JR 137

Kata and kihon (basics) are the theory, kumite is the practice (or application, if you will). As an example or two... My brother in-law is a NYS Trooper. In the academy, he learned how to hold and care for his gun(kihon). He went to a range and learned to fire it (kata), then he learned how to fire it in scenarios/drills (kumite). If he gets into a shootout (hopefully not), this'll be his "street fight." A student studying physics learns theories/laws and formulas (kihon). He/she then learns how to solve problems on paper (kata), then he/she goes into the lab and sees the whole process first hand (kumite). If he/she works for, say the police investigating car crashes, the "street fight" is looking at the entire scene and figuring out what actually happened. In both of those "street fights," the person uses what they learned and applies it to the real world. It'll never go exactly as stated in textbooks, as there's too many variables to consider, but they're equipped with the best choices to choose from. Kata gives you the opportunity to see/know the choices and make them work for you. What you do with them is up to you.

Thank you for sharing it with us. Your son is truly inspiring.

If this was 20 years ago, it could constitute neglect. In this day and age, with technology as you've mentioned, I highly doubt it could constitute neglect. I'm assuming your role is not running the day to day operations of the honbu, but rather the day to day operations of the organization as a whole, right? If your job is to make sure classes are being run correctly at the honbu, then it could be considered neglectful. If your job is administrative, then so long as you're in regular contact and are available immediately through technology, and available in person within a reasonable time, then you're not neglectful IMO. Would it be better if you lived in the honbu? Sure. For the honbu anyway Then again, isn't it your job to oversee the administration of all dojos in the organization? Isn't the honbu really more or less just another dojo in the organization (when all is said and done)? Criticizing you for not being there is like criticizing the president for not being in the White House 24/7. If you can just as effectively carry on your duties and communicate them from a remote location, then you're fine. If not, then there's a problem.

A few guys I train with wear the KI Mugen Orange Label. It looks great for a 10 oz. gi. Actually, it looks good for any weight gi. KI stuff, especially the tournament cut stuff doesn't fit me right. Not much else does either though, gis or clothes in general. I've been searching for a 10 oz. gi that fits right and is high quality. The only one I can think of is the Shureido K-11. At $175 it's out of my price range at the moment.

My favorite inexpensive heavyweight gi is Ronin's heavyweight. About $65, depending on size. It's pretty similar to a Shureido K-10, cut-wise. Shureido's material is a lot better IMO, but the K-10 is a $200+ gi, so comparisons either way are unfair. http://www.discountmas.com/heavweigwhit.html People also like KI's heavyweight and Mugen gis for about equal money. I think Ronin is a bit better in quality, and it personally fits me better. Stay away from the middleweight gis; they're garbage unless you're buying a Shureido or Tokaido. I haven't seen every single middleweight gi out their, but I've never seen one that was good other than the high end ones.

I do the gun defense Jackie Chan did in Rush Hour. The one where he takes the gun apart while Chris Tucker is still pointing it at him.

Kathryn promoted to blue belt on Monday night. Blue belt comes after white in Seido. She's so happy she got her blue belt and wants to wear it around the house. Blue is her favorite color, and she says she doesn't want any other belt. I know I keep saying she's improving so much, but she really is. The new material is going to be pretty hard for her. Every beginner, especially kids, struggle with Taikyoku 1. I thought it was the hardest kata to learn, and I've seen pretty much every white belt (without previous experience) struggle with it longer than pretty much any other kata, simply because it's nothing like they've done before. Once they get that one down, the rest aren't radically different IMO; it's mainly a matter of substituting different moves and steps. She'll get frustrated, and I'll help. To me, the best compliment from the instructors is that she loves karate. She's focused and determined. There hasn't been a single time when an instructor has had to keep her attention. She does the right thing; she's never been told to stand still, pay attention, etc. The instructors love teacher her. That's what it's all about IMO.

the best embroidery is done by the manufacturer during the process of making the belt, not after its already made. Eosin Panther and Isami embroider their belts during manufacture, not afterwards. Shureido and Tokaido most likely do too, but that would have to be ordered from Japan. Perhaps Shureido USA could order one directly. The impression I get from their site says they can embroider it themselves (Shureido USA is the importer/distributor, not the actual company) or they can order it embroidered by Shureido. A phone call would answer that question.

Choke sports is Isami, I believe. Isami is high quality stuff. If you want to see their belts, see a Kyokushin guy, as Isami is their unofficial brand. Then again, Isami sells stuff with Kyokushin logos rather than their own logo, so it's more than "unofficial." They have videos online of their manufacturing and embroidering process. Very high quality stuff. Tokaido is very well respected. I've seen their black belts, and they're very good quality, but honestly I've seen better. Far better than the majority of them out there though. It's not wasted money by any means. Shureido makes the best belts I've seen. Far more durable and solid than anything else. Embroidery is as good as whoever is doing it, as I don't think they'll be embroidered by Shureido (Tokaido too) unless you're ordering directly from them in Japan/Okinawa. I've seen Eosin Panther belts, and I'd say they're 99% as good as Shureido. Easier to get in the US, as they're based here, and their embroidery is top notch. If I was in charge of black belt ordering for everyone in my school, I'd easily go with Eosin Panther. Very high quality and embroidery for an honest price. I've heard their turn around time and service is equally as good as their belts.

I see what your saying, I appreciate you taking the time to explain it to me. I like that, and I'd like to think about that some. I'm always open to trying new things and new ideas. Sometimes they don't work and I just revert back. I'm open because I want my program to be a living thing that evolves, that's why I love these topics so I may feed off of them and take what I like lol. I do my main curriculum currently once a week, and do something different and often new on the opposing class day. An example would be on Tuesday I may do forms, then on weds day I could do sparring, or weapons, or kicking drills (I enjoy kicking drills) or whatever I see fit. I like having an open day each week to break up the monotony and do what I think will fit at that time. Its an interesting idea to rotate it in the man error described above though. What I posted was a very general outline. We do different stuff and my teachers have made it up as they go. It's not a 'I have to spend this much time on kata (or whatever else) today.' And just because you're focusing on kata for a while doesn't mean you're doing one kata over and over, with no variation. My teacher likes to keep the classes similar for a week. I usually go Wednesday and Saturday. There's a lot of similarity on Saturday from Wednesday night's class, but they're not the same. Sometimes he'll do something completely different from one night to the next, but not too often. A lot of it also depends on who's there that class. Casually observing, you wouldn't know he was following a format. It took me about 6-7 months to see the pattern. I like his pattern because everything gets covered in time, and it all comes together near the end. We're not going into a test thinking we have any outright deficiencies. I've seen other schools split the week with kata emphasized days and kumite emphasized days. My old organization's honbu did kumite on Monday Wednesday and Friday, and kata on Tuesday and Thursday. There was other stuff done on those days and you might spar on kata night and vice versa, but the emphasis was on one or the other. Seido's honbu does it differently. They have specific classes scheduled for different aspects. They have beginner, intermediate and advanced kumite classes, rank specific kata classes, etc. No one approach is inherently better than another. It all depends on the number of students, the diversity of ranks and ages, and what works for you. Seido's honbu schedule wouldn't work at our dojo, and ours wouldn't work there. My teacher likes to cover a lot of things in class and keep the pace up. Some guys from honbu come to our dojo periodically and love the change of pace. Our honbu reportedly focuses far more on specific things and class moves at a slower pace. The guys who come to our dojo say it's the toughest dojo in Seido because we cover so much and don't stop; it's go, go, go. Our students reportedly stand out (in a good way) when they're taking class and/or testing at honbu, so my teacher's approach works. That's not to say my teacher is better; just different. I haven't gone to honbu to confirm or deny any allegations My advice is experiment, but don't make drastic changes. Try to follow a pattern for 3 months (not scrapping your routine completely) and see how it works. If it's making a positive difference, go with it. If not, you didn't lose much. A week or two isn't really going to show you an overall picture.

Lex, Either you're overthinking it, or I'm under thinking it. I'll give you a bit of how it's been done in the 2 dojos I've been at... Lower kyus (10th-6th-ish) promote every 3 months, upper kyus (5th-2nd) promote every 6 months, and 2nd-1st is 1 year. In a 3 months cycle, you break up the emphasis of class into 3 parts - kata, kihon (basics, combinations, and other standardized stuff) and kumite. You emphasize on aspect every few weeks to a month. You have 1 hour class time, including 5-8 minutes of warmups, bowing in, etc., followed by another few minutes of light stuff to get going. Let's say 45 minutes of class of really being into things. 1st month- Once you get going, you dedicate 20 minutes to kata. Teaching new kata for rank, polishing older kata, etc. Once they've got the kata down, you start breaking the kata down into application. The remaining 25 minutes are spent as a mix of polishing previous material, some introduction to new basics/combinations, and sparring. 2nd month - 25 minutes spent on new basics. In Seido, we have standardized combinations in line drills (numbered to make them easier), standardized "self defenses" (numbered again), etc. The remaining 20 minutes are spent on kata and kumite. 3rd month - 25 minutes of kumite stuff. Standardized prearranged stuff, more situational drills, and emphasizing how to tie in basics and kata into kumite. The remaining time is spent on the other stuff. A week or two before testing - going through the syllabus, making sure everyone's on the same page, fine tuning, etc. Students who are on a 6 month cycle go through it twice. Their material is more in depth, and often more material overall for rank. There isn't an abrupt stop from one month to the next; it's a gradual progression. You don't have to do that order of things, you can do whatever order works best for you. The point of it all is to ensure that you've given the proper amount of emphasis on each aspect. Black belt level doesn't follow this. There's different time frames, promotion time tables, and so on. But there is an emphasis on aspects for durations of time. My old Sensei, who I used to teach under discussed this with us explicitly. I don't teach under my current Sensei, so I'm not sure how much he's planned it out or if that's the way it naturally works out. He does follow this, intentionally or unintentionally. The times are ballpark amounts of time. The number of weeks/month to month is a ballpark amount. It's all driven by the students' comprehension of the material.

I like it. That Nakamura guy knows his stuff Glad to see things are moving along. When are you opening up shop?

There's really no shortage of people who want to collect belts from different schools/styles. There's also no shortage of teachers who claim to hold black belts in several different arts. The people with black belts in several styles tells me jack of all trades, master of none. Michael Jai White holds black belts in 7 or 8 different systems. That tells me he showed proficiency in the basics of each style, and left before he really got into what makes the style what it is. Associate's degrees in 7 different majors or submajors doesn't equal a doctorate. Not even close. Cross training is a very good thing. The more you understand other ways of doing things, the more you'll understand your art. It's not necessary to hold and/or rank in other arts, or even be a formal student; working out with people informally in other arts can sometimes be more beneficial. Keep in mind that a lot of the big names in karate have experience in other arts. It's very common to see a founder of a karate system who held dan ranking in judo, or have some iado training.

I think it ultimately depends on the size of the school. My dojo is small; we have about 45 students. My teacher does a somewhat rotating curriculum. He'll spend more time in class on certain aspects, month to month. At our school, we basically have 3 different classes - adults, kids, and black belts. We don't have other rank specific classes because we don't have the class sizes to make it a necessity nor really a possibility. We have a kata specific class offered once a week that's immediately followed by a green belts (4th kyu) & up class though. Our honbu is the opposite. There's several hundred students, and therefore rank specific classes (along with a few "all ranks" classes). Their classes are more specific; they have kumite classes, kata classes, and general classes. It's the student's responsibility to make sure they attend a mix of class types. My old Sensei used to closely follow a rotating curriculum. On a 3 month cycle, he'd focus on kata the first month, kihon and bunkai the second month, and putting it all together with kumite the 3rd month. Black belt class was different. He'd somewhat follow a rotating schedule, but there wasn't the promotion time table like with kyu ranks, and students varied quite a bit more in rank and experience than in kyu classes.

I'd go rank specific videos. Cover the requirements for white belt (white and advanced white if you do that) - kihon, kata, and any other standardized stuff. Then the next color belt, as far as you wish to go. Rather than all the kata on one, all the kihon on another one, etc., so white belts are given a white belt syllabus, manual, and dvd. Upon promoting, they get the next series, and so on.

I think I passed my first a-ha moment onto a kid I was helping teach yesterday... I was going over kata with him (he's around 12 years old). I was trying to emphasize setting his hands, looking in the next direction, stepping strong, then twisting his hips and torso with the turn while timing the block with the turn, with the block and turn ending at the same (180 degree turn into low block in Taikyoka 1). It didn't mean much to him until I demonstrated the bunkai on him - arm lock into a throw. The light bulb lit up pretty brightly. His father who was watching and studied Uechi Ryu for quite some time smiled and nodded. After class, his father said to me "finally someone got through to help." My teacher gave me that same exact a-ha moment when I was starting out. I thought Taikyoka 1 was a worthless and unrealistic way of defending against multiple attackers until my Sensei showed me that bunkai and said we'd get into a lot more bunkai after I polish up the kata a bit more. Without bunkai beyond block, punch, kick, kata is a pretty much worthless dance.

Wait... You mean there's other things besides karate? I've got to get out more often.

I don't think at any point in my life I didn't wish my conditioning was better. Looking back at how I was in such great shape when I was wrestling, I never felt like it was good enough at the time. Do the best you can do and don't get hung up on it. You've got age and life experience on your side. Make them come to you and outsmart them. Make them pay for every mistake they make. Don't try to outpace them.

As Sparticus was getting at, the intent of the video will determine what you do. Are the videos instructional, demonstration, reference, etc.? Will there be verbal instructions, or will it simply be a video of someone performing a kata? There's a whole series of Kyokushin kata on YouTube. It has a karateka performing a kata to a count from someone out of view. No explanation of technique, not done fast nor slow; simply as it would be performed in the dojo with a teacher counting off steps. People criticized it a little in the comments section, but they missed the point: it's a reference. If you've been taught the kata and are home practicing it and draw a blank on a step. Or if you've just learned it and don't want to practice it wrong at home. Or for uniformity across dojos. For those purposes, it works quite well. For showing the world how pretty a kata can be, or for competition, it falls on its face. I really like Kanazawa's videos. My criticism of them is you don't know the counts and can't see what's going on too well when he has his back to the camera. If I were to do a video, I'd first do the kata like the Kyokushin video, followed immediately by the way Kanazawa does it. Playing devil's advocate... I understand the resistance to the videos. Kaicho Nakamura made Seido DVDs for each kyu rank, with all the material for each rank. He's not a big fan of them. According to my teacher, students in various dojos have used them to teach themselves stuff above their rank. Students have argued with teachers about what's right according to the videos. A student or two has been corrected DURING TESTING and told NAKAMURA '...according to your video...' It's not a common thing, and there's nothing to stop students from getting together and teaching each other stuff outside their rank outside the dojo, so take it as you will. We also have written reference manuals that people have cited when making mistakes and/or tried to learn from. Again, they're intended as a reference, not a teaching tool. As a student, I'd like videos to be available as a free reference. There's a few things I'm working on right now that I want to practice on my own, but I know I'll practice them wrong and do more harm than good. And I don't want to pay for a video that I'm only going to refer to about 5 minutes of. I know, I'm being cheap and shouldn't expect to have it both ways. The stuff I'd like is Seido specific, and no one's posted anything about it online.

I think BJJ is a bit of a wild card here with lineage. I think it's due to the heavy competitive nature of it and the Gracies making a name for themselves in MMA and the UFC. Same as (although possibly not as much as) karate back in the era of Kyokushin's Open tournaments' popularity back in the 70s and 80s. I think when someone makes huge waves, people want to learn their methods.

Indeed stupid will always be around. I've never witnessed it. My Sensei says no ones ever come into his dojo. He says he has witnessed it on several occasions at his teacher's dojo (Tadashi Nakamura's in NYC). This was in the 60s through the mid-late 80s. Nakamura wrote about a few "challenges" over the years in his autobiography. According to a few sources (not my teacher), Nakamura was given the nickname "Knock 'em out Nakamura" because of all the challengers getting knocked out. A friend witnessed a time when he almost put a challenger through a window. Perhaps the bigger the name, the more people want to be able to say they beat him and prove their superiority (in their mind). Add to that the population of NYC and the popularity of martial arts in general and karate in that era and area, and it's not as much of a stretch as it may seem. I guess at one time people thought the better fighter was proven to be the better teacher. We've smartened up as a society. If a 25 year old guy went to Phil Jackson's hypothetical basketball school and beat him in a challenge game of 1 on 1, no one in their right mind would think the 25 year old is a better coach/basketball teacher. Add lawsuits and MMA accessibility, and challenges have pretty much become a thing of the past. But as tallgeese says, stupid will always be around.

An absolutely horrible thing. An abomination of biblical proportions.

I've heard of Gankaku a few times, but never saw it. Just watched it performed by Kanazawa on YouTube. Very cool kata IMO*.Not knowing anything about its history, I'm guessing Kanku/Kusanku has very similar roots, as it looks like Itosu and Funakoshi could have developed Pinan kata from it. Pinan is from Kanku, but looking at Gankaku, if I didn't know better I'd say Pinan came from Gankaku. *Kanazawa will make any kata look great.

I'm not a comic book guy by any means. But this battle seems to be a brains vs brawn matchup. Not that Superman isn't smart by any stretch of the imagination, but I think Batman is craftier. He's got to be, due to his inherent weakness of being a human vs being whatever Superman and the rest of them are. I won't see it, simply because it's not my thing though. But it's an intriguing matchup.

A very good post. I have zero experience with TKD. I've thought about it, but I'm not going to commit to it for the sole aspect of kicking. I've never been able to half do anything.