aurik

So the last couple weeks have had their ups and downs. Last Tuesday (before the US thanksgiving), our CI had us practicing kicks (with bags, our partners holding them), and I was starting to get really into things. I was getting some really strong, high right-footed mawashi-geris up there, and then... WHACK! My partner had let his elbow peek out on the other side of the bag, and my foot was just past the bag and solidly impacted his elbow. I don't *THINK* I broke anything, since I can still walk on it, but it feels pretty tight trying to flex the ankle in certain directions, and it is VERY tender to the touch. So this past Tuesday when he had us do bag work for our kicks, I decided to focus on my left kicks. He's not particular about HOW we do our kicks in the adult classes -- he wants us to find a technique and rythm that works for us. So, I did a lot of left kicks. My left front kicks are so-so, the side kicks are okay, and my left roundhouses were actually pretty strong. Left crescent kicks were okay as well. Now the spinning hook kick and spinning back kicks... well, I really don't want to talk about them Which means, of course I need to work on them a LOT more. Now on to the really good news. Today I tested for (and passed) brown belt (sankyu). He generally is in a state of continual evaluation for us, especially for those of us progressing to higher kyu and dan grades. So today's test was fairly straightforward. He had us do our hojo undo at random (still in English for now). He then had us perform Sanchin twice. The other student was testing for gokyu, so he had us work through all of the kicks and combinations for the kicking exercise, and then we did the kicking exercise a couple of times (he had me call out the kicks on one of them). He then sent several of the students off to work on rank material, and then we did our dan kumite drill. We first did the drill just in the mirror, then he asked me to demonstrate it against him -- (with appropriate social distancing). For sankyu he really was only looking for the attacking side, which I did without any hiccups. I then demonstrated the defending side -- I had a couple of hiccups here though. Again, that wasn't required for the rank I'm testing for so I wasn't too worried. Finally we got to kata. We started out with everyone doing kanshiwa, then he sent off the yellow belts to practice that on their own. We next did kanshu as a group, and then he had the other candidate demonstrate on her own. He had some corrections for her, especially on her nukite attacks -- he wanted to see her use more hip, less shoulder on those. We then moved on to seichin. We first demonstrated this as a group, and then he had me perform it solo. During the kata, I caught myself in two substantial errors (or I should say, I realized them as soon as I made them) - first of all, I let my center of gravity get too high on the final crane block. I didn't lose my balance, but I had to hold that position for far longer than is necessary while I waited for me to regain my balance). Finally, on the last sumo stance/elbow strike combination, I did not hold that position as long as is generally accepted -- of course, this was right after I made the previous error so my brain was a bit flustered. So when it came time for my corrections, our Sensei told me "don't hold that leg up position so long. Make it look just like the other two in the kata". -- I didn't mention to him that I was struggling with balance at that time He also mentioned how the last sequence should be three separate techniques. His final correction was regarding the side-to-side blocks in the beginning of the kata -- apparently I haven't been extending them as far as I should, so that's something else to work on. He then handed things over to his father, who talked to me about the difference between hard and soft techniques, and at brown belt, they want to see us finding the balance between hard and soft techniques. He used those side-to-side blocks as an example, showing how I was doing them (hard and enunciated) versus how they can be done (soft, flowing and kung fu-ey). In the end, our Sensei said that we both passed, and he wanted to see us working on those corrections before our next testing. Here are the obligatory pics:

The handles he's got are about 24" long. I'd imagine a 10lb sledge would work as a substitute if you've already got one. Otherwise, it's cheaper to just make your own -- get a cheap plastic pot, some concrete mix, some nails/screws, and an appropriately thick dowel. You can do a batch of them for less than 10 bucks each. There are several videos on YouTube on how to do it: is one.

Congratulations on your 3rd degree!

In our organization, all gradings are technical. However, there is a huge difference between godan and higher dan grades. At Godan, you are tested over the entire curriculum. At rokudan and higher, you are only tested on the three core kata (sanchin, seisan, and sanseiryu).

Our CI won't invite someone to test unless he feels that they're ready. During the test, if a student makes mistakes, he has three options: 1) If the mistakes are minor and he's testing for a fairly junior rank, he'll pass the student with comments. 2) If the mistakes are a bit more serious, he may pass the student but note in their file that they'll need to spend an extra month or two in their new grade before they're eligible to test again, or 3) outright fail the student. He doesn't fail students often, but then he also usually does pre-tests the week prior to a grading to see if students have a sufficient grasp of the material before grading. Dan gradings are a different story. They're only done twice per year, and you must complete (and pass) a 3 month test prep cycle before grading -- if he gives you corrections during that test prep cycle and you can't incorporate them into your technique, you may need to wait for the next grading. Additionally, each section of a Dan grading is scored, and if your total score isn't above a certain threshold, you don't pass. I've not heard of people failing dan gradings, but I have heard of people who sustained injuries in the cycle leading up to the dan gradings and were unable to test.

I'm going to guess they are about 10lbs. They're not all that heavy if you hold them close to the weighted end. However, if you hold them towards the free end of the handle, then the leverage multiplies that effective weight by several times. I'm guessing that since we can't do our traditional kote kitae conditioning, he's going to use these other tools to help us with our conditioning.

Our CI is planning his annual dojo tournament for December'ish. Each division shows up at a specified time, kata only. I think he also plans on doing an online-only tournament for his online-only students. His instructors will do the judging. As far as the local/regional tournaments, as far as I know they've all been cancelled for the year.

This week has been pretty interesting, in both good and bad ways. First, the bad. My neighbor has COVID, and he is recovering from a pretty bad case of it. He apparently was in the hospital for 6 days, and he is still on supplementary oxygen (18 days into it). I haven't seen him lately, since he's been cooped up in his guest bedroom, but my wife saw him briefly yesterday while dropping off their kids' schoolwork. He's still looking pretty weak. This guy is/was a West Point graduate and (until now) has been doing the Ragnar relay race each year. He's definitely a lot fitter than most mid-40's guys out there. And he got whammied by it. So it can really hit anyone, and hard. The good news is he's now on the mend though. This is the second person in our close circle who has been hit by COVID -- my sister-in-law got it last month. So as a result, most of the counties around us are moving to level red in restrictions. No more indoor dining at restaurants, no gatherings with more than 2 families, and gyms must drop to 10% of capacity, or 10 people per room. Fortunately our dojo has 2 rooms (an upstairs and a downstairs), so it shouldn't affect us too much. One statistic that scared the hell out of me, though. In Boulder (which is just 10 miles to the east of us), if you put 10 unrelated people in a room, there is now a 43% chance that at least one of those people has COVID. Scary stuff. So our family is locking things down as much as we can. The last thing we need is for our son to have to quarantine because one of us got COVID, and frankly both my wife and I are likely at higher risk. We recently got ourselves a chest freezer, and we'll be doing a Costco run to stock it up this weekend, and then we'll stay at home as much as we can and wait things out. Fortunately since our son is in a charter school, he can still do in-person learning. They've only had 4 confirmed cases of COVID at his school, and they all were infected from outside the school, so I have to commend all of the parents, staff, and teachers for that. Now on to the MA stuff. At some point over the past few weeks, my sensei came into a set of chi ishi, or "stone mallets". In this case, they're basically a brooimstick with a concrete weight on one end. He got them out last night and had us work with them a bit. The nice thing about them is that you can adjust their effective weight to your own strength by choosing where on the handle you hold them. Hold it right below the weight, and they're pretty light. Hold them at the far end from the weight, and they're brutally heavy. I picked somewhere closer to the far end for most of the exercises. And they seemed a good heavy weight at first. And after a couple sets, my shoulders were screaming at me, telling me how much of an idiot I am. But today they're just sore in a good way, telling me I gave them a good workout. Also, our CI is having us do (kata) tournament prep. Working with us on how a tournament kata is different from the traditional kata. He had intended to do a tournament around April of this year (and bought all the trophies with the year 2020 on them), so he's looking at doing a tournament in December. He's thinking of basically having each division coming in at different times for their part of the tourney, and of course there would be no sparring this year. But it'll be fun.

Yeah, we're having a huge COVID resurgence here, too. Fortunately we have enough space in the dojo to do in-person training with 10 students (per room). I'm glad to hear that you're still training despite all of the craziness going on out there. Keep up the good work!

Indeed it does! There's a running joke in our dojo. By itself, "Keri" means kick. When used with an adjective, it becomes "Mae-Geri", "Sokusen Geri", "Mawashi-Geri", etc. "Geri" by itself means "diarrhea", and the Okinawan masters will laugh at you if you try to use it (by itself) to say kick.

It doesn't need to be a high hop, but the idea is to quickly change stance while the opponent is preoccupied with your hand work, so you can do a (rear) roundhouse kick with the foot formerly in the front. Quickly getting my center of gravity high enough to do that switch is where my challenge is.

Latest update: I'm still making good progress on Seichin. I'm pretty comfortable with performing it with a count, but I still have a ways to go on it performed solo. Last Saturday our Sensei had us perform kata solo in front of him, and he told me it looked pretty good (with no corrections). That almost never happens, unless he's planning on testing you soon and doesn't want to mess up your groove. Also, since we can't spar as a general rule, he's developed some sparring combinations he wants us to practice -- he will be including these on tests for advanced brown belts (nikyu, ikkyu), since it doesn't look like the pandemic is going away anytime soon. Most of them are pretty straightforward, but I'm struggling with one of them -- it consists of front jab, reverse punch, front cross, then a hop to switch feet followed with the roundhouse. With my size and knee issues, the hop is what makes things hard on me. Soooo, it means I'll need to practice it a LOT more. Since this week is a testing week, (and based upon the lack of feedback I received over the weekend), I asked my sensei if I was testing this coming week. He replied with a long discussion of how politics come into play with shodan gradings, he wants to make sure that when he presents my case to our organization head, he wants to make sure that there isn't any pushback. So, test next month. But he said that based upon where I am and how I'm progressing, he's pretty confident I'll be testing for Shodan in about a year and a half (barring serious illness or injury of course). I don't mind the wait -- I just wanted to know so I could prep apprpriately. Also, I think it's good for Zach to see me having to wait longer between gradings (and look at the bright side of it), because his gradings are also going to get farther and farther apart. So all in all, I'm happy with where I am now, and I know what I need to work on over the next couple weeks and months. Thank to all of you for your encouragement, it's really been helping!

Generally our nukite conditioning includes Sanchin kata, which we perform thrice in every class. During the entire kata, you're expected to keep your nukite tight, and he periodically will come around (pre-COVID) to apply pressure to your hands to evaluate the strength of your nukite. Also, during hojo undo, we're expected to keep our kamae tight, which results in a strong isometric contraction of the flexors and extensors in the forearm. We also occasionally will do fingertip push-ups as well. As far as how is MY nukite conditioning? As I mentioned, I'm comfortable striking a heavy bag, but I am not ready to try breaking boards with a nukite. I've seen videos of Uechi-Ryu masters doing so, but they've gone through a lot more hand/finger conditioning than I'm willing to do.

At our dojo, a student above a certain rank can ask to serve as an assistant instructor for a class. Generally if the class is intended for a given set of ranks, the assistant instructor should be at least one grade above that. (e.g, a beginner's class is typically 10th kyu - 8th kyu. The assistant instructor should be at least 7th kyu). In such a situation, the students will refer to the assistant instructor as "Sempai" (as opposed to sensei). We also have a certain set of classes that are all ranks (and sometimes all ages). In this case, our sensei will break us up into groups to work on rank-specific drills, and he'll often ask a senior student to work with his/her juniors on their techniques. For example, last weekend he asked me to work with a couple of different groups of junior students on their rank material. He then rotated through the different groups of students to answer questions and offer corrections. Towards the end of class, he worked with me on my own rank material, so in the end, I got to help teach (and reinforce my learning of) most of the white/yellow belt material as well as my own rank material.

Congrats!

Like many Japanese/Okinawan organizations, we have 10 kyu grades and 10 dan grades. As a general rule, each Uechi-Ryu organization is headed by a 9th or 10th degree (including ours). I've had the privilege to train with the heads of two different organizations, ours (James Thompson, judan) and Konan Kai (Itokazu Seiki, kudan). Both of those seminars were extremely enlightening, and I only remember a small fraction of the material they taught.

As a Uechi stylist, we do train in nukite from our very first class. Sanchin is our fundamental kata, and we train it with the nukite strike. We are expected to maintain isometric tension in the hands during the kata, most especially at the kime segment of a strike. At higher kyu ranks, your instructor will apply pressure to your fingertips to ensure that your hands are sufficiently strong. Almost every one of our kata includes nukite strikes, but they are selective in their targeting. In sanchin we target the shoulder joint, obliques, and clavicle. In kanshu, we target the oblique muscles, and in seichin/seisan we target the groin and throat with our nukite. These are not intended to be used in sparring situations or combat against a prepared attacker, but more in street self-defense. By the time one of us gets to senior kyu ranks, we've trained the nukite sufficient that I'd be pretty confident that if I needed to use a nukite in a self-defense situation that I'd know where to hit someone to do far more damage to him than me. This also applies to several of our other weapons, such as the boshiken (think of a palm heel strike with the thumb tucked in, where the thumb is the striking point), and the shoken (one-knuckle punch). I'm not quite there with the tsumasaki geri (toe kick) -- I need several more years of conditioning for that one.

Since shutting down from the Coronavirus, our CI has changed things up quite a bit, offering different learning experiences for different students. He started out with purely virtual learning (via zoom), and some outdoor classes. Once we had guidance to open in-person learning, he added that to the mix. Right now, I'll take whatever training I can get. I prefer learning in the dojo, mainly because of the flooring. However, I'm happy to learn whatever and wherever our sensei teaches us. As a fellow Uechi stylist, I have to admit that I'm surprised your instructor is teaching you Kanshu so early. The two katas are similar enough that if you don't have a very solid grasp of Kanshiwa, you'll start getting the two katas messed up. One thing I'd recommend you talk to your instructor about (if you haven't already) is how to do forearm and shin conditioning on your own. Since we can't generally do partner drills during Coronavirus, it's best that you get some of that in on your own. Our school generally expects that by the time you reach brown belt (2 years or so in), your arms and shins are conditioned enough to tolerate reasonably heavy contact, and the drills at brown/black belt pretty much require it. Good luck on your journey!!

Hey Bulldawg! It's great to see another Uechi stylist here. Welcome to the forum!

There are no less than a dozen different Uechi-Ryu organizations worldwide. My understanding is the first major split happened when Kanbun Uechi died (at the time, it was known as Pangai-Noon Kung-Fu). Then after his son, Kanei Uechi died, another split occurred. Each organization is generally run by a 9th degree or 10th degree, and they all have slightly different ways of doing things. All Uechi-Ryu organizations usually teach the same 3 original kata, Sanchin, Seisan, and Sanseiryu. Most also teach the 5 kata derived from the originals, Kanshiwa, Kanshu, Seichin, Seiryu, and Kanchin. However at least one organization teaches Kanshu by its original name, "Daini Seisan" aka "second seisan" or "half seisan". They also teach the same junbi undo (warmup exercises) and hojo undo (accessory exercises). The major place organizations differ is in the bunkai. Most organizations have defined bunkai for Kanshiwa and Seisan, as these were formalized by Kanmei Uechi. However, not all organizations have formal bunkai for the bridging katas. For example, when I studied with another organization last summer, they didn't have a formal bunkai for Kanshu. Also, while the general pattern for each kata may be the same across organizations, some of the specifics differ, and many of these specifics act as a "signature" to identify which lineage a student has learned from. I've had the privilege to train with several different high-ranking instructors from different organizations -- I've not yet experienced a "our way is right and yours is wrong". Of course, I've always gone into the situations with the understanding that other organizations/instructors will teach things slightly differently. Each of these situations I've taken as an opportunity to learn new ways of doing things and incorporate them into my own karate.

Congratulations Noah! I hope you and Stephanie share many happy years together!

In the craziness that is COVID, our dojo got some good news. Our sensei has been looking to move to a larger space, because he's essentially outgrown his current space. The good news is that a nearby multi-use facility (combination physical therapy / yoga studio / fitness center) recently became available, and our CI was able to secure a 5 year lease at essentially the same rates that he's paying now. The new space has 2 floors, the lower floor is ~3000sf and the upper floor is ~1500 sf. This compares to 1700sf at his old space. He started up classes in the new dojo this week, and while there are many adjustments to be made (for example, he ordered a set of zebra mats for the downstairs space that he needs to get installed & set up), it was a lot of fun working out at the new place. Last night we had a very small class - me, a nidan, two green belts and one yellow belt. He started me out working dan kumite with the nidan (he's one of my favorite partners to work with), and then after we did that for awhile he had me work/teach the kicking exercise to the yellow/green belts. The green belts are already pretty comfortable with this, but the yellow belt is still learning the blocking part of this exercise. After that he had me work my rank kata (seichin), and he gave me a few pointers to work on. He wants me to stay slightly longer in the low stances following the elbow strike, there is one sequence he wants me to do in a rat-tat-tat sequence (fast, but still distinct), and he also had a couple corrections to my crane block/sukui-uke sequence. He also mentioned that he wants me to know these things, because with where I am, I'll be doing a lot of practice on this on my own. After that, I focused on those three sequences and worked them. The last part of the night was kata. A lot of kata. He started us with two times through kanshiwa, then twice through kanshu and twice through seichin. I got to rest a bit while our nidan worked through seisan, seiryu, and kanchin. He then had us face different directions and practice our kata. Normally in the old dojo this would really mess with us, but since this is a new space, it really didn't phase me much. However at the end, he had us do mirror-image kata. I did pretty well with kanshiwa, reasonably well on kanshu, but when we got to seichin I completely fell apart after the second turn. Overall it was a really good workout, and I left feeling like I'm making a lot of progress to my next goal.

Or school does junior belts, which are denoted by a white stripe through the center of the belt. Kids from 4-6 year olds do the "junior" curriculum working from white belt through junior 3rd kyu (brown belt). When a kid ages out from the junior program, they tend to work their way through the adult curriculum faster. The junior curriculum teaches the requirements for (adult) 9th kyu in a much more easy-to-digest format. By the time a student has earned their junior brown belt, they've learned all of the requirements for (adult) 9th kyu, along with bits of the requirements for (adult) 6th kyu. We do also have junior black belts - they have the same time-in-rank and technical requirements, but a student can test for shodan-sho (junior black belt) at 11 or so. It's also not uncommon for a student to test for nidan-sho and (adult) shodan at the same time. It has been our CI's experience that most of the students who earn their junior brown belt continue on to earn their black belts.

One other thing that I haven't yet seen mentioned here is "flexibility". Not physical flexibility, but flexibility in teaching methods. Not every student will necessarily learn best from the same methods. Have more than one way to present the material, because different presentations will resonate with different students. What is also helpful is the flexibility to present material differently for students at different stages in their MA journey. For example, one of our fundamental techniques is the wa-uke (aka watari-uke, aka circular block). As a novice student (white/yellow belt), the student is expected to demonstrate it as a simple funnel that begins straight down in front of them and then rotates through 270'ish degrees to the ending position. Somewhere around green/brown belt, the student learns that if you leave your arm loose through most of the movement and let the shoulder *snap* it into place, the block gets a LOT faster and more effective. Also, they learn that the fundamental wa-uke they perform in their beginner's kata can be abbreviated/modified to block different sections of the body. Finally at senior kyu/dan levels, the expectation is the student will start doing two-handed wa-ukes, where the off-hand will perform a small guide block while the blocking hand will perform the snapping circular block as before.

Our CI has modified the kyu requirements to eliminate the two-person drills, and he has added additional requirements to make up for their omission. For students who are testing for dan grades, he typically runs a 3 month test prep cycle. What he is doing now is assigning each student a partner to train with, getting a signed waiver from each student (or their parents), and allowing those designated partners to spar against each other and do 2-person drills against each other. This does put the brown belt students (sankyu & nikkyu) in a bit of a pickle, since sparring is required on their tests. What he is doing is teaching them material in advance (ie, seisan kata & bunkai) so that when requirements ease up enough that students can touch each other again, he'll be able to modify the time-in-grade requirements -- if a student spent extra time in sankyu or nikyu, then he can reduce the time-in-grade requirement from ikkyu->shodan. Now for students who are members of the same household, he allows them to do 2-person drills with each other (of course). So that does give them a bit of an advantage.