mushybees

Our club is unusual in that the highest grades are both yondan and the least experienced is the chief instructor. There's been a harmonious dynamic for the last 15 years but it's about to change. One of the instructors is leaving the club and although he hasn't asked me to leave (he would never poach students) he has certainly set his stall out. If I had maintained a healthy seperation from my teachers it wouldn't have been a problem. Unfortunately I've become very good friends with the ci. If I'm being objective my path in martial arts is following the instructor who is leaving and I have an unpleasant task ahead of me. My question to everyone is what has been your experiences of club's splitting? Good and bad. Has anyone had to leave a club where they were friends with their sensei but for better instruction?

We only use mats when working throws and takedowns and then only when there are under 18s present. We train at 2 venues. One is a community centre with a nice sprung floor, the other venue has a tiled concrete floor which gets so cold in the winter it numbs the toes. They have nothing to do with the quality of the instruction.

No one wants to have to roll or get on the floor outside of the dojo/gym. Newaza? eeww!

There are some films you can't remake. Enter the Dragon is one of them. If you look at it objectively it isn't a terribly accomplished film. Some of the acting is a bit ropey and it's not helped by some weak dialogue. It's become more than the sum of it's parts though. It was Bruce Lee's swansong and it has become ingrained in popular culture. It's almost distasteful to remake it and I suspect it would bomb at the box office.

Yes, none of the principles I would fall back on in an attack involve a great deal of flexibility. I'm more concerned with the probability of me being attacked whilst wearing a hoody or, in the summer, flip-flops/sandals..

Even if it isn't combat orientated if you can develop a connected body and learn to utilise your tanden in movement it'll improve your wado significantly. Tai chi is definitely beneficial. Personally it would be preferable to just practising wado alone

No other martial arts available in your area?

Pinan Sandan Kushanku Naihanchi Chinto Wanshu

Not to discourage you but the bulk of the principles which set wado apart are found in it's paired kata. Wado ryu without kihon gumite and kumite gata may as well be any other fighting style. It's certainly possible to work on the kihon and kata but without a sensei to help you explore and understand them you won't even scratch the surface of what wado has to offer. Imo you could probably get your kihon and kata to the standard of a blue belt if you trained alone. A terrible waste of obvious enthusiasm.

If I'm being honest, based on what you've said in this thread and the pinan nidan thread, returning to white belt sounds like a great opportunity. You're training isn't for nothing just because aspects of it differ from other schools. You should have plenty of valuable experience and skill that could expedite your future grading. It will mean you have more faith in your art going forward.

What style do you train in?

If you're teaching yourself from a book, who do you owe loyalty to and why?

The first time I met one of the most influential and highest graded wadoka in europe he told me he'd overdone it at dinner and was heading back to his hotel room to put on looser trousers! He was unassuming with a gait which reflected his advanced years but when he stepped on the training floor I witnessed true waza. He moved effortlessly, he allowed himself to be taken down to the floor to help in young karateka's development and understanding and he hit hard! He's still with us and I'm very fortunate to be training with him again this summer.

Personally I'd go for a jujutsu ryuha. There are styles that are more atemi focused but still has little kicking. Maybe something totally different like wing chun?

Wadoka use naihanchi as an exercise for developing internal structure. I can't speak for every wado dojo but I have never spent significant dojo time exploring naihanchi's application. Not because they don't exist, because it's obviously full of combative principles, but because I think the wado pedagogy is to purposefully divorce it from application. It's where wado's koryu jujutsu and kenjutsu pedigree is particularly apparent. The problem with that is naihanchi is not an easy entry point to developing internal power and there are few people willing and able to teach it. I've fleetingly trained in a few chinese internal arts and some of the similarities to naihanchi are interesting. It's an avenue I'm interested in exploring further and I've found a style agnostic teacher, I just have to find the time to work on some of the solo exercises before visiting. I didn't get in to it with the physio. I believe the stance itself doesn't permit much mobility but it's long term structural impact is an increased mobilty in a more neutral stance. He didn't seem to notice my femurs were rotated in and my knees and ankles were neutral so who knows what assumptions he was making.

As a wadoka I use a naihanchi stance where the toes are pointed ever so slightly inwards. The rotation is cause by rotating the head of the femur inwards, not the knees or ankles. Whilst speaking to a physiotherapist about other issues I asked his opinion of the stance and it's long term implications for knee health. His opinion was that it isn't good for the knee but it would lead to being lighter on one's feet. He didn't elaborate on how. He was also a martial artist so I value his opinion.

I find there are classes where I enjoy a sweat and other times I need something more cerebral. I try and weight train 3 x a week, I can't do that if I'm always recovering from too strenuous a karate class. Personally I'd prefer I get my exercise outside of ma classes. I need my sensei to teach me to fight, I can exercise myself. That said it's good to see how you perform whilst fatigued.

There's something wrong if your training is impacting you that much on your off days. What should happen is that you're worst gets progressively better, not necessarily that your best is better under ideal conditions. I hope that makes sense

I've never bought a book to learn techniques as such. There isn't a great deal published relating to wado ryu, and the books that do exist are concerned mostly with the very basic, external aspects of the art. Wado has a lot in common with koryu kenjutsu and taijutsu so they provide a lot of avenues for study. The best books are the ones that have fueled my own experimentation. Some of them have opened my eyes to the most fulfilling elements of wado ryu and they haven't been instructions for the perfect ushiro geri.

This is almost identical to the question you asked about using martial arts in self defense. You don't "use" stances in a fight. The stances you practise in your art will, over time, affect the way you move. At any time you may recognise your posture as what we call a stance but it's incidental. Through training you will instinctively manage your posture for the most appropriate and efficent way of dealing with a given situation.

I have no experience of tkd kicks so I can't comment on that. What I will say is I have had the exact same experience as prototype in regards to muscle weakness and imbalance. I can kick high and quickly but only with speed. In time the weakness in my glutes and hip abductors caught up with me and made training painful. I'm now on a course of strength training. i wish I had incorporated it in my training from the beginning.

Traditional Martial Arts.

I've had to take a little time out from training lately and I've felt very out of sorts. Easily irritable and just feeling a bit glum. Regular training definitely keeps me on an even keel. Being able to freely show and feel aggression, albeit very controlled, is a good thing. Aggression is a natural facet of many people's nature, to deny it totally can be quite unhealthy.

There's a huge difference between kumite and kata to develop martially applicable attributes and the same for point scoring. I train karate with seriousness as a budo, not a sport. I train with the intention of learning life saving skills, not for shiny baubles.

Olympic forms will surely mean the return of standardised shitei kata. Not something I would like to see happen and not something I feel will be good for karate as an art in the long term.