JR 137

I know you say it with the smiley at the end, but I believe Mas Oyama is the most influential after the founding fathers' generation... Each IKO (how many are there now, 5?) claims several million karateka Then add the numbers from the following well known international Kyokushin offshoots: Seido Juku Seidokaikan Ashihara Enshin World Oyama Daido Juku Kudo Zendokai Then there's independent Kyokushin dojos. Then there's local offshoots (a former Kyokushin or offshoot karateka starts his/her own school without using the Kyokushin name, and a few of his/her senior students do too). Then there are the schools that don't have an Oyama lineage, but changed the way they did kumite once Kyokushin started gaining popularity. IMO, after the founders, more karateka can most likely trace their lineage back to Mas Oyama than any other person. Perhaps being a Seido Juku student, I'm a bit biased. Maybe there is/was another Funakoshi student who stayed Shotokan that can rival Oyama's numbers? Based on numbers (anecdotal, not actually counted), I'd have to say the Gracies with BJJ. If you limit it to the last 20ish years, Gracies, hands down. The last 50ish years, Oyama.

That's really cool! JR, if you post to YouTube, you can edit your upload, and mark it as private. Then only those you share the link with can view it. But, if you share it here, anyone viewing this page can view it. Thanks. I thought it was something like that, which I'm ok with. I just don't want it showing up in anyone's search, and I don't want the absurdity that goes with the comments. No idea how the comments aren't moderated somehow.

YouTube has all Kyokushin kata. Seido isn't full contact any more. Some dojos focus a lot on point fighting, but mine doesn't. We basically do knockdown, but with protective gear on. The system I used to be in did bare knuckle and padded continuous kumite. With gear on, some people hit harder than when we didn't wear it. The same is true in my current dojo. It all depends on who you're sparring against.

The tournament I'm competing in is a closed tournament; it's Seido Juku only. Being the 40th anniversary of Seido's founding, there's a week-long event with a tournament at the end. There'll be people from Seido dojos all over the world, so it's a good thing. I competed in a few open AAU tournaments and a knockdown tournament during my first karate stint about 17 years ago. I got turned off to point fighting after 3 times. The preparation for it was far better than competing IMO. We don't do Gekisai Dai ichi and ni in Seido; our Gekisai Dai is Kyokushin's Gekisai Dai that Mas Oyama taught from his Goju days. It's pretty much Gekisai Dai ichi. I like Gekisai Dai more than Pinan 4, but Pinan 4 is physically harder. Higher risk, higher reward IMO. When I get closer, I'll video myself then consult you and the rest of the crew for posting directions.

I'm getting the Fitbit Blaze for my birthday which is in a few weeks time from my fiancee. For me I wanted it for the practicality for my placement and work so I don't have to pull my phone out of my pocket to see who is contacting me. I personally don't need the GPS considering it would also use my phones GPS if I ever needed it. Also it is about $70AUD Cheaper than the Surge. I'm contemplating the Blaze. I have a friend who can possibly get me one for $125 (they'll retail for $200 here; and it's not stolen or anything like that). It'll all depend on my mood, finances, and if I like it after seeing it in the flesh. Not sure if you're interested in the Charge HR, but it'll tell you who's calling when paired up to your phone. It won't show text alerts though.

I was waiting for Pinan 4 and 5, Oshishinobu. I love seeing different versions/variations of kata I practice. I got talked into competing in June by my 5 year old daughter. Going to do kata and kumite (point fighting) in Seido's 40th anniversary tournament. I wouldn't do it, but there will be people from Seido dojos from all over the world, so it should get interesting. And my daughters are too cute to say no to (other than when it's detrimental to their wellbeing). I have to figure out how to post videos to YouTube, just as importantly keep them private and turn off comments. It would be good to get some feedback from people who I don't train with. Gotta figure out which kata too. I can't do kata above my rank, so Saiha and Seiunchin (my favorite katas) are out. I've done Pinan 3 in a tournament before, so I'm leaning toward Pinan 4. I'm thinking Gekisai Dai, but it's a lot easier for me; I'd rather do a more personally challenging one.

That's funny, Naihanchi cho Dan in a kilt, I have seen it all now I'm sure. Trust me, you haven't seen it all. At least, I hope you haven't. Some things, you just can't unsee. Has nothing to do with your kata in a kilt, Oshishinobu; just saying.

Solid post!! While lineage might provide something positive, it's what the student does with that lineage that might make a difference. If my lineage came from Kanazawa Sensei, as an example, then that might mean something, but it's what I do within that lineage that makes the difference...either I can or I can't. My thoughts exactly. Lineage can give some credibility, such as if you're writing an article or a book, or as a speaker. People will most likely listen up and pay attention if you were some big shot's uchi deshi or the like. But once you're on the floor, as you say, the proof is on the floor. That lineage won't keep you from getting laughed off the floor if you're a paper tiger.

Looks great. The music was a bit of a let down though

I think it's important when discussing differences between splinter groups, so to speak. For instance if you have 2 Shotokan practitioners or Goju practitioners comparing and contrasting their ways, it's good to know where those stylistic potentially came from. But that's pretty much it. Does my lineage of my teacher to Tadashi Nakamura to Mas Oyama make me any better than if it was my former Sensei to his teacher to Nakamura to Oyama, or me to Sensei X to Kanazawa to Funakoshi? It'll help understand/explain why I don't certain things, but it doesn't make me better or worse. The most important part of my lineage is the person standing in front of the dojo while I'm in class that day.

I saw somewhere that someone was claiming Frank Dux was actually Frank Clark, who fought in the first World Open Karate Championship (aka the tournament in Fighting Black Kings/Strongest Karate). Talk about misguided clowns. I love the Frank Dux stories. My favorite Dux claim has to be his 150 wins in a tournament (or something like that). Someone did the math and calculated that in a single elimination tournament, it would take about 1.5 million people entering it. Can't get enough of Frank Dux!

I'm not sending her to that dojo. She comes with me. Where I go, it's $55 for adults, and $45 for kids. There's $10 off for each family member (1 adult pays full price). So it's $90 for both of us ($55 + $35). She had to wait until she was 5 to get in, and she had to 'audition' so to speak. My dojo doesn't take kids under 6, but if there's an adult who's been training, my CI will let a 5 year old try a few classes to see if they're mature enough. His criteria is if they're focused and can follow directions. He saw all he needed to see in the first 10 minutes to say she can stay. She started at the end of November. She's been going once a week for an hour because she's usually too tired after school or has other activities during the week. I get her in twice some weeks. There's 4 classes she's able to attend, and no limit on which nor how often. The best day of my karate life was her first day. I was far prouder of her training than anything I've ever accomplished in the dojo. Still am. I have an almost 3 year old that begs to go and is her practice partner at home. I just wish we had a family class where kids line up next to their parents. I talked to my CI about it, but we don't currently have the numbers to do it. It would be me and one other parent. He says he'll let us do it during special workouts down the road, but she's not capable of hanging with us during those yet.

I know the quality of instruction there is pretty good, as it's a dojo in the organization I used to be a part of (my former Sensei left the organization and moved his dojo closer to his home). They've calmed down a bit and have distanced themselves from their Kyokushin and Seido (when Seido was bare knuckle) roots, but the quality is still better than most places around. It's just expensive. Most places around me have gotten rid of the monthly rate with a yearly contract, and have gone to black belt plans. You pay a fixed amount of money, up front or with money down and monthly payments, and you stay until you earn your black belt. Once all the glorified daycare TKD McDojos in the area did it (not all TKD is this, please don't feel like it's a blanket statement), just about everyone else followed suit. It seems like a me all the full time professional dojos do this, while the part time ones that are run by people with day jobs are month to month or even pay per class.

It's been a busy 2 weeks, between doing a ton of stuff for work, and having the winter break. It's actually harder during breaks to get anything done, because my kids are also off. I've stayed at 210 the last 3 weeks, +\- half a pound. Since I've cut my portion sizes to more realistic sizes, I can't eat as much as I used to. I took my mother out for lunch last week to a place my wife and I used to frequent (she can't anymore due to allergies). I ordered what I used to, and my mother ordered something similar. I used to finish mine, then finish my wife's (about a quarter of her meal). I couldn't finish mine. That's a new one for me. Hopefully I'll be able to go pretty hard the next few weeks. I'll try my best to drop 10 lbs the next 4 weeks. A little under 3 lbs per week doesn't seem too unrealistic. As for weighing myself - first thing in the morning after going to the bathroom and righ before getting in the shower. It's the only way to get consistent readings on a regular basis.

Very true; have to cater appropriately to who is coming through the door. I only teach adults, or 14+ if they have an adult to acompany them and show appropriate maturity, and so anything less than an hour is indeed insufficient. However, 30 minutes for a child is often more than enough; most children struggle to focus on a task over 20 minutes. Now, there is the question of the cost; is that 30 minutes worth the money paid by the parents? In that sense, even when I did teach younger children I did teach for an hour; I would focus on 20 minutes or so of Karate, and then fill the rest of the time with aerobic exercise and karate themed games. I did not frustrate myself by trying to get kids to do what they just can't, but they still learnt something and walked away able to say they enjoyed the class. I checked out a place for my daughter when she was 4. 1/2 hour once per week. The half hour part is fine, but I should be able to bring her more than once a week. The option to go twice would have been so much better. Cost for 1/2 hour, once a week - $85 per month. Plus a contract. Price and contract aren't anything others aren't doing though. Ridiculous. They have a nonsense justification - more than once a week burns them out, and the contract teaches them commitment. 4 year olds don't get burnt out by playing for a 1/2 hour twice a week, and a contract certainly doesn't teach a 4 year old commitment. It's not a McDojo, just questionable business practices/costs. The real reason for only going once a week IMO is so they can have more openings. Filling a class with 20 different kids 4 nights a week makes more money than the same 40 kids twice a week.

IMO, a 30 min class is a waste of time. You hardly get a chance to warm up, and it's over. Naw, a MINIMUM of 1.5 hours..2 is better. Not a waste of time to a 4 year old.

Depends on many factors. If the teacher can get done what needs to be done in an hour or so, then so be it. Different teachers teach differently. Teachers who like to go into every part of the syllabus every class will require more time. Teachers who like to talk will require more time. Our dojo has the reputation as being one of the toughest dojos in Seido, according to several high ranking students from other dojos who've dropped in to take class. We do the 3 Ks of karate just about every class, and there's no stopping. It's one thing to the next, to the next, like clockwork. No water breaks, sitting or waiting around (except brief meditation before we start and after we're done). Nothing's cut short, and the pace will slow down when necessary, but in adults' class with students who've been at it a little while, there's very little of the instructor talking to the entire class; he'll correct individuals during drills. We get a workout while training. When our students go to honbu to test, we're consistently better prepared and in better "fighting shape" than most others. When class does go over an hour, we don't really cover much more or do much more; it's because he took more time explaining and going further in depth. How long it takes depends on the teacher's teaching style and the students. In the weeks before testing, things slow down a little to fine tune things, and afterward to teach new material, but it's back at it again once the appropriate students have their new material pretty much memorized. We came from Kyokushin (as did my CI), so I guess that's to be expected.

At my dojo (I'm not an instructor), it depends on the class and who's there. We have 2 classes per night. The first is usually kids, and the second adults. On Tuesday nights, we have a kata class that's supposed to be 30 minutes, followed by an upper ranks adults class (4th kyu and up). The kata portion typically goes 45 minutes or so, with no formal warmup (beginner kata are the warmups). At the end, the instructor usually says "whoever is staying, you've got 5 minutes until we begin." The second class typically goes about an hour - hour and a half. It ends when he's gotten through, and when we've gone over what we wanted to. That night is taught by my CI's right hand man. Wednesday night is all ranks adults followed by black belts. The all ranks class starts and ends on time (1 hour). Th black belt class ends when my CI is done (I've heard about 1.5-2 hours), but is scheduled for 1 hour. I'm not a black belt, so I'm not sure. The other weeknight adult classes typically go an hour and a half, scheduled for 1 hour. If there's more beginners and/or kids (the ones who are under the adults curriculum, but 14ish), then he'll finish on time, as there's only so much lower rank material to drag out. He runs right on time Saturday mornings, as he has some family obligations. To make a long story short, everything is scheduled for an hour. When appropriate, he sticks to the hour. When appropriate, he ends when we're done. We also have needs based classes, such as tournament prep classes. Those are once every 2-3 weeks before our annual benefit tournament, typically going 2 hours. We have a few testing for a few different dan ranks in a few months. He has a Sunday class that'll go 2 hours or so.

I'm sure they've come across people who aren't so nice, Sparticus. And I'm sure they know the laws inside and out, so they'll have few problems crying about it in court. Hopefully Australia has stricter lawsuit regulations than the US. As to how they'd handle themselves if someone went to their dojo, GKR is all point fighting, and according to a thread here (and I've seen similar elsewhere), lower ranks aren't allowed to hit upper ranks during sparring. I'd bet anyone with any decent amount of skill wouldn't have too much to worry about in a "challenge match."

Thanks again, tallgeese. You bring up some very good points about effectiveness and training. And I totally agree with striking arts and long term training. My first go-round with karate was a Kyokushin offshoot. It was easy to figure out what worked and what didn't, and where my flaws were through knockdown karate. But that hard style training had its limits in time. When I went to start up again after 15 years away from karate, Kyokushin was on my radar. After I looked around, I didn't persue more because I knew I wouldn't hold up more than a year or two this time around. I'll be 40 in June. I basically had the mentality of been there, done that. No one's getting any younger. Full contact/knockdown is great for a college aged guy, at 40, it's time to stop being a punching bag. There's people out there that do that all their life, but they're the exception, not the rule IMO.

I always like your posts, tallgeese. Do you think BJJ's strong central control/adhered to standards/I'm trying to put a description to it is due to it being new, relatively speaking? I think there's a handful of BJJ schools/organizations out there compared to JJJ, which has been around since the samurai days. Give BJJ say, 100 years, and there will probably be a lot of splintering. Agree? Sorry, I'm just trying to pick your brain a little bit here.

I've heard Meitoku Yagi (Chojun Miyagi's successor) didn't have mirrors in his dojo, saying "I'm the only mirror my students need." Can't remember where I read that. On second thought, it may have been one of the senseis in Ti: The Spirit of Okinawan Karate.

I'd follow the format that's in place. Don't make drastic changes, but do the things you'd like to do and alter things you think should be altered. I wouldn't go in and change the entire structure of the class.

I think they have a conditioning class alongside traditional classes. Nothing wrong with that. My CI offers a "kumite conditioning" class every so often. Not required, and it's not part of the curriculum. It doesn't count toward attendance toward promotion, not that that's his benchmark. If there's a demand for it by the student body, the teacher is willing, and it's not a requirement, by all means do it IMO. Being in better shape can only help.

So I've got this straight... They came into an academic school where a sesnsei rents space to teach karate classes, and started handing out brochures to karate students during class and/or students waiting for class to start and students who've just finished? I know some people who would have had a violent solution to that one, and to be quite honest, I wouldn't hold it against them. I'd disagree with the methods, but I wouldn't fault them. My teachers and their teachers are from an era where challenges were common; almost expected. To the best of my knowledge, they didn't challenge anyone, but people showed up to their "house" with something to prove. After a few times, word got out, and it would stop. Sometimes it would take longer. It doesn't get much more disrespectful than what the GKR guy did. In a day of lawsuits, litigation, etc., things can't be done that way. They shouldn't be either, regardless of that. If faced with that, I'd call everyone into the middle of the floor, including the offender, and say something along the lines of "Goggle GKR's business practices and quality of instruction. Take his brochure. If you think what they offer is better than what I'm offering, go watch a class and take a free class with them. Ask the teacher how long they've been teaching. If they have a black belt with a white stripe through it, they took a weekend course to teach and haven't actually earned their black belt yet. If you're convinced they're better, go there with no hard feelings." Then I'd turn and tell him/her directly and calmly say "If you or anyone else steps foot in here or outside my door again, you'd better be ready to prove yourself." I'd follow up with a call to whoever was listed on the pamphlet. I'm sure they'd have a standardized rebuttal though.