn't really make sense until a lot of other things fall into place. Stance, for example, because the role breathing plays in connecting a solid stance to the torso creating a total body technique can't really be felt until you've got a glimmer of a proper stance in the first place and that takes years to develop. Kime in particular is effected by breathing. There's a tendency of students to get puffy with their breathing because that pressure I mentioned at the top makes it feel like they're stronger but since doing so introduces isometric contraction precisely where it isn't needed it's actually reducing power almost exponentially. Breath out with the gut and try to keep the resulting flow of air unrestricted. It should feel like your rib cage is getting in on the act as well but don't concentrate on that as much since using the abs will bring the intercostals into play naturally. There's a saying that receiving a black belt just means you're finally ready to start learning karate. It's true, and breathing is one aspect of that. For now, don't sweat the details and, of course, don't hold your breath.

Aside from maybe some of the fist alignment stuff, I fail to see how this contrasts with Shotokan. My sensei's been working on my wobblies like that for years. Never mind front stance, we expect to be able to withstand a smack on the extended fist practicing punching in shizentai.

You're doing them wrong. Practice something else until you or your Sensei figure it out.

I wasn't going to bring it up but I'm glad you did. At the risk of creating thread-drift I'll back you up on that. If they're not learning to fit in to a dojo kun and aren't enjoying the taste of class spirit, they're missing out.

Check the axis of rotation. The tendency is to rotate at the ulna but this results in a spiral path. That can be hell on the wrists. The best way to correct this is, temporarily for training purposes, to concentrate on the withdrawing arm being sure to snap the forearm aggressively at kime so the elbow tucks in at the back creating a strong connection. The feeling should be the ulnar side of the forearm (pinkie side) locking in and up into place. One side feeds the other. Correcting the punching side should be easier with that in mind.

Not to make light of anything anyone is putting up with, but I've found over time that most of the joint and muscle pains I've put up with over the years have been self inflicted and generally relate to my own poor technique. a couple examples, and certainly not to say this is what others are going through... I've got an ankle as well. Lots of sprains, lots of pain I always just chalked it up to a legacy of bad luck but one day I realized I was pronating that foot all the time and consistently letting the blade of my foot lift off the floor. This meant that hundreds of times a week I was placing undue strain on on the joint. Concentrating on keeping proper contact with the floor has given the ankle enough of a reprieve to not only stop aching so much but actually get some of its strength back. Not to mention it's improved my stances. Had a hitch in my back between the shoulders. I went back to basics and concentraed on proper hikate and sure enough in a couple days the hitch let go and in a couple weeks its like it was never there. My lower back used to be sore and tired after putting in a good effort on the dojo floor. The better I tuck the hips and control the tanden, the less my back hurts after, most days not at all. In fact, if my back does hurt after a session I now find it safe to assume that one way or another I've been letting my centre go. That said... Dislocated my wrist last year. Spent the summer keeping it braced. Mother Nature and Father Time have worked their magic, but it still needs the occassion range of motion work to keep it sliding back in place. Wrist curls with dumbells helps.

I've always looked at it from a training perspective. In many ways it's more challenging to perform a reverse punch with the target below shoulder level. Poor balance, improper hara and weak hikate is easier to disguise with a head shot. The sublties learned from striking chudan properly first is more readlily transfered to jodan strikes than the other way around. Without understanding the basics involved in achieved proper kime punching chudan, students can go a long time performing a weak version of the rising punch found in empi without even realizing it.

You might want to check with your doctor to make sure compensating for for flat feet on a daily basis isn't causing you to develop hip problems that can haunt you later. Some physiotherapy might be in order.

That's the thing though. I've known more than one regional kumite champion who aside from the advantages of a nose not worth protecting, general bullheadedness and near idiot savant specialization one or two well-timed techniques actually sucked at karate. That said, I'd give the grand championship to first place kumite second place kata over first place kata second place kumite every time.