Most martial artists have seen the so-called “Wing Chun dummy,” which is actually called a muk yan jong in Cantonese, or mu ren zhuang in Mandarin, meaning “wooden man post.” This training tool was widely popularized by Bruce Lee and, more recently, the Ip Man series of movies, starting Donnie Yen. While these dummies were developed for Chinese martial arts, […]
On Saturday, October 12th, 2019, I attended a Catch Wrestling (Catch-As-Catch-Can) seminar with John Potenza of the Old School Grappling Catch Wrestling Association (LINK), which was hosted by Ed Morales of NAK Martial Arts in Gilbert, AZ (LINK). For those who are unfamiliar with Catch Wrestling/Catch-As-Catch-Can (LINK), it is a no-gi folkstyle submission grappling art that was founded in England […]
“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 […]
Lately, my friends over at Karate Culture have been posting videos, like the one above, that connect kata to techniques found in mixed martial arts, and various grappling arts–something I have also done, although on a smaller scale. This has brought with it some argument as to the nature of karate. As with most such arguments, this one is not […]
The grappling techniques of karate are classified as tuidi-waza (seizing hand techniques). This primarily refers to joint locks and grabbing/tearing techniques, but could technically include some types of chokes, throws and takedowns. We practice these in kata, in application drills, and in flow drills, but most people don’t work them in a randori (free grappling) scenario. Admittedly, free grappling with […]
When martial artists think of throws, they often think of judo, and if you say “shoulder throw,” they will generally think of judo’s ippon seoi nage (single point carry-on-the-back throw) and morote seoi nage (double carry-on-the-back throw), which are often called single/double “shoulder throws.” While classical karate does contain a throw similar to seoi otoshi (carry-on-the-back drop), which is a […]
The one-legged turn in Kusanku Dai A little over a year ago, I wrote a quick post to show three techniques that I had recorded video of, and wanted to share. I didn’t go over any of the techniques in-depth, and I wanted to revisit the Kusanku application, to shed a little more light on it. The kata movement is […]
