On February 4th, 2020, Ulf Karlsson landed in Phoenix, AZ for the first time in nearly 6 years. For those who are unaware, Ulf Karlsson is the foremost expert (outside of Okinawa) in the rare style of Shuri-Te called KishimotoDi, and is the only person to be granted a Shihan license in the art by the Bugeikan on Okinawa. On […]
The art of KishimotoDi (AKA, Kishimoto-Ha Karate/Shuri-Te) is an interesting look into the Shuri-classified (or Tomari-classified, if you prefer to look at it that way) karate of the past, before its popularization by Itosu “Anko” Yasutsune and his disciples. As this style is is rare, only a small number of practitioners around the world study it, so it has been […]
Karate is not a single, homogeneous practice, but rather is made up of a wide variety of styles, all of which are eclectic blends of native Okinawan arts, Japanese arts, Chinese arts, Indochinese arts, and more. While the human body only functions in so many ways, there are actually quite a number of approaches to doing most things, including generating […]
Bunkai (lit. “take apart, analyze”), in the context of karate, is the practice of breaking down kata and working on developing applications for their movements, but sometimes it can be hard for karateka to figure out how to apply kata movements on their own. This is compounded by the fact that many instructors still only teach basic “block-punch-kick” applications for […]
In March of 2017, our dojo will be hosting two major martial arts events, back to back! Be sure to plan ahead so you don’t miss this amazing opportunity! Click here to see the flyer for the Ryukyu Martial Arts Friendship Gasshuku! Our first ever Ryukyu Martial Arts Friendship Gasshuku was held in October of 2015, and was a great […]
The following review was submitted to me by Ed Sumner (Kyoshi, Nanadan, Goju-Ryu under the late Chinen Teruo Sensei). I have added photos, and done some minor grammatical editing. I had the opportunity to attend the Ryukyu Martial Arts Friendship Gasshuku this last weekend, hosted by Noah Legel at the Peaceful Warrior Dojo in Scottsdale, AZ. Noah had attended our […]
This past weekend was our Ryukyu Martial Arts Friendship Gasshuku, which was an event I put together with the intent of getting martial artists together to learn and train in a variety of martial arts from the Ryukyu islands. The idea actually came from the Ryukyu Martial Arts Facebook Groups that were set up by Ryan Parker Sensei. There are […]
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 […]
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 […]
The image, above, comes from Page 204 of Konishi Yasuhiro’s book, Karate Nyumon. I was inspired to go back and look at this publication by Victor Smith Sensei, who wrote an article on another section of the book. This book, in its original Japanese, along with many others, have been made available for free by Charles Goodin Sensei and the […]
Here is a collection of video clips from Ulf Karlsson Sensei’s KishimotoDi seminar at our dojo last month. You can see some of the material he taught, most of which comes from his system’s version of the kata Naihanchi.
