Zaine

Karate was there for me in exactly the way that I needed it at the exact time I needed it. I've been doing this in one way or another since I was 12. Karate, for 19 years, is how I've framed a lot of my experiences and learning. Without Karate, I imagine that I would be a lot angrier. I can see a person didn't bond with his brothers as keenly as he could have. I can see a person who did not have the outlet to frame his understanding of who he was to himself. A big part of Martial Arts for me is introspection. I learned a lot about how to pick apart my feelings and get to the source of them. Without karate I don't think that I would have come to the idea that learning is 70% self-study and that would definitely have made getting a Master's a lot more of a struggle.

We have a really nice record store really close to me. I'll have to set a calendar reminder

I just finished catching up on it. I thought it was really fun. If you liked the games as a kid, then you'll like this.

If you're looking for a book about teaching, then I would suggest you get a textbook for classroom teaching (as in, K-12 classroom). The reason for this is that it will go a little more in depth on pedagogy and use scientific studies to back up some of the psychology and the like. At the end of the day, there is not much difference between a classroom of K-12 learners, and a classroom of people (of any age) learning martial arts.

I didn't even know there was a new record day! I'm very knowledgeable about new comic day though.

I think Bob hits the nail on the head with this sentence: As someone who has had ADHD all 30 of their years, I can definitely speak towards the idea that teens are lazy. Sometimes, teens are actually lazy. Sometimes, like most people, they need to be engaged. Teenager's brains are still developing and that means that they don't have a fully developed prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex is the part of our brains that, among other things, controls our focus. So it's no wonder that a teenager might be struggling to focus during class, their brains are there for it yet. I've been doing Martial Arts in one way or another for 19 years and I still have trouble focusing (because ADHD more than anything else) but I remember being a teen and MA was all I could talk about. It wasn't that I was lazy, it was that sometimes I didn't find that my instructor engaged the class. As my instructor got better at engaging the class, I got better at holding my attention on the instructor throughout the class. The point of all of this is that if you're having issues with teens being "lazy" and not focusing, find a way to engage them in a way that gets them excited for the lesson. When I was teaching middle school, doing this was most of my lesson planning. If you can engage them in a way that they enjoy without alienating the class or embarrassing them then you'll have a student for life.

It would be awesome to see it! I stopped following MMA in the late 2000s so I can't speak towards what older star fighters are doing. I know, however, that Bas Rutten has gotten involved in Karate Combat, which seems less MMA focused. All in all, if people like Bas are doing this, I can imagine that Karate will see a "comeback," as you put it. I remember the boom of BJJ in the 2000s with schools popping up all over my area. Few survived after riding the fad, but the point remains. I hope we can start to see more traditional Martial Arts schools coming back, I would love more options.

Sign me up!

Fusei Kise happens to be a Yondan in Shorinji-Ryu and taught Coffman the Shorinji kata that shows up in the American versions of MSSR. He later stopped teaching it and did not carry it over to Kenshin Kan when he founded that system. So I would say that it's probably more accepted that Coffman added it, as he states that Kise didn't remember the kata later in Coffman's training. That said, you are correct in your assumption. Ananku no Sai is just the unarmed version with sai. The way it was explained to me was that Ananku no Sai was the true version and the unarmed version is to introduce it. Not sure if this is true, you know how Martial Arts legends pass down. As far as the kata's relation to Matsubayashi-Ryu, I'm not familiar enough to comment if the form made its way to me from there. Interestingly, despite it bearing Soken's name, as far as I know MSSR (or at least the variant that I learned) had only Ananku no Sai as its Sai form. It is entirely possible that my instructor either hadn't learned or had forgotten the ones post Shodan. I can't find a reliable list for MSSR katas post Shodan so I'm not entirely sure either.

I got it from Matsumura Seito Shorin Ryu, from Soken, Kise, Coffman, Gagne, and then my teacher.

Wado gives a lot of great information here. If you go to YouTube and search "no sai" a lot of Sai kata show up. For me, I learned Ananku at 5th kyu and then Ananku no Sai at 3rd. I would say that most Japanese (and specifically Okinawan) styles tend to have Sai kata so if you find a style from these regions near you that you're interested I would definitely call them.

When I was teaching Elementary and Middle school we ran in to the same problem all the time. Parents just don't understand the process, or they think their child is ready for the next step before they've put the effort in, or they want to argue that there needs to be an immediate retest for a failed grade. Overall, parents just have a difficult time understanding the function of learning and this probably doubles when it comes to Martial Arts. It's cliché to say something is about the journey, not the destination, but for MA that's true.

Congrats on the double promotion! It's like my signature has said for the past however long, 70% of training is at home.

I think something cool that will come out of this is that MA will start being more inclusive to distance learning. Yes, in person will probably remain superior. It's important having in person corrections and tips but as far as accessibility I think that there a lot of people who would love to zoom in to a class and drive up once or twice a month to a class to get that connection. It's especially great in instances where the student is rural and can't justify driving to a school 30-60 minutes away 3 times a week.

Good stuff. I like the emphasis on using the stronger parts (elbows, in this case) to work for your advantage. Why do more work when it's easier to let biomechanics take its course?

My thoughts on Dillman aside, the punching thing is familiar. It was always treated as a warm up with us though. Our punching drills (which were done during the "40 basics") were always just about warming up the body. It was made very clear that chambering at the hip would get you a hit to the face. I have also heard of the practice of publicly teaching one thing and privately another. It's where a lot of the secrecy comes from. Like you, I get it 100%. No one wants to teach secrets to people occupying their land after a war. That said, like you get at, why continue now? Especially outside of Japan. There's no reason that Coffman and Gagne couldn't have taught my instructor and his class everything up front. I get the desire to maintain some mysticism and tradition, but in the information age you also run the risk of us finding it somewhere else. One of my peers would constantly scour the internet for more information and our instructor always had to correct him about the differences. It just seems easier to have a database up front.

I'm so excited for the Shang Chi movie. As a long time comics fan, I'm so pumped that the character is getting screen time. I found myself watching a lot of old MA movies at the beginning of lock down along with some of my favorite classics as a way to pass time as I worked from home. Like you, I'm in need of some new material.

I can't wait for the update! I'm sending good thoughts your way.

That's great Zaine. As I get older I take the view that I should just train if I'm feeling good, rest day or not. Also it's ok to take a rest day if I'm not feeling so good. That was a hard lesson to learn. I used to feel so bad about not going when I was feeling bad. Now? I still feel a little twinge of guilt but I'd rather take a rest day and not push myself to an injury.

Thanks everyone! It's a honor to be recognized by such a cool community. Thanks to everyone who posts and chats with me here.

So I can't remember my instructor giving any hard reason as to why we did it one way or another. The American canon of MSSR seems to be rooted largely in doing things based of tradition and so I got the impression that other things were lost in the fervor of wanting to stay true. In regards to biomechanics, his reasoning that the Matsumura style of blocking was more solid and stable than the Shorinji style blocks. This made sense at the time and still does. He offered that Matusumra might have been better for uneven terrain of Okinawa, and at the time I bought in whole sale but as an adult I'm less inclined to believe this. For me and my own reasoning, it seems to be a difference in how the block strikes. Do I want to strike the arm (e.g.) with the knuckles on my index and middle fingers or with the side of my arm with a closed ridge hand? It seems to me that Matsumura is great for offering stability if sacrificing some power while Shorinji is the opposite.

Acceptable to whom? Just to be clear, I get what you're saying up front. You need approval from your hierarchy. What I mean here is that you shouldn't go in worrying about if you're enough. You are enough! You've put in the work, you've done the research, and the next step for you is to open a dojo so that you can become better. Go in with that attitude! As someone who has given honestly far too many presentations and proposals, your best bet is to take a breath, understand that what you want is not only reasonable but necessary to your continued growth, and act that way. You got this.

We had (and I'm not entirely sure why the American tradition went this way) a few Shorinji kata in our program. So I'm holding on to Seisan, Wansu, and Ananku as well. I've actually been mulling over the idea of making an online repository for MSSR (and other systems, but MSSR is what I know). It seems a little silly that in 2021 our system can be dying off due to lack of knowledge. There has to be someone in the world who has knowledge of the things we're losing. I'm involved in HEMA as well and every fencing manual from the Medieval and Renaissance period are easily found on Wiktenauer, a free online Wiki. I know that MSSR can be secretive, that seems to be a trait of MA at large but I've never met another MSSR practitioner who wasn't at least a little guarded. I totally understand this, as well! Like you, I balk at the idea of making changes within the kata and various traditional techniques. I don't mind those techniques being adapted in sparring etc. but I believe that we should learn the original technique before adaptation. That said, if there was, at bare minimum, a drop box file that held kata information that instructors could share with their students as they came to these kata that would be awesome. I know that for my purposes it would be great to see some kata again to knock off some rust. So like I mentioned above the American program has incorporated some Shorinji techniques. So the MSSR I learned had both blocks with the knuckles facing toward and to the side of the opponent that we separated into "Matsumura" and "Shorinji" blocks (we had punches in both of these techniques as well). That said, in practice and sparring, we were mostly encouraged to use the Matsumura techniques, which is the knuckles facing the opponent.

I'm definitely with you here. I've been known to drink a cup and them immediately lay down and go to sleep.

Today felt great! Planks: 3 minutes in total Leg lifts: 3 sets of 10 Oblique lifts: 3 sets of 10 on each side (16 kilo weight) Army press: 3 sets of 10 (50 lbs) Arnold press: 3 sets of 10 (30 lbs barbells) Lateral raises: 3 sets of 10 (20 lbs) Smith back shrug: 100 (50 lbs) Barbell upright row: 3 sets of 10 (50 lbs) Barbell shrug: 100 (50 lbs) Revers wrist curl: 3 sets of 12 (40 lbs) 30 minutes on a stationary (7.5 miles) Today was great. I was in the zone, got some good reps, sweat a lot. I really enjoy doing the stationary because I can watch anime and then suddenly it's done! Tomorrow and Friday are designated rest days, but if I still feel this good tomorrow I might go on a little jog.