aurik

I agree there is certainly a lot of room for self-expression in karate. In our dojo, our CI generally has at least three variations of a kata. The first version is the super-strong version where you very clearly enunciate each of your techniques. The second version is the "kung fu-ey" way where you try to get one technique to flow straight into one another. The third variant is a combination of the two, where you find your own expression, incorporating parts of the super-strong version and kung fu-ey version. For example, if you go on youtube and watch several different advanced practitioners perform the same kata, you'll see different interpretations in speed, power, and flow. I'm just now getting to this point in my training - as I'm learning Seichin (required for 3rd kyu), as I start to show proficiency with some of the sequences he says "Okay, now that you are understanding the super-strong version, why don't you try this version (shows me the kung fu-ey version). I've tried doing some of the more flowing versions of my katas, but I have a lot more training ahead of me before I get proficient with those.

Today was a very good day. Since our CI has opened the dojo to larger classes (up to 8 students), he's been permitting students to come twice a week. So I've been trying to do at least one (sometimes two) virtual classes in addition to two in-person classes. Also, this week our HOA finally opened up the pool for lap swim. It's limited to 5 people at a time, and you need to sign up in advance, but it was really good to get into a pool and swim some laps. I pretty much grew up on a swim team, so swimming laps is one of my favorite exercises other than the martial arts. When we all showed up at class today, it was just me, our sensei, and one of my fellow adults who I usually am partnered with (he's about my size), and his two kids (the older one is ~14 and the younger is 8 or so). There were two younger (18'ish) black belts who were supposed to come, but our sensei thinks they were instead planning on going to the afternoon black belt workout in the park. Since he's now able to do in-person classes, he's started testing some of the students. However, I haven't yet been in a class where he's been doing any of the tests, and he hasn't announced them in advance. Today we started with a slightly modiified junbi undo, followed by hojo undo, several of them picked out at random. I was feeling pretty strong today and things were feeling pretty crisp on my techniques. We then moved straight into sanchin kata. My technique felt strong and pretty accurate, and my endurance was holding up pretty well. However, instead of doing the second and third times through Sanchin, he had us do our basic kicks. Following this, he walked the other 3 students through Kanshu kata (required for green belt), and I focused on my technique while we went through it. He then walked us through Kanshu another 2 times for the benefit of the other 3 students, and he said he'd work them through it again. He then asked them to work on that while he asked me to do Kanshu on my own at my own count. He'd been giving me little pointers over the last few months and I tried to put them all into play. I felt REALLY good about that kata -- I think it's one of the best I've done so far. When I finished, he had one correction for me, and it's more a matter of his preferred interpretation. Towards the end of the kata, we do a 90-degree pivot south, step forward followed by a double hiraken-tsuki to the opponent's eyes, followed by a 180-degree pivot north. In my kata I did the pivot-step-strike, pause, turn around. What he wanted me to do was pivot-step, pause/set, then strike and turn with no pause. At this point I'm feeling really good about that kata, because he's now giving me interpretation corrections instead of basics or technique corrections. He then asked me to do Seichin (kata for brown belt). I'm still very much learning this kata, but it's improved quite a bit in the past couple of weeks. I managed to get through the whole kata without any major errors, and he didn't give me any corrections for that. I found that.. interesting. He almost always gives some kind of correction -- since this is a kata that's technically above my grade level, maybe he just wants to see me get the basics of it down first. He then watched the other students do Kanshiwa bunkai (since they are family, they can do 2-person drills). After that, he asked us all to do Kanshiwa. I tried to pace myself on this and focused on improving my technique. After we all did Kanshiwa, he asked us to go through the offensive side of our kicking drill. He asked the two youth students to announce the techniques, and I followed along with what I felt was one of my better performances. This happens to be one of those drills where it's a lot easier to do it with a partner, since at certain points of the drill, the partner's block will help set you up for the next technique (especially true for the two spin kicks in the drill). After the kicking drill, he lined us up to bow out. After we did our closing bows, he announced promotions for all of us -- 4th kyu for me, and 7th kyu for the other 3 students. It was a very nice surprise, and I felt that today I'd put in one of my best performances of those techniques so far. Here are some pics taken by the other adult student: https://i.imgur.com/azz9c0e.jpg https://i.imgur.com/RBbymEG.jpg When I got home, I shared the news with the Mrs and Zach. Zach was understandably disappointed because he hasn't yet been tested. A part of me knows that it's partly due to his age -- since he's not eligible to test for shodan-sho (junior black belt) until he is 11 or 12, our instructor is trying to space things out a little so he doesn't have a really long wait once he gets to the brown belt ranks. The other issue is that honestly he doesn't always try his best. There are times when our sensei has to remind him to get his kicks up, especially if he's not working with an opponent. I encouraged him as best as I could, and he seemed to cheer up a bit when I told him that I'm always willing to work with him on whatever he wants to. After that, we went to the local archery range and shot our bows for an hour and a half or so. I'm shooting a 60lb compound, and we've got him a 15lb recurve. Since the range was doing a father's day promotion, there were a LOT of brand new people there, so we could only shoot at 10 yards. I discovered on about my 3rd or 4th set of arrows that I really shouldn't be shooting at 10 yards anymore, as two different times I heard the *smack* of two arrows hitting each other, instead of the satisfying "thump" of arrows sinking into the paper and target. At least I didn't destroy any arrows in the process -- good arrows are not cheap ($10-15 each). Zach is definitely getting better with his bow as well, at 10 yards almost all of his arrows were in the blue, with at least half in the red. Once that other family left, we moved back to the 20 yard line, and I was still able to keep most of my arrows in the red (Zach wasn't doing quite that well, but most of his were still on the paper). After awhile, my left rotator cuff started bothering me, so I sat and watched Zach every other round. On the way out of the range, I showed my arrow with the damaged nock to the lady who was running the place. She told me that I really needed to replace that nock, or it would give out at the worst possible moment. At least it's only a $1 repair, and she can have it done tomorrow. All in all it was a REALLY good day.

In our school, every kata has a formal bunkai, except for the first (sanchin) and the last (sanseiryu). There is no formal bubkai for sanchin, because it is our foundation kata. Everything we learn is rooted in Sanchin. We do not have a formal bunkai for Sanseiryu because by the time a student is learning sanseiryu (3rd dan) they should be able to see lots of applications for each sequence. In addition to the formal bunkai, our CI periodically takes part of a class to teach self-defenses derived from the katas. He tends to rotate through these every couple of months, and each time these come up, i get new insights to both the kata and applications.

In Uechi-Ryu, we have a mantra, “Everything is rooted in Sanchin.”

So it's been 2 months since I last posted in here. My wife and I are both very fortunate compared to many others. I got laid off from my previous job at the end of February, but I was able to find a new position and started in mid-April. I work from home full-time, and my wife has to (gets to) go into the office twice a week, since there is a lot of her job that she cannot do from home. I've been continuing to train, trying to find the time to train on my own with my son at home all day long is pretty hard though. I have been doing the Zoom workouts our sensei has set up, and about 3-4 weeks ago, he started doing "personal training" sessions -- at first it was just one family group at a time, and now it is up to 5 students at a time. He has partitioned the dojo floor off with painter's tape to keep each student in their own area. He's also moving training to the lawn outside somewhat to reduce the risks and allow students to spread out more. The funny thing is, in the 6 weeks we've been training like this, the sessions have either been just Sensei, Zach, and me or just Sensei and me. I'm finding these 1:1 sessions and 1:2 sessions very valuable in that he's starting to teach me some of the subtleties in the kata that he generally reserves for advanced students (brown/black belts). While my endurance has most definitely suffered during these COVID times, my understandings of the techniques have definitely improved. For example, in our first kata, Kanshiwa, the closing technique is originally taught as "shuffle step forward while doing a left circle block, and a right one-knuckle strike". Last Saturday he told me, "Weelll, that technique is more of a downward pressing block." He demonstrated it for me a few times, and mentioned that same technique is in Sanseiryu (taught at 3rd dan), and somewhere around brown/black belt he expects students to transition to the new technique. Likewise, our Kanshu and Seichin katas have a sequence that at first appears the same on the surface, but are subtly different and have substantially different applications. The version in Kanshu can be interpreted as grabbing a guy's lapels, pulling him in towards you, then snapping a pair of leopard-fist strikes to his eyes. The version in Seichin is interpreted as a guy's reaching to grab YOUR lapels, and you do a downwards scooping block to bring him towards you, then snap the double leopard fists at his eyes. One thing that he mentioned I should start working on is our principle of "Everything returns to Sanchin". In other words, I need to focus on whenever I do a technique, my hands and elbows should return to a Sanchin posture, whether that is open-hand or closed hand. Likewise, when he had me doing our hojo undo (technique exercises, aka "kihons"), he noticed that sometimes when I was doing a left-hand technique, my right hand would droop a bit. He mentioned that if I worked on holding my hands "just so", tilted out, fowards, and down a bit, that would effectively lock them into place so they wouldn't droop. Also, holding my hands that way would work my forearms and strengthen my grip quite a bit. These are all little things, but I think I'm starting to get to the place where these little things will make a big difference in my Karate. Until next time! Thank you all for the encouragement!

Welcome, Gary!

In Uechi-Ryu, there is a saying, "Everything goes back to Sanchin". Sanchin is the very first kata we learn. Almost every class we do starts with 3 things: junbi undo (warm-up exercises), hojo undo (accessory/technique exercises), and sanchin kata. We typically practice sanchin three times in each class, with the CI walking through and evaluating people's stances and and sometimes pushing/pulling/striking them to test them. Our practice of Sanchin is also significantly different than the Goju-Ryu version. All strikes in Sanchin are spear-finger strikes, and our strikes are mostly soft. Your whole body will be tense as you chamber, your arm loosens up for a fast strike, and then towards the end of the strike, you tense the entire arm again. One other hallmark of Uechi-Ryu is the "ssst" breathing. During Sanchin, we are taught to keep the entire body tense throughout the kata. For each step, we inhale into the gut as we chamber, we hold our breath/tension as we strike, and then after the strike/reset, we exhale under tension with a "ssst". It's supposed to be a relatively shallow breathing technique. Why do we do it? According to my CI, we do it so that if we ever get into a real fight, we can absorb hits by an opponent in the commonly hit areas -- forearms, lats, pecs, abs, quads, and shins. (Keep in mind that we also train kote kitae, or "forearm forging", which strengthens the muscles and bones in the forearms and legs).

In Uechi-Ryu, we only have 8 kata (9 in some organizations) in our entire system - there are the original 3 katas from Pangai-Noon (sanchin, seisan, and sanseiryu) and 5 additional "bridging" katas which were added later. We have sanchin, 3 kyu level katas, and 4 dan level katas. Each kyu kata is required for 3 kyu grades -- for example, Kanshiwa is required for 9th kyu through 7th kyu. At 9th kyu, the student is expected to show basic memorization of the kata. At 8th kyu, the student should show memorization + appropriate power in the techniques. At 7th kyu, the student is expected to show memorization, power, and techinique/timing. In our school, adults are generally taught their next kata 2 kyu grades before they will be tested on it. So a student will be taught Kanshu (first tested at 6th kyu) after they reach 8th kyu, and the student will be working both kanshiwa and kanshu during that time. We practice Sanchin 3 times at the beginning of almost every class. In some classes, we will have time to work on kata individually, either the kata itself or its associated bunkai. Also at the end of most classes, we will run the gamut of kata, starting at kanshiwa followed by kanshu, seichin (required for 3rd-1st kyu), and seisan. If there is sufficient time (and students of appropriate rank), they will run the advanced black belt katas (seiryu, kanchin, and sanseiryu). So that being said, my favorite katas are the ones I currently know: Sanchin Kanshiwa Kanshu Daini Seisan (a variant of Kanshu with a cool jumping sequence) Seichin With the current COVID-19 and teleconference lesson situation, our CI has been giving us teasers of the advanced black belt katas (seiryu and kanchin). I'd like to think I'll be able to learn the entire kata during this time, but I seriously doubt that

Also with all the time spent indoors, I was able to complete a little project I've been talking about for a bit... a belt display rack for Zach. I also included a shelf on top to display any trophies, and there's a v-groove on the top to display a rank certificate as well. https://i.imgur.com/JCOk5jL.jpg

This isn't the same "weighted" kata you may be thinking of. It's more like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIzVFj7rOkM. I'm doing it to focus on the "tightness" of my sanchin, working my core strength, and strength in the shoulder girdle. It's pretty brutal doing it with a 44lb kettlebell in each hand.

The past couple of weeks have consisted of my family trying to adjust to the "new normal" in a COVID-19 world. The governor of Colorado has issued a "stay in place" order, which effectively bars any in-person instruction (for martial arts or otherwise). My son is trying to adjust to doing his schoolwork at home, and we went out and got him his own Chromebook expressly for that purpose. My wife is now working from home 3 days a week -- her work is deemed "government essential", and much of it has to be done in a SCF (secure computing facility). They're staggering the people that are in the SCF at any one time to keep to the spirit of the executive order, so she goes in one day and her cubemate goes in the other day. I'm also working on a more regular "at-home" routine. Today's morning routine consisted primarily of strength training with 44lb kettlebells: One set of: 10 Kettlebell Swings 10 Kettlebell Deadlifts 10 Goblet Squats 10 Kettlebell Overhead Presses (5 per arm) As my body adjusts to this, I"ll add more sets (up to 5). I immediately followed that with one sanchin kata while holding 44lb kettlebells. This afternoon I'll be doing the karate-specific workout, which will consist of 3 instances of each kata I know -- sanchin, kanshiwa, kanshu, and seichin. The shoulder girdle is really feeling the weighted sanchin kata, and my whole posterior chain (hamstrings, glutes, lower back, and spinal erectors) are feeling the effects of the swings/deadlifts/squats. It's a good feeling.

Our school is completely shut down until the end of March. Over the next week or two, our CI is going to be setting up technical videos for us and arranging video sessions to conference with his students. After next week, he's going to try to set things up so we can get one in-person class per week, so he can keep the numbers to 5-6 students per class. I spoke with one of the other dads here today when I was picking up some stuff from his restaurant (he JUST opened 2 months ago, ouch!) -- and we're thinking of seeing if he can/will do some private lessons, both to keep us in practice, and to help him stay above water.

I agree with the others -- definitely contact the CI and find out how he wants to proceed. At our school this happens a fair bit. Students get dragged in different directions, and when life calms down, they decide that they want to resume their training. This happens often enough that our CI has a formal way of handling it, depending on how long you've been gone and what rank you were when you left. Good luck on returning to your training! You'll find that muscle memory WILL be your friend, so it won't take nearly as long to re-learn techniques as it took to learn them the first time.

I'm glad to hear that you're moving forward through the struggles, Swede. I've been struggling a bit at the dojo (and at home) lately, but I am putting one foot in front of the other, and I figure in the end I'll be stronger for it.

Thanks for the encouragement, Swede! This week's "a-ha" moment involved some guidance that our CI was giving one of our brown belts. The most common block we do in Uechi Ryu is the wa-uke, or circular block. His advice to the student was basically that all of the power and speed in the wa-uke is in the shoulder and upper arm. The forearms are just along for the ride until the last moment when you tense the entire arm. I started trying this out, and I was amazed at how much quicker my blocks got from just this one tip. Another tip he gave the other day had to do with one of our hojo undo techniques -- which we usually translate as "rising block, leopard-fist punch". The Japanese term for this is Hajiki Uke, Hiraken Tsuki -- and that Hajiki translates literally as "snapping", so the block is more correctly done as a snapping motion forwards and upwards. I'm starting to get the hang of Seichin, and I've started working Dan kumite. I just really need to get more cardio work in during the week

Congratulations on ikkyu! Train hard, train well, and shodan will take care of itself!

On Monday's class, I started trying to learn Seichin, which is our kata required for brown belt ranks (3rd kyu - 1st kyu). This is a considerably more dynamic kata and substantially more difficult than the prior two rank katas we do (kanshiwa for 9th-7th kyu and kanshu for 6th-4th kyu). In our first two rank katas, almost the entire kata is performed in sanchin stance, except for one instance in each kata where we drop to a shiko dachi to perform an elbow strike. Seichin is considerably more difficult in that there are a couple of instances where we transition from sanchin->shiko Dachi->sanchin in fairly quick succession. There's also a new sequence where we bring the leg up to a crane block while both hands do a pair of circular blocks (in the same direction), and then you bring your toe down to a neko dachi. I'm just glad our sensei tends to start teaching adult students their new rank katas well before they are tested on them. This one is going to take me quite a while to get right, but that's part of the fun isn't it? Here's a video of my sensei performing it:

The kata seisan is not just part of our style, but it is one of the 3 core kata of our style (along with sanchin and sanseiryu). It is a requirement for shodan in Uechi-Ryu, so I figure I’ll start learning it in about 9 months to a year. You can see one of our instructors performing the Uechi version here :

When I think old school karate, I think of something like this:

My CI has a very realistic outlook on this aspect. He fully expects to lose a large number of students within the first 6 months to a year. Uechi-ryu isn't for everyone, and he doesn't tend to lose a lot of sleep if students drop out at the white or yellow belt ranks (10th kyu - 7th kyu). By the time students make it to green belt (6th kyu), he figures they'll probably stay around awhile unless life gets in the way. It does kind of bother him a bit when he loses students beyond their first year or so, because by that point he's started really putting effort into them. His approach works pretty well, because he has a number of long-time students. His adult classes are generally half full of black belts -- and some of these students have been with him for 10+ years (starting when they were 7-8 years old). He also recently had the pleasure of promoting one of his students to 3rd degree. Something he tells kids and parents when they start approaching the brown belt ranks is the meaning of "shodan" is "beginner". Meaning you've mastered the basics and now you're ready to learn the good stuff. It seems to work. It probably also helps that he has a lot of students who have stayed with him after earning their shodan ranks.

In Uechi-Ryu, we are taught to strike with the toe in both front kicks and roundhouse kicks. We are taught to strike at places like the gut (right at/above the belt), the floating ribs, the root of the calf muscle, and the front or inside of the thigh. Needless to say, this can be a very fast kick, hard to defend against, and if you haven't conditioned yourself, it'll hurt like the dickens.

This sounds a lot like the conditioning we do in uechi-ryu. It takes time to condition your body, especially the striking surfaces and places you are likely to get hit -- I've been training uechi-ryu for about 15 months now. When I first started, I would get pretty easily bruised and the bruises would last for quite some time. Now after I've been training for a year+, I'm able to accept much harder strikes on my forearms and shins without lasting consequences. A couple of nights a week (in addition to class nights), I'll do some conditioning while I watch TV or listen to a book -- just to the point of discomfort and maybe a little more. Start slow and don't push yourself too hard. When you start feeling pain/discomfort stop -- if you give yourself bruises, you'll need to wait for those to heal before you can continue. As your body acclimates to the conditioning, you'll find you can strike the bag harder and more often without incurring injury. And most importantly (as others have said), listen to your sensei. And good luck on your journey!

Thanks for the encouragement, sensei8! I understand (to a point) how things get harder at brown belt. Our brown belt kata, seichin, is considerably more difficult than either kanshiwa or kanshu. Our brown belt requirements also include our dan kumite which has jumping kicks and takedowns, and moreover it is supposed to have an inherent flow to it (unlike our two person drills at yellow/green belt, which is 2-4 strikes followed by a counter.). Likewise, we are required to spar at brown belt (something which I am not all that good at), and he gets to hit us in sanchin testing. Also the testing cycles go from 3 to 6 months. Which probably isn't a bad thing for me, because I really need to focus on my cardio and weight loss if I'm going to survive a shodan test I really appreciate you guys and your encouragement. It definitely helps a lot!

It's been a few weeks since I last posted on here, and I've had quite a few "a-ha" moments. This past Monday, we did a lot of work with kicks and I was paired with our CI for bag work. He started us working technique with mawashi-geri, specifically he wanted us to start them by bringing our knee up like a front kick, then quickly turning the hip over and pivoting the supporting foot. The intent of this is to make this look like a front kick so the defender doesn't have as much time to figure out where to block. While I can definitely see the advantage of this, it's going to take me a lot of work to make it feel natural. He then had us work double mawashi-geri, where we would kick, drop the foot back to the ground for a quick reset, then kick again. Unfortunately, my right knee twinged when I landed too hard on it, so I had to lay off the right kicks for awhile. Which wasn't an entirely bad thing, because my left kicks are in dire need of help. Finally, he had us doing "skip kicks", where you bring the kicking leg up, and do a hop on the supporting leg to get additional distance/penetration. Since I was holding his bag, I had a bit of an eye opening, since I felt a gut punch even through the bag. Well, it's good training for sanchin shime. Next, we worked on some of the more advanced techniques when blocking kicks. At the white/yellow belt level, we're taught that we should just do a circular block for those kicks. However, since most of the people in the class were dan ranks, he had us work the more advanced version of those blocks. Basically, as the front kick comes in, you step back, use your same-side hand to stop the kick (again, you're stepping back, so there's not much penetration power left), and use your opposite side hand to come up under the ankle and catch the foot. At the same time, you drop your body into a low stance, and then after you have the kick you, step forward into sanchin and complete your circular block, hopefully throwing your opponent off balance. I immediately saw the applications to this in several of our two-person drills, and started working on it in our practice that week. Also, this past weekend, Zach and I both tested for our next ranks. At Zach's last test, he was told to really work on his power. Well, he definitely has improved on that in leaps and bounds. At his test, his evaluator gave him kudos on that, and told him he had some serious "mean eyes". His feedback was to look his opponent in the eye and to "tighten up" his circular blocks. He passed, moving on to shichikyu (yellow, 2 stripes). Since I was the only adult green belt testing, I got to work with our CI on all of my drills. He gave my arms a serious pounding during our kote kitae drills (my left arm is a bit tender), and he stepped things up a few notches on the two person drills. I got a bit ahead of myself on one of them -- I succeeded in blocking his mawashi geri, but when I was circle-blocking it to spin him around, I did not wait until his foot cleared my face before stepping forward and got a smelly foot in the face for my troubles. Also, during our kicking exercise, he made a point of showing the weakness in my crane block technique -- we're supposed to angle our shin and forearm to guide the kicks downwards, but my forearm wasn't angled quite right, and his foot went right up my forearm to brush my chin... another smelly foot to the face. Those were two of my pieces of feedback at the end. The last thing we worked on this week was the presentation part of our bunkai. He said that we should start and end each partner demonstration by setting together in our kimae. Since it was pretty new in my mind, I wasn't always remembering to end each demonstration with the kimae, but during the test, our CI told me that during a black belt test, you can use those that pause to catch your breath. Since I have a tendency to be low on stamina, I will definitely keep that in mind. In the end, we both passed, and we both learned a few things for our future tests. I'll now get to start learning my next kata (seichin). Fortunately I have at least 6 months to work on it before I get tested on it. As always, my wife has pictures of us, so I'll post those once she sends those out

My reasons have changed over the years. When I was in high school, it was because of The Karate Kid and other MA movies. After I graduated college and went off to live on my own for the first time, I joined a dojo because of my previous enjoyment with martial arts, and I wanted to get out of my apartment more. Now that I'm a parent, I want my son to learn karate for the self-discipline and fitness aspects. I'm doing karate with him to try to be a role model for him, and to boost my own personal fitness.