Lupin1

Congrats!

Happy birthday Noah!

I think Seisan is the core of Isshinryu as it's the first Isshinryu kata and the one people spend the most time on. However, I'd say Sunsu showcases Isshinryu the most. It's the last empty hand kata and is the only kata unique to Isshinryu. It contains pieces of all the other seven Isshinryu kata (Seisan, Seiunchin, Naihanchi, Wansu, Chinto, Kusanku, and Sanchin) plus a few movements unique to that kata which the founder of Isshinryu thought essential to his system.

My instructor used to tell us a ton of myths about the black belt test when I was little. I now know he says this stuff jokingly, but when I was eight I 100% believed him. He'd tell us that in order to get your black belt you had to: 1. Run through a rain storm without getting wet (since a black belt has to be so fast they can dodge the rain drops) 2. Curl up into a ball and be thrown against the wall. If you got hurt at all-- you failed. 3. Punch so hard your sleeves fell off (one of our black belts regularly wore a gi with the sleeves cut off, which I think is where that came from) 4. Fight every other black belt in the school and beat them. 5. Do Kata Chinto on a board suspended over a stream while people throw things at you. If you fell in the water, you failed. And finally... 6. Right at the beginning of the test, you're punched in the nose and you have to complete the test with a broken/bleeding nose to make it more difficult. Makes me wonder why I ever wanted to be a black belt...

There's always the classic "never wash your belt".

I dont think the purpose of children's karate is to create little warriors. It's good to teach some basic self-defense skills. The first thing we teach kids starting their first night is how to get away and run to safety if someone tries to grab you-- and that's probably the most practical and useful thing we teach them in the entire curriculum. But think the more valuable things taken away from modern kids' programs are the development of concentration, body coordination, movement memory, and how to deal with failure, set-backs, and slow progress towards a long term goal.

Did anybody else read "throwing a martial arts tournament" as "losing on purpose"?

Yes, I've trained with Mr. Smith off and on since I was eight (mostly off, unfortunately). He is very into his blog, especially recently as he's been stuck home the past few years since the issues with his cancer treatment. He is very passionate about what he does and has a wealth of knowledge. In addition to his Facebook and blog posts, he also sends us a compliation e-mail at least once a week with even more research he's done, interesting videos he's stumbled across, or thoughts and observations he's had after class. I'll try to work on the power thing-- that's something I've noticed as well. I go into it consciously putting a lot of power into each sequence, but at certain points I'll lose the bubble and my movements won't be as sharp until I bring myself back to it. I think it's a concentration thing. I need to work on that.

That's for the input, everyone! I am a brown belt (guess I have to practice a little harder...). I've never done this kata for competition or anything, so it's certainly not practiced to competition readiness-- just normal run throughs in class. I'll try out it bending my knees a little more to see if it helps with my posture. Isshinryu generally has higher and narrower stances than most other systems. For example, here's the founder of Isshinryu doing the kata-- His are still bend more than mine, though, so I'll try to work that in.I like the advice about the speed and the core-- will work both those things into my practice. I, too, like the fact that my sensei video tapes us. He shares a lot of his old, grainy videos from the late 80s/early 90s with us via e-mail, and it's very interesting to see how things have changed/stayed the same as well as see some of our instructors when they were just learning. It's also very helpful when I'm learning kata to watch a video of a sensei doing it and be able to pause, go back, etc. And now that he's starting to tape me (for my own use), I'm definitely seeing the usefulness of seeing myself. I'm picking up on a lot of things both big and small I never realized I did before. Thanks for the advice about the gi, as well. I'm short and bigger, so it's generally a pain to get them to fit and they need a huge hem on them. I usually end up rolling my sleeves to the elbow for training, but left them down for the video to make it look better. Guess that didn't work out so well... Thank you to all who have commented so far! Any other advice would be appreciated!

I've been debating all weekend if I'm brave enough to do this, but I think I'm going to go for it! My instructor has been recording me doing some of my new kata as well as some of our basic kata for my records and to help me improve. Last night he recorded my Seisan. I've never posted a video of my karate up here, but I thought I'd put this out there for you all to see and critique. The belt was an April Fool's day joke The main things I took away from it is that I need to be deeper and more obvious with my horse stances and I need to watch out for the constant opening of my opposite fist before punching (I think that's a product of my just beginning to play around with the loosening of the body's muscles and then tightening at the end of the strike).

That is cool! Maybe he'll have a good chance of making the roster!They're sending him down to the minors for a little while for contractual reasons (If he misses something like 12 games this season, they'll control him for another entire year later on). But the consensus is that the day that's up (April 17th, I believe), he'll be brought up to the majors. Sad thing is, he's in the NL and the only stadium close to me is Fenway, so unless we get a Cubs/Red Sox World Series, I won't be seeing him play in person.

This is my favorite story my instructor tells. He was training at his dojo back in the 70s-- a time when people apparently regularly walked into dojos and issued challenges and otherwise started trouble. Two guys came in and wanted to watch. They sat and watched for awhile, making loud comments about how weak everyone was and how it was a joke of a school. The instructor was getting more and more angry, but everyone just kept training and ignored them. My instructor was a lower ranked student at the time and was working a move he and his partner had been practicing just for show where he covers his ribs with his hand and she sidekicks him there-- hitting his hand but looking like she's nailing him hard in the ribs. Afterwards, she was supposed to sweep his leg and take him down, but she swung her leg up a bit too high and popped him in the nose. He falls to the floor with blood gushing from his nose when his instructor comes up beside him and whispers "just lie still and go along with it". The instructor and another black belt grab him by the ankles and drag him the entire way across the floor and into the changing room, leaving a trail of blood that spans the entire floor. The black belts then go back out, walk up to the obnoxious visitors and say "Gentlemen, you're in luck! It seems a spot just opened up for a new student!". The two guys turned white and immediately left, never to darken their doorway again.

In addition to everything jaypo said, which is spot on-- the newness is wearing off. At first it's fun and unique and novel. After 8 months to a year, the novelty is gone and you have to start digging deeper for motivation. Some people have the deeper motivation, some don't.

Exactly. We have a lot of low income kids, so we give them the option of giving us $6 for a belt every few month, or just handing in their old one to be re-used. Most of them are surprisingly unsentimental about it. Once they get the new belt, they can't leave the old one in the dust fast enough.

We do promotions very often for the kids at the beginning. We don't do testing fees as we never officially test, we just promote when ready and they pay for the belt if they'd like to keep their old one (or they return their old belt and get the new one for free). My instructor specifically added belts between white and yellow so that new students get new belts quickly. In his official curriculum, he had three kata to learn at white belt. For the adults, it's still that way. But he noticed most kids would get frustrated and quit when it took almost an entire school year to get to yellow belt. So, in the interest of keeping the kids coming to class and learning, he split white belt into three belts for kids (he also added a Junior Black Belt more recently which coincides with adult brown belt). They usually get their purple belt very quickly after 1.5-2 months. He chose purple figuring it would be extra motivating for them to get the darkest belt possible right out of the gate. About 2 months later, they get their orange belt. Then usually 3-4 months later is their yellow belt. So they seem to be getting promoted very rapidly in the beginning, which keeps them motivated, but in reality all they're doing is moving from white to yellow in 6-8 months. After that it slows down, taking progressively longer as they go. The whole thing looks something like this: white (8th kyu) purple (8th kyu) [1.5-2 months] orange (8th kyu) [2 months] yellow (7th kyu) [3-4 months] blue (6th kyu) [4-6 months] green (5th kyu) [4-6 months] brown (4th kyu) [8-12 months] 1st jr black (3rd kyu) [12+ months] 2nd jr black (2nd kyu) [12+ months] 3rd jr black (1st kyu) [12+ months] black (shodan) [12+ months] For a total of about 4 years to junior black and about 7 to full adult black belt.

Haven't specifically studied it yet. We don't really get into bunkai until black belt and I'm still an Ikkyu. Until Shodan it's just an application here and there-- no systematic study. If I were to hazard a guess, I would say uke comes in with a punch/grab/whatever, you lean away and side block, then stomp on their foot as you twist your hips and punch them in the stomach. Could also be trapping their leg or something... Idk... I'm just starting to think like that with my kata.

Here's one of our (now) instructors performing our version of Kusanku when he was a Shodan We teach it at 2nd kyu. It's one of my favorite kata, although now that I'm learning Sunsu I can't seem to keep all the moves straight. My instructors teach it as a night fighting kata due to all the drops to the ground, the "feeling" movements, and inside, kinda sneaky moves.

Robert Frost taught English at my high school for five years. Over 100 years later, our English program is still insanely demanding in an attempt to live up to that. I drive by his farm (now a historical site) every day. The woods there are lovely-- dark and deep. Also-- the first potato planted in the US was planted just up the road from me.

Way to go!

If I ever start my own school, black pants will be standard at least for middle school and up. I can only imagine how many teenage girls skip out on class or even end up quitting because they're embarrassed to wear white pants at certain times.

So far I've gone the route of buying relatively inexpensive gis (around $50) every 2-3 years rather than getting an expensive one and trying to make it last. I find it's just too hard to keep the white white much longer than that. I had one that was practically orange with hard water stains, one that got kinda grayish, and I'm about due for another one soon as the one I'm currently using has a big pine sap stain right above my belt that won't go away despite about a year and half of washings. If I know I'm gonna get a new one in two years or so, I can be a little rougher with it (for example, I do bleach mine every so often to keep it white, even though I know it weakens the fabric). I'm kinda holding out til black belt now, though. Then I can get a nice black gi and be done with it.

We do that. Usually our first weapons kata is a version of our first kata (an Isshinryu-ized version of Fukyugata Ichi) with a short stick. Later in black belt we study the Isshinryu weapons forms, which include a sai version of Kusanku. I believe there's also a tonfa version of Wansu somewhere in the mysterious upper reaches of our curriculum.

Happy birthday!!!!

I think it depends, though. We've made decisions like that for our kids and we're a free school. For the most part, the ranks before Shodan are just teaching and motivation tools. If promoting a child who's not quite there yet with his or her classmates keeps them coming to class and learning for a little while longer, plus gives a needed boost in confidence, why not? I wouldn't advocate it in the upper ranks where they should be more intrinsically motivated and the standards are a big more stringent, but in the long run the color of the belt doesn't matter as much if it keeps a kid coming.

Haha. Awwww. It's ok. I have a cousin who was born on February 29th.