The majority of karate schools, today, fall into two camps, both of which are almost entirely creations of Post-WW2 Japan: That said, there is a third camp that has been growing in popularity: I honestly don’t think I need to go into much detail on how the first two train, because they are so popular; they almost exclusively follow a […]
“Karate” is a broad term, which covers many different martial methodologies and styles originating on Okinawa and, later, Japan. There are a number of misconceptions about what karate is, although there has been a movement–a sort of “karate Renaissance”–in the past decade, or so, which has been making more information about karate available, and promotes a practical approach to the […]
While many joint locking techniques (kansetsu-waza) exist within karate, there are still karateka who are unaware of them and, frequently, people look at the joint locks of karate from the perspective of other arts. We know that such techniques exist within karate, not only because of karateka who kept them in their curricula into modern times, such as Uehara Seikichi […]
Chris Denwood is a karateka, fitness expert, researcher, and the author of “Respecting the Old, Creating the New,” and “Naihanchi (Tekki): The Seed of Shuri Karate Vol. 1.” The latter is easily the most comprehensive book on Naihanchi Shodan fundamentals that I have ever read, and I highly recommend it to anyone who practices Naihanchi kata that can be traced back […]
Martial arts come in a wide array of styles and methodologies, but they are all connected by the human body and laws of nature, so even among wildly different systems, founded centuries and countries apart, there can be found many similar, related, or complimentary methods. While many martial artists prefer to segregate styles and promote the isolationist idea that each […]
Author’s Note: This article was originally written for a disaster preparedness newsletter from the Arizona chapter of Zombie Squad–a non-profit focused on educating people about disaster preparedness–and I recently re-discovered it in my archives. Upon realizing that I had never publicly shared it, I decided to share it, here. Unlike most of my articles, which are geared toward martial artists, […]
Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the 2015 Brotherhood of Veteran Warriors Gasshuku. The BOVW is an organization that was founded by US Military veterans with decades of martial arts experience, for the purpose of providing settings where martial artists from different backgrounds could come together to share and learn. They do not have any sort of curriculum, […]
Karate is often described as being a linear art, especially when looking at modern karate, but it is actually more circular than it gets credit for. Both linear movements, and circular movements, work together in karate to function as compound movements. These compound movements allow us to do more than we might otherwise, because they exert force in unusual ways […]
Over time, it is natural for a martial artist to narrow their focus of study to specific aspects of their art–I mentioned this in my recent article on the development of martial artists. There are also some martial arts which are narrow in focus, to begin with. It is rather likely that those arts and styles are specialized because […]
A very interesting discussion started on one of Theodore Kruczek’s posts on the OKI website regarding people’s perception of traditional martial arts and how to change it. One of the things that I found interesting, and which ties into my previous post about people’s personal systems not needing to have names, was the idea of calling karate something else that […]
