traditional martial arts

Flow Drills – Valuable Tools or Wastes of Time?

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Flow drills are common teaching tools in many martial arts, but are they valuable, or wastes of time?

Seminar Announcement: Wansu Bunkai – Jan. 25th, 2025 – Roanoke, IL

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Join World Combat Association Instructor, INKKS co-founder, and internationally recognized practical karate expert, Noah Legel, Renshi, for a bunkai seminar on the kata Wansu in Roanoke, IL, on Jan. 25th 2025.

Kata Wormholes

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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 […]

Illustration of a wormhole

KishimotoDi Revisited: Exploring the Shuri-Te Roots of Okinawan Karate

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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 Scissor/Wedge Throws of Tachimura no Naihanchi

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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 […]

Head Height Changes in Kata Practice

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Karate has, like all things, changed over the course of time, for a variety of reasons, from sociopolitical considerations, to sports science and movement theories, to simple aesthetics. Breaking down the myriad changes that have taken place within it would be an impossible task, but one can isolate some specific examples for study, which make for an interesting look at […]

The Five Elements of Karate

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“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 […]

Karate and the Fighting Arts of Thailand

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Much is made of the influence of Chinese martial arts on karate, from the “36 families” of Kumemura (LINK), to the Oshima incident (LINK), to the mysterious Hakutsuru kata (LINK), and of course the more solid connections found in Naha-Te styles like Goju-Ryu and Uechi-Ryu. While Chinese martial arts would certainly have had an influence on Okinawan martial arts, given […]

Joint Lock Practicality

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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 […]

Power Generation Methods

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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 […]

Basic Sabaki and Tenshin – An Evasion Primer

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Sport karate has long been known for its fast in-and-out approach to fighting, largely because of the way points are assessed–you want to get in and touch your opponent, and get away before they can touch you. Lately, though, the kumite used in the increasingly popular World Karate Federation (WKF) competitions seems to involve the “in” component, but not so […]