gspell68

I just hemmed up the pants myself after a small learning curve on a new fangled sewing machine after not using one in 40 years. It looks great but I lost the extra inner reinforcement strip that adds snap and pop to kicks. No big deal for me. I just decided to leave the jacket sleeves alone. I’ve always rolled them two or three times, anyhow. Kinda looking forward to practicing a little bit again. It’ll probably be a little embarrassing since I probably look like a short, blonde, clean shaven, less douch-y version of Steven Segal in a gi! Dunno I still have the wind and stamina to make it through a class outdoors in the Philippines heat. I ain’t as good as I once was, but I’m as good once as I ever was!😜😜😜

Yeah. He learned it from Tetshuhiko Asai. You can see it in the first few seconds… Asai JKA

Yeah. I live near a military installation which generally has cheap and fast alteration services, but a karate gi might be a little too weird even for them. I’ll probably just try to do it myself. I did my first one as a teenager when I first began karate back in the 1980’s, so I should be good as long as I can figure out my wife’s new-fangled sewing machine! And I had to look up the Arawaza supplier out of curiosity. Holy cow! $545 for a karate gi!!!🥋 I think I will stick with the $84 Mugen for now at least, since ANY gi I’d wear right now would fit me as well as Steven Segal’s gi fits him! 😄

Just a little help with fat boy sizing for everyone since gi sizes are generally based on height rather than chunkiness. I got a size 8 Orange Tag Mugen yesterday. Planning a trip to the Philippines next week and they have a couple of nice, traditional Japanese karate schools there. I haven’t been in a karate class or karate gi since 1996 so I figured something lighter was in order rather than the Tokaido or Century Iron Man uniforms I last wore 30+ years ago. I’m 5’8” tall but I’m also 295 pounds, around 42” at the hips, and 53” around the chest and around the waist at the navel. KI suggested a size 8 when I called. I just tried it on fresh after a cold wash and hang dry. Starting from top to bottom: the shoulders have lots of room; the sleeve length is not bad, only two or three rolls of the stitched cuffs and it’s about where I like it, the arm hole openings where your hand is at are huge; the left side flap ties won’t butt up and cinch all the way, but there’s easily enough to tie the strings together, same on the right side; the jacket skirt was really long reaching down to my knees, however, once I cinched up a size 8 belt around my waist, the Bavarian tumor above it took up all the excess fabric and it looked fairly normal at a mid-thigh length; the size 8 belt ears had about 8” of hang-down floppiness. The pants had about 3” of looseness at the waist. I could pull them up over my navel and simultaneously give myself a wedgie and a cameltoe and they were almost the right length for floor dragging American style, but rolling the 1” stitched seam about five or six times put them at the classic Japanese low- to mid-shin length. I’ll probably tie them under my Bavarian tumor so I don’t cause an international incident requiring medical attention in the groinal netherworld. Hemming is planned. The fabric is light but stiff. No shoulder liners to rip out. A little scratchy right now since it’s not broken in. I predict it will last quite a while.

I just yell, “DIE!” Multi syllable utterances just don’t make sense, plus there’s also the psychological impact.

I had been doing Shotokan for five years when I joined the Army and got stationed to a karate desert in Colorado. The only thing nearby was the on-post karate school taught by a Special Forces guy (Skip Ettinger) who spent five years in Viet Nam and then became a live-in student at the Seibukan dojo in Okinawa for five years (and even married Chotoku Kyan’s granddaughter). Seibukan is strange compared to almost every other style I have ever seen: deep square stances, high cat stances, few front stances, weird knife-hands where both hands move in the same direction, and the first kata you learn is Seisan (Hangetsu) which is probably the 10th kata you’d learn in Shotokan. Even until today it still kinda weirds me out that was a part of something so eccentric. But, it was easy to adapt to and I learned to enjoy it, eventually. The class entered several local competitions and we always did extremely well. I still cannot understand why. It’s rather hard and slow hard to move in square stances. In kata, it’s fine, but I was expecting the other students to get absolutely crushed in kumite, but they always excelled to my astonishment. The first tournament I participated in, I completely left out a huge section of the kata by accident and still won first place. I think other students may have tested, but after a couple of months, the instructor just tossed me a green belt in class, then about four or five months later in class he tossed me a brown belt. Skip was quiet but charismatic. He could really hold a club together. Almost every weekend, practically the whole class would go out dancing and partying together. Never saw anything like it.

Looks like you are in a Shotokan desert, too. Heck, I’d be happy to find ANY kind of just plain old decent traditional Japanese or Okinawan karate in my area. Looks like you are in the same boat.

My biggest obstacle has been relocating. I started out in Shotokan and did that for five years. Moved to Colorado Springs. The only traditional karate around was Seibukan. I wasn’t thrilled about it originally, but I did that until the Army made me move again. Everywhere the Army moved me over the next 20 years seemed to land me in a karate desert, to include my last duty station where I retired. There’s a few MMA and McDojo places around, but no plain ol’ simple traditional white gi wearing karate schools.

Doing kata slow without power, fast as possible without power, mirror image (starting to the right instead of left, gives a chance to exercise complicated moves on the other side that may only happen once in a kata).

Maybe it has something to do with the coronavirus? I know that I would not be thrilled to be inhaling someone else’s hot dragon breath at point blank range. Socially distanced kata practice seems pretty attractive given the current pandemic situation! I’m not exactly sure that we ever saw a good matchup of “elite athletes” in the early days of the UFC since I seem to remember it essentially being a Gracie promotional campaign. It would have been nice to see someone of the caliber of a JKA instructor or the son of an Okinawan master that was eating/breathing/living karate like Royce did with his father and BJJ. I don't know about that. Dan Severn was an elite wrestling talent. Art "One Glove" Jimmerson was a professional Boxer at the time, and a former Golden Gloves Champion. I think there was plenty of talent in the early UFCs. The sport just hadn't evolved yet. My bad. I was referring specifically to karate. Even more so, there was a dearth of traditionally trained Japanese karate-ka. I only remember one Japanese guy that was like a nidan that let himself be taken down way too easily by Royce.

Teaching karate is awesome. It’s where you really start learning karate. You start holding yourself to a higher standard because all eyes are on you. You have to justify every move you make and be sure you have a reasonable answer for every question. Oh, and how did it go?

One of the guys that I trained under as a teen in the 1980’s had gotten a lot of hard knocks in the JKA in Japan in the early 1960’s.He imparted his philosophy to me during one session both verbally and physically: everything is a target. He’d punch your arms and hands until you could no longer physically hold them up, he’d intentionally and constantly step on your feet instead of the floor, or whatever it took until you’d finally break down and give him the target he wanted. It was really a conservation of energy on his part as his every move landed with intent to steal from you either physically and/or emotionally/psychologically. Probably the best strategy I ever learned.

Maybe it has something to do with the coronavirus? I know that I would not be thrilled to be inhaling someone else’s hot dragon breath at point blank range. Socially distanced kata practice seems pretty attractive given the current pandemic situation! I’m not exactly sure that we ever saw a good matchup of “elite athletes” in the early days of the UFC since I seem to remember it essentially being a Gracie promotional campaign. It would have been nice to see someone of the caliber of a JKA instructor or the son of an Okinawan master that was eating/breathing/living karate like Royce did with his father and BJJ.

I agree. There’s a very fine line between conditioning and permanent damage that sets you back for months. I’ve crossed that line a couple of times! So, I’ve just kinda cherry picked the way that keeps me out of trouble. My first job as a teenager was a grocery store stocker and I had a specific duty of breaking down all the stockers boxes for the crusher. I eventually perfected a middle knuckle punch/peck (nakadaka ken), unintentionally, from opening and breaking down a couple thousand boxes a night. At the time, it was funny when the other guys tried to imitate it off-the-cuff and just got bloody knuckles and unopened boxes.

Yep. 1944-45 saw the passing of masters like Motobu, Funakoshi (Gigo), Hanashiro, Tokuda, and Kyan. A couple of them never got to really formalize their knowledge into a “style”, yet their students did.