still kicking

I would highly recommend just about anything by Dave Lowry. He is definitely into traditional MA -- I believe he practices karate, kendo, and iaido. He is very well versed in Japanese history, the history of budo and the samurai traditions, and is also able to speak from years of experience training, both in Japan and the US. I also find his writing style to be quite engaging and enjoyable. He has written many books, but the ones I am familiar with are "Moving Towards Stillness: Lessons in Daily Life from the Martial Ways of Japan", "Autumn Lightening: The Education of an American Samurai", and "In the Dojo", which is about various aspects of etiquette, procedures, and tradition, logically enough, in the dojo. I also have a book of his that is a compendium of the Karate Way articles he wrote for Black Belt magazine, between 1995-2005. In some ways this is my favorite, because they are short articles, usually 2-3 pages, that can be read over and over again. I get something new and different out of them each time I read them. A few of the article titles are The Gateway to the Martial Path, Reaching the Target, Losing Gracefully, and The Art of Overcoming Fear. (Lowry also wrote a book about sushi, one of the best I've seen, if you're into that sort of thing). Check out Dave Lowry -- he's great!

Shotokan-kez wrote: I hope your Wednesday class went better! I have a similar situation in my school. It's only one student, but she totally bugs me because she does not push herself at all. She is quite overweight, though I understand she lost a lot and then gained it back, but I have see pictures of her when she was a more normal weight, and maybe she was better than. All I know is what I see now, which, I have to say, is basically a very lazy and unmotivated person who seems to mostly enjoy karate for the social contacts. Nothing wrong with that, I guess, but if that is the case you should not be wearing a brown belt and strutting around with senseis and thinking you are one of them, because your KARATE STINKS. It's a shame because she is a nice person, I guess, but that kind of energy just brings me down. When I am in class I am there to work hard, and when I see lazy (bleeps) just hanging out, it takes energy to deal with my annoyance. But I do manage to ignore her and focus on my training and all of the other people who are working hard.

I guess I'll chime in on this topic. My two worst injuries occurred long ago, when I was training first time around. Since I have been back to training, i.e. in the past 3 years, I have been fortunate KNOCK ON WOOD to not have had anything worse than sore muscles, bruises, and a stubbed toe. My one injury happened when I grabbed my sparring partner's gi, and my left ring finger got twisted in it and I got a spiral fracture. It was only a finger, but it hurt pretty bad and I was out of commission for a while. The worst one, though, was when a spinning back kick caught me in the ribs, and I got a cracked rib. One second I was sparring, and the next thing I knew I was lying on the floor gasping for breath. Cracked ribs are no fun because for days afterward I could not get comfortable, and kept feeling like I was gasping for breath. Other than that, karate has been a blast!

I just noticed that you said "Kihon Kumite 1" and not "Kihon Kata 1". We don't even have a Kihon Kumite, so you are talking about something completely different. Sorry about that! My advice, such as it is, still stands, though, in terms of asking your intructor about things, because scools vary so much. I know how it feels to be so eager to learn, though. I just started a-in iaido last summer, and was so eager to learn the kata. I bought a book, that I think is a very good reference, but I was trying to use the pictures to learn the kata because I got impatient when the sensei just kept going over the first one for weeks on end. It really didn't help much in that regard, but slowly but slowly I am learning. I think developing patience is one of the things I need to work on, anyway.

Hello Sushi -- I hate to say it, but you really should just ask your instructor. Kihon kata just means "basic kata", and will can vary widely from one school to another, even within the same style. In my school, which also practices a traditional Japanese style (Shito-ryu), Kihon Kata 1 does not have any kicks. It's just down blocks and straight punches. Starting off, you turn to your left 90 degrees and down block with your left. Your left fist comes up to your right ear to prep, and your right arm extends, but I think different styles extend it differently. Then after you block you step in and straight punch, and so on. But I don't think you need to worry about it. If you continue to train in karate, after a while you will be able to do this kata in your sleep. Have fun!

Greco said: There's something to be said for this, I think, which is why I hesitated a bit at the question 'what katas do you know'. I will admit that I can be a bit greedy about learning new kata, but overall I think it is probably better to know a few kata really well then to just be "kata collectors". My teachers are always emphasizing that kihon kata is the most important one, and that in tournaments it is better to do an easier/more basic kata well than to do a more advanced one poorly. I believe in this philosophy -- really, I do! -- but I can't help it, I just love learning new kata! I guess the answer, as with so many things, is to find a balance, i.e. go ahead and learn the new kata, but don't go overboard. I just learned 2 new bo kata within the past 3 months, and have only been practicing Bassai Dai in the past 6 months or so as my main performance/competition kata. Sometimes in the advanced class when they are going over kata that are very advanced I will follow along, so that I have some familiarity with them, but in general, I think that my time is better spent working on a few kata over and over again. Plus there are all those old ones that we have to keep practicing so we don't forget them. Too bad there aren't more hours in the day!

OK, I am going to take this question at face value, and will just say the ones that I have memorized well enough to practice on my own. Shito-ryu has a gazillion katas, so I might forget some of them. Pinan 1-5 Kensei-Dai Matsukaze Aoyanagi Rohai Shodan and Nidan Jyuroku Jiin Jitte Annanko Seinchin Naihanchin Shodan and Nidan Bassai Dai Enpi In terms of weapons: Bo no kihon kata Syushi no kon sho Syushi no kon dai Rohai no kon Sakugawa no kon sho (still learning it) Sai no kihon kata 1-4 Rohai no sai My current favorite open hand katas are Bassai Dai and Enpi, but I also like Annanko and Rohai Nidan a lot. As far as weapons, I really like Sakugawa no kon sho. I hope to have it ready for competition by October, but don't know if I will. It's fun to work on it, though.

I didn't mean to imply that I think it's good or correct to be obviously rageful in class, whether sparring or doing basics or kata. But I think when I am angry, frustrated, or other related emotions, there is a lot of energy there, and I try to tap into the energy but in a controlled and focused way. I do think it would be a negative thing to be in a sparring match with someone who I was actually angry at, if it was so strong that I would actually be fighting with them in anger -- though that hasn't happened to me yet. Or even to be wailing on the bag like a banshee. It's supposed to be karate, not primal therapy! I also like what Bushido Man said, along the lines that we should control our anger, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be angry. This is a particularly interesting topic to me, because I think that there is a tendency to be ashamed of anger, where it's just a normal human emotion. The key is to express it appropriately.

Still Kicking is now a yellow belt on karate forums. Onward towards orange.

Are we allowed to crow about our new belts from posting on karate forum? Because I now have 25 postings and have earned a yellow belt -- woo hoo! This is such a great resource, and I come here to learn and feel a sense of connection with other martial artists, but now I'm getting caught up in belt chasing on the boards! Well only to a minor degree, I try to keep my comments relevant and hopefully useful or interesting, but I will admit I'm just doing this one beause it's #25, and I wanted to see if my yellow belt will show up. It's a good system. I suppose most of us are over achievers and "belt chasers" to a certain degree, but hopefully keep it in perspective and don't make it the whole point. The point is to improve your martial art and then you'll get your belt, and the point is to improve this board by contributing something useful or interesting, and then you'll get a belt on here, too. It's the same, see? Very very clever.

This is something that seems ambiguous to me. On the one hand, I agree that it is not a good thing to take out our anger and frustrations with work or whatever on other people in the dojo, whether in sparring or in how we relate to them. At the same time, I think that I do use what could be called the negative energy in my life to energize my training, and I don't know that this is a bad thing. For example, maybe I am feeling defeated by a problem at work or a longstanding personal issue, and in the dojo I can tap into my determination to not be defeated, and make my karate better. If I am particularly worked up about an issue it's probably safer to channel it into basics and kata rather than sparring, but even then, I think I can separate the fierce energy of wanting to win or do well from any kind of destructive feeling towards my opponent. One thing does come up in the dojo that is hard for me to deal with, on an ongoing basis. There is one person in our school who really pushes my buttons, so to speak. She has been around for 16 or more years, and now outranks me by only one level. But her karate is really truly bad. She doesn't have a job and has nothing but time on her hands, so helps out around the school with all kinds of things. Yet in class, it's really appalling. When the advanced students are told to go off and work on our own kata for a while, the rest of us will do our kata over and over, maybe rotating out one round after doing it 2 or 3 or 4 times. This person will do hers once, then stand around with her hands on her hips for a good while, watching everyone else. She just does not push herself at all, and is just bad at karate. So I feel resentful that she is currently the highest ranking adult colored belt. My teacher is always emphasizing what high standards we have, and that's why it takes so long to promote, but then seeing this person at the top of the line just throws it all out the window. So anyway, sometimes it just bugs me so much that I throw myself even harder into my training, but it feels negative, like I'm trying to prove to my teachers how much better I am than her. This is not the proper karate attitude, I know it. Well anyway, I'm still struggling with this one, but in general, I don't think it's bad to use negative energy to fuel one's training. I suppose self awareness is the key. By the way, I have talked to my teacher about my feelings about this person, and how to deal with it in my training, but it's an ongoing discussion and as yet unresolved for me. It's all grist for the mill, I guess!

This isn't really a question for me in terms of choice of style, because I love Shito Ryu Karate. I love the aesthetics of the long clean lines and the crisp focus. From reading these forums, I have learned that people practice martial arts for a variety of reasons. Some people are primarily or maybe only interested in fighting, but I have to admit that for me that is secondary. I have always been drawn to the aesthetics of Japanese arts in general -- I think maybe I was Japanese in a past life , and for reasons I don't fully understand myself, I love to do kata and work on perfecting it, making it more clean, focused, etc. I do feel that developing this skill is applicable to being more effective in a fighting situation as well, but even if it wasn't, I love to do kata! In terms of the "going with or overcoming body type" issue, this question has come up for me in terms of choice of kata to work on in performance and competition. I feel that speed, power, and focus, are strengths for me, while balance and flexibility are weaknesses. Up until now I have mostly chosen kata (with advisement from my sensei) that highlight my strengths, such as Annanko, and now Bassai Dai. But lately I have been also focusing on Rohai Nidan, which has those blasted crane stances. It is really hard for me to hit them without wobbling, and I'm not to the point where I would want to use that kata for a promotion test or competition, but I want to work on it so I can make my balance better! So in my opinion, it's good to go with your strenghts and work on your weaknesses. This can be difficult if it involves practicing 2 or more different martial arts, but I think that's the beauty of kata, you can practice different ones to work on different things.

This is a great topic! I am quite short, and one of my "secret weapons" is to move in quickly and get within close range so my opponent can't do anything. Keep in mind that I am talking about point sparring, which I realize can spur reams of words about the relative merits or the lack thereof. I enjoy competing, and I do think the skills required are applicable to self defense, but that's another whole discussion. My point is (no pun intended), I have to admit I enjoy the look of surprise on my much taller opponent's face when I move in quickly and score a point before they figure out what they're going to do, and then realize they're too close to do anything that would score a point! Another of my "tricks" is to do a lot of dodging out of the way, then quickly sliding in to cover a lot of territory and score. Also, I use a lot of kicks, mostly front and roundhouse, because that enables me to cover the distance without getting too close myself. I think the fact that I am short, which might usually be considered to be a disadvantage, can be an advantage in the sense that a lot of people don't know how to deal with it -- at least in point sparring. (For self defense I would do more close in techniques that are not allowed in point sparring, but as I said, that's a separate discussion).

I think these are just different words for exactly the same thing. At any rate, at our school we call crane stance sagi ashi dashi. Thanks for all the good ideas, everyone!

I just realized that there are a bunch of postings on this very topic on the next page -- sorry about that! The suggestions were helpful, but mostly come down to what I should have expected, I guess... basically, practice! The funny thing is, though, for some reason I trust that I can build strength and everything else with practice, but I think I feel a little hopeless about my balance. Not that it's that terrible. I can stand on one foot, just standing still, O.K., but what kills me is those crane stances in the Rohai kata, where you are basically turning on a 90 or 45 degree angle and then quickly trying to hit the crane stance without continuing to spin so that you fall over. But I guess if more practice is the answer for everything else, it is probably the answer for this, too!

I am having a really hard time with my balance on one foot stances i.e. Sagi Ashi Dachi, or crane stance. It seems like part of the problem is weak ankles, so I've been trying to improve on that. One classmate suggested practicing trying to stand in the stance with my eyes closed -- it's amazing how much harder it is! But if I do this for a while, even if I have to lightly touch my fingertips on a counter or table top when I fall over, after that it is much easier to do it with my eyes open. Does anyone have any other hints or ideas about ways to work on improving balance? Thanks!

It is generally understood that people slow down as they age, but I am trying to find out more information about why that is. Some of the research seems to indicate that one of the "confounding variables" is that, generally speaking, people don't seem to exercise as much when they're older. I was wondering if there is anyone on here who is knowledgeable about sports medicine, and particularly about the capacity for older athletes to build more fast twitch muscle fibers, to help increase speed. At this point my speed is pretty good, but I'm wondering if I can get faster, or just hope to not get any slower.

After a year at 5th Kyu, I am now 4th (second green). I was disgruntled when I didn't get it last time, and this time I wiped the floor with the brown belts (figuratively speaking), but still we have to go through it by the slow and steady route. Whatever ... I'm happy I made it this time.

At our school it routinely takes from 8 to 10 years to get to shodan -- though we do have one particularly talented teenager who made it in 7 1/2 years, after training intensely 5 to 6 days a week for at least the 2 years preceding it. We have testing every 3 months, but most people take at least 6 months to a year or longer to reach the next level, even if they know all of the requirements pretty well. Our teacher is very picky about every detail of our basics, even at the lower ranks, which can sometimes be pretty frustrating, but on the other hand, I think we have a really good school. We do really well in tournaments, but it's not like our teacher holds us back so we can compete against lower ranking students. In the only tournaments we go to, the divisions you compete in are based on the number of years training rather than rank in your school. I think it's beginner for less than a year of training, novice (colored belt) for less than 2 years, intermediate (brown belt) for 2-4 years, and after 4 years of training you compete in the black belt division. This means that we have many green belts competing against black belts. They don't usually win, but our black belts usually do!

I bought a bunch of stuff from them last summer, to get equipped to start Iaido. I bought a hakama and dogi, an obi, and a few other little things, in separate shipments due to my indecision. I bought an entry level hakama and gi, so they're not top of the line, but seem to be very good quality for the price. I was very pleased with their service, especially because I bought the hakama first, then decided I wanted the gi, too, and they gave me the discounted price for the set. The shipment arrived quickly with no problems. Hope this helps!

This is the progression in our school. There are stripes at the white and yellow belt levels for the kids, otherwise there is no differentiation between 1st and 2nd level of your rank, in terms of belt color/stripes. White Yellow Orange Blue Purple Green Brown Black

In our school we go through all of the ranks in weapons separate from the ranks in open hand. We do bo, sai, tonfa, and kai bo. You have to more or less have reached the same rank in weapons in order to get promoted to that rank in open hand, but this is pretty flexible until you get to shodan. In other words, you have to have reached shodan in kobudo in order to test for shodan-ho in open hand. The first test is on the 1st bo kata (bo no kihon kata), the second is on the first sai kata, alternating between bo and sai until 2nd kyu kobudo, then you start kai bo and tonfa. I like bo the best, it seems easier to keep track of only one weapon, as opposed to sai!

I'm 57 and still kicking -- hence the name. Took a 20 year break from karate and started up again 3 years ago. What I've noticed is that muscle memory is a lot stronger than mental memory -- fortunately, or else I would be starting from square one -- but I have also noticed that there is no such thing as joint memory! In other words, especially when I first started up again, I have to be careful to not get carried away and do things the way I used to do, or I might hurt myself bad! Everybody's different, of course. Some of the "young kids" in my school (age 25 or so) have had various problems with knees, rotator cuff, etc., and so far I have been lucky with that. I get a bit annoyed sometimes when people 20 years younger than me say they are so old and can't do something, but I don't have to buy into it. The trick is to not kid yourself that age doesn't matter at all, but at the same time challenge yourself to go farther than you thought you could. You just have to tune in to your own body, and learn the difference between good pain and bad pain -- which admittedly is sometimes hard to do until it's too late. I will second the comment about recovery time. I have the hardest time with my quads. I often feel like my quads are shredding. I try to deal with it by doing some light exercise bike work before classes, stretching, hot baths, massage, ice, ibuprofen. I'm sure what's needed even more is rest, but I'm a fanatic and there is rather a group culture of training hard all the time. We can always work individually on something lighter when the class is doing deep stance work, if we need to. I think it's about time I let go of the ego that makes me think I have to try to keep up. The thing is, I can keep up, but I pay I high price in soreness for several days sometimes, and possibly more serious unjury. OK so I'm a slow learner, but I'm just now figuring out that the point is to pace my training so I can keep doing it, not blast through full out just to prove I can. Jeesh. To sum up -- sometimes it's frustrating that I can't kick fast to the head easily, or keep going for a longer time without running out of breath like I used to, but on the other hand, I look pretty darn good if I do say so myself. My speed, power, focus, and timing/reaction time are good, flexibility and endurance "need improvement". So what -- I'M PLAYING! I'M HAVING FUN! Getting better every day, and keeping the most insidious characteristics of old age at bay. I appreciate every day that I am alive, and with any luck will be back at it tomorrow. Woo hoo!

I'm built short and fat -- well, not really all that fat, I mean I'm in good shape but kind of round around the middle. Anyway ... I find that I need about a size 4 gi to fit me sideways, but since I'm only 5' tall, even if I get a tournament style gi I have to hem the legs and arms. This is fine, but the top/jacket hangs down way too low. The one that fits best is the Juka Emerald, tournament style and with legs and arms hemmed, but lately I have been fantasizing about having a gi custom made. Does anyone have any experience with this, and is it as expensive as I'm afraid it might be?

I have been frustrated with my training. As a returning black belt after 20 years off, I had to start from the bottom again. After almost 2 years back I have only attained 6th kyu. This would be fine, except that objectively, and according to other observers, I am performing at a much higher level. To keep it short, my sensei seems to base rank more on seniority than actual ability or skill. Recently I phoned an instructor from another school from the same style, who has the same sensei as my teacher does. In other words, I have to test with my sensei's sensei to get a black belt, and this is also the sensei of the person who I phoned. My current sensei makes it out that his sensei is very demanding, and expects what I think of as an onerous amount of perfection before being presented to him as a possible black belt candidate. This other sensei, also his student, has a very different take on it. He thinks I should have been grandfathered in as a black belt, or if not, should be on a fast track. He has seen my karate, and thinks I could be ready to test for black belt with the head sensei within a year or two, if not sooner. If I continue training with my current sensei, it will take many years. There are 2 problems. This second sensei is located too far away for me to train with him more than once a week, and I doubt that my current sensei would be happy to be giving me a lot of help in class if I were actually claiming this other person as my sensei. The main thing, though, is that I want to behave in a way that is entirely ethical and above board, and I would not want to do anything that would show disrespect to my current sensei. The bottom line, though, is that I really don't agree with his approach to ranking. (I have not told the whole story, but the bottom line is that he has students who have been training for years who dont' seem to try that hard and aren't very skillful, but are several ranks ahead of people who are much better in every way). It's really complicated, but I am not that young any more and I think I deserve to both be respected for my previous accomplishments and recognized for my present ability. Would it be unethical to call this other person my sensei, and have him present me to the head sensei? It seems like it would be a major slap in the face to the sensei I have now. Any advice would be much appreciated.