Wastelander

Ah, I see. Well, I don't train in Muay Thai or Kyokushin, so I'll go on what I know about them. A Thai roundhouse kick is generally done with the supporting leg standing on the ball of the foot, and with the hip turned all the way over so that, at full extension, the kick actually lands at a downward angle, and the toes and foot are pulled back to tense the muscles of the shin. In karate (can't say for certain that this is how Kyokushin does it) we tend to keep the supporting foot flat on the floor to provide better balance, and we usually kick at an upward angle or horizontally with the toes and foot pointed. Both hit with the shin, but the toes being pointed in the karate version gives us a little extra reach because we can land with the ankle and instep, too. I've learned to kick both ways, but I get knocked off balance pretty consistently if I stand on the ball of my supporting foot, Thai style, so I try not to do that part. Another feature is that the Thai kick is usually done by stepping to an angle first in order to help generate more power, while the karate style kick is typically launched by just pivoting on your supporting foot.

Shadowboxing and bagwork would be a good idea, but I think the best thing you could do is spar a lot (make sure you go lighter the closer you get to the tournament so you don't injure yourself). How often do you spar at your dojo?

Kyokushin has lots of kicks, but since you mention the "Brazilian kick" I assume you are talking about the fake-front-kick setup for the roundhouse kick with the same leg, also sometimes called a "question mark kick" because that is the shape it draws in the air. I've never heard it called the "Kyokushin kick," though. If that's the technique you are talking about, the kicking leg comes straight up, as if to throw a front kick, but then whips over to throw a roundhouse kick--usually to the head because the fake-front-kick should have brought their guard lower. Alternatively, the front kick portion can be an actual front kick instead of just a fake. The kick developed in sport karate, Taekwondo and Muay Thai pretty much the same way, and I don't know where it was first used for certain. In any case, the benefits of learning more than one way to do it are likely going to be limited unless the subtle differences between those methods is enough to overcome your opponent's defense to the way it is normally done in your art.

Well, I was always told that kata start with a block because it signifies the defensive nature of karate--a physical representation of karate ni sente nashi (karate is not the first strike). Of course, the thing we call a "block" isn't always really a block, as you mentioned, so it can also play into Motobu's take on the same concept--karate wa sente de aru (karate IS the first strike). Either way, the kata starts by responding to an attack in some way, which still represents the idea that we should not try to start fights but should defend ourselves from harm with vigor.

I'm not from the UK, but I know that Amazon has some, and this is what came up with Google: http://www.google.co.uk/#q=martial+arts+belt+display&hl=en&tbo=d&source=lnms&tbm=shop&sa=X&ei=WUD_UNCuOMag2gXzmoCICA&sqi=2&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAA&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&bvm=bv.41248874,d.b2I&fp=683782c9a6b3589f&biw=1366&bih=602

I'm currently on track to reach shodan after about 8 years of training.

Well, it is definitely possible to launch those kicks from those stances. I'm guessing these are part of your kihon training for conditioning the legs?

Welcome to the forum! First of all, you need to talk to your instructor and tell him/her your goals, and explain how you want to be treated in the dojo. The instructor sets the tone for the class, and if he/she is on board with you then it will be much easier for your training partners to treat you the way that you want to be treated. Second of all, at your size you are never going to be more powerful than a man twice your size, but that doesn't mean that you can't be effective in defending yourself. Train for accuracy, speed and explosiveness in stressful situations and that will serve you very well--as JusticeZero mentioned, most attackers outside of the dojo are going to be untrained and looking for a weak target. If you are accurate, fast and explosive then you will hit plenty hard enough to stop an attacker like that. In pursuit of becoming more explosive and developing striking power, I would recommend that you research strength and conditioning programs the focus on explosiveness, and work your strikes on a makiwara, heavy bag and punch mitts held by your instructor. This should also help you develop the speed of your strikes, but be sure to do footwork drills to make sure that your entire body moves quickly and smoothly. For accuracy, mitt work, using a BOB and sparring are going to be your best bets.

It's a commercial school, certainly, but not necessarily a McDojo from the sounds of it--the instructors are teaching martial arts to earn a living, and that will be reflected in how they market their school, but as long as they teach well and invest in their students then I don't see a major issue. I will point out that it is not unusual for black belt ranked instructors to be under 40 years old, and most "traditional" martial arts focus on forms/patterns. In any case, it sounds like you like the instructors, who seem like open, accommodating people, the fees are quite reasonable, and feel of the environment is a good one, so you don't really need to justify it any more than that. Enjoy your training!

I will go ahead and respond to the points that you brought up in your reply to me, OP, but before I do that I will say this--you don't really want to train in Okinawan karate. You have made it abundantly clear that you think Muay Thai and boxing are superior fighting arts, even while you are criticizing them. I think that you actually just want to train in MMA, which is fine. Maybe you do have an interest in Okinawan culture/tradition, and maybe you do want to throw on a gi and practice a kata every now and then, but it seems to me that you aren't really interested in Okinawan karate as a whole. I am not saying that your experience is incorrect, I simply disagree with your knowledge of how the "blocks" in Okinawan karate are meant to be used. You are thinking that the movements called "blocks" are only able to be used one way, and the way you have seen doesn't work well for that purpose. Look at it this way--mime what you would do with your hand to turn the steering wheel of your car one-handed, then mime what you would do with your hand to wax that car one-handed. The movements are very nearly identical, but accomplish two completely different things. I know this seems very Karate Kid (wax on, wax off) but it's true. All that said, there ARE ways to use the traditional blocks of karate and make them work. Dan Djurjevic has done some great posts on his blog about that very topic, if you are interested. I think you are thinking of renzoku kumite and yakusoku kumite, which are choreographed fighting sequences with a partner. The "iri kumi" that I am referring to is not choreographed, and doesn't seem to be any more restricted than MMA sparring. I will also note that while an MMA fight is full contact, it is not "no-holds-barred" (there are something like 50 rules in place for professional MMA, and even more for amateur MMA) and when MMA fighters spar, they don't do it full contact--if they did, they would always be too beat up to train consistently. Fighting at mid-range is stupid if your opponent is better at it than you--mid-range isn't just where they can hit you, but where you can hit them, too. If you are bad at that range then yes, you should get in close to nullify their striking or you should stay at long-range to make use of your kicks. This isn't a matter of style so much as personal ability and preference--you should always play to your strengths, if at all possible. As far as standing in front of your opponent and trading strikes, I would agree that is a bad decision unless you are a seriously tough fighter, but Okinawan karate, in general, doesn't promote that anyway. As for boxers taking the most brain damage, that is largely because of the rule set used in boxing--it promotes head-hunting and allows fighters to continue fighting after receiving a concussion, making their brain injuries drastically worse. Depends on how you define "real fights," and I wouldn't say that Okinawan styles are more practical than Japanese styles--both can be practical, but only if it is taught and trained in a practical way. I would agree that a lot of martial artists don't like seeing MMA because they feel that it is an attack on something they have dedicated their lives to, but that isn't the only reason. I know of a lot of martial artists who don't watch it because it goes against the values that they were taught in their arts--primarily that one should avoid violence and not seek to harm another person with their skills. Personally, I like MMA and watch it frequently--in fact, I just won the UFC fight prediction pool at my work. I will point out that karate does, in fact, have a "jab" and the technique that Machida used to KO Couture wasn't really a crane kick, it was actually a fake front kick used to set up a front kick with the other leg, and that technique is found in the kata Kusanku/Kanku Dai.

I really like BOB for working specific targets--because he has a human shape, you can contour your strikes (hard-to-soft and soft-to-hard) and work strikes to individual targets (eyes, pressure points, floating ribs) much more effectively. I have actually seen people draw pressure points on their BOB in Sharpie to give students a better idea of where they are so they can work on how to strike them.

I disagree with your assessment of the blocking in Goju-Ryu, but I will also point out that many "blocking" movements are not actually intended to be used as blocks. Regardless of that fact, however, you said you didn't mind some "impractical" techniques, and the fact that they pressure test their system through close-range contact sparring should weed out what is practical and what is not, anyway. The thing that you have to remember about traditional Okinawan styles like that, though, is that they were designed for self defense purposes, not sport fighting, so they were never intended for fighting at long-range or moving around an attacker--it was meant for dealing with short, brutal altercations from medium- to close-range because that's where self defense situations occur. This is how most Okinawan styles are, although they go about it different ways. You can find people who do Okinawan styles that also teach sport fighting at long range, but you are going to have to look at individual instructors to find that, not styles. My instructor teaches a traditional Okinawan style, and also happens to be a very good long-range striker Not sure if you're watching bad MMA, or just don't have the grappling knowledge to understand the difference. I'm with MP--there is a vast difference between untrained brawling and an MMA fight between trained fighters.

As I recall, when Kano Jigoro originally instituted it the black belt was intended to indicate when a student was knowledgeable enough and skilled enough for new students to learn from them. I believe that this would have meant those students knew how to perform all of the kata, as well as all of the throwing, pinning, locking and choking techniques of judo well enough to teach to beginners, and could demonstrate them against a resisting opponent. The idea of black belt being "the beginning" of your training was technically still true, because just knowing how to perform all of the techniques in judo didn't mean you had mastered it, but it did mean that you could explore and personalize it for the rest of your life because you had all of the fundamentals. If we carry this concept over into other arts, then the black belt should be given when a student knows how to perform all of the kata and techniques of the art well enough to teach them to beginners and demonstrate them against a resisting opponent. How long this takes depends entirely upon the size and complexity of the curriculum, the skill/talent/dedication of the student and the skill/talent/dedication of the teacher. I do think that the black belt has been over-emphasized over time, but I actually think that was done for the very reason that you are suggesting we de-emphasize it, OP--to keep people training. Training is hard work and requires a lot of dedication, so the black belt was over-emphasized as a hard-to-reach goal that would keep people coming to the dojo to try and achieve that coveted piece of fabric in the hopes that by the time they reached it they would have developed a love for the art that would keep them coming after that. What you seem to be proposing is that we give students a black belt more easily to try to accomplish, essentially, the same thing, but I think that what we have discovered by the original over-emphasis of the black belt to try to keep people training, and the subsequent prevalence of post-shodan dropouts, is that you cannot use the belt system to build your students' love for the art. They will either love it or they won't, and they will only keep training if it fulfills their personal desires and meets their goals. An instructor can try to meet the student's needs, but if the development of the art, itself, isn't the student's goal then the instructor can only do so much.

To be honest, I suspect that this WAS a power-trip for that Godan. There has been nothing keeping him out of the dojo or off the mat--the only difference between the situation you describe and your normal classes where he sits out is the absence of your head instructor. This tells me that the head instructor may be the reason that the Godan in question doesn't train or teach at the dojo anymore. My guess is that he resents the instructor for taking the dojo in a different direction, and he saw his absence as an opportunity to make his disapproval known and "prove his superiority" to you all, so to speak, by showing you how things used to be, although he probably exaggerated the severity, intensity and difficulty of it to boost his ego. I would talk to your head instructor about the incident immediately, because I suspect that the Godan may try to tell the head instructor about how "disrespectful," "rude" and "ungrateful" you are, and you will want to explain your side.

Goju-Ryu, particularly any branch that practices iri kumi, will give you the in-close fighting and hard contact that you want, but you will also get a strong tradition and history, powerful technique and effective self defense applications for your forms. Traditional Okinawan karate really only has low-level kicks, and those are largely limited to stomps, toe-kicks, front kicks, side kicks and heel kicks, so you aren't likely to get much new kicking material after already receiving a black belt in Taekwondo. That said, a lot of traditional Okinawan styles have been "modernized" a bit so that they include more kicks (still nothing you wouldn't have already picked up in Taekwondo, though) and some of that modernization has also led to the exclusive use of non-contact point sparring. You will really just have to look around your area, see what is available, watch a class, try a class and research it.

I typically practice my kata, go through kata application if I have a partner, and do bagwork and makiwara training. I also like to throw a heavybag on the ground to work ground strikes and transitions, and I will usually do some extra conditioning exercises like pushups, crunches, dips, pull-ups, lunges, medicine ball slams, wrist rollers, etc.

We have a tiered pay structure, so you pay less if you go to fewer classes, and pay more if you go to more classes. $79 a month for 8 classes, $89 for 12, $99 for 16, and $119 for unlimited classes.

To be fair, I think there is some speculation as to whether Matsumura taught his family differently than he taught his other students (Kyan, Itosu, Tawada, etc.), and I think it is fairly likely that this was the case. We see similar trends in other family styles, after all. It is possible that Matsumura, himself, could have "dumbed down" the Passai he passed on to his public students and taught the "original" version to his family, or he could have taught the "original" version to his public students but a personal variation to his family. We really have no way of knowing! I wouldn't say that Hohan Soken's version of Passai is less effective--whether it is the "original" or a personalized version, it should still be effective if it came (mostly) unaltered from Matsumura--but I don't practice it so for the purpose of this thread I chose the Tawada version of Matsumura's Passai.

In my system we teach both Itosu's Passai (we call it Passai Sho) and the Matsumura Passai (we call it Passai Dai) that Chibana learned from Tawada. Of the two, I would say that the Matsumura Passai that Chibana learned from Tawada is better. We know that Itosu changed the kata to fit his new school-safe curriculum, and in pursuit of that I feel that some of his kata lost their originally intended applications and became less useful. The Passai that came from Tawada, who was a contemporary of Itosu and student of Matsumura, seems as though it may be closer to the original kata as it was taught by Matsumura. I will also note that Chibana thought it was better, and his opinion carries some weight with me.

I would say that your only real options are to teach, yourself, or call martial arts schools around the area and see if they have any instructor-level students that would be good options. If you do hire an instructor from another dojo, though, you should probably expect them to want to get something more than just a wage for the instructor--advertising or referrals, for instance.

We can argue semantics all we want but, honestly, the general martial arts public uses "traditional" as a classification without much in the way of actual criteria. Some arts that are labelled "traditional" are karate, judo, taekwondo, kung fu, and silat, and they are generally classified as such regardless of style or personal methods. The only thing I can see for saying that these are traditional arts is that they all wear non-Western clothing and use terminology that isn't necessarily native to where they are being practiced. For example, in karate and judo you wear a gi and use Japanese terminology, even though you may not be Japanese or live in Japan. On the flipside, martial arts like Muay Thai, boxing and wrestling are generally considered "modern", and they all tend to use Western clothing and mostly native language terminology. BJJ is a different one because it is considered a modern art, but it uses a gi and uses a mixture of non-native terminology (Japanese and Portuguese), although there is also a lot of no-gi BJJ that uses native terminology as well. I have heard of it being called "traditional BJJ" (with a gi and Japanese/Portuguese) and "modern BJJ" (without a gi and using native terminology). My own personal definition of a traditional martial art is fairly simple: a martial art that has has its methods and practices passed from one generation to another, which then passes it on without much change, if any. For karate, that started happening in the 1930's when styles started to really solidify and cross-training started to become less common. For boxing, that happened a very, very, very long time ago and really only changed when boxing gloves and Queensbury Rules were introduced, and now it is traditional again, by my definition. BJJ is a traditional art when done in the manner of the Gracies, but only starting to become a traditional art in the realm of no-gi BJJ. MMA isn't a traditional art by my definition, and really can't be simply because there are so many methods and practices involved that it can't form one cohesive tradition.

A karate instructor should promote a healthy lifestyle and, ideally, live a healthy lifestyle. That said, even those with healthy lifestyles don't always look healthy, and those with unhealthy lifestyles don't always look unhealthy. Take a look at this list: Motobu Choki, Higaonna Morio, Masutatsu Oyama, Kinjo Masakazu, Patrick McCarthy, Iain Abernethy, Wullie Roger, Jeff Speakman. All of these men are well-known in their respective realms of martial arts, and they are all considered to be skilled, knowledgeable martial artists and, by all accounts, great instructors. They are (or were, in the case of those that have passed away) also all overweight, to varying degrees. Does being overweight negate everything else about them? Going along with that, I have personally known some great instructors who are overweight, and I know people who are overweight despite living a healthy lifestyle because of medical conditions. Calling such medical conditions "excuses" is the same as saying that a person with a compromised immune system due to chemotherapy or HIV is making "excuses" for why they get sick so easily. Are there martial artists out there who preach a healthy lifestyle, but don't live it, and are therefor overweight even though they could be trim and fit? Of course there are. But regardless of that fact, I don't see the need to demonize overweight instructors, or to question the quality of their teaching. My instructor happens to be thin and in great shape, and he promotes and lives a healthy lifestyle. He is also very skilled, very knowledgeable, and a great teacher. A Godan that trains with us is a big, barrel-chested, overweight man who promotes and lives a healthy lifestyle, but is overweight anyway. He is also very skilled, very knowledgeable, and a great teacher. I, personally, am thin and in good shape, and promote a healthy lifestyle, but I also eat an awful lot of fast food and way too many desserts. Appearances can be deceiving, but regardless of that fact, they do not impact an instructor's ability to be a good instructor.

Very interesting, albeit morbid, topic! As it turns out, I am currently reading a book that I got for Christmas called The Katas: The Meaning Behind the Movements, that goes over this very thing. I may be way off base with my assessment, or the author may be way off base with his descriptions, but I'll give it a shot. As I understand it, the act (and art) of seppuku has value in Japan because of their reliance on ritual and form as a way of life. This is largely because of the period of isolationism that Japan locked itself into, which forced it to develop culturally within its own borders without input from other cultures. This development saw the rise of strict codes of conduct in order to make everything run smoothly, and everyone was encouraged to follow their respective codes of conduct or face consequences. Everything in Japan has a kata, from getting dressed, to making tea, to speaking with others, to ending your life. Part of the kata of life for a samurai was the kata of seppuku, which was used as a motivator in the quest for perfection as well as a desensitization technique to the concept of dying. To the samurai, to fail at something in your life essentially meant that you had no more reason to live, because you would not be able to achieve perfection in life, but the act of taking your own life in such a painful way without fear or acknowledgment of that pain was a way to cleanse yourself of your failure and dishonor. To the warrior class, this idea was instilled in them from birth, so they would not be shocked or horrified by death, whether it be the death of those they kill in battle, the death of their friends and loved ones, or the death of themselves. The rest of the world, having developed largely through open trade and travel between regions, rarely formulated such stringent codes of conduct because people from different cultures were constantly mingling. Since we had much looser ideas of how people should behave and act, we never developed such extreme acts as seppuku in order to repent for misdeeds, although we still developed apologies, procedures and punishments that our cultures felt fit those misdeeds. If someone were to suggest seppuku as a viable method of repentance in most civilized nations, it would be reacted to with horror, fear and disgust because it is not a concept that fits with our societal norms. Personally (and I know this is a bit harsh for some people) I see no honor in killing yourself unless you have done something completely unforgivable and, even then, you won't be forgiven, but at least it can be said that you saw the evil of what you had done and saved the world the trouble of your existence.

My instructor is my friend, but he has "modes" that make it fairly obvious what role he is taking--sometimes he is a teacher, sometimes he is a big brother figure, and sometimes he is a friend. It depends on the situation and what he has to do, and I feel that it works out quite well.

As I mentioned, I am not an evolutionary biologist. That said, the martial artist/university scientist I mentioned DOES happen to be an evolutionary biologist. He also happens to believe that most scientists, let along the general public, do not understand how evolution works. I'm not really qualified to argue for him, but this whole mess caused him to write up his own response. For those who would like to read the counter-argument, here is the link: http://www.genomicron.evolverzone.com/2012/12/another-just-so-story-this-time-about-fists/