One of the biggest challenges for any instructor is keeping students focused on the basics. Why is this important? Because without a good solid foundation, everything built on top of it eventually starts to give way. It might not be obvious at first. In fact, it often looks quite the opposite. People get faster, sharper,…
Category: Self-Protection
Kicking in Karate: A Question of Context
In the modern dojo, it’s common to see almost every combination include a kick somewhere within it. That isn’t accidental. It reflects the influence of competitive environments, where kicking plays a significant role. At a high level, competitors are exceptional athletes. They have the timing, flexibility, balance, and conditioning to apply kicks in ways that…
Kata Isn’t the Problem – Misunderstanding It Is
Here we go again. Every time I write about the benefits of kata – really trying to help people understand what it is and how it works – someone shows up in the comments to tell me to go and do ‘real training’. This time it was someone proudly talking about his ‘street-real’ jiu-jitsu and…
Applications – You Have to Find Them
Before I get into this article, here’s a question. As a child, who taught you to walk? Many of us want to understand the movements in kata, and there is an assumption that someone will show us what they mean. The reality is that being shown is not necessarily a requirement, and in many cases,…
What Survives at 95?
I watched a 95-year-old Okinawan Uechi-ryu master recently performing Sanseiryu, Shintoku Takara, and it stayed with me longer than I expected. Not because of anything dramatic, but because of how little seemed to be happening on the surface. There was no urgency, no obvious effort, and none of the exaggerated movement that people often associate with…
When Power Becomes Performance
Do you watch a kata and, at first glance, it looks impressive – snappy, powerful – but something about the function just feels wrong? The techniques look powerful, but only because the body is being overused to make them look that way. Big shoulder rotation. Excessive upper body movement. A visible “back and forth” to…
When Something Changes in Your Training
After decades in the martial arts, something changes. You’re no longer just repeating what you were taught. Is spending decades in the martial arts – learning and teaching across several styles – enough to shape your own method? I wonder why this is frowned upon. Much of it likely comes from the McDojo culture, where…
Karate, it’s like a classic car
Karate is like a classic car. We don’t need it, and perhaps it’s not even fit for purpose anymore. There are other “cars” that have better fuel consumption, more comfortable seats, and all the modern features we’ve come to expect. But we still love them anyway, because they make us feel something that the modern…
Self-defense – what are we really training for?
Self-defense – the ability to protect yourself when it matters. We train for it for years, and for some of us, decades. But for what? One moment? Maybe a moment that never even comes. Does that make it any less important, or does it mean we should just treat training as something for fitness and…
There Is No ‘Ready’ Moment
I received a comment recently about the opening of kata – the yoi position – and how it might represent awareness. The point where you recognize something isn’t right and prepare yourself. I understand why people see it that way. But it rests on something that doesn’t really hold up when you look at it…
Pre-Emption and Kata: What Comes Before the Movement
There’s a question that came up after I wrote about kata not showing the setup. What about pre-emption? If it’s often better to act first – to move before the attacker commits – then where does that fit? Because kata doesn’t show that either. And that’s the point. Kata doesn’t try to show the moment of…
Reflections on Kata: Why Kata Does Not Show the Setup
I’ve been watching this for years. Someone takes a piece of kata and immediately tries to turn it into a neat sequence. This is the attack, this is the defense, this is what comes next. It all lines up nicely, and on the surface it makes sense. But the more you look at it, the…