Most karateka spend a great deal of time learning and practicing kata, which is fitting, given that the kata are templates for the curriculum of karate, but as the art has morphed into a tradition-based art over the past century, the way that people train and practice kata has changed. As recently as the mid-20th Century CE, kata were regularly taught differently to […]
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 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 […]
A common complaint about karate, and its kata, is that the stances are impractical–that one would never use such stances in a “real fight.” This goes along with the general complaint about kamae (postures) found in kata being impractical guards for fighting from (as discussed in this article: LINK). This tends to stem form the fact that the word tachi […]
