angus88

Well, provided you do it correctly, certainly you're still getting a benefit from Sanchin even if you don't take strikes. But keep in mind that taking strikes during Sanchin is a traditional part of the kata. I just have a hard time saying you'll "toughen up your body" by simply going through it without strikes, but that would sound like I'm undervaluing the kata. So as a blanket statement I'll say sure - your body will be tougher as a result of Sanchin, but not if you're doing it wrong.

To say it "toughens up your body" is an odd way to put it and I'm not even sure how to answer that. I can see how you might say that because if you've never done it before, it might look like the person is getting the crap beat out of them while doing a kata. But as the participant, your focus is not on the strikes, but concentration on the kata itself and the breathing and stances.

thesasafras - you may want to reference Seikichi Toguchi's book for this. I checked on this one and Miyagi did not create his own Sanchin kata, he made a change to it during a period before he died when he was ill. He changed Sanchin in which the student would not turn his back on him, feeling that was disrespectful. So for a brief period of Miyagi's instruction, he changed Sanchin where there were no turns at all. After Miyagi died, Toguchi and the other senior students of Miyagi changed it back to it's original form, the same style they learned from Miyagi initially, the same style as Higashionna. Until I read otherwise from one of the masters themselves, that's what I'm going with.

It definitely comes down to reputation. As others have been saying, if no one knows you, no one will come. Just get all your students that can afford it and go to all the local tournaments as they come up - go as a group so people start knowing your students. This, of course, probably means you're going to have to get your students prepared for point fighting! Once you get a little well known and you get to know the other dojo owners, they'll hopefully come to yours too.

That's a tough position, and a major reason we don't let 7 year olds in our school. At 8, you can train them to take it kind of seriously. That one year, in my opinion, makes a huge difference. Dealing with the situation at hand, I think it would be more awkward to pull him off the stage than to let him finish. But that would be his final "performance" of the night and there would definitely be a little talk afterwards!

Something else to consider Mike - you're not going to make your money on students who are so-called martial arts experts that actually know anything about organizations or affiliations. Just like your current students, the average person on the street that might wander in to your place doesn't know and doesn't care. And parents looking for schools to put their kids in aren't going to know anything about that stuff. If they want to see your credentials, tell them to watch a class.

I don't know Goju Boi, if you think about it, what do organizations do except take your money and allow you to go to certain "tournaments"? Personally, the proof is in the pudding. If an experienced martial artist takes a look at your school, hopefully his judgment will be based on what he sees out of your students, not what organizations are up on the wall. I think it was a coincidence that the "horrible" school didn't have any affiliations. Sorry I'm so opinionated on this subject, but it seems like every dojo I've seen has some kind of certification system for the black belts and the school is affiliated with everything under the sun, but the affiliations don't teach your students, you do.

Wow SenseiMike - your electric bills are cheap!

Well if by style you mean curriculum, that pretty much changes the whole thing! And in that case I agree - curriculum combined with individual - absolutely.

To Andrew: I understand the economics of running a school perfectly well. I also understand that prostituting your art is not the only way to make money in the martial arts. You can make a good living running a school without compromising the integrity of the system itself. There are a few schools that still do that. To Sauzin: Believe me when I say being PC is the last thing I care about being. All I know is what I've seen. And I've yet to see a style so perfect that a person is unbeatable by virtue of style alone. Of course style can make a difference to an extent, but I've seen people practice very dangerous martial arts moves that you can tell by watching them they'd never be able to do if push came to shove. In other words, you can't hide behind your style and pretend to be superman just because on paper it looks like an unbeatable style. Does that make sense? And when you say "styles affect how you progress, in what manner, etc." - again, I would question the school itself. You can have two kung fu schools of the same "style" that progress in very different ways. I agree - method and manner both count, I just wouldn't attribute that automatically to style.

I'm going to have to go back and reference Seikichi Toguchi's book on this one, but if I'm not mistaken, Sanchin always had two turns, but right before Myagi died, he changed it to only one turn. Something about not wanting or being able to walk around to see both sides of the kata. Like I said, I'll have to check. Then when Myagi died, his successors changed it back to the old way. I'm paraphrasing the details on that one, but I'm pretty sure that's correct.

I think the school you train in and how you train matters far more than style. I've visited countless other schools of verying styles, bust mostly karate, tae kwon do and kung fu. But I'll watch people train and see how the school is and just about every time think to myself, "no wonder people think karate/tae kwon do/kung fu students can't fight." It's a sad reality - most schools today care more about money than training good students. Plus people nowadays want things easy, and most schools are more than happy to give them what they want. Still, that's not a true representative of the styles themselves, just the majority of schools out there and consequently, many of the students as well. Maybe BJJ hasn't reached the depths that karate, TKD and kung fu have, but give it some time. The more popular it gets, the more money can be made from it, then let the watering down begin.

One impression of "real" Goju would be that your school's lineage goes back to an Okinawan Goju system linking you directly to Chojun Myagi and nothing in that original system has been taken away. Not to say that new things can't be added to a traditional system, but nothing can be taken away or it ceases to be a traditional school. That definition probably doesn't suit everybody, but there it is.

I know what you mean about "fake schools" - someone takes a seminar from Chuck Norris, suddenly they include Chuck Norris in their lineage (bad example, but you know what I mean.) But to me, visiting a school and watching them work out tells me quite a bit more than being part of an organization. I've checked out so many schools on the internet, but you can't really tell how they are until you go and watch them in person. Seeing them spar is great too. It speaks volumes. I've seen so many schools that pay their dues to X organization, but you go into their school and you have kids are running around on the floor playing with PVC pipe and black belts that are going through demonstrations with the intensity of an 80-year old woman. Know what I mean?

I take from a guy that took from Seikichi Toguchi in Okinawa. No organizations though - don't really see the point and neither does he.

Something else - with kata, it's pretty much the only way you're going to be able to simulate a lot of the moves you have in the system that you can't use in sparring (eye gouging, throat rip, etc.) I also think it's a good mental exercise to pick out different self-defense moves in kata that aren't so obvious. There's just too many benefits to kata to name. The masters obviously knew what they were doing when they came up with them!

Cool - Sonny Chiba rocks! His karate is very powerful on screen. Ranking my favorites, I'd say - 1. The Street Fighter (I love that the Street Fighter movies are definitely Karate and not Kung-Fu, you can really tell the difference) 2. Return of the Street Fighter 3. Kill Bill Vol. 1 (not really a Chiba movie, but I'll include it since he was in it briefly - if only for the first fight between Uma Thurman and the black lady) 4. Champion of Death (Cool movie about Mas Oyama) 5. Street Fighter's Last Revenge

Street Fighter with Sonny Chiba - I hear that's the first movie to get an "X" rating simply because of the violence! And of course the karate is fantastic.

We used to use Century, now we use Macho. Their stuff seems to work pretty well.

Well I guess I should first ask - who is teaching karate in your school if not the black belts? And if the black belts are all teaching the same thing in the same way, there shouldn't be any question on a belt test whether something is right or wrong on a test. In other words, subjectivity is bound to happen, but you can keep it to a minimum if the people teaching are on the same page. Guess I read you wrong originally then. For some reason I was picturing a normal test and at the end you telling your students that you're failing them just because they should know what it's like to fail. But I have to say - if someone quits because they failed a five minute test, I'd hold the door open for them. But you're absolutely right about people (in America anyway) not taking criticism too well. In our school, people like that tend to quit eventually anyway. If you mix criticism with praise, kids can be conditioned to take it I think better than adults can. Try as I might, I have no response to this that could be described as anything other than scathingly sarcastic. Have a good one.

Justice Zero is correct, and to add to that, I'll go one further and say if you're taking in a system with any history and/or depth at all, you'll see that even by getting a black belt you haven't "mastered" the system. THIS is why people say you should master one art before starting another. If you did that, you'd probably never change styles or systems. There wouldn't be a need to. But it also has to do with motivation. Why are you taking martial arts? If you just want to learn how to fight you'll have a much different path than someone that ones to truly master or come close to mastering a specific martial art.

A face mask?! That's not going to teach you to block your face. It sounds to me like a crutch for both you and your instructor. I don't care how "hard" a student fights, an advanced rank ought to have enough control not to punch you in the face. Once, maybe. Definitely not twice. But I guess if you had a face mask your instructor can be as uncontrolled as he wants to be and he won't hurt your face. Meanwhile, you don't learn to block the face because you don't have to. And head gear is not the same thing as a face mask. Head gear can prevent serious injury to the brain - it doesn't stop a good hard ridge hand or back fist from rattling your head. If it does you're not hitting hard enough!

I agree with Caged Warrior. If you punch or kick the bag correctly, you shouldn't get hurt from it. At my school, people don't start even touching the bag until Gold belt and they don't start doing routines on it until Orange belt. By then you better be punching or kicking properly or you really will break your wrists, hands, toes or feet, etc. And then it's your own fault!

You should probably try and turn your head or "go with" the punch if you can. It takes practice, but it's worth it once you get it down. It's that old saying that the best block is when you're not there. That said, some people are going back and forth about tensing your face up or not tensing your face. The only thing I'd say to that is you should definitely clamp your teeth nice and tight on your mouthpiece. One punch or kick to the jaw with your mouth even slightly open and you'll find out why. As for the head butt - I guess it depends on the speed of the puncher. The old boxers used to punch a lot right between the eyes. You could probably head butt those, but a quick jab to the nose might be tricky to head butt. It might be just as well to use that energy getting out of the way of the punch than running right into it!

Not necessarily. I think part of learning karate is the mental aspect you should be learning every day. As a compliment to learning focus, you also should be learning to channel your own emotions. Testing is also a test of that. You should be able to demonstrate everything you know in karate under any circumstance. Just as you should be able to demonstrate your karate if you're attacked. This, unfortunately, can be true, but it shouldn't be. If this is the case in a school, someone isn't learning consistency, starting with the black belts. But that's no reason to throw out a belt system, it just means the black belts in that school need to shape up. If a school is having this problem, there is a problem with the school. In my experience this has only been the case with students that probably shouldn't be there in the first place. If a karate student is worth teaching, he will be learning humility along the way as well. Again, if he's not learning that it's either the fault of his instructor, or the kid isn't right for karate. There's simply no reason to set up a student to fail, but not to say that can't be an option if the student totally screws up his test. There should always be that threat of failure, otherwise your system loses it's integrity. It's like a spoiled child that always gets his way. No offense, but I think the problem here is obvious. Number 1. don't experiment on students, just be honest. If they fail a test, then they fail. If they pass, they pass. Number 2. if you were going to experiment with them, don't tell them what you're doing. Right there they've got ammunition against you and I wouldn't blame them for using it on you. In the end what they want is consistency and fairness. It looks like you gave them neither. I guess if that solves your problems then that's that. Frankly, I think that would look a lot more suspicious than a belt test that someone may or may not have deserved to pass. But that's just me. 24Fighting chickens - I mean the utmost respect in my post. I don't know you or wish to judge you - but you gave the most thoughtful response I've read in a while. Cheers!