JR 137

I like doing that. And stretching in the pool. I can get splits (if that's what we're calling them ) a lot deeper. Kata and the splits in a pool. Sounds like a hoot! Try doing kata or anything else MA in the ocean. Waves do funny things to your balance. Edit: I'd imagine it's not too easy to get to the ocean if you live in Michigan. Motivation for a vacation?

I like doing that. And stretching in the pool. I can get splits (if that's what we're calling them ) a lot deeper.

We also do what we call ura kata - a 360 spin before every forward step. Apparently it used to be a Mas Oyama training tool and not part of any official syllabus, but a lot of Kyokushin schools and their offshoots have made it part of their syllabi. Seido Juku included in the dan ranks for kyu kata. It's a good way to change things up, but I'm not a fan of making it a formal requirement and testing students on it.

Solid post!! In my competition days yesteryear, whenever I was the Arbitrator of said tournament, I never saw an Eku or a Timbe/Rochin, and most of that was due to the specifics of said tournament as regarding what Kobudo was and wasn't allowed. Me, being an practitioner of an Okinawan MA style, I would've completely enjoyed and appreciated to see a competitor wielding either of them. I believe that those judges on said judging panels would still award appropriate points to said competitor who wielded one of them without never have seen one and/or practiced with one and/or having never judged either because, as we all know, there's wide parameters to judge accordingly. For example, the very first time I judged a Musical Kata, I was awed at what I saw, however, I had to put that aside and judge accordingly to what that tournaments judging parameters laid out, and nothing else, for that division. I saw Eku done twice. I recognized the kata from seeing my sensei at the time perform it. My question of how do they judge a weapon they've never seen probably wasn't worded exactly as I meant it... Assuming it's a tournament that only allows traditional kata, if the judges have never seen a timbe/rochin kata or a nunte bo kata before, how do they know it's really a traditional kata being performed and not something made up? Do they trust the competitor is being honest? To the bold type above... As an Arbitrator, I'd pose this very simple question to all of the assembled judges, just after I've read to them out loud the acceptable Kobudo weapons under the parameters of the Traditional Weapons Division...and if the Eku as well as the Timbre and Rochin is on the Traditional Weapons Division approved list, as determined by the Tournament Director. "Are you familiar with all of these said Kobudo weapons that I've just announced?? If not, raise your hand!!" Whomever raises their hand, are dismissed from any and all judging pool immediately, and thanked for their honest as well as their time. If during the course of the tournament that I discover that a judge has misrepresented their familiarity of those previously mentioned acceptable Kobudo weapons, then that judge is forthwith dismissed immediately. IF THAT'S THE DIRECTIONS OF THE TOURNAMENT DIRECTOR!! However, I've been Arbitrator before at tournaments where there were NO approved Kobudo Weapons list available for the judging pool to read. Whenever that happened, I simply instructed the judging pool, if they are judging a Kobudo weapon that they're not familiar with, then keep this in mind... Control of the weapon must be paramount and continuous at all times. After that, judge said Kobudo weapon just like you would do with the one(s) that you're the most familiar. After all, no matter what type of Kobudo weapon it is, or might be, or appear to be, that said Kobudo weapon is the extension of ones body, and it must be in control at all times. That's how I'd judge either of them if I hadn't ever seen either of them before. Don't judge the book by its cover. Same to Kobudo...don't judge the Kobudo weapon by its look, no matter how familiar it might or might not be. That makes sense. Thank you. Your "control of the weapon" parameter reminded me of a sai kata I saw done at a tournament. It was the first time I saw a sai kata being performed. The karateka was doing a routine flip of it (I don't know what to call it) where the pointed end is along the inside of the forearm, and it gets flicked out to where the pointed end is pointed straight out. The karateka lost his grip and it flew straight at the judge. He was standing about 4 feet in front of the judge at the time. Good thing the judge had karate instincts and moved his head It flew right by him. The look on the karateka's face was priceless. The judge smiled professionally, and politely handed him his sai back. Needless to say, he didn't score very high. He looked very good until that slip up though. He might've won had it not happened. I say that because a few others did the same kata afterwards, and his looked the best until the incident which was near the end.

Solid post!! In my competition days yesteryear, whenever I was the Arbitrator of said tournament, I never saw an Eku or a Timbe/Rochin, and most of that was due to the specifics of said tournament as regarding what Kobudo was and wasn't allowed. Me, being an practitioner of an Okinawan MA style, I would've completely enjoyed and appreciated to see a competitor wielding either of them. I believe that those judges on said judging panels would still award appropriate points to said competitor who wielded one of them without never have seen one and/or practiced with one and/or having never judged either because, as we all know, there's wide parameters to judge accordingly. For example, the very first time I judged a Musical Kata, I was awed at what I saw, however, I had to put that aside and judge accordingly to what that tournaments judging parameters laid out, and nothing else, for that division. I saw Eku done twice. I recognized the kata from seeing my sensei at the time perform it. My question of how do they judge a weapon they've never seen probably wasn't worded exactly as I meant it... Assuming it's a tournament that only allows traditional kata, if the judges have never seen a timbe/rochin kata or a nunte bo kata before, how do they know it's really a traditional kata being performed and not something made up? Do they trust the competitor is being honest?

What the organizers should have done before this was an issue is state specifically which weapons are allowed. In addition to MatsuShinshii's five listed kobudo weapons, I'd say Eku (oar) is pretty well recognized. You don't see it often as most people with experience with it are usually higher rank, such as 4th dan. Maybe I'm off with that assumption though. I wonder how a judging panel would react to a timbe and rochin (Okinawa shield and sword). I've seen pictures and a video, but I've never seen it in person. I think it's one of those things everyone's heard of, yet no one's really seen. How would a judge something they've never seen before? Has anyone seen it used at a tournament? What about a nunte bo?

Welcome aboard

The bit of advice I give most often to members who've just joined... White belt is the hardest rank. I've always thought that. EVERYTHING is new. It all seems awkward and unnatural - hand techniques, kicks, stances, movement, kata, etiquette, saying "Osu" a million times, etc. Everything you learn after you've got the very basics down, you can relate to something you've previously learned. Not so at white belt. Sure, a kata like seiunchin is far more difficult than taikyoku 1, but by that point you've got a frame of reference. I had more difficulty with learning taikyoku 1 than any other kata. Not even close. I still vividly remember trying to learn it, thinking "I'll never get this." I've never felt that way about any other kata. I guess a better way to say it is it took far longer to click than any other kata I've learned.

Congrats!

MC Hammer pants should get the job done

Does Chuck Norris still wear those?

I appreciate meeting, training alongside, and learning from the people in my dojo. And my former dojo.

I don't wear anything under my gi top. The extra layer would probably kill me. I wear Nike Pro Combat spandex as underwear under my gi pants. It's a trick I learned from the Div I basketball players I used to work with. They don't bunch up, ride up, etc., and they don't get all saturated like cotton boxer briefs do. No chafing, no nothing I tried the Under Armour spandex initially, but they weren't comfortable. They were too stiff and thick. The seams on all of them started falling apart after a few months too. In fairness to Under Armour, I called them and told them about the seams. They told me to mail them to them and they'd replace every pair for free (and would ship them to me for free too). I didn't take them up on it because I started wearing the Nike ones and liked them better. I've seen the Nike Pro Combat shorts I own with a pocket for a cup, but I've never tried them. The Nike and Under Armour shorts are great for while you're working out, but they get pretty uncomfortable when you're not. They get pretty hot. I wear Nike Dri-Fit and Under Armour Tech t-shirts when I work out, and even when I don't. Ive never had a smell issue once. I only wear the loose fitting shirts, not the compression. Nike and Under Armour claim some sort of anti-microbial treatment in their stuff. But I have a few shirts I've been wearing for 7-8 years (I'm wearing one right now), and they've never smelled. Any anti-microbial stuff would've been washed away a long time ago. Both companies make shirts with different materials. I go with the cottony feeling ones (they're not cotton though), not the traditional spandex feeling ones. Under Armour's is the Tech shirt. No idea what Nike's is beyond Dri Fit. The Pro Combat t-shirts seem more like spandex, and are a compression fit. I've never tried them. Sorry if this is too much information

We also do Sanchin with our eyes closed often (Bulltahr and I are in the same organization- Seido Juku) too. We also occasionally have people pushing us from different directions and holding our arms to resist our movement. We do all our kata with eyes closed - not every time; rather we've done every kata with them closed on occasion. We also occasionally do them facing different directions. I know it sounds stupid, but it throws us off sometimes if we have our back to a different wall when we start.

Welcome to the forum

As far as I know, Lyoto Machida studied Shotokan karate.

I've seen the Meijin gis recommend quite a few times. I'd like to try one, if I've never seen one in person. I'm so difficult to fit for clothing (gis included), and I hate buying stuff sight unseen. I wish there was a section at a place like Dick's Sporting Goods that had racks of gis (good gis), equipment, etc. There's way too much online leap of faith equipment and uniform buying in MA.

We had a group of yellow belts (6th kyu at that school) who kept yelling "kiai!" at the school I used to train at. My sensei was in a really bad mood one day (he was going through a rough divorce and custody battle). The guys kept doing it, unintentionally. 15 minutes into class, he got fed up and lined us all up. We stood in straight lines and did single kihon techniques to his count, kiai-ing as loud as we could for the rest of the class. About an hour and 15 minutes. Definitely one of my most memorable workouts. It looked like one of those mass workouts Mas Oyama used to run. No one ever said "kiai" again. A classmate and I used to joke around in the locker room trying to get each other to do it just to get the reaction again. Neither one of us had the guts to though.

I've found scrubbing lightly with Oxy Clean spray works quite well on the pit stains and yellowing around the collar/lapel. My Shureido K-11 is about a year old now, and zero yellowing. Gotta love the Japanese gi cotton.

There's a big difference between resisting during sparring and resisting while the teacher's teaching/demonstrating. A profound difference. And the teacher shouldn't be using much force while demonstrating. The point of demonstrating isn't to hurt the student nor is it to show the class the teacher's technique doesn't work. That's what sparring is for. It's like a science class (I'm a science teacher, so I have to go there)... The demonstration and practicing the taught material without resistance are the lecture portion. Sparring is the lab. You prove and disprove in the lab, not during the lecture.

Yeah. I have no idea how to respond to a kid trying to use an obviously fake AR15 for a weapons kata. I genuinely think it sinks to a new low. Far worse IMO than glowing weapons set to music and fog machines, and I despise that stuff. If you allow it, what's next, someone breaks out a foam dart shooting crossbow? Fake flame thrower? Toy chainsaw? Crowbar? And where was the kid's instructor in all of this? Did he/she teach the kid the AR15 kata? Did the instructor actually think this was a good idea? In all fairness, kids are kids. The instructor is to blame if he/she knew anything about it. Just when you think you've seen the limits of stupidity, someone comes along and takes it to an unimagined level. The Michael Jordan of stupid.

Sorry I missed the discussion... Maybe heresy, but I like karate and kobudo taught separately. My previous organization had weapons in the formal syllabus. To be honest, it seemed like an afterthought. There wasn't much continuity to it. Certain ranks had specific kobudo kata attached to them. And there didn't seem like much rhyme or reason to it beyond increasing in difficulty. You'd have a bo basics at 3rd kyu, a bo kata at 2nd kyu, then another bo kata at nidan. Then a sai kata at sandan, and an oar kata at yondan. No formal drills, kumite, etc. It was basically "we haven't done this in a while, so let's do it tonight" or "you're coming up on promotion, so let's work on this." When my former sensei left that organization, he eliminated kobudo for a period while he studied up and found Shihan Nishiuchi's organization. After he was comfortable with it, he made it a separate entity. People could study kobudo exclusively, alongside karate, or not at all. Kobudo had its own curriculum, testing, ranking, etc. Kobudo class was during specific times. When it was part of the karate syllabus, it wasn't nearly as in-depth as it was when it got separated out. After it was separated, we became far more proficient with them. It was night and day. And people who weren't interested in it didn't have to do it out of obligation. There's a huge difference when half the class is doing something out of obligation and when the entire class is into what's going on.

It's pretty easy to resist something when you know exactly what's coming, let alone something that's being shown slowly while the instructor is explaining it. It doesn't matter what it is. Resisting it while the teacher is teaching it/demonstrating it to the class is pretty disrespectful. Unless the teacher tells you to resist. Let's take something everyone knows can work - a lead hand jab to the chin. If the instructor is teaching it and using a student to demonstrate it, how absurd would it be if the student moved and countered it? If I'm throwing it slow and saying what I'm doing before and while I'm doing it (and have no intention to throw it fast and land it with any force), even people who've never seen it before could easily get out of the way and punch back. Just like anything else in MA, a jab doesn't land every single time. If it did, it would be the only thing anyone would ever have to know. Proving it doesn't work every time is asinine. Taking up the teacher's time by proving it when he's trying to teach the class the technique is extremely disrespectful to not only the teacher but the entire class. Substitute jab with ANY other technique here, and the scenario is exactly the same. If it's not set up, you know it's coming, and it's coming slowly while the teacher is talking about it, whatever it is, it'll never work against resistance. Students need to be taught a new technique without resistance before resistance is added. This is common sense. A wrestling coach can't properly teach a fireman's carry without going slow and saying what he's doing while he's doing it against another person. He should go very slowly the first few times, then gradually speed it up. Then have his students do it slowly, gradually speed it up once they've got the basics of it down, then have them try to use it an an actual full resistance scrimmage situation. Skip a step, and it'll never work. Trust me, the fireman's carry is very effective when set up properly. And it can be countered. And it's very easy to counter when someone's telling you it's coming and going slow enough to show it and explain it to the crowd. I don't like the crescent kick to the hands. I'm also not much of a kicker, so my crescent kick to the hands would most likely be caught pretty easily. But that doesn't mean the technique is of zero value to anyone nor everyone else in the dojo. If I knew exactly when a crescent kick was coming at my hands, it would never be effective against me. If it was the last thing on my mind and the attacker set it up properly, it could easily work (I've never had anyone try it on me that I'm aware of). One thing I really like to do - knock down their rear hand with my lead hand, and step in with an overhand right. Or knock the hand down and throw a back spin kick (spinning hook kick in other schools) to the back of the head. Both of those have a pretty high success rate for me when my opponent isn't expecting it. I did it to a guy about 4 times one day and he laughed "why can't I stop this!" If I can consistently knock down someone's hand with my arm during resistance sparring, I'm sure people out there can make a crescent kick work the same way. Not everyone, and not every time. It's all about setup, timing, and knowing when it's a viable option. At the end of the day, you have to ask yourself if you're not going to let the teacher teach, why are you there in the first place? All you're doing is wasting your time and money. And everyone else's. Let the teacher teach. If you don't like what he's teaching, leave. Simple as that.

Sensei8, As a curiosity question - what did you wear when you visited Nakamura's dojo? Ninomiya's dojo?

Depending on the purpose of the visit, dan graded visitors should be allowed to wear their belt IMO. Some examples... My former sensei had a childhood friend who moved to Japan and attained a godan rank in jujitsu. He came back home for close to a year during his father's illness and subsequent death. He trained at our (karate) dojo and taught some classes there as well. We (the students) enjoyed his stay and appreciated his contributions to our dojo, even though we weren't a jiujitsu dojo. His insight into our own kata bunkai was a welcomed alternative. There was no student-teacher relationship between him and my CI; they taught each other and considered each other equals. Visitors during stuff like open floor/mat should wear a white belt. I worked out at a Uechi Ryu dojo during open floor times for a semester in college. I didn't need to be told to do so, but was anyway - I wore a white belt, even though I was a shodan in another school. I would've only worn my black belt if they INSISTED. I came to my present dojo after earning a shodan and invited to test for nidan in a school that was started by former Seido senseis. The curriculum is about 95% identical up to nidan. Nidan and up is where the former senseis' really made the change. I started as a 10th kyu (white belt), and tested for nearly every rank since (I double promoted the first 2 belts). 2 and a half years later, I'm a 3rd kyu. Yes, there was 15 years between leaving one place and starting at my current dojo, but I was just about where I was within about 6 months. Why start at white belt again? A - I didn't care B - my current teacher nor anyone else in my current organization gave me any rank C - what's the difference? D - I didn't feel like I was worthy of it anyway Visitors within our organization wear their rank. They're part of the family. We have several people of all different ranks within our organization drop in somewhat regularly, and they all wear their rank. One is a recently promoted 6th dan who owns a Seido dojo about 3 hours away. He comes to train with our CI from time to time. Another is a yondan who comes in every year during his fraternity reunion which is 10 minutes away from our dojo. He lives 3 hours away. He's brought his kyu ranked kids a few times too. If I go to our honbu or another Seido dojo, I wear my rank. If you're exchanging ideas with the CI, working together, or giving a seminar, you wear your rank. If you're a student in the new dojo, or are attending open floor, you wear a white belt. My CI has had plenty of people wanting to join from different arts and karate organizations who thought they should be able to wear their own belt. None were allowed to. The only outsiders who wore their own belts were guests, not students.