Over the past year, I have not been very active in posting updates to this site, but I would like to take a moment to quickly review a few of the seminars that I have taught in that time. When I am brought in to teach seminars, I am most often asked to teach practical kata application, as this is what I am the most well-known for through my publications and co-creation of the Waza Wednesday YouTube series, and I very much enjoy this. Bunkai, the process of breaking apart and analyzing something–in this case, karate kata–is a very fulfilling practice, and brings much-needed realism and practicality into the art. In 2026, I was also pleased to teach a seminar on karate material for an MMA context, which I haven’t done since the seminar I taught for the MMA Club at Arizona State University in 2023. While not generally all that popular with the traditional MMA crowd, I feel that it is very beneficial for us to find common ground with modern combat sports, as they are the gateway through which most people view and access martial arts, in the current era.
Wansu Bunkai at Heartland Dojo
On January 25th, 2025, I visited Heartland Dojo in Roanoke, IL, which is run by my friend and former Shuri-Ryu dojo-mate, Mike Oliveri Sensei, to teach practical applications for the kata, Wansu. This kata is not actually part of my Shorin-Ryu system, but I originally learned it when I was doing Shuri-Ryu, as it is considered the foundational kata for the style. Since then, I have altered it to be more like the original version taught by Kyan Chotoku, but in this seminar I was able to cover both variants. Wansu is a fairly simple kata, consisting of only a handful of sequences, with one keystone sequence being repeated almost four times. Despite its simplicity, it has a lot of very effective combative applications that can be used in self-defense.
Tawada Passai Bunkai at Heartland Dojo
Later in 2025, on October 11th, I returned to Heartland Dojo to teach Tawada Passai, also referred to by some as Matsumura Passai, as well as combative applications for it. This kata is exclusive to my lineage of Shorin-Ryu, which comes from Chibana Chosin, as he learned this kata from Tawada “Megantu” Shinkazu who, in turn, had learned it from either an older male family member, or directly from “Bushi” Matsumura Sokon, depending on which oral history you learn, and when he showed the kata to his teacher, Itosu Anko, he was told to preserve it and pass it on. It is more technically challenging than Itosu’s Passai, and shares features found in Oyadomari Passai, but with its own unique flavor. Tawada Passai is one of my favorite kata for practical application, as it blends simple, straightforward techniques with more involved, complex ones. We were able to walk through the entire solo kata during this seminar, but ran out of time to get through applications for everything. Mike Oliveri Sensei and I plan to set up another seminar to go over the rest of the material for this kata, at some point in the future.
Gojushiho Bunkai at Shi Rei Kai
On February 28th, 2026, I traveled up to Mundelein, IL, to teach a double-feature seminar at the Shi Rei Kai dojo, run by my friend, Oscar Vargas Sensei, who is a Shito-Ryu practitioner. The first session was to go over practical applications for the kata Gojushiho, also known as Useishi. I originally learned a version of Gojushiho that came from Nakazato Shugoro’s first teacher–before he became a student of Chibana–who was a Shito-Ryu instructor by the name of Iju Seiichi. Additionally, it is generally believed that all versions of Gojushiho stem from a version that was either brought back from China by, or created by “Bushi” Matsumura Sokon. Even so, that version is a bit different from the version practiced in Oscar Vargas Sensei’s lineage of Shito-Ryu, and so we had an interesting opportunity to explore both variants. I also included some variants from the Koryu Gojushiho kata practiced in the Kyudokan lineage of Shorin-Ryu, which I have been working on learning from videos, and with input from friends who train under the Kyudokan, over the past few years. This kata is often considered to be one of, if not the most “advanced” kata in karate, but I personally do not find it to be any more complex or challenging than Tawada Passai, or even Kusanku Dai. Like both of those kata, it features both simple and complex techniques, and is full of excellent self-defense material.
Karate for MMA at Shi Rei Kai
Immediately following the Gojushiho bunkai seminar at the Shi Rei Kai dojo, we transitioned into a session on karate for MMA, where we looked at karate from a modern combat sports perspective, rather than the classical perspective of self-defense, law enforcement, and security work that karate was originally designed for. Very often, you will find traditional martial artists, including karateka, fighting tooth-and-nail to not be associated with, compared to, or included in modern combat sports, like MMA, because they feel that the two must remain separate, or their traditional art will be somehow ruined. The usual excuse for this is the insistence that “karate is for the street, not sport,” as well as claiming that “karate is too dangerous” for use in combat sports, or that “combat sports have rules, and there are no rules on the street.” In my opinion, that is all these sorts of statements are: excuses. There is truth to the fact that karate was not designed for consensual duels with other trained opponents–which is what combat sports are–but at the same time, the art has a history of dueling through the practice of kakedameshi. There is also some truth to the fact that some techniques are illegal in combat sports, which are part of the karate curriculum, but this also ignores that sport karate does, in fact exist, and in comparison, combat sports like Muay Thai, Lethwei, and MMA, allow more karate techniques than any sport karate format that is currently in use.
While I can admit that neither Muay Thai, Lethwei, nor MMA are built specifically around karate in the way that kakedameshi is, they are also far more mainstream and popular, making them more accessible to the average person, both to watch and to participate in. I also believe that it is a mistake to reject modern combat sports, as traditional martial artists, for the sake of maintaining some sort of “purity” which was never intended to be part of karate, to begin with, especially by avoiding pressure testing the art through some form of dueling. We have numerous stories of karate masters who engaged in challenge matches, including the likes of Motobu Choki, Kyan Chotoku, Chibana Chosin, and Matsumura Sokon, and no one complains that they somehow degraded the art in the process. If we want karate to continue to survive as the world surrounding martial arts evolves, we need to be willing to engage with that world, and not reject it outright because it doesn’t fit our idea of what karate is supposed to be. I am of the opinion that MMA is the best option for pressure testing karate that is currently available, and a karateka who participates in MMA competition will be more capable of defending themselves than a karateka who doesn’t spar, despite not being able to use every technique in their arsenal during competition. We are doing ourselves, our students, and the art a disservice by avoiding something that might reveal weaknesses in our own training, which is what I feel is really at the core of most traditional martial artists’ avoidance of combat sports.
For all these reasons, I love having the opportunity to teach people how karate can be used in an MMA context, and the majority of what I teach in these sorts of sessions is still material taken straight from kata, or slightly modified from the way kata usually perform them. This connection solidly links the traditional with the modern in a way that makes sense for karateka, and helps inform non-karateka on the value of material they might otherwise reject as being “outdated.” In this seminar, I took techniques from Chibana Chosin’s Kihongata, Naihanchi, Passai, Kusanku, and Gojushiho, and put them into the context of an MMA fight. This included not only striking methods, but many grappling methods, as well, and despite not being allowed to do small joint manipulation (finger/toe locks), strikes to the throat, back of the head, eyes, or groin, fish hooking, or kicks/knees to grounded opponents, we still had plenty of material to cover. Some students expressed concerns that they weren’t certain that they would be able to use all of the techniques we went over on someone who was bigger and stronger, and I reminded them that we were training for MMA, where everyone is grouped together by size, so the likelihood of having to use the techniques I showed against someone significantly bigger or stronger was low. That said, I also provided input on how we would execute the same techniques in a self-defense situation, where we can utilize all of our tools to make the techniques easier.