Rick_72

My kids attended an after school program at the dojo for the last 4 years. Where they not only had Karate training 5 days a week, but also incorporated that hard work into their school studies while being tutored by their Karate instructors on their daily school homework. My oldest son also attended night class's when I attended mine. So basically he was training anywhere from 2-4 hours a day 5 days a week. When he took his Shodan test he was held to the adult standards, while he fought students his own age he demonstrated his self defence and Tuite on a teenage student 5 years his senior.

I always find it funny when people bring up size, strength, and fighting ability (meaning fighting child vs adult) when talking about child black belts. There is absolutely no reason to judge whether or not someone deserves a belt based upon those requirements. I've met, and sparred with plenty of black belts senior to me, whom I've beaten....some easily. I'm an athletic, 6' 1", 185 lbs male. Its only natural that using the training I've been given that someone that doesn't match up with me physically is going to be at a disadvantage when attempting to execute their techinique's on me. A belt is earned by knowledge of the system, and the mental capacity to weild that knowledge. The size and age of the student really has nothing to do with it. The respect issue is pretty easy too. I'm a 34 year old Shodan, should I not show respect to a 24 year old Sandan who's been training 3 times as long as I simply because they were born a full decade after I was? Respect is shown to our instructors because of the time and sweat they've dedicated to learning the things that we want to know, and then bascially putting their training on hold to teach us (only one of our instructor's is a paid employee of the school, and she teach's 4-5 class's a day from 3-8pm). The reason I'm lumping all black belts into the instructor catagory, is because all of our black belts must teach, its part of our syllabus. My son has his junior Shodan, and I'm proud to say he's the youngest ever bestowed that rank in our school. I've been to Okinawa, and I saw plenty of young kids running around with black belts wrapped around their waist's. Do our kids not warrant the same opportunity because their not Japanese? I mean plenty of our schools are training at the same level as theirs aren't they?

Tough to say really. Could be he started training when he was like 10 years old. Would twenty years of experience be enough? Many people receive their Shodan in three years. There's a lot of factors you have to take into account. How many days/hours a week did/does he dedicate to training? Is he exceptionally skilled at his art? I tested for Shodan in three years, but I attend every class available at the school on a weekly basis. Which add's up to about 12 one hour class's a week, broken down beginner, intermediate, and advanced. I did so because it was always my attitude that without continuing to practice my basic's and my conditioning that my advanced learning would suffer. I would say the same thing I'm sure you'll hear a lot with this thread, go in and watch a couple class's then determine for yourself if you think they teach well. With a previous martial arts background, it won't take you long to determine if you want to attend training there. Just keep in mind, ever dojo you go to after your first one is going to be different. Not necessarily better or worse, just different.

We practice both Passai Sho and Dai in Matsumura Seito Shorin Ryu, however, I'd have to re-look at the Bassai's to see how similar they are. There are different versions of Passai's (based off of discipline), just like I'm sure there are with Bassai's, but I'm pretty sure Passai and Bassai are supposed to be similar in technique. At least that's what's been explained to me. Some styles call them Passai, some Bassai.

I'll see if I can find a clip of it out there. If not, I'll ask my Sensei if its alright if I have myself filmed doing Seisan and post it.

That is basically the same version of the kata that we practice in Matsumura Seito...I guess because its the Matsumura version haha. At any rate, our technique's look different, but almost all the same technique's are used there. There is a variation at the end, as we don't have a kick at the end.

See, that is a difference that we have. We don't do the push-ups and sit ups for our testings. There's no set number of push-up's/sit up's we have to do, we just have to do them if we make any mistakes....then redo the kata/technique we messed up. Incidentally, I passed my Shodan test two weeks ago. I can't remember the last time I was that tired.

When point sparring try to strike as quickly as you can then you might not have to block . When your free sparring, or continuous sparring, you'll want to move out of the way of strikes more than actually blocking them. As you said though, keeping your hands out away from your body is going to give you the best reaction time. Much to the pain of those I spar with on a regular basis, one of the technique's that I use to block those middle kicks is dropping my front elbow on their foot/ankle from that higher face guarding position. That allow's me to bring it back up quickly to defend a kick/punch combo, and it makes your opponent think twice about kicking there again.

Stances. Just like has already been said, Shorin Ryu has a more natural upright stance than most other disciplines. The amount of cat stances you do will be dependant on not only the particular style of Shorin Ryu, but also how sport centric the particular dojo you are attending is. There's nothing wrong with sport Shorin Ryu, as the bunkai is all still there, but you'll notice that there's a little more flash in some of the technique in empty hand, and kobudo.

Isn't it amazing when you watch the Okinawan Karate version's of white crane kata's next to white crane based Kung Fu forms how the Chinese origin's of Okinawan Karate really make themselves evident? There's a couple of white crane Kung Fu forms on You Tube that pop up when you search Hakutsuru, check them out side by side and you'll see what I mean.

If he's planning on putting out that magazine, I'd love to know how to get on the mailing list, do you have any more info on it? He's actually been recommended by my Sensei (also a long time student of Fuse Kise) to a fellow student at the dojo I train in (Matsumura Seito), because that fellow student is moving home to Texas very soon. My Sensei told him it would be more than worth the drive to train with him.

No one, and I mean no one can ever acurately predict the outcome of a fight they haven't had yet. It doesn't matter how much training, in anything, that they've had. If you train in martial arts for the rest of your life, and yet are never involved in a fight/physical altrication, I challenge you to look back on your life and honestly be able to state that your time was wasted. If you want to test your Karate skills, get into a ring with another practioner and go to town on each other. Have fun proving each other's technique's work. Don't wish for a real fight that you may not like the outcome of. The outcome may have absolutely nothing to do with your skill level or practicality of your training, sometimes its just dumb luck that wins a real fight.

I've never trained seriously in Aikido, however, I do know an Aikido instructor, and have participated in some of his class's. I can tell you this from my limited exposure, Aikido, while from what I've seen is a great art in itself, you'd be surprised how much it opened your eye's to some bunkai in your own Karate kata's that you may have never known was there before. I've stated before that I really didn't start seeing all the potential bunkai in my kata until I started practicing my Tuite in my later Kyu grades. Aikido is not only a great self defense art, but from all I can tell would also open up your eyes to much knowledge about the human body and how it can/can't be manipulated.

Double bone block, front kick combination (done at the same time). It looks powerful and graceful at the same time in kata, is simple to do, and is effective in both kumite and a real situation. Sure there are some more advanced technique's that I like better, mostly Tuite, but this one is the simplest to actually land on my opponent.

Their behaviours are exactly what's in question in my opinion. At the risk of getting into a conversation about moral's and Karate, would you hand a loaded gun to a psychopath? Why put fighting arts, which applied correctly could seriously harm or kill a person, into the hands of someone with a horrible attitude. I think he should be working on their attitudes along with their physical skills, its all part of Karate training. Pull rank? Isn't it his school? Isn't he Sensei? What he says goes, in all of his students Karate world, period. Its not a matter of pulling rank, its a matter of a respectful teacher/student relationship. He's put you in a position of authority in his school, he's got to back that up with actions. He doesn't have to boot them out of his school, he just has to use a little tough justice on them to teach them that bad attitudes and real Karate don't go hand in hand. I'm sure that its every Karate person's dream to be able to pass on what they've learned to as many people as want to learn it. However, the facts of life are that teaching Karate, and running a successful business can be very different aspects of the same life. Unless your independantly wealthy, you either have to go to work for a living, or you can have your cake and eat it too by teaching your Karate full time. The facts of business are this; students with poor attitudes chase away other students, and cause new students to not wish to continue their training, and a few bad apples chasing away the rest of your students will not make for successful business. Not being successful in business when trying to make a living from your Karate and still remaining true to your art, means that you have to go back to a 9 to 5 to feed your family, and more often than not means the closing of your Karate school. I'd say he has a serious choice to make, unless he want's to stuck teaching the few bad apples in a broom closet at a local community center that will let him teach his class in their facility for free. I'd say, never turn away a student that's enthusiastic about learning. However, once that student turns out to be a burden on everyone else in the class a choice has to be made.