rogue2257

Used to watch that back when it was originally airing.

My school is a fairly traditional Shotokan style school, and we often use pushups, or holding the pushup position as punishment for misbehavior or not listening to the instructor. I know there are varying schools of thought on using physical punishment like that, particularly pushups, but I think there is some validity to it. When I started karate long long ago I lacked much of the discipline I have now from such punishment. So here is my question: Do you use punishment as an enforcement method in your school? If so, what form does it take?

Tough to say, I love kobudo. I've trained with bo, sai, tonfa, nunchaku, kama, sword, knife, and kubotan/yawara. Can't say I necessarily prefer any over the others, I think they're all worth training in and I enjoy every moment of it.

Myself, I always TRY to get to the outside, as many of you have mentioned. We practice a lot of tai sabaki actions that involve avoiding the incoming technique and moving to a more opportune position. Of course, it isn't always the easiest thing to do in sparring.....

My primary frustrations with the martial arts have always come during periods of constant repetition in class.... kata for months on end with nothing else, for instance. The class starts feeling stagnant and I get bored. I've found that the best way to keep myself interested is to learn about and study aspects of the martial arts that we don't get to in class. For me, that has included learning new kata that aren't practiced at my school, weapons, takedown techniques, judo/jiujitsu moves, solo training (weight lifting, running, etc.) I could never quit karate. It's a part of who I am, but I can definitely relate to where you're coming from. You just have to find a way to keep it fresh for yourself, even if you're doing the same sorts of things in class over and over.

I have a tendency to kick elbows with my roundhouse kicks in sparring. I usually kick with the top of my foot. Ouch. Haven't managed to teach myself to quit doing it yet.

Yes it does...in Shindokan it most certainly does! My Soke and my Dai-Soke both taught/teach Kekomi as a thrust and Keage as a snap...period! I believe that they knew/know what the true actual meaning of the two words are because they were both born and raised in Okinawa. Why is Kekomi a thrust and why is a Keage a snap in Shindokan? Soke wanted the understanding of either term to be simple enough for the laymen to understand and to NOT be bogged down with definitions of a word, but, to just execute the technique, because that's what's important. Snap?! Thrust?! Rise?! Great...now just kick! I am sure they know what the words have come to represent, but Keage does does not literally mean snap. Do you have your website up yet? WNM Freedict.com says that the translation of "snap" from English to Japanese is "sunappu." I'm not sure that's the best translation for our purposes.

There is probably some truth to that. Aside from the jumping/spinning/flying kicks, the side kick is the most mechanically difficult basic kick to do.

Agreed! This one is one of the toughest to get through to the students of our school. Sounds like that's a pretty consistent issue across schools.

That's very important and smart!

I agree wholeheartedly. School style is always the most important thing. Awareness and understand of what other styles and schools practice is hardly a bad thing, but doing what your instructor teaches you should always come first. And on the way that Kanazawa performs the kata.. What is more important than the exact positioning of the foot is consistency. He practices it without a full 180 turn, where when I practice that exact same kata my foot turns more. If I do it one way on one side, it has to be the same way on the other side. It doesn't REALLY matter which way I do the kick, foot positioning, placement of the knee, and the actual execution of the kick (stomping with the heel of the foot or striking with the ball). Different people can't do kicks the same way. I'm a tall guy with long legs, so I'm comfortable with doing the stomping side kick, but for someone with less flexibility, maybe they aren't physically capable of doing the stomping kick well, so they do the ball of the foot style side kick. There's nothing wrong with that as far as I'm concerned, and in fact, the recently late grandmaster of my organization did ALL his kicks very low as front kicks. In any case, for proper form, no matter how the kick is actually executed, consistency in how it is done is most important. Of course, the same applies for any technique. Having done a little bit of judging myself, it is very apparent when karateka have no consistency with their techniques.

In Shotokan, that is exactly how we perform the action there. We both do "yoko geri" but our yoko geri is different than yours. In all our kata, anywhere it is designated that a side kick be done, it is always the stomping side kick rather than any other type of kick. Our kicks are exactly as you described, with the bottom foot pivoted 180 degrees away from the kick. Different methodologies, same effect, as far as I'm concerned.

There is indeed merit to looking at the eyes while in combat, because sometimes the eyes will give away intent to strike at a particular area. Myself, on the other hand, I've always found it best to look at the person's chest, or their center of mass and let my peripheral vision catch any extra action. If I'm looking at the eyes I won't necessarily be able to see what the feet are doing, but if the gaze is at the opponent's center I can see just about anything they're doing. EDIT: I should clarify, just because I look primarily at a person's center doesn't mean that I never look to the eyes. I tend to move my gaze around the person's body fluidly, so I don't stare. I look at the eyes as much as I look at someone's feet, for instance; just not as much as I do the center.

Just a stomping kick? WNM I never said anything about a rising kick. At our schools there is no differentiation between yoko geri (as a stomping side kick) and any other side kick, because we do not practice any other side kick.

That is the exact problem I was mentioning. Aha! So what I posted was a good thing then? Absolutely. The biggest problem for me trying to teach the kick is getting people to understand the difference between the body mechanics of the two actions. The way we practice, we pivot the bottom foot similarly, but the round kick is a more sweeping action, where the side kick is a stomping one.

That is the exact problem I was mentioning.

I should have clarified, I was referring to confusion and difficulty understanding the the proper body mechanics of the actions. Or in other words, difficulty in grasping the differences between how the stomping and roundhouse kicks function. They know that the kicks are different, but they have trouble making their body do the kick that their brain wants them to. I'm sure that they understand that because that is how it has been defined to them. This gets back to how you define the kick. If you define mae geri as a category for all kicks to the front of the body, that is how it will be understood. On the other hand, if it is a term designated for a specific kick, it will be understood THAT way. And similarly for the yoko geri, of course. The way that a concept is taught is how it will be learned. Your students KNOW that any kick to the side is yoko geri. Students at my school KNOW that yoko geri is a stomping kick to the side of the body. Neither is necessarily wrong, and I'm sure we both do very similar actions, but the fact that we have defined them differently means that the understanding of them is different.

Haha now see, the students I deal with have difficulty enough trying to understand the difference between mawashi geri and the stomping yoko geri. I think that convoluting the names, and referring to more than one kick as "yoko geri" won't help, but only make an additional barrier that the newer and troubled students have to work though. On top of that, to be perfectly honest, we simply don't practice any front kick type action to the side at any point during our warm ups, one step fighting, or kata. Not to say that we couldn't, we just don't regularly practice anything like that.

I think there's plenty of merit to the argument. If I'm the head of my own school, realistically, I can call the techniques whatever I want to. If I think that a jumping double front kick should really be called the Flying Spaghetti Kick, who can say that I'm wrong? My point is, you can call the kick whatever you like. A kick is a kick is a kick. When it comes down to it, how important is classifying it and debating it? For the sake of trying to avoid too many headaches from the subject, I'm at the point where I'd just as soon keep the front kick as "that one you do to the front where you hit with the ball of the foot," and the side kick as "that one where you stomp out to the side of the body." I don't disagree with the argument, by any means, but I'd rather just do the kick than sit around debating what it should be called. But that's just me.

Haha, you know, one of them recently told that being a Shihan just meant that "you know how to make things up."

How would you refer to a kick executed to the side but done with the ball of foot and toes upward? WNM That would be the classic example I referred to (classic in the sense that it's what the Shihans always use to demonstrate the point), a mae geri performed not straight ahead, but off to the side of the body where a yoko geri is normally done. At the conceptual level something like that is referred to as a "side kick" because it is done to the side. Now me, I'd just as soon keep the call the kicks what they are traditionally labeled. I'm of the opinion that overly convoluting the names of the techniques is unnecessary. It's just one school of thought on the matter.

I don't disagree with that. And to be honest I don't like the argument to begin with, but some of the Shihans in my system would argue that any kick to the front is a "front kick", or similarly, any kick to the side is a "side kick" Now the classic example that gets used is a mae geri performed not straight ahead, but rather to the side of the body. It is argued that such a kick should be classified as a "side kick," a notion that has some merit. Myself, on the other hand, I'd rather keep it simple and not overly confuse the concept. A mae geri is a front kick, a yoko geri is a side kick, a mawashi geri is a round kick, etc. Again, don't particularly agree or like the argument myself, but I just thought I'd share the thought process there.

Soooooo you're saying that the wooden practice sword shouldn't be used to practice with? I can't imagine how I would practice combat drills without making contact with other weapons... I don't mean to downplay your experience by any means.... but are you talking about striking other weapons or random objects? I wasn't intending to try to smash cinder blocks with it, if that's what you meant.

I'm honestly stunned by that. I don't even know what else to say. It's incredibly disturbing.

I saw that article yesterday when it came out. I was honestly stunned at what I saw. Without being able to see the girl and how she acts or performs, its not really possible to say whether or not that she's good at what she does... but my experience tells me that that kids are not usually ready for black belts. There's a huge difference between knowing a bunch of forms and really understanding the meaning behind the actions and the kids I've dealt with are generally not at a level of maturity to deal with that. I'm not saying its impossible... but to me the notion of a 5 year old black belt is utterly absurd. Now, to be perfectly honest, I got my black belt when I was 14. We had a recent black belt promotion who was 14-15, but he is at a point where he deserved it. I feel like I need to address the line at the end of the article: "She is already a mini master but if she makes it to second dan she can start teaching -- just like her father." I don't know about the rest of you... but the idea of a 5-6 year old teaching a karate class seems absurd to me... almost like a joke. I suppose I could be completely wrong and the girl could be some kind of prodigy, but I have a really hard time imagining it. The story seems so sensational to me that I have to wonder... I know you didn't want to get into the argument about being too young to have a black belt, but I had such a kneejerk reaction to it that I felt like I had to say something about it.