Wastelander

Thanks Wastelander for the detailed in-depth advice as usual, much appreciated Regarding the side-facing stance, yes I do it to absorb strikes when I start to get tired and it happens invoulantry most of the times. It's not a tactical move at all, I am just stepping my very first few steps in the sparring world ! That's kind of what I figured. Since it's natural, you can try to adapt it to become a tactical component of your fighting, or you can try to override it with training. The choice is yours.

As JR mentioned, different arts are going to have different approaches to things, and they may all have valid reasoning for their differing opinions. Here are mine. 1. Depends--a lot of people do this by mistake, which is bad, but some people do it tactically, which can be useful. Most likely, you are doing it to absorb strikes? That can work fine, but you have to be aware of the different defensive and offensive pros and cons of the positioning you have chosen. Changing from a more square position to a side-on position can be beneficial for absorbing some strikes (especially kicks, in my experience), but it does put you in a position where you can't really utilize your normal rear-side tools, and leaves your back exposed. That said, it also gives you more reach with your lead-side tools, which can be useful, and it also sets you up for spinning techniques. Then, from the teaching perspective, as Dani pointed out, you can purposely put yourself in that position to condition your students to take advantage of openings, all the while working on your defense from an awkward position. 2. Depends on what your opponent does. If your opponent is a counter-fighter, you can probably just hang back and throw some feints to catch a breather. If they are more offensive, however, you will have to expend a lot of energy, either through evasive movement or thrust kicks, to maintain distance. Personally, in that situation, I look to grab a hold of my opponent and start using my kata techniques and Judo experience to smother and control. That can be exhausting, too, though, unless you're comfortable with doing it under pressure. 3. Essentially, your options are to stay out of their reach and try to get around them when they attack so you can counter, or close the gap to the point where they don't really have the space to do much of anything. Tai sabaki (and its lesser known component, tenshin) has already been mentioned, and is a very important tool in kumite. I've written about it rather recently on my site, actually, but to sum it up, you should not always move straight forward and straight back, on a level plane. You should try to move to angles, both offensively and defensively. You want to change your elevation, as well, and incorporate slight tilts in your body. These types of movements, at the right times, will help you avoid being hit, and will also allow you to get close enough to reach the taller fighter. You can also bait them to come closer by backing up just out of their reach, until they over-commit to an attack to try to catch you, at which point you can utilize evasion to get around their attack and counter while they are open. Bear in mind that there is no possible way to attack your opponent and NOT be open to some form of counter. The best you can do is minimize that possibility, and tai sabaki and tenshin are good ways of doing that. I also recommend attacking targets that are closer to you, such as the legs and body, more than the head, unless you can pull the head down (either by clinching, or pulling the arm, for example).

We do have a weekly grappling class in our dojo, as well as twice weekly "cardio kickboxing" classes, and we periodically hold yoga and meditation seminars. These things aren't super popular, but they do tend to bring in people that don't normally join the karate classes. If it works in your area, with your demographics, then it can definitely be beneficial. It's pretty easy to keep these things from "watering down" your karate, honestly.

Welcome to the forum! MMA is a fun challenge--I hope your training serves you well!

Congratulations to all!

Welcome to the forum!

Well, officially welcome!

Welcome to the forum!

That is very much a decision that is made on a school by school basis, and a student by student basis. Generally, unless it is a sparring class we don't have them hit bags or pads with gloves. Since we do wear gloves when we spar, for the most part, any bagwork or padwork we do leading up to it will be done with gloves, so students get a better feel for it before throwing strikes at a partner. We do sometimes spar without gloves, but it's simply not as safe, and when it comes down to it, we want students to be uninjured so they can keep training, so gloves are used the majority of the time for sparring. We also have students wear gloves for hitting things if they have injuries like torn or cut skin--they can tape it up and put a glove on to keep it from getting worse, but still train. Bone and connective tissue injuries are a different story--no contact, period, until your doctor clears you.

Private lessons are excellent for fine-tuning. If you want specific, detailed feedback and corrections on how to do your kata, or execute a technique, or move in sparring, etc., then it's an excellent resource! Also, if you can't make it to enough regular classes, or can't train with the level of contact you want in regular classes, they can be helpful, since your Sensei can adjust to fit you, and no one else. I would never tell someone to go with nothing but private lessons, though, as there is a lot to be gained from working with a variety of different partners on a regular basis

I think it's important to do both, to some degree. For example, we have traditional training tools like nigiri-game, chi-ishi, and the makiwara, but we also have a full Olympic weight set, dumbbells up to 85lbs, and two full sets of resistance bands with attachments. We train our kata in the traditional manner, but also in ladder formats, or for cardio, or HIIT, etc. We do drills for control, but also do a lot of hitting pads and bags. Tradition for tradition's sake isn't really a good idea in martial arts, in my opinion, unless you are supplementing it with proper, valuable methods.

We will allow people to spar on their first day, if they'd like, but only with a black belt or brown belt, whose job is really to run them through drills that feel like sparring, more than actually sparring with them. We don't have a rank requirement for sparring in our dojo, but we do make a judgement call on a student-by-student basis as to when they can join the "general population" in sparring. Sometimes they are still white belts, and sometimes not.

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What you are seeing is the natural disconnect between the Japanese-created long range kumite and the methods transmitted by the kata, which are (as Dani_001 suggests) intended for close range fighting. Enpi-uchi, shuto-uchi, some forms of uraken-uchi, takedowns, uke-waza, etc. are really meant for use when you are up close with your opponent, tangling your limbs with theirs. If you try to bounce in from long distance, tag your partner, and bounce back out before they can tag you back, you'll never have the opportunity (or need) to use these methods. They aren't necessarily more dangerous, provided your partners know what you plan to use in sparring, and know how to react safely. Since kumite, in training, is meant to be a training method, try not to worry about winning and losing--there are no winners or losers in training, as it is not a competition. Tell your partner that you plan to try working with close range methods, give some examples, and then work toward that goal. You will probably do very poorly with this, at first. The more you do it, though, the better you will get.

I learned the "lockdown" knot in Judo--it's much more prevalent in grappling arts than in striking arts, although my KishimotoDi instructor also uses it. As it stands, though, I generally just do the standard square knot with the back crossed, instead of overlapped. I was originally taught to do the full overlap in the back, but it's less comfortable for me, takes longer to tie, and doesn't really add anything to my karate.

I fairly regularly teach classes that include people who earned their black belts when I was a child, or even before I was born. They outrank me, and have more experience than me, but I just teach what I know, and it works out just fine. They leave the ego at the door, and I pretty much give them free reign to explore and modify the drills and techniques as we go, to suit their needs.

Welcome to the forum!

Welcome to the forum, and back to karate! I actually have a friend who teaches KishimotoDi in Malmo

Congratulations!

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Belated welcome to the forum!

I'm in agreement with Nidan Melbourne on this one--it looks right to others, but it doesn't feel right to you, and that means you have to form down, but need to work on internalizing it and developing the details. That's the kind of thing that happens when you're a black belt

Welcome to the forum! We do have a Chinese Martial Arts section, where you might find some assistance in Chinese methods of conditioning the hands. To be fair, many karate practitioners who chose to condition their hands actually use Chinese methods, as well

Kata does not teach kickboxing--if it did, it would look much more like you are thinking, I suspect. Instead, kata teaches something more akin to clinchwork. That is, it teaches close-range fighting techniques, many of which involve limb control, grabbing and striking, and takedowns of various sorts. Of course, the kata are cleaned up versions of these fighting methods, either to build proper structure or just to look nicer. As JackD mentions, the stances you see are much more transitional than they appear in the kata. If you want to see the stances of kata in competitive fighting, look to the clinchwork of Muay Thai, the cagework of MMA, and the standing components of arts like judo and sumo. They don't stand idly by in a proper front stance, or horse stance, or cat stance, but they absolutely use them where appropriate for structure, control, and application of technique. You'll also notice a good number of the arm movements of kata, as well, just by the very nature of fighting at that range. Obviously, it isn't 100% crossover, because karate's approach is not identical to any one of those arts, but the similarities are clear, if you know what to look for.

I can kick the head--and have knocked people out doing so--and yet I rarely throw head kicks, unless I'm doing them the old-school way: https://www.instagram.com/p/BLjbWcjDkuN/ In all seriousness, though, you do not need to be able to kick high to be a karateka. If you do want to be able to kick that high, then that's fine. Without seeing you kick, it's hard for me to say whether it is truly a flexibility issue, or whether it is a mechanical issue.