EvilTed

Equaminius, That's a little known fact, but is actualy 100% correct. I got that from my Sensei and I'm sure he was told this by Shigeru Oyama. Anyway, enough of the in-fighting m8, OK? Peace ET

Hey, before you start calling me a Troll, just remember that you are the one who was disrespectful towards Kyokushin and Mas Oyama in particular. You should learn something about what it is you think you know before opening your mouth. Either that or be prepared and wash your foot ET

You are quite correct, Knockdown, I was just trying to point out that World Oyama is a serious style with great lineage. We have several people at our dojo in San Francisco that have trained Kyokushin in Japan and say the styles are very simillar and the fighting just as hard and intense. I've studied Shotokan and a bit of Kyokushin under an affiliate of Steve Arneil's some years ago in the UK (as well as Tae Kwon Do) and the intensity of training in World Oyama is second to none. We are lucky in having Shigeru Oyama's top student and Uchi Deshi for 5 years as our Sensei. The point of the Web courses is to help beginning students who don't have time to attend as much as they would like. They still have to attend a promotion test and they still have to fight to get it. Like our Kyokushin brothers we test first then fight at the end. My brown belt test in September can only be performed by Shaiko Shihan. Osu! ET

Equaninimus, This just confirms my opinion that you are an opinionated fool. The lineage of World Oyama Karate is excellent. Founder: Soshu Shigeru Oyama, Saiko Shihan of Kyokushin Karate and top student of Mas Oyama for 30 years. 100 man kumite 1966. Vice President: Saiko Shihan Yahiko Oyama, began training in Mas Oyama's dojo in 1958 and was considerred a Kyokushin genius by Mas Oyama. All Japan knockdown champion. Shuseki Shihan M. Miura He was the 1972 open-weight division All-Japan Full-Contact Champion, and also successfully completed the 100-Man Kumite. He is widely respected for his awesome fighting ability and his exciting exhibitions with the sai. 100 man kumite 1972 and the first Japanese to do it in one day! http://www.geocities.com/irek65/100man.html My advice to you is go and find a World Oyama dojo and train there for a bit before you start bashing it. ET

We have two Shotokan shodan's in our World Oyama dojo. Both started at white belt again. The only style my sensei allowed to keep his black belt is a Kyokushin shodan from Poland. Is there a difference in styles? Only about as much as there is between dance classes and Special Forces unarmed combat Osu! ET

Jodan, I meant Judan - he he, but we do have some big guys Anyway, after 5 hours in the emergency room today and 12 x-rays later, I have another fracture to take care of Now I got to learn not to throw kicks so damn hard ( or if I do, land them correctly ) What was pleasing was when the nurse took my blood pressure and monitored my heart and said they were both really good for a 20 year old. For someone 40 this year like me, she said it was excellent and if I kept doing what I was doing (not the fractures) , I'd live to be 100 Osu! ET

Jodan, I meant Judan - he he, but we do have some big guys Anyway, after 5 hours in the emergency room today and 12 x-rays later, I have another fracture to take care of Now I got to learn not to throw kicks so damn hard ( or if I do, land them correctly ) What was pleasing was when the nurse took my blood pressure and monitored my heart and said they were both really good for a 20 year old. For someone 40 this year like me, she said it was excellent and if I kept doing what I was doing (not the fractures) , I'd live to be 100 Osu! ET

Jodan, I meant Judan - he he, but we do have some big guys Anyway, after 5 hours in the emergency room today and 12 x-rays later, I have another fracture to take care of Now I got to learn not to throw kicks so damn hard ( or if I do, land them correctly ) What was pleasing was when the nurse took my blood pressure and monitored my heart and said they were both really good for a 20 year old. For someone 40 this year like me, she said it was excellent and if I kept doing what I was doing (not the fractures) , I'd live to be 100 Osu! ET

"Don't rely that much on kumite unless you do Kyokushikai or one of its offshoots. Now that's KOOOOO-MahTay" Aye, I-Self, my knowledgable brother, I almost broke my other foot in kumite today. Hard jodan mawashi-geri, aiming to hit my oponent in the liver with my shin at close distance, but as I threw it, he saw it and stepped back and my instep impacted on his hip bone That feckin hurt and I've had ice on it for the last few hours but I'll live Osu! ET "Oh yeah? - how well do they fight?"

Ushiro Geri can win the fight with one hard kick to the liver. We throw it in a kake-ashi dashi method too. Basically cross the non kicking leg in front off the other so that this pivot leg's heel is pointing towards the target. Knee up, pivot, look over shoulder and let them have it with the heel in a fast, hard thrusting motion. It's probably one of the most powerful and deadly kicks in the Kyokushin style(s). As far as turning your back on your oponent, yeah that's a bit weird at first, but you throw it at the end of a set up technique like gedan mawashi geri to the outside of your oponents front leg or when they are backing away from you. ET

Excellent post, I-Self and very informative. Can you please explain more about the problems experienced in later life due to Sanchin and the breathing techniques? I study World Oyama Karate, which is basically the same as Kyokushin, with the same Goju influenced Sanchin and breathing techniques. Thanks ET

It depends upon how you define 'most popular' At his death in 1994, Mas Oyama (Kyokushin) could bost the most students world wide unified under one man - some 12 million! As far as which style is the biggest (has the most branches) then it's probably shotokan. Which style of karate is the most respected as a 'real' fighting art? It has to be Kyokushin. After I explained to my sensei about seeing a program on TV about Okinawan karate and them breaking boards with their big toes, his answer was "Oh yeah? - how well do they fight?" ET

Guys with long arms and legs like to keep you at distance where they can use the reach to their advantage. Tall guys like this tend to be slower but hit harder than smaller guys. My advice: 1. Timing, timing, timing. Wait for them to throw a judan or jodan mawashi geri then jump in and attack the rear leg. Sending 6' + of opoonet crashing to the mat is always a great ego boost. 2. Get in close quick, hit and run out again using speed to your advantage. If you are too slow you will get nailed with rib shots or knees. ET

Ha ha Ripper, Guess my spelling wasn't up to much that day Talking of bears, did you ever see Willie Williams (Kyokushin then World Oyama) fighting the bear? That really WAS an abuse of the bear. ET

Ripper, Because others don't know how to control their power I have never injured anyone, but I got injured frequently in my first 6 months of training. The 3 broken ribs were all in the same place, so maybe they never healed correctly (or I never gave them time). One of the broken toes was my fault when I kicked someone hard and hit their elbom. Toes vs elbows - elbows usually win The second toe was during mae-geri drills with a black belt and we were going very fast. Instead of stepping back and dodging the blow with tae sebaki he brought up his knee and blocked my kick, my toes got bent back over and one got broken. I stand by what I said. I did shotokan 20 years ago. Several others have done shotokan too. We also have two shotokan shodans in our dojo. All prefer full-contact over no contact. Light - contact is usually light until the first hard blow Osu! ET

You should try and spar with the highest rank available, preferably your sensei until you get more comfortable with your abilities. Most of the injuries I see are with lower belts being too gung ho and coming in hard. (I've been one of them once too and have had the broken ribs and ties to prove it) Lower grades also fight like their very life depended on it - very stiff and very hard. Find a higher grade person around your build, explain to them your fear and can they teach you how to spar confidently. I think you'll find that if your dojo is full of good karate-ka, they will help you overcome this fear and teach you how to be a good fighter. Just remember, they are there to help you, not hurt you. Osu! ET

Fist off, if you have no sparring experience DO NOT enter the tournament. You will get completely beat up if you are fighting other full-contact tournament fighters. I am NOT kidding you. We have a full-contact, knock down tournament in Alabama in April and our tournament fighters are hard at work already. They train 5 or more days a week, both basics and fight classes. Fight class consists of pad work, stamina training, punching holding weights, kicking and punching a hessian bag full of sand for hours on end with bear feet and hands. They fight roughly 15 - 20, 2 minute, full-contact rounds in these sessions too. This is the type of fighter you will be facing: lean, mean and very brutal. If you are not an experienced fighter and in great condition you will get mauled. You do not fight by belt rank but by wieght, so you may face a black belt. I'm actually kind of interested in hearing where this Kyokushin dojo is that has no sparring???? This is unheard of. ET

I have no intention to get into a flame war either. If you make statements that are felt by some to be incorrect, you should expect people to take you up on them? You mention Oyama people leaving? For what reasons exactly and what style do they train now? Granted, the Kyokushin way is not for everyone. It takes a strong will as well as a strong body and some people just don't want to take this type of training. That's fine - each to their own. We have lots of females in our Dojo from kids to 50 years old. All train hard. All fight full contact. All practice with great spirit. We are not a bunch of meat - headed guys who like violence. I think your statements regarding kata are incorrect. We take our kata and basic training very seriously. Just because we are a fighting oriented full-contact style does not mean we neglect the basics - far from it. They are essential to the proper execution of a technique in Jissen Kumite. Osu! ET

I am 39 and have been studying full-contact karate for a year and a half. I did shotokan and tae-kwon-do 20 years ago but they are nothing compared ot this. The training is more intense, the fighting is hard. Injuries are real and heal time is longer. Most of the guys in the dojo are in their early 20s, so it makes for an interesting workout Our Soshu says karate begins at 50 - I believe him. I'm going to get my blackbelt in the next year or so. To get it I have to fight 15 people, one after the other in knockdown, full-contact bouts at the end of a 2.5 hour promotion test and they wont be very kind to me No, you are nowhere near too old to start karate, just a style that suits you and your body, research the dojo and find out the lineage of the sensei (this is the most important point). ET

Sorry for catching this thread late. I'll give you my opinion: 1. You are a disrespectful inidividual and need to learn a few life lessons. You hate this woman because she is a woman, because she is a lesbian or because she stops you drinking water? Or all of the above? 2. The black belt should NOT be ordering you about like this. That is the sensies right, not hers. If one of our sempeis tried that in our dojo, they would be in a world of pain VERY quickly. 3. Training of ANY kind without drinking water is both stupid and dangerous and serves absolutely no physical purpose. It is a form of torture and anyone condoning this should be reprimanded. I think you need to learn respect for you elders, respect for women, respect for people of different sexual orientation than your 'norm' and to go find a full-contact dojo and learn to fight against men. (I don't mean fighting women is a bad thing, but we do not fight women in our dojo with heavy contact). My $0.02 ET

You need to pick another style than Shotokan if you want to do Tameshiwara (breaking). We do breaking in World Oyama Karate, as do all Kyokushin derivatives. It's not about ego or showing off its about confidence in ones ability to deliver full contact without injury to oneself. We break baseball bats with our shins (two strapped together), boards and ice with our hands, elbows, feet and heads. ET

equaninmus, "artificial rules for sparring, i.e. no hands to the head, and its disdain for kata" Do you know anything about Kyokushin? Have you ever studied it? Mas Oyama did NOT hve disdain for kata at all. He considered it essential. He taught Steve Arneil that the only way that a style could remain consistent was to be taught the same way around the world. He taught him the only way to do this was through kata. The no face punches rule was introduced to protect people. You can still knee of kick to the face and you can always wear head gear and gloves and do head contact if you want. There is NOTHING artificial about Kyokushin fighting. Try it and you will understand. My advice to you is to find a Kyokushin (or close derivative) dojo and train there for a while and see if there is disdain for kata or you find the fighting artificial. ET

I think non-contact karate is basically aerobics or at best, dancing. Having done several non/semi-contact styles in my youth (I'm 40 this year) I finally decided to start karate again a year and a half ago. After searching hard in San Francisco for a Kyokushin dojo, I was very lucky to find a World Oyama Karate dojo. World Oyama Karate was founded by Mas Oyamas top student for 30 years, Shigeru Oyama and his brother, Yashuiko Oyama (who Mas Oyama called a Kyokushin genius). The San Francisco dojo was founded by my Sensei, Takeshi Saito, who was Shigeru Oyamas best student and 'uchi deshi' for 5 years. World Oyama Karate is full contact karate and is basically Kyokushin karate modified to suit the larger American size. We fight full contact every time we train. If we are injured we can stay out of it, but we learn to work around injuries and how to avoid them. I have had three broken ribs, two broken toes and a cracked rib in the year and a half but it doesn't put me off. I know now what the result of my technique is. I know what works in a real fight and what doesn't. I know how to control my power so as not to injure my oponent. Control comes from knowing the affect of a technique, not from guess work. Knowledge is power they say. Full - Contact all the way for me! Osu! ET BTW - we have two Shotokan 1st Dans, a Tae Kwon Do 1st dan and a Mauy Thai fighter with over 8 years experience in our ranks. All love the style and prefer the full-contact training.