KorroddyDude

There is a position that this puts you in. Let's say that this pocketed gi existed, and a few of your students owned one. And for half of them, their gi tops were in notably better condition than their pants. Would you recommend this gi to a new student?

The "cheap" and "lazy" part was not reference to wanting pockets. It's in reference to people potentially using their pocketed gi pants as regular pants to be worn with sneakers and a t-shirt. Maybe when they get home, the only thing they'll change is the gi top for a t-shirt, then go out and hang with friends. And it's also one less pair of pants to buy at Walmart. When I stop and think about it, maybe the very reason why gi pants lack the functionality as regular pants is to discourage people from using them that way.

That's why I suggested a fannie pack. Unfastening the strap and laying it down somewhere is much less of a hassle than emptying pockets. I also see a downside to the pockets: the gi pants are going to end up serving a dual purpose for those who are cheap, lazy, or both. In addition to training, some people will slip on those pants and wear them outside as if they were jeans. They'll wear these pants to a barbecue and get sauce stains on them, or go to a bar and get Guiness spilled on them. Next thing you know, they've got this pristine white gi top being worn with pants that look like they've seen better days.

I think that a lot of this is actually failure on the part of traditional martial arts. First, people in the general population who grew up watching Chuck Norris and Van Damme were convinced that traditional martial arts would look like what they saw in the choreographed scenes. MMA comes along and people find out otherwise, and now they feel that they've been duped by traditional martial arts the whole time. Secondly, traditional martial arts doesn't market itself properly in the age of MMA. I think that Karate Combat is a good case study. Although I don't know for sure, my hypothesis is that Karate Combat fighters aren't like the rest of us here who go to the dojo x times per week. I don't think that they only do the same training as we do. I'm certain that there's a lot of drills, pad work, and other training that most of us don't go through that Karate Combat fighters go through to prepare for upcoming fights - much like what boxers and MMA fighters go through. None of that is necessary for those who train for self-defense. Yet, you will be doing those things if you train in boxing or MMA. Traditional martial arts need to point that out. You don't have to be able to hang with MMA fighters to effectively defend yourself from an untrained troublemaker on the streets.

Well, you could always go to your nearest alteration shop with some white fabric and ask them to add pockets to the pants. In the case of front pockets, they'll have to be similar to back pockets as was the case with Navy dungarees back in the back in 80's and 90's. I just hope your gi top is long enough to cover them, as the pockets might be bad for the aesthetics.

A fannie pack seems like a good solution for this. I know it's not very fashionable, but it definitely functional.

There's a potential for this to slippery slope into demands for cargo pockets. And when videos of karateka wearing these start making it to YouTube, you'll have the latest wave of "American jokes" since camouflage belts.

You're Shorin-ryu, correct? If you don't mind me asking, what organization?

I believe it's because the instructor believes that such a person could either be a danger to the other students or a bad influence on them. That's it. As for everything else, it's hard to imagine spending all that time and money to learn a martial art for evil intent, when they've got all kinds of sharp and/or hard objects laying around the house to carry out their bad deeds with. Even trained martial artists who murder and maim don't use their martial arts to do these things. Look at Cain Velazquez and James Scott. When you think about it, it's probably the real hot-headed types that can benefit from martial arts training the most. We all saw that in the Karate Kid. The other thing is that some of the old Okinawan masters were, themselves, known to be violent when out and about with very little or no provocation. Such as Chotoku Kyan.

Mine is to get back into BJJ. I trained in it for about 2 months in 2023, but eventually had to drop it because adding it to karate was keeping me out of the house too much and it was causing problems with my wife. However, I found a BJJ school that has 6 am classes, which will allow me to get back home when everyone else is waking up. And, most importantly, these morning classes will allow me to continue having the same number of evenings per week that I stay home with the family.

I'm not sure where we're going with this. Are we flashing credentials to silence people who disagree? Remember, our responses were not unsolicited. Furthermore, the word we're really looking for is "kakutogi" - as that is the word that is used to mean "martial arts" the way we mean it in English. The literal translation of the word is "fighting arts," which I've noticed has been growing in use in English anyway.

The list of Bugei Juhappan (18 Martial Arts) was created during the Tokugawa era, and yawara (grappling) is listed as one of them. So there is a precedent of unarmed fighting being considered bugei before the Meiji Restoration. It would've been impossible for karate to be listed, as it was unknown in Japan at the time.

I think the first question to ask is whether or not the current Okinawan masters of these smaller arts even want them to be more widespread in the first place. Think of the following example: many people from the West Coast who move to the East Coast miss really miss In-N-Out. Does that mean that they want In-N-Out to expand to the East Coast? Definitely not. They take pride in In-N-Out being a West Coast thing, and they want to keep it that way. There's an example of this happening in karate: Ryuei-ryu, which was developed by the Nakaima family in Okinawa just a few years before it was annexed. Ryuei-ryu was kept within the Nakaima family for a century (the 1970's), before deciding to go public with it. To this day, it's not a very widespread art. That's the first hurdle. The second hurdle is availability. I live in a fairly large metropolitian area, where even some of the most ubiquitous arts are not present. Around where I live, there's no American Kenpo, no Wado-ryu, no Kyokushin, and no Uechi-ryu. If we don't even have those, then the likelihood of finding To'on-ryu or some of the others you mentioned just isn't there. Furthermore on the second hurdle, I don't think most people are dismissing the rarer styles because they're rare. Most people who've never trained in karate before who walk into a dojo for the first time to inquire know nothing about "styles," nor are aware that karate even has them. To them, karate is karate. Many new guys might actually be training for a few months (might make yellow or even orange belt) before even knowing what style they're actually training in (I'm not saying that this reflects negatively on them or their school. In the initial stages of training, knowledge on how the new student's style of karate differs from others is not a priority, in my opinion). Then there's the third hurdle, which applies to those with experience who are aware of styles: the days of people growing old and dying in the same town they were born and raised in are long gone. People move. And because of this, people are going to gravitate towards the more ubiquitous styles that they can continue training in, no matter where they go. Although I've never seen it myself, I've heard many instructors lament about how previous students who begrudgly sign up because they're new to the area where the style they trained in prior isn't available - and they have a habit of disrupting the class with "back at my last dojo, we did it like this." I'm not saying that people who switch to new styles when they move are likely to do this, but they really fell in love with their original style and there's always that part of them that refuses to let it go. And that likely even applies to the people with enough social aptitude to not disrupt the class with how they did things before. Why put myself in a position to get attached to a style that I'll never see again if I move out of town? I'm not saying that I, personally, would feel that way. If I moved out of town to where there was no Shotokan, I'll gladly sign up for whatever karate is available, as long as there's no Navy SEAL-style belt testing. But what I will say is that I completely understand those who may not want to do that.

I can't say that I agree with most of this. First, this article gives the impression that the term "martial arts" was coined in English, and that Anglospherians somehow took it upon themselves to translate it to "bugei" and falsely attribute usage of the term to the Japanese. This isn't true at all. Not saying he said this, but it's easy to get the impression that he's implying it. If he's not suggesting this, I wish he would have clarified. The word "bugei" dates at least as far back as the 14th century, and was exposed to the Anglosphere in 1918 in a Japanese-English dictionary where it translated to "martial arts." In other words, the term was either coined by the Japanese or in another nearby language and then translated to Japanese. In either case, it came to English from Japanese. Secondly, there's that "do" vs "jutsu" claim; where "do" allegedly comes at the expense of "jutsu." I'm sure that this debate has been had ad nauseam on this message board, so I'm not gonna go any farther than simply pointing it out. Lastly, he says to stop being a karate apologist when someone compares karate unfavorably to MMA. That's not gonna happen, at least not from me. To that, I say this: the rigorous training that MMA fighters go through to preparare for upcoming fights definitely isn't a life for everyone. Those of us who train in traditional martial arts do not need to be able to beat an MMA fighter. We just need to be able to beat the trouble-maker on the streets who can't keep his hands to himself. The odds of such a trouble-maker being an MMA fighter are probably lower than the odds of winning the Mega Millions or Powerball jackpot.

There's only one way to "get this:" by showing up to train! You have no competition in your dojo; everyone there supports each other on their journey. Always ask questions on things that you don't understand, and if there are any movements in particular that you're having trouble with (for example, using your hips, relaxing your shoulders, half body/full body, etc), ask your instructor for specific drills you can use to improve them (and your instructor will have plenty).