Most Suidi/Shuri-Te lineage karate contains at least one version of the kata, Kusanku. This kata was, supposedly, developed to record the techniques brought to Okinawa by a Chinese envoy of the same name, as described in the Oshima Hikki. Patrick McCarthy has written about this in several books, and Jesse Enkamp posted this article about it, a while back. Itosu […]
Motobu Choki (right) teaching women’s self defense I recently wrote about the importance (or lack thereof) of hand formations in kata and, in that article, I specifically mentioned the use of haishu (backhand) versus haito (ridgehand) in Naihanchi Shodan. Now, for the sake of clarity, I wanted to illustrate the points I made in that article a little bit more […]
Traditional martial arts have a secrecy problem. This problem has existed for a very long time, and has likely lead to the death of countless fighting systems, and the degradation of many more. There was certainly a time where secrecy was important in martial arts–rivals and enemies discovering how you train, and what your best techniques are, would have a […]
I write a lot of articles about karate techniques and concepts, but not a lot about the people who train in karate. Today, I decided I would do that a little bit! When you start training in martial arts, you will notice that there are certain personality traits that keep popping up in certain people. These seem to exist in […]
Kote-Gaeshi (Wrist Reversal) as taught in Aikido The most commonly recognized example of a joint lock “throw” is kote-gaeshi (wrist reversal). It is a basic technique in Aikido, and several variations of it also exist in karate tuidi. You can see in the animated GIF, above, that the uke (person receiving the technique) drops his left knee to the floor […]
Ryuuken (Dragon Fist), or Nakadaka-Ipponken (Convex Single Point Fist) Most kata use the closed fist more than any other hand formation, but even those kata will typically use at least one other hand formation, at some point. When you change hand formation in kata, the kata is usually telling you that you are striking in a certain way, or to […]
Moxie-Up is a women’s self defense program, which was put together by a female martial artist here in the Phoenix area. I only became aware of it at the tail end of 2012, but this program has been advertised and promoted by the local news for a few years before that. They have taught the program to hundreds (if not […]
On October 25th, 2005, the Okinawan government, in partnership with several Okinawan karate masters, held the first Karate no Hi (Karate Day) celebration in Naha, Okinawa. Since then, every year there are demonstrations and seminars on the 25th of October to support and spread awareness of Okinawan karate. This year, the DOJO Bar has gotten together with some other sponsors […]
Hojo undo kigu on display High quality hojo undo kigu–literally “supplementary training tools”–can be hard to come by. Thankfully, you can often improvise, or make your own! Chi-ishi (stone mallets) are the most common tool for people to make, and I’ve actually written about that before. For ishi-sashi (stone locks), most people use kettlebells. For the tan (barbell), most people […]
Over the weekend, I had an opportunity to train with the Phoenix Society of Historical Swordsmanship, which is a HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts) club that specializes in Italian styles of swordsmanship, as well as Spanish rapier. The club is run by Richard Marsden, who is also the President of the HEMA Alliance. They were a good group of people, […]
Every now and then, I like to search YouTube with the kanji/kana for certain key phrases, to see if I’m missing any good material because it isn’t listed in English. Sometimes, it’s as simple as searching for 空手 (karate). Other times, I will search for something specific, like 取り手 (torite/tuidi). As an English speaker, with very limited Japanese skills, I […]
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