Fish

It depends on context. In a real life situation, by all means stay out of range and out of the way. But in a sparring situation, there is an issue when the two protagonists are different sizes and have different reach. In that situation, it makes sense for the shorter fighter to move in and close the taller one down. Not only can this remove the advantage of longer reach, but if done effectively, it can force the taller fighter to move back to reestablish the range they are comfortable with. Thus, the shorter fighter is moving forward and the taller one moving backward, which makes the shorter fighter look more attacking.

The specific technique you described (block and hold the kick followed by a takedown) should be practised slowly at first and with plenty of control. It comes with practice. It used to be one of my favourite techniques.

Had my first Judo lesson on Saturday (after 7 years karate). Suddenly, I realised, I know nothing!! Doing groundwork and the yellow belts were all over me. The sensei just lay on me and challenged me to move him onto his back! Great fun.

I've been running for a couple of months after quite a long time away from running. The easiest way to run (or any other exercise) is to incorporate it into your natural routine. I'm lucky enough to live in the forest and have a dog - so it's out on the trails first thing in the morning. It does seem to make me much more alert during the day and I feel I have more energy as well. Strangely enough, I was having some pain in my knees before running which I thought would get worse, but the running seems to have made it better! Must be something to do with working particular muscles.

In point sparring, person with longer reach obviously has certain advantages. So does the fastest person. These natural advantages obviously help in any fight, but they are accentuated by point sparring where the fight stops on each point, since the opponent has no chance to respond. So, for example, it might be difficult for a smaller person to get inside and strike or throw before being tapped by the taller one. I prefer continuous sparring myself - there's more opportunity to think about and develop particular fighting strategies and test them and less advantage to the person who can tap first.

In Wado we don't practise Sanchin, but we have Seishan. The first half is very similar to Sanchiin and is performed slowly with dynamic tension, in forward facing Seishan stance (which is similar to Sanchin stance). The second half is performed fast and light with kicks as well as blocks and punches, and in sideways or vertical Seishan stance. The contrast between the two halves is interesting in training.

My guess is that (as others have said) the emphasis on high kicking began to develop as Karate and other arts became used as sports. The difficulty and aesthetic appeal of kicking to head height probably has something to do with it. The aesthetic appeal was no doubt reinforced when the MA became the subject of numerous movies, where high and complex kicks are emphasised to great effect. It seems to me that karate and other ma now contain a number of kicks that would not be easy to execute or terribly functional in a real fight, and are there for sporting purposes only. For example, in my art, ura-mawashigeri to head height strikes me as eminently impractical in a real fight: the relative weakness of the kick combined with the difficulty of execution and the sacrificial compromise of balance and stability make it a poor choice in a self defence situation, imho. This emphasis on aesthetics and complexity over functionality in the sports arena has been taken to an extreme in Olympic TKD, for example, where points are only scored for kicks, so the protagonists keep their arms down, don't punch, and attempt to score using highly complex kicks that would have no or limited practical application, whereas TKD is in reality (as I understand it), a functional ma with a full range of effective punching and kicking techniques etc. The same evolution can be seen in boxing, which originally contained grapples and takedowns, but which has abandoned them in favour of a smaller range of point-scoring or ko techniques.

I always thought it meant there is no "first" strike in the sense that "first" is an ordinal number, followed by "second", "third" etc. The aim in karate is to incapacitate with one blow ("one strike, one kill"). If there is only one, there can be no first.

I am +5.5 in one eye, +5 in the other and have mild astigmatism. My sparring without glasses is not great as I have poor peripheral vision. I use contact lenses pretty much only for sports. I use the soft monthly disposables. They are fine for an hour or two, but can be uncomfortable with prolonged use. I've had several incidents of lenses falling out and even (when I did my 30 minute kumite for shodan!) of splitting and becoming unusable. But there's no way I could manage without them.

Why do you want to gain weight? You may just have the "wrong body type" for serious weight gain through body building. I don't think you're that light compared to your height - I'm 6'0" and only 175 lb. I try to stay toned but I don't think I'll ever be able to bulk up (I've never found it easy to gain weight even though I eat more than anyone else in my home!).

IMHO a black belt sparring with a white belt should be sparring in a very light and relaxed way, trying to encourage the white belt to learn the technical side of sparring (how to spot openings, how to move out of the way, how to counter etc. etc.) without being frightened of getting walloped. It's ok for a black belt to show their skill, but in a very controlled way. There's no need to be making actual contact to the face of the white belt - what does it achieve? A black belt should have sufficient self confidence and maturity not to need to overwhelm a beginner. When I spar with beginners or other students who lack confidence, I always make a point of telling them "I'm not going to hit you, just play tag" I can practice my own techniques without having to make hard contact and, at the same time, it helps them to relax which frees their minds up to learn new things. Of course, there is a time and place for harder sparring, but IMHO only between more advanced students and under controlled conditions.

I went to one of Iain's seminars last year - it's well worth it. He is a Wado practitioner, as am I, but he comes at it from a pragmatic perspective. Personally, I find a lot of what he has to say makes sense to me. One of the things he (and other pragmatic ma's) teach is that the specific moves in Kata are mnemonic moves that train self defence principles. Therefore, the bunkai is relatively open ended since the principles can be applied in a number of different situations. Makes sense to me, since in a self defence situation you obviously can't predict exactly what your attacker will do: you can only anticipate and prepare for the likely range of attacks.

It would be interesting to see steps that a beginner can take after gaining their black belt. The oft repeated adage that bb is a beginning not an end is certainly proving true in my experience - so much to learn and improve.

if a student (usually a kid) treats me with disrespect I just point to my belt and say "I've got mine already, if you want yours, you listen and learn, if you don't, it's up to you." They usually get the point.

How long it takes before one has even a superficial grasp of the practical application of kata. How many kata we learn superficially and how little emphasis there is on knowing even one in depth.

It's not necessarily about money. Where I train, we're thinking of introducing a minimum attendance requirement between grades to stop the problem of people (usually kids) showing up irregularly, and then their parent expecting them to participate in a grading. With a minimum attendance requirement, Sensei can give an objective reason for refusing to allow them to grade. In one case we had a kid who didn't show up for two months, then his mum shows up on the night of the grading and complains that he wasn't invited to grade!

But going back to the original question: it's not right to say that because only a small percentage do achieve dan grade, it follows that any individual karateka only has a small chance of being able to do so. It's the old statistical fallacy of correlation = causation. Personally, I think the majority of karateka could achieve shodan and above, but it is obviously a matter of perseverance, practice etc. The odds are not stacked against those that withdraw from training any more than against those who succeed.

I wonder whether there is a Chinese whispers effect as well. I.e. Sensei subconsciously makes a slight change to kata because it suits his own approach (e.g. changes a stance in part of the kata from, say, seishan to shiko dachi) and then passes that on to his students. They then pass it on in turn, together with any subtle changes they make. I have found such differences in the way kata are taught at the dojo I attend as compared with books/ videos by other sensei.

And yet Naihanchi is reckoned by some practitioners to be one of the most difficult Kata (notwithstanding its seeming simplicity).

Why do you want to study karate? Most people, if they are beginners, start off not being very good at sparring and being apprehensive or fearful of it. A good instructor will help you become good at it. In my view sparring is indispensable as it enables you to practice distance, timing, evasion etc with a partner - it's hard to practice those things solo.

In my experience 6 to 8 months to be able to perform the kata at a basic level of competence. However, the knowledge of it will be superficial after that period. One problem with learning new kata for every belt is ending up with a superficial knowledge of too many kata and no in depth knowledge of any of them. I had to perform 11 kata (5 pinans, and 6 advanced kata) for my shodan test. But I was only beginning to understand some of the bunkai of some of the pinan kata. It would be better to concentrate on gaining a thorough knowledge of a few kata than having to know some many imho.

I too was a runner through my teens, 20s and until my mid thirties. I also had flexibility issues when I started. Stretching every day helped, and I can kick mawashigeri to my own head height (I'm 6'). However, dynamic flexibility is different from static flexibility - regularly practising kicking higher will also help improve kicking flexibility. A certain amount of flexibility in the hips and leg muscles helps to get the "snap" even for lower kicks.

Well, I've only got the one book by Johnson. it's pretty slim, but an interesting account of his year studying in Japan. There's not much in there that you can use to improve your own karate though.

I'm reading The Way of Kata (Kane and Wilder) and 5 Years One Kata (Burgar). Both very good books which give good advice on applying Kata. Iain Abernethy's books are also good. Waking Dragons by Goran Powell, and Wado Ryu Karate Uncovered by Frank Johnson are both good autobiographical accounts of the study of karate.

It can depend on the age of the kids as well. Where I train some of the kids are quite young, and they find it hard to concentrate on doing one thing for any length of time. So they start chatting and messing about instead of learning karate. I started learning as an adult in my 30s. My main problems were lack of (physical) flexibility - that resolved over time with stretching, although I still have to work on it; and I find it difficult to grasp and remember complex body movements. I find grappling and takedowns especially difficult to absorb.