Shorin Ryuu

Speed is another good way of breaking boards, especially thinner ones. A good "trick" is to have someone just hold the board on one corner with one hand using just their thumb and index finger. Then, doing a proper punch (or you might hurt yourself), punch the board very quickly, emphasizing a snap. It should break easily, but looks impressive due to very little support added by the board holder. Or something. I don't ever break boards, we just did it one day for the heck of it.

Tommarker stated it very well. A lot of changes to kata were often made for aesthetic reasons. What they didn't realize is that kata wasn't meant to look pretty, it was meant to be deadly. Sometimes things didn't look linear or sharp or as aesthetically pleasing simply because it was more effective that way.

Well, let's see how I should answer this... I have a complex way of answering this sort of question. Taking a look at martial arts traditions in Japan, the whole concept of added spirituality and moral character development was never the main focus, or even a big focus. The introduction of zen into Japanese martial traditions was at first seen as a helpful tool rather than the main focus. Later on, it took on an enlarged role, especially the less that samurai were actually employed in fighting. In more modern times, this aspect of spiritualism has taken a role that is so large, it is sometimes even in detriment to the actual useful combative applications of the art itself. Especially after WWII, this has become an even bigger part. Looking at Okinawan karate, it is much of the same thing. Traditional "karate" (I put it in quotes since that term is less than 100 years old, anyway), was always focused more upon pure fighting techniques, applications, and concepts. This isn't to say that people in the traditional karate lineage like Sakugawa and Matsumura were not well-balanced gentlemen. In fact, they really advocated humility, honesty and a good moral character. If I understood the Japanese of Masaru Yonamine (one of two 9th dans in my style) last weekend, he said that the first direct reference to the art of "te" in 1663, went like this: "No matter how you may excel in the art of te, and in your scholastic endeavors, nothing is more important than your behavior and your humility as observed in daily life." (Okay, so I cheated and found a translation of this elsewhere later, but only because it sounded better than the translation I had in my head, and Yonamine-Sensei did tell me about it) Perhaps what I am trying to say is that maybe to many people who are Westerners, and indeed, Asians who are sloughing off traditions of the past, the traditions of humility and respect seem somewhat limited to the realm of the martial arts, in this context. However, I would argue that back in those days, it was permeated throughout the society, so it wasn't necessarily promoted specifically through the medium of martial arts, but rather that many martial arts masters had those qualities and wanted their students to have them as well. But it wasn't the main focus of their training, nor was it always a direct result of it. I do believe that self-control was probably something teachers wanted their students to have. But they usually didn't even teach those who they felt had no self-control, rather than instilling self-control in them. Not that they never did, but it was more often the case that they refused "wild" students, unless a friend or someone recommended them. But, I could go on and on. As for me, I've always held the values of humility, disciplin, self-control and respect in high regard. I think the dojo is a good place for some people to learn them. But, I don't think that should ever be at the detriment of martial training. All the same, I agree with Teikunsoku that even if you are an excellent martial artist, it is useless if you don't have a good character.

Zanshin means "follow-through" (like in archery, or basketball). The first character means "remaining, leftover", that sort of thing. The verb Nokoru, which means remaining, uses this same character. The second is "Heart, spirit, or mind". So, while everything is being done and even after everything is done, your mind and heart still remain, as opposed to being distracted elsewhere. This would make sense in the martial arts usage of the word, which means continual focus. To be honest, this is the first time I've seen the characters for zanshin written out (not exactly everyday Japanese), so that was interesting for me to see.

Sauzin is right. Purpleheart is a little heavier than you would think (heavier then say oak), but not too heavy. I like it because it is heavy, but still good enough to whip around. Cocobola is very heavy, as mentioned above. You won't find either purpleheart or cocobola for under forty dollars though.

http://www.weaponsconnection.com/ or an Okinawan hardware store...

In my system, there is a Kyoshi 7th Dan student under the 8th Dan who is the director of the system for North America. He doesn't "teach" in the sense that he has his own dojo, but it is not uncommon for him to help instruction in or outside of class. He may also just flat out teach some classes, but I am not sure either way, since I've only been to that dojo for a week. All the same, he is incredibly skilled and does deserve that rank. He also does teach during seminars and the like. I for one like teaching. For one, it involves talking. And how I do love talking about martial arts (as people here can attest to how much I ramble). And as others mentioned, it really makes you analyze what you are doing so that you can show others. Personally, I just love giving back in any way possible to the style that has given me so much. I also want to share the joy I've felt to others, and teaching is the best way. But, do I feel it is absolutely necessary? No, not really.

I've been invited to watch some videos of Chibana Chosin (founder of Kobayashi Shorin Ryu and student of Itosu), and I've been told that the way he does the kata in the videos is extremely close to the way the head of my style of Kobayashi Shorin Ryu does them. I just haven't had a chance to swing by my instructor's house yet and watch them. More on this when I actually do get the chance.

I have to agree that purpleheart is a mighty fine wood. Most all of my wooden weapons are purpleheart, except for my tekko and nitanbo (which I may just buy some in purpleheart the next chance I get)

Man, I leave for a weapon and people ask all these questions about kobudo... I've actually seen a video where a traditional kobudo instructor (Nishiuchi) claimed that the plural form was zai. Maybe it's just a Hogen thing. Of course, along this same line, there are exactly 593 different ways to say "tonfa", apparently. Okay, I'm exaggerating (there's only like 422 ways). All the same, the answer is: it may be legit, it may not be. Yes, I do know Japanese. At any rate, I have a pair of sai that do not extend past my elbow. The head of my style for North America actually says he prefers his shorter (not too short, but not past the elbow) because he prefers to manipulate them quickly. He told me he looks at it as more offensive then purely defensive, and even on the defensive, you should be blocking in a manner so you won't end up getting your elbow hit anyway. Just food for thought, I suppose. I've already mentioned this in another thread, but then again, so has this question.

Where in Colorado? Apart from a most excellent instructor I met in my system outside of Denver, there was also a RyuKyu Kenpo instructor in Colorado Springs I trained with once (he came to do a kata and bunkai seminar for the 'nontraditional' karate club, but we in the traditional karate club were invited as well). I forget his name, but he really knew his stuff. Very traditional and lots of pressure point grappling.

I think the reason why Shimabukuro Tatsuo emphasized the vertical fist is because of the "sink" it naturally puts in your elbow. This "sink" is very important, yet many do not do this. From what I've been taught and what I've felt, this sink (whether it is in the punch, block, whatever) just helps to make your biomechanics better in addition to its grounding effect. You can still do the sink in the 45 degree punch, but the vertical one just emphasizes it more. One way one of the kyoshi's that I met last summer would test your blocks would be that he would lean his entire body weight on it, and if your block collapsed, then you obviously aren't doing it right. To be fair, he let us try and sure enough, he would always be able to support us. I've found that sinking from the elbow (as opposed to a conscious, forcing down) really helps in this kind of support. As I've no training in Taiji, so this is just conjecture, it sounds very familiar to a lot of the relaxed sinking at the joints that they do. As always, I could be totally wrong and be way out in left field, eating a ham sandwich. [/end near tangent]

Three guesses, and the first two don't count.

I'm not really sure what to say, other than "I take traditional karate." This means I don't train in anything that won't help me in a fight. My style is very heavy in striking and close in-fighting, to include grappling. I'm obviously biased, but I think it is the real deal (not casting aspersions about other styles, but I'm just saying this stuff will help you in a street fight).

Well, I got back at 4:30 Monday morning (and then had to finish my midterm...). Suffice it to say, it was an excellent experience. I got to meet people in my style from all over the US, and I think there was around 170 of us. I also got to meet one of the instructors, a kyoshi in my system that was holding some seminars at the camp, that I had trained with a few times in the past. I don't think I've ever met anyone who just exudes as much happiness as he does when he teaches. A real great karateka and great person. The two Okinawans who came over were really good (duh). One of them could speak English pretty well, but the other one could not. During some seminars and stuff, I kept getting called on to do spot translations from time to time, so that was interesting. There was also some time where it was just a question and answer session with the two Okinawan guests about anything, so I went up there and translated for the one who did not speak English. All in all, I'm just glad that I could help in any small way to make them feel more comfortable. Of course, I had to chat with them off to the side for a while, get their meishi (business cards), and that sort of thing. They were both extremely talented, humble, and actually pretty humorous guys. Apart from that, a lot of kata, bunkai and other training from the Okinawans and some of the American kyoshi in our system. I'm very tired now though...

Err...I haven't left yet, but this isn't a karate camp(ing trip). It's just more of an "everyone get together in a huge gymnasium for a weekend and train, train, train... Haha, maybe we just aren't as "hardcore" as some? All the same, I'm sure I'll still have fun. I've had enough of the rugged outdoors during basic training, survival school and the like...I still like them, but I won't be missing out on too much.

Now, now, let's keep this neutral.

Well, tomorrow I'm off to a karate camp this weekend down in El Centro, California for a Shorinkan Shorin Ryu camp. It should be interesting, as it is actually the first Shorinkan karate camp I've attended. If I receive anything I think is even remotely interesting (read: expect something simply because I enjoy a good ramble every now and then), I'll be up to posting it when I get back. I'm not sure or not if this one will have a lot of seminars taught by instructors of other styles, like some Shorinkan camps that I've heard of, but either way, it should be a lot of fun. These people coming from Okinawa (9th Dan Hanshi Masaru Yonamine and 8th Dan Kyoshi Giyu Gibo) are pretty darn senior in my system, so it should be a lot of fun. Plus I'll meet some other folks in my system that I've run across in my travels here and there. The only bad part is, I'm wasting time here instead of writing a mid-term that I have due Monday. Did I say wasting? I meant to say...spending, or something.

Chin Na can be roughly translated as "seize and control" and is thus a grappling oriented system. I'm not sure if it is meant to be stand alone or not, but it is most heavily oriented towards controlling and locking the opponent's joints, muscles and tendons. It also has some pressure point manipulations if I am not mistaken. I actually have a book entitled Comprehensive Applications of Shaolin Chin Na that I bought last year. I get a kick out of names for the techniques, like Spiritual Dragon Waves Its Tail, but they are very practical in nature and contain common principles to many fighting styles. What makes it not necessarily unique but very interesting is a specific emphasis on how one manuever causes something else to happen that you capitalize on. For example, putting the arm in one position causes muscle X to bind up in a certain fashion, making it easy to rip with your fingers. This is by no means exclusive at all to Chin Na, but it is merely an example of the things they specifically focus on. There is theory behind all of it, but it is very, very heavy on the practice. A partner is pretty much a must for this.

I still insist that there are far more dynamics of fighting that a karateka has trained in as opposed to a boxer. Don't get me wrong, there are far more dynamics of fighting in boxing than most people give boxers credit for (as I've mentioned before, I did box in college). All the same, the competent karateka (I mean someone who has trained in a competent karate style) could take on the average boxer toe to toe and win. Before I get the response that "Yeah, but you said 'competent karateka', so that introduces a biased qualification," I don't consider many things "competent karate". This in and of itself may elicit some response, but let me explain by arguing the reverse. Say I pit against a karateka against a boxer who can't ever seem to keep his guard up and couldn't throw a decent hook to save his life. You'd call him an incompetent boxer. But instead, I pick a boxer who has a firm grasp of the fundamentals of boxing (distance, timing, punching, we'll even assume punching bare-handed, moving at angles, that sort of thing). Place him against a karateka who has a firm grasp of the fundamentals of karate (distance, timing, puncking, kicking, striking in general with multiple parts of the body, moving at angles, grappling, decent knowledge of the weaknesses and strengths of human anatomy, energy or whatever you choose to call it, etc.). The point is, there are far more requisites for a person to be a "decent" karateka than there are for a person to be a "decent" boxer. Believe me, this is in no way a put down on boxers. I've boxed, a lot of my friends boxed, and I've trained with and been friends with people who were All American boxers. It's just that training in pure boxing places a lot of limits on a person that training in pure karate does not. I use the term "pure" to represent the concept in abstraction, since that is what this exercise is about: generality. Not every boxer trained only in boxing, and not every karateka trained only in karate. But this is a "boxing" versus "karate" debate at best, so those are the framing conditions of this argument.

The word "diet" has picked up an incredibly negative context because it almost always carries connotations of eating less food to lose weight. Instead, we should remember what the word really means, which is just what you are eating. I for one think any one, athletes especially, but anyone at all, should eat a healthy diet regardless of who they are. The problem is, in most developed countries, the attitude of the people is now becoming one of instant gratification and over indulgence in pleasure, to include in the culinary aspect of life as well. People pay more attention to what their desensitized taste buds tell them rather than what their body tells them. Gluttony isn't a new thing, but now more and more people are able to do it, and are doing it. People need to realize that there is more to health than "not being fat." What you eat plays such a large role in building your resistance to disease, including cancer, heart disease, etc. It also plays such a huge role in how gracefully you age. Whether you end up as a hunched over, ailing old person or a spry, active person of advanced years is up to you. I prefer to be the latter. Of course, I would be considered "radical" in my views of what a proper diet would constitute. I don't eat sweets, ever. I don't eat junk food snacks, and avoid eating fatty foods in general (unless it is healthy fats, in which case I eat a healthy amount of them). Furthermore, I eat less and less meat (I don't even remember the last time was...maybe a few weeks ago?) and more vegetable protein (but still sufficient levels of protein). I also take care to ensure a good level of vitamins and the like. I don't eat herbal supplements or anything, as I get a lot of nutrition from the food I eat. And lastly, I ENJOY what I eat. My body doesn't even crave junk food anymore (believe me, I ate as much if not more than the average person did before I started all this). People tell me "Oh, I could never do that," or "Wow, you have such crazy discipline." The sad part of it is, none of that is true. It starts a day at a time. I had relapses from time to time, but they were very few and far between. I didn't give it up once I had a relapse. The fact of the matter is, given financial means (meaning you can afford to eat what "normal" people would consider as enough to satisfy their needs), ANYONE can do this, and it isn't that special. You just have to make the decision to do it, and make it for real. This sounds like a cheesy motivational confidence tape that some people listen to on their way to work, but it is true. I'll use the following example, but it isn't a great one considering the dietary considerations I am proposing: Walk into a Baskin Robbins 31 flavors ice cream store. What flavor do you choose? Is it vanilla? Is it chocolate? Or maybe even Perils of Praline? Why do you like it? Experience, your taste buds give you a specific sensory impulse, whatever. Having true power of choice is being able to walk into Baskin Robbins and pick vanilla, because you choose to. And then the next day, you walk in and choose Chocolate Mint, because you choose to. They're not your favorites, really, because having it that way would limit you from choosing something else. Right...maybe I should have chosen someting else, but I'm sure that walking into Baskin Robbins 31 flavors of asparagus would not have provided the image I was going for... Anyway, a long and rambling post to say that no, you don't need a "special diet" because you are taking martial arts. You should eat healthy because it's healthy. You don't have to be as "extreme" as I am, or not eat as little meat as I do (but eating too much isn't that healthy...), but most people could use a little more health in their diet. And no post of mine about diet would be complete without plugging the book The Okinawa Program by the doctors Willcox and Suzuki. I don't buy into everything they say, I don't follow their program per se, and I'll be the first to admit that some of their attempts to fit everything into a Procrustean bed to make everything "Okinawan" may be a bit of a stretch... All the same, it contains a lot of excellent nutrition info that you can use to find out what kind of foods and things are healthy or not. Using this info, you can orient your diet to be much more healthy, or even just a little more healthy, if you don't feel like taking the plunge.

At first, I was going to say Shorin Ryu. Then, I decided to pick a better answer: traditional Okinawan karate in general. But really, there are a lot of styles out there that share very common principles, but just choose different means of achieving them. I'm not saying every style is created equal. Far from it. There are many styles out there that I do not think are best for fighting. There are a lot of Chinese styles that I think very highly of. I chose traditional Okinawan karate because despite all my martial arts elitism and lamentings over all the new styles popping up all over the place, Okinawan karate really is a comprehensive, mixed martial art. It combines indigenous fighting methods with a variety of Chinese methods. Most masters learned weapons as well as empty hand in their training all over Okinawa, China, Taiwan and even Japan at times. What distinguishes traditional Okinawan karate from many modern hodge-podges in my opinion is that it was oftentimes "battle-tested" and refined by people who truly devoted their lives to its perfection. In many cases, it was their job (bodyguard, palace guard, constable) to learn how to fight, and they did it well. It contains depth as well as breadth. Striking, pressure point/muscle/joint manipulation, energy, body mechanics, and loads, loads of grappling are all signatures of true traditional Okinawan karate. And that is why I take it, love it, and live it. As usual, I've rambled and let my blatant bias...I mean, preference for traditional Okinawan karate show.

Yes, after reading the description of the moves, it sounds like the names were just sort of given to those specific techniques by your school, rather than being a general term used for them.

Japanese. Incidentally, many people on Okinawa referred to the indigenous arts as ti (te in Japanese) and used toudi to refer to Chinese arts. But, both of them became so mixed together on Okinawa anyway, and then they called it karate later.

The reason why I posted my answer the way I did (not standing double-weighted and letting his push go 'through' you) was because I was starting the assumption that someone pushes you before you can stop it. Not being double-weighted is more of a "strategic tactic". It helps shape your other responses no matter what happens. If you stand there double-weighted and he pushes you, then you'll just go back. If your weight is o one side or the other and you let him push, you'll use all his force to help spin you and then you can do whatever technique you wish (X, Y or Z). Ideally, I wouldn't let him touch me, I'd just shift forward at an angle and do technique X, Y or Z. Standing with my weight to one side or the other helps me do this AND helps me manipulate his energy even if he does manage to land his push successfully. This may end up requiring a conscious effort to not be double-weighted at first, but it ends up being automatic after a while. I've actually talked to people far, far better than I, and they've told me they did the same thing (some told me without even me asking specifically about it).