Spartacus Maximus

It is a little strange to bow to anyone outside of the context and environment of where one trains. Unless the gesture a normal thing to do in the surrounding culture. Bowing is part of East Asian culture. If one lives and trains there under a native instructor it wouldn’t be out of place or be strange. Anywhere else it would be quite odd and perhaps slightly cultish to many outsiders.

These are accounts heard personally, the most recent from about 5 years ago.

To avoid going too far off course in this discussion, what the old teachers meant by a « murderous disposition » was the kind of person who seems to look for an excuse to hurt someone or will purposely hurt others without concern for themselves and especially not others. Has a confrontational attitude, a volatile and violent temper Cannot control their emotions and deal with frustrations and lacks patience Is easily provoked to anger or violence by insignificant things. Knowingly puts themselves in stupid positions, in dangerous places at dangerous. As you can see, this applies to many types of undesirables whether they have a criminal background or not. In Japan and Okinawa and one or two occasions elsewhere there has been cases where someone was turned away because of supposed(not confirmed) ties to Organized Crime(quite a big deal in some locations).

Being able to spot undesirable people comes with experience. There are a few telltale patterns of behaviour that can identify a potentially dangerous individual. Some of these are obvious even to regular people. Perhaps it was/is easier to do with a smaller select group of students than in large groups where the instructor knows only names and not much else. In such a situation, what ways could an instructor use besides discussion to determine if a particular person was of good moral character enough to be taught potentially dangerous things?

There are many reasons why respectable instructors of martial arts might delay, or even refuse teaching a person. Anyone who has trained in Okinawa or Japan for a while might be more familiar with this reason. The one and only reason was that the instructor saw what could be explained as a murderous disposition, a fatal flaw of mind and character in the person asking to learn. A responsible and fair instructor, these circles would never want to facilitate or help cause violence by teaching a violent criminal to be more dangerous and efficient in felonious assault. The curious part is how early the old timers could spot this type of character. A generation or so before now, many karate instructors would know before teaching the slightest thing, whether a particular person was morally teachable.

If one really wants to do so, there isn’t much stopping a martial artist to re-do or re-train any part of what was done before. It’s a great way to go back and perhaps take a new look from a different perspective

A lot of people have a chasing rank phase at one time or another, especially teenagers and younger adults. In that respect my case was an exception. I tested/graded because my instructor insisted and I didn’t/don’t doubt his evaluation. Otherwise I’m perfectly confident and content to keep training rank or no rank

All teachers, whatever they may teach must consider the level of mental development and varying attention spans and ability to stay focused or concentrate. Each age group has different levels and individual abilities also vary. Basic knowledge and understanding of these are essential for knowing how to teach, how much and for how long. 2hrs might be good for older teenagers and adults, but it is way to long for the average youth and younger children will be bored to tears after a half hour maximum.

Depending on their age, it’s always more productive to talk to their parents/guardians or whoever paid to enroll them. In my experience, no sensible person will refuse a refund and that is usually all it takes to get rid of incompatible students Absolutely nothing can force anyone to teach anyone, especially a martial arts instructor who has none of the constraints that say, a schoolteacher might have to abide by. Choosing with whom to share skills and knowledge is one of the advantages of the occupation.

What helped was that the instructor had trained with and was well acquainted with most of the other Kobayashi Shorin ryu instructors on Okinawa(the island is small), and mainland Japan. Also, the previous instructor and himself were taught by the same teacher(successor of Chibana). In addition to that, most of the other students had significant experience and background in all kinds of martial arts. He was very well accustomed to teaching these types of people and for some reason, those with no prior knowledge of any martial art were a minority.

One way or another it is always possible to get rid of someone who is disruptive. Give them a refund if they’re paying and simply tell the adults in charge that their child/youth’s attitude to being taught and/or behaviour is not acceptable.

The nagging thought of having key concepts and important fine-points from kata, techniques or bunkai missing; is why starting over made sense. It felt like going back to school and repeating each grade, but it became clear that the instructor is always more important than the martial art, even within the same ryuha/style.

It is possible that Jion is also done in at least some dojo affiliated with/under direct students of the late Miyahara Katsuya.

Amateur okinawan karate historian here. There is much similarity among those styles as they share most of their kata. The Naihanchi and Pinan series as well as very similar renderings of the kata Passai, Chinto and Kusanku. All can trace their origin to Matsumura Sokon(taught Shotokan founder) as well as the most influential Okinawans to introduce karate to mainland Japan such as Funakoshi(disciple of Matsumura), Motubu and a few others, all from the shuri-te, which is what it. was called before evolving into all the shorin stlyes.

The original post’s question is not exclusive to martial arts. The same can be said about any teaching situation. There is no worse student than one who isn’t interested, unwilling and thrust upon the teacher by another’s will or wallet. Fortunately for martial arts teachers, unlike regular school, the solution is simple: give them minimum teaching attention(they’ll eventually quit) or just stop wasting energy/time teaching them. A good suggestion for an instructor would be to approach this explicitly with all students old enough to understand(Even parents/guardians). Tell them: Don’t come/don’t bring your kids if for any reason you/they don’t want to be there or aren’t interested in learning.

This is something I had to do and it is still difficult. A few years ago a change in lineage and instructor meant re-doing and re-living each and every level of training from nothing to 3rd dan. Basically earned all levels in two different lineages/associations of kobayashi shorin ryu (Chibana Chosin’s karate). Looking back on the experience, it was the best thing to do. Learned more in 1 year with the second than nearly 10 with the first. All native Okinawan teachers on Okinawa and mainland Japan. There is something particularly difficult about re-learning the same thing a different way compared to starting a completely different unknown style where there is nothing to unlearn first.

without going in depth, it is now quite obvious that the answer is that it is a question of focus and emphasis. Both « methods » effectively train and develop powerful kicks, but the Shotokan/japanese way seems to target a different part of the technique than the way kicking is approached with the Okinawan method of teaching/learning the same techniques. For personal practice, both are good and useful, however it can easily be too much for teaching/training others. When teaching it would be recommended to introduce one way(Okinawan, in my case) and later get them to practise their kicking the other way to give them a different perspective to emphasize different points in kicks such as using stabilizing muscles etc…

When comparing the kicking technique of high level Okinawan stylists with high level Japanese Shotokan, both have very solid, fast and fierce basic kicks. Their method of teaching and training kicks clearly produces a similar result technically speaking. So then besides stylistics and esthetics, there must be a different point of emphasis versus the “Okinawan style” kicking drills. As for the Okinawan method described in previous posts, the explanation is that learning/practising basic kicks from a natural stance closed hands in a guard is that it is meant to emphasize all muscles involved in kicking. Most importantly the essential role of the core in the action. The other reason is that if one is attacked, one will most likely be in a natural standing or walking position, therefore it makes sense to train to execute techniques effectively from the position people are usually in when casually walking or standing.

A question to Shotokan karate students/instructors: After watching kihon waza drills of Shotokan groups in person and in media, many if not most drills for basic kicks start in the forward stance/zenkutsu. What exactly is the reasoning behind using that specific starting point? Is there some advantage to training/teaching basics that way? It is one of the first things noticeable when comparing how Okinawan schools train versus what is the norm in Japanese schools. The Okinawan schools have mostly the exact same drills used in Shotokan, except the most common starting stance is either natural standing(shizentai) or something that looks like a natural waking stance with a natural guard instead of closed fist with arms extended to sides like seen in the “Shotokan version” of drills. Anyone have insights?

In the original post the question was about the style taught by Chibana and his students who eventually started their own schools. My teacher’s teacher(Miyahira) was one of these and so was the late master Nakazato(founded Shorinkan). It is now almost certain that Seisan taught in my school didn’t come from Chibana, otherwise everyone trained by him would include it.

some of the best examples of good “kiai” isn’t even from martial arts. Tennis and baseball has great ones depending on the player. So does weightlifting.There was even some issue with certain athletes being given “warnings” because supposedly it isn’t sportsman like to do what they thought was just some over-agressive posturing.

Almost identical to my experience. The first thing to come to mind was that “kitae” was a key factor in effective technique. It explained much of the reason why it is possible for a human body to develop uncommon strength and resilience.

Anticipating difficulties and challenges involved can be tough. Its really easy to be overwhelmed because of unpredictable circumstances. Restrictions for evaluating progress are not a major issue, at least for now. The entire project of opening a dojo/teaching is just the best solution to support and facilitate my continued training under my teacher while at the same time sharing what little skills I learned. After realizing the non-existence of Okinawan karate dojo where I live, it seemed like the best thing to do was to start one. Luckily my sensei and CI of the hombu dojo made an exception to allow a 3dan to teach. Usually this isn’t allowed until 5dan.

genealogy is a pet hobby and research into it has been fairly easy thanks to elder relatives as well has the reliable record keeping of Europe’s clergy. With all this information collected from various archives, it was possible to trace all the way back to the mid 1500s . After that it becomes much harder to find anything significant. It is a personal challenge to try and see if DNA tests will make it possible to identify genetic origin much farther back. If most of these are reasonably accurate, it should be possible to go back a few centuries more…. This stuff only matters to nerds such as myself.

Question for anyone who has ever tried DNA tests such as “23 and me” and for those who know how these tests work: With what accuracy can these DNA/ancestry tests analyse background? Can any of these test actually find the specific geographical origin of someone’s DNA down to a specific region of the world? Can any of these say someone is 10(totally random number) percent Dutch or would they just show something generic like “European” instead of a precise country/region? Many of these DNA kits claim to be able to accurately identify a person’s ancestry with specific percentages for every “part” one might have in their blood. There are a lot of videos out there of people who have done these tests and found very unexpected results which they never would have thought of themselves.