Had a great seminar with Renshi Jason Griffiths on the weekend who travelled down from QLD. On Saturday we focused on bunkai (applications) for Pinan Nidan and on Sunday did Choku gata futari geiko. There a large amount of material covered and these couple of lines hardly do it justice.
For reference here is a video of Chokyu gata, which is related to the Gekisai kata we do in Goju Ryu.
The event was organised by Chris Gillies
Monday, January 18, 2010
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Working vs Training - or both?
It is 8.45 pm and am still at work at the moment! I will probably be at work for a while... This is one bad thing aboubt being a Lawyer. But 95% of the time work is fun. (Note: 95% may or may not be an accurate figure)
Being a Tuesday I usually try to get to a MMA class at Brazilian Top Team followed by a Gi BJJ class for about 3 hours of training total. Tonight there was also our monthly Advanced Karate seminar which was on a special Kata that catalogues all of the blocks of Karate. It is being presented at the camp this weekend and the test run was tonight. Unfortunately I could not get to any training tonight :(
I had some urgent work come up and so had to skip training. Work comes before training unfortunately. To make it worse the work is basically administrative work and will probably not be billed (so no happy time sheet). And I still have heaps to do...
Thankfully while I am waiting for documents to print and scan I am able to do some Kata practice in the hallways. I am working on Shisochin at the moment, and have managed to fit it in between the desks in my office because of the symmetrical nature of the Kata. The only modification I have to do is not extend my legs for the Mae Geri (front kicks), otherwise I will knock over a filing cabinet and/or put a hole in the wall! I am also practicing the Kata quite slowly so as not to sweat in my business attire (or rip it).
The Kata is definitely being used as a moving meditation (and is helping keeping focus on a mundane task), but I am also thinking about bunkai (applications) and so am mentally going through self defence applications. While this is probably not as good as lots of hard training, it certainly is more useful than pacing up and down the hallways.
Osu!
Being a Tuesday I usually try to get to a MMA class at Brazilian Top Team followed by a Gi BJJ class for about 3 hours of training total. Tonight there was also our monthly Advanced Karate seminar which was on a special Kata that catalogues all of the blocks of Karate. It is being presented at the camp this weekend and the test run was tonight. Unfortunately I could not get to any training tonight :(
I had some urgent work come up and so had to skip training. Work comes before training unfortunately. To make it worse the work is basically administrative work and will probably not be billed (so no happy time sheet). And I still have heaps to do...
Thankfully while I am waiting for documents to print and scan I am able to do some Kata practice in the hallways. I am working on Shisochin at the moment, and have managed to fit it in between the desks in my office because of the symmetrical nature of the Kata. The only modification I have to do is not extend my legs for the Mae Geri (front kicks), otherwise I will knock over a filing cabinet and/or put a hole in the wall! I am also practicing the Kata quite slowly so as not to sweat in my business attire (or rip it).
The Kata is definitely being used as a moving meditation (and is helping keeping focus on a mundane task), but I am also thinking about bunkai (applications) and so am mentally going through self defence applications. While this is probably not as good as lots of hard training, it certainly is more useful than pacing up and down the hallways.
Osu!
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Practical Kendo
While many people take up Karate or BJJ for self defence, very few people take up Kendo for self defence - and for a good reason: there are not too may Samurai walking the streets these days.
However because of the interest in the Japanese sword arts (Iaido, Kendo etc) and their availability to the public the incidence of violence occurring involving a Katana ("Samurai Sword") is surprisingly high. Here is a quick article that has compiled a few incidents in one area. While I cannot find the news article anymore there was a gang fight in Sydney a couple of years ago that involved two gang members facing off with Katanas. If I recall correctly one gang member had their wrist severed (or at least badly injured) and each had some bad cuts. Humorously my initial thought was scoring with Kote!
There has been quite a bit of writing in the last few days about the incident involving a Johns Hopkins University student who slew a burglar with a Katana. Here is one example news story for the details. Further details state that the Katana wielding student scored a Kote, dealing alot of damage to the thief's hand and cutting into the thief's chest. While some think this is cool I am not going to make any jokes here. As some have already mentioned, this incident will probably scar the victim student psychologically.
Perhaps that is where Kendo is really practical in an incident like this: providing a physical release from stress and cultivating a strong mind and spirit. If one accepts completely committing to a technique and applies it to their life by completely committing to their actions then perhaps they will accept and deal with the consequences easier.
However because of the interest in the Japanese sword arts (Iaido, Kendo etc) and their availability to the public the incidence of violence occurring involving a Katana ("Samurai Sword") is surprisingly high. Here is a quick article that has compiled a few incidents in one area. While I cannot find the news article anymore there was a gang fight in Sydney a couple of years ago that involved two gang members facing off with Katanas. If I recall correctly one gang member had their wrist severed (or at least badly injured) and each had some bad cuts. Humorously my initial thought was scoring with Kote!
There has been quite a bit of writing in the last few days about the incident involving a Johns Hopkins University student who slew a burglar with a Katana. Here is one example news story for the details. Further details state that the Katana wielding student scored a Kote, dealing alot of damage to the thief's hand and cutting into the thief's chest. While some think this is cool I am not going to make any jokes here. As some have already mentioned, this incident will probably scar the victim student psychologically.
Perhaps that is where Kendo is really practical in an incident like this: providing a physical release from stress and cultivating a strong mind and spirit. If one accepts completely committing to a technique and applies it to their life by completely committing to their actions then perhaps they will accept and deal with the consequences easier.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Contact in Karate
Last weekend (when this was written, though the time of posting is a couple of weeks after that) we were fortunate to have a 6th Dan from our network fly in from interstate and conduct as a grading for the Adelaide Dojos and do a seminar on Kumite (sparring). At the end of the seminar there was naturally some Kumite matches, and in one of them someone's Mae Geri (front kick) got blocked too hard and they asked for the match to be stopped. Actually the kick was not blocked that hard, but there was a pre-existing injury on the leg and the block aggravated it.
Anyway Shihan said that even if you get injured in Kumite you should not show it or stop the match, unless the injury will require hospitalisation or some such. Even then you should try to remain as composed as possible. The reasoning for this had a street application: if you are attacked and you show that you are injured then the attacker will be encouraged to attack you further because they can see that you are being beaten and are weaker than them.
Showing strength and determination even when in pain is also related to Zen because of the drive and focus to achieve the end goal. Just as a punch requires full commitment to be effective, so to does all aspects of Karate, including training with commitment to the Kumite match.
Shihan mentioned that in the past Dojos he has trained in bouts were not stopped even when teeth flew onto the floor! I can think of several examples told to me by people I have trained with of a similar acceptance of punishment while still sparring, but most stories occurred in or before the 1980's - well before my time. Comparing these stories (which, because I have heard them from such a variety of sources I assume to be a true contrast to today) with Kumite today it seems that there are many more people who train with much less contact.
The interesting discussion is how much contact is the right amount of contact in Karate?
Firstly I would like to say that I think that "Non-Contact Karate" is really not appropriate. While it goes without saying that Kids training should be non-contact, and there is no harm in not contacting a beginner, if black belts are not familiar with contact (of any kind) and able to accept it I think that Karate would actually be making their life more dangerous for them (and possibly others) from a self defence point of view. If someone thinks that waving their fists and feet around doesnt cause pain they are going to be in for a rude shock if they are ever called to use their skills. If someone has gained confidence from Karate to face an attacker but does not realize how much it hurts to get hit then their confidence is going to take a massive shock, and so not only would they being more confident than they should be, they are also doubly scared and demoralized. They would have been better off being sure that they knew nothing.
At the other end of the scale I think that the core demographic of Karate students are not interested in "full contact", at least not initially. Naturally I am excepting Kyokushin from the definition of Karate that I am using, not because it is not Karate, but merely because it attracts a different demographic. I think that in the western world the core demographic for Karate are middle class suburbanites. Ignoring kids the people that make up Karate classes are teens, Uni students and people over 35 who approach training with a more mature mindset. For differing reasons each of the groups do not want to turn up to work/study the next day with a broken nose or barely able to walk. Therefore training with full contact is not appropriate.
I would like to seque here and note that even in full contact Karate (Kyokushin) they do not have 'full contact' matches every class. They usually spend most of the class doing bagwork, sparring drills, conditioning drills, basics (kihon) etc. Similarly other full contact styles (eg Muay Thai) do not pound each other 'full contact' every class. One quite simple reason for this is that even a strongly contitioned human body can only take so much damage. It is usual to have months between full contact matches to have time to re-cuperate and train for the next match.
An interesting proposition that arises from the fact that full contact training does not involve full contact each class is that by definition a student must be able to train (to a certain extent at least) like a full contact fighter without being subjected to the rigerous bodily punishment of a full contact match. Obviously there is a huge amount of experience to be gained from the actual matches that would be missed, but I wonder how much the correlation would be from training. Would someone who trained at a Kyokushin dojo but never entered any full contact matches be 90% as good as someone who has trained for the same length of time but who enters full contact matches? Put another way, what proportion of the skill of a 'full contact fighter' is attributable to experience in full contact matches, and what percentage is attributable to training methods that are less than full contact? I might hazard a range of 10%-30% of skill being attributable to the full contact matches. I really dont know for sure. Moreover it would be difficult to measure.
But unless the actual 'full contact fighting matches' accounted for the majority of the skill in full contact fighting a student can still get most of the way there, without actually 'stepping into the ring'. This is a reasonable proposition because of the amount of time full contact fighters spend doing 'non-full contact' training.
On the other hand it cannot be said that martial arts would be the same if no-one did full contact fighting, because how would it be known which drills and training prepare people to deliver and receive that type of impact? It could be guessed, but never known for sure. Also, the challenge of competition encouraages the development of new fighting training methods.
Therefore a club that has exposure to full-contact fighting via a couple of its students (but not all) could train the rest of the students most of the way to the skills of full contact fighting, without the other students having to compete in full contact fights.
Sequeing back to the topic I like the level of contact that it seems that our network has - low/none for beginners and increasing to a quite strong contact (expecially to the body) for more senior ranks. While this not necessarily the only "happy medium" level of contact, it seems to me to address all of the points that I raised above, namely:
-Dont have useless/deluded black belts
-Dont damage people who need to take a 'pretty face' to work/study the next day
-Practicing committment/follow through with techniques
-Having people with the knowledge of the drills necessary for more contact orientated fighting and their effectiveness who can disseminate the training methods to the 'non full contact' students. (Including having people who have experience in the full contact arena, although I will continue to decline to name people in this blog)
What do you think?
Anyway Shihan said that even if you get injured in Kumite you should not show it or stop the match, unless the injury will require hospitalisation or some such. Even then you should try to remain as composed as possible. The reasoning for this had a street application: if you are attacked and you show that you are injured then the attacker will be encouraged to attack you further because they can see that you are being beaten and are weaker than them.
Showing strength and determination even when in pain is also related to Zen because of the drive and focus to achieve the end goal. Just as a punch requires full commitment to be effective, so to does all aspects of Karate, including training with commitment to the Kumite match.
Shihan mentioned that in the past Dojos he has trained in bouts were not stopped even when teeth flew onto the floor! I can think of several examples told to me by people I have trained with of a similar acceptance of punishment while still sparring, but most stories occurred in or before the 1980's - well before my time. Comparing these stories (which, because I have heard them from such a variety of sources I assume to be a true contrast to today) with Kumite today it seems that there are many more people who train with much less contact.
The interesting discussion is how much contact is the right amount of contact in Karate?
Firstly I would like to say that I think that "Non-Contact Karate" is really not appropriate. While it goes without saying that Kids training should be non-contact, and there is no harm in not contacting a beginner, if black belts are not familiar with contact (of any kind) and able to accept it I think that Karate would actually be making their life more dangerous for them (and possibly others) from a self defence point of view. If someone thinks that waving their fists and feet around doesnt cause pain they are going to be in for a rude shock if they are ever called to use their skills. If someone has gained confidence from Karate to face an attacker but does not realize how much it hurts to get hit then their confidence is going to take a massive shock, and so not only would they being more confident than they should be, they are also doubly scared and demoralized. They would have been better off being sure that they knew nothing.
At the other end of the scale I think that the core demographic of Karate students are not interested in "full contact", at least not initially. Naturally I am excepting Kyokushin from the definition of Karate that I am using, not because it is not Karate, but merely because it attracts a different demographic. I think that in the western world the core demographic for Karate are middle class suburbanites. Ignoring kids the people that make up Karate classes are teens, Uni students and people over 35 who approach training with a more mature mindset. For differing reasons each of the groups do not want to turn up to work/study the next day with a broken nose or barely able to walk. Therefore training with full contact is not appropriate.
I would like to seque here and note that even in full contact Karate (Kyokushin) they do not have 'full contact' matches every class. They usually spend most of the class doing bagwork, sparring drills, conditioning drills, basics (kihon) etc. Similarly other full contact styles (eg Muay Thai) do not pound each other 'full contact' every class. One quite simple reason for this is that even a strongly contitioned human body can only take so much damage. It is usual to have months between full contact matches to have time to re-cuperate and train for the next match.
An interesting proposition that arises from the fact that full contact training does not involve full contact each class is that by definition a student must be able to train (to a certain extent at least) like a full contact fighter without being subjected to the rigerous bodily punishment of a full contact match. Obviously there is a huge amount of experience to be gained from the actual matches that would be missed, but I wonder how much the correlation would be from training. Would someone who trained at a Kyokushin dojo but never entered any full contact matches be 90% as good as someone who has trained for the same length of time but who enters full contact matches? Put another way, what proportion of the skill of a 'full contact fighter' is attributable to experience in full contact matches, and what percentage is attributable to training methods that are less than full contact? I might hazard a range of 10%-30% of skill being attributable to the full contact matches. I really dont know for sure. Moreover it would be difficult to measure.
But unless the actual 'full contact fighting matches' accounted for the majority of the skill in full contact fighting a student can still get most of the way there, without actually 'stepping into the ring'. This is a reasonable proposition because of the amount of time full contact fighters spend doing 'non-full contact' training.
On the other hand it cannot be said that martial arts would be the same if no-one did full contact fighting, because how would it be known which drills and training prepare people to deliver and receive that type of impact? It could be guessed, but never known for sure. Also, the challenge of competition encouraages the development of new fighting training methods.
Therefore a club that has exposure to full-contact fighting via a couple of its students (but not all) could train the rest of the students most of the way to the skills of full contact fighting, without the other students having to compete in full contact fights.
Sequeing back to the topic I like the level of contact that it seems that our network has - low/none for beginners and increasing to a quite strong contact (expecially to the body) for more senior ranks. While this not necessarily the only "happy medium" level of contact, it seems to me to address all of the points that I raised above, namely:
-Dont have useless/deluded black belts
-Dont damage people who need to take a 'pretty face' to work/study the next day
-Practicing committment/follow through with techniques
-Having people with the knowledge of the drills necessary for more contact orientated fighting and their effectiveness who can disseminate the training methods to the 'non full contact' students. (Including having people who have experience in the full contact arena, although I will continue to decline to name people in this blog)
What do you think?
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
End of Financial Year - Finally Posting Kendo
Have been supremely busy with end of financial year tasks at work - and have even missed a few trainings! Terrible, I know, but work must come before fun...
I am going to finally post about the great time I had at the 34th Australian Kendo Championships on 11th April 2009, and have finally compiled the videos that I took. At the moment I will just post the 2 matches that I was in due to time constraints (because blogging is inherently narcissistic), but I got a few Kyu individual matches, especially of the South Australian team so if someone wants a copy please let me know. There was also someone at the Adelaide Dojo who was going to compile the video that they took into a nicely edited DVD of the Nationals and they were going to incorporate the video I took, but they have been busy/not at training the same time as me and so am not sure of the status of this project.
Video is uploading to Youtube as I type, though I am getting tired and may not post it today.
At the Seminar we had 2 visiting 8th Dans from Japan and I will write about a couple of the most important points that I picked up from them (I have several pages of notes, but most are probably boring/personal).
- There are many ways in which a person can be taught Kendo, and there is not necessarily a "right" way. There are many ways to climb a mountain, but all of the ways lead to the same summit/peak.
- It is important that the distance that Kendoka start away from each other is 9 paces. At that distance you are wary of the opponent. Further than that and you are not in danger. Once you are at 9 paces you each take 3 paces in and you are at To-Maai and are dangerous to each other.
- When you lift your Shinai you keep your arms in the same position as Chudan-no-kamae and do not move past where your shoulders naturally allow. Your strikes should be relaxed and natural
I am going to finally post about the great time I had at the 34th Australian Kendo Championships on 11th April 2009, and have finally compiled the videos that I took. At the moment I will just post the 2 matches that I was in due to time constraints (because blogging is inherently narcissistic), but I got a few Kyu individual matches, especially of the South Australian team so if someone wants a copy please let me know. There was also someone at the Adelaide Dojo who was going to compile the video that they took into a nicely edited DVD of the Nationals and they were going to incorporate the video I took, but they have been busy/not at training the same time as me and so am not sure of the status of this project.
Video is uploading to Youtube as I type, though I am getting tired and may not post it today.
At the Seminar we had 2 visiting 8th Dans from Japan and I will write about a couple of the most important points that I picked up from them (I have several pages of notes, but most are probably boring/personal).
- There are many ways in which a person can be taught Kendo, and there is not necessarily a "right" way. There are many ways to climb a mountain, but all of the ways lead to the same summit/peak.
- It is important that the distance that Kendoka start away from each other is 9 paces. At that distance you are wary of the opponent. Further than that and you are not in danger. Once you are at 9 paces you each take 3 paces in and you are at To-Maai and are dangerous to each other.
- When you lift your Shinai you keep your arms in the same position as Chudan-no-kamae and do not move past where your shoulders naturally allow. Your strikes should be relaxed and natural
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Brace for War - Silvester Lidicky (Integrated) VS Kane Gehling (Brazilian Top Team)
Recently one of the guys from BTT competed in a MMA tournament up in QLD. Unfortunately South Australia has restrictive laws and we cant have this much fun down here.
Kane did a great job, although he lost on points.
Watch what I believe is Round 1 here
Osu!
Kane did a great job, although he lost on points.
Watch what I believe is Round 1 here
Osu!
Current Training
I haven't been posting much because I have been doing alot of training at the moment. Also, I have had lots of work and family commitments. I was going to post the videos that I took at the Kendo Nationals, but haven't had time to edit them yet. Also someone from the Dojo is going to more professionally edit the videos that they took with any other they can get (including mine) for a DVD for everyone to reflect upon.
Therefore I will most probably just edit video of my matches so people can see me get defeated - this keeps my humility and is in line with the narcissistic nature of blogging. I shall also try to post some comments about what happened, and especially the semiar with the 2 Hachidan's, which was one of the most significant martial arts experiences I have had, ever!
In the meantime I suggest you have a look at Vivian Yung's write up of her experiences of the Kendo nationals. I have been reading her blog for a while and we discussed blogging at the nationals. We naturally discussed Kendo too!
http://nintai.blogspot.com/2009/04/34akc-shomen-ni-rei.html
At the moment my training regime has been approximately this:
Monday: Kendo. (I missed the last 2 weeks due to work/injuries and did a 9 km run instead)
Tuesday: Weight training.
Wednesday: 9 km run (though this week Kendo because I missed Monday's training)
Thursday: No Gi BJJ; Gi BJJ - 3 hours total!
Friday: 9 km run or kata and kihon. Try for Kendo kihon inside
Saturday: 3-4 hours bunkai research at night
Sunday: 2 hours normal Karate class + 1 hour informal kata training with seniors (Sanseiru at the moment) + 1 hour of bunkai and conditioning with students or 1 hour bag work at home
Therefore I will most probably just edit video of my matches so people can see me get defeated - this keeps my humility and is in line with the narcissistic nature of blogging. I shall also try to post some comments about what happened, and especially the semiar with the 2 Hachidan's, which was one of the most significant martial arts experiences I have had, ever!
In the meantime I suggest you have a look at Vivian Yung's write up of her experiences of the Kendo nationals. I have been reading her blog for a while and we discussed blogging at the nationals. We naturally discussed Kendo too!
http://nintai.blogspot.com/2009/04/34akc-shomen-ni-rei.html
At the moment my training regime has been approximately this:
Monday: Kendo. (I missed the last 2 weeks due to work/injuries and did a 9 km run instead)
Tuesday: Weight training.
Wednesday: 9 km run (though this week Kendo because I missed Monday's training)
Thursday: No Gi BJJ; Gi BJJ - 3 hours total!
Friday: 9 km run or kata and kihon. Try for Kendo kihon inside
Saturday: 3-4 hours bunkai research at night
Sunday: 2 hours normal Karate class + 1 hour informal kata training with seniors (Sanseiru at the moment) + 1 hour of bunkai and conditioning with students or 1 hour bag work at home
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