About Raising Your Shoulder and Bad Habits

Goodin Sensei always continues to amaze me with his easy to apply thoughts. His latest one is one of the most common problems in karate, especially for beginners. Maybe most of us raised our shoulder when we started our training. It is one of the most common bad habit and most of the times, the instruction gave to new practitioners was quite long winded. It only confused them further, resulting some of them to develop bad habit that is difficult to remove once it has been programmed in their body. Goodin Sensei has a simple instruction: “Squeeze our lats” (please refer to his article here). Although it will still takes time to develop working lats, but this instruction is easier to understand and memorize.  We should follow his examples to think about correcting bad habits instead of only pointing to it. I have never met Goodin Sensei in the real world, but I have my utmost respect to him.

Karate Lifestyle

Karate lifestyle? Is there any karate inspired lifestyle? Is it a new hip and trendy haute couture? I’m not too sure about other people, but for me, karate lifestyle is a lifestyle that centers around my karate practice. A lifestyle to make my karate better, stronger, more applicable and practical. The point is to breathe, think, eat, work, exercise, sleep and dream about karate. Why should it be you might asked? Well, it’s definitely because I LOVE and ENJOY karate very much. Because of it, I want to make my karate better. The easiest way is to live the karate life.

Of course I can’t really train for more than 8 hours a day, always wearing an iron sandal everywhere, bringing a heavyweight on my shoulders and challenging local thugs(whoopsss). I’m talking about improving my karate, not only from karate practice, but also from other aspects of life. A lot of things can be done in our daily routines that can help to improve our karate. Good breathing helps a lot. A lot of people can’t breathe properly. Without proper breathing, our physics will be weaker, and in return, our karate will be weaker also. Think karate? This one is quite easy. Someone who loves karate easily thinks about karate even at work That’s why I’m also working for karate besides for my living. Why? Because sometimes karate requires capital. My private training room requires money, an overseas training requires money, as well as my monthly dojo dues and those karate seminars. Sleeping and dreaming? This is a MUST

Ok, how about eat for karate? This is one of the most important one, but very difficult to do. I really like to eat anything, specially meat. Recently I ate too much and I think I have gained a couple of kilos(I haven’t measure my weight though). I only realized it today, when I trained on my own. My stamina has been awful for the last three weeks, which I thought was because of my busy schedule in the office. But today I realized that my weight must have been increased. That’s why I need to control myself better and I also promised myself to do more cardio training. This is another difficult part since I don’t really like this type of training. But with lousy stamina, it really hinders my training. If I want to maximize my training, I must start running, skipping and doing some other cardio exercises. These training are not karate training, but it really supports my karate, that’s why I’m willing to do it.

It might be weird for someone that doesn’t do karate or other martial art to incorporate the art to our lives, but it is only logical to do anything for someone/something you love right? My karate lifestyle can only be considered as a minor addition to my daily life, but I have seen people that really loves karate, without any words being said, can be seen that they really live a karate lifestyle that has been integrated a lot with their daily life. That’s why their karate are excellent.

Health is a treasure

Again, going AWOL and neglecting this blog, but this time, it’s more due to my busy days in the office rather than my laziness :-p Because of a new and very troublesome project, I couldn’t train regularly for these past three weeks. I have only been training in the dojo three times plus a couple of times at home. Not only lack of training, but irregular eating pattern and also the exhausting project almost brought me down. Yesterday I dragged myself to the dojo although the day before I only slept for 3 hours before I went for presentation in the morning and attending some meetings in the afternoon before I rushly left to have my dinner at 7:30pm, went back to my house to get my gears and straightaway went to the dojo. Lost concentration, poor performance, lack of stamina and almost faint during training.

Felt really lucky to be able to finished the whole session and promised myself that if I can’t attend my training, I will always spend at least 30 minutes to do my own training at home. I have lost so much for the past three weeks because of my negligence. And that’s not the only loss I had. Due to less training, irregular eating and lack of sleep, my body condition also dropped and I almost got myself into trouble before the project even finished. Now I know why the older generations always value their health and take care of their own health was always an important thing for them. With regular training, I didn’t really have any major health problem, so I didn’t really take care of my own health due to the inherent benefit of training to my own health. But the last three weeks taught me an important lesson:

1.Training regularly IS A MUST. No reason not to train myself at home!!!

2.Health is a treasure, without health, we can’t do all those fun activities we always love to do.

3.To fall sick is to waste all those training days. With just one day of sickness, we need to rebuild our stamina and condition again. This requires time and wasting our training days to rebuild instead of advancing. IT IS TOTALLY INACCEPTABLE!!!

Hopefully the burdensome project can finish soon and I can return to my good old training days!

Karate Rants – Part Two

When karate was brought over to mainland Japan from Okinawa, changes were bound to happened. It’s becoming more rigid, systematized, militarized, spiritual side was added and it is becoming less martial in order for it to be available for larger masses. Not all the changes are bad, although this is also subjective. Some people said the changes from karate-jutsu to karate-do is good because not only physical training, but spiritual training is also very important for the practitioner. But other people consider this to be bad, because it diminished its martial applications. Karate also becoming systematized and militarized. This is also a double-edge sword.

Systematized means proper syllabus for the masses, ranking system and karate uniform were introduced and organizations are formed to be able to organize the growing structure. The ugly sides of this are the politics and power struggle in the organization, resulting in splinter groups, bad bloods and animosities. Okinawan masters used to learn from various masters, but nowadays this practice is frowned by the majority. Loyalty to the organization is valued very highly. Loyalty is good, but blind loyalty is bad. Furthermore, our instructor(s) can’t be good at everything. Learning from other people and masters are a good way to develop our karate. Ranking system provides a way to measure growth of the practitioner, but money corrupts, how many dojo offer grades for money? Syllabus is good for a more systematic training, but individuality becoming almost extinct nowadays.

Before karate introduced to Japan, most practitioners only know mostly 5 kata. Nowadays, people aren’t satisfied with 10, 20 or 30. Not many people can understand too many kata, although there are exceptions, such as Mabuni Sensei of Shito-ryu. Old masters taught certain kata to certain people with characteristics that match the kata itself. First they learn basic kata such as sanchin and naihanchi. This can be as long as five years or as short as two or three years. Once their basic was consider good, gradually they’re being introduced to the more advanced kata. It can take at least a year before they learn another kata. There’s just too many things to learn in one kata, and they studied the martial values of the kata, not the nice poses and the sequences only. To even do a proper shuri ashi, the posture, the body mechanics and in-depth understanding of how body moves are needed. It’s not just a simple stepping that can be learned in one day. It takes years to perfect. That’s the difference nowadays. In some dojo, the students are required to know the sequence in one session. Then after the student remembers the sequence perfectly with a good looking basic techniques, flashy poses and nice sound effects, they’re considered to have mastered the kata and proceed to do another kata. No movement concepts were mastered. The way kata taught was different. They need to master the first few sequences first, with all the proper techniques, body mechanics, movements and the concepts and ideas behind the sequences, then they proceed to the next sequences one after another. One sequence can take months. This is also true if you’re practicing chinese martial arts, and fortunately for them, many of them are still doing this. Once someone properly “know” the kata, he should have enough arsenal to defend himself/herself. If he/she managed to master 3 or 4 kata, he will become a very able martial artist. Nowadays studying one kata for one year is considered too long. The fault is not only on the instructors, but also the students, they got bored and always hungry for new kata, although they haven’t even “know” it. It’s a sad state actually. I have even seen someone taught a kata in a more militarized way. If the one being taught unable to remember the sequence, he/she will be asked to repeat the kata again. This is not a kata that he/she has learnt for a few months, but it is a new kata for him/her. To remember one sequence in one day is good enough. To be able to do the sequence properly in one or two months is a feat. That’s why it’s perfectly normal to work on a kata for years.

Karate Rants – Part One

First post after so long Ok, let’s go down to the business right away. I’m going to more than one dojo to train karate and I would like to talk about one particular dojo that I always go at least once a week. First of all, the atmosphere is good there, people are friendly, a lot of friends are there, the facility is top notch with all the training equipments, basically all looks good except for a few flaws that I find very bothersome.

First of all, the practitioners age range are varied between 10-50 for the beginners. I’m not against sports kumite for people that enjoy doing it or for people going to tournaments.  But if the dojo teaches sports kumite regularly while 95% of the people practicing on a particular day aren’t going for tournament, and although they might enjoy the training and find it beneficial for their health, I find it very worrysome that instructors put a lot of emphasis on this regulary in the class. A lot of the practitioners are salarymen, students looking for activity and middle-aged parents. One of the reason why they choose karate must be the martial part of it, the self defense. Although self defense might not be the main reason why they do karate, but it’s must be one of the benefit they find useful. Every week they train once or twice, doing some drills on sports kumite during one part of the training. But unknowingly, they are training for a sports event that they won’t event participate in their whole life, not a self defense drill/techniques that they can use on the street outside the safe dojo!!!

The problem itself is not really the dojo’s fault, but the emphasis came from Japan itself, and the local instructors in all countries following it blindly without thinking. Japan is like a bible for them, they follow it without thinking and consider it to be a source of truth. Then this truth is being propagated to the practitioners everywhere. They believe what the instructors said that sports kumite is the ultimate self defense since they saw it’s beautiful form works in the dojo. Hopefully they don’t get to use it outside the dojo, or they will find themself lying on the ground and then start questioning why a black belt can be easily trumped by people with no training.

Sports kumite is designed to be a safe playground to a game of karate. For me, I don’t see any karate techniques in sports kumite. The footwork is not karate footwork, there’s no shuri ashi, yori ashi or tai sabaki from the katas we know. It might look the same, but the body mechanics are different. The gyaku tsuki and kisame tsuki with a low faux-zenkutsu dachi are hybrid techniques. No where in kata we do gyaku tsuki and kisame on zenkutsu dachi with the rear leg being lifted up. These technique is taken from boxing and the result is the hybrid technique. But again, none of the body mechanics in the kata are found here and none of the boxing body mechanics are also found here. Pulling punches are also one of the problem, some practitioners doesn’t even realized that unless they know why they pull the punches and only train rigorously on pulling the punches as fast as possible will make their fist harmless on the street. As for mawashi geri, it’s a good technique really, but again, which kata has mawashi geri? And for me, kicking above our belly button will put us in a very disadvantageous position. I do mawashi geri, but most of the time, it’s only knee/thigh level height.

Ok, maybe the techniques aren’t karate techniques, but some people might argue that it’s working on the street. Unless you’re an elite performer, I don’t think you will be able to survive on the street pulling punches, kicking high to the head, and bouncing around. I did sports kumite before, and I came to realized that its advantages can’t compensate its disadvantages if you’re looking to defend yourself unless you know that running is the best defense in the world. It’s very good if instructors can separate this kind of training from the regular classes, then more people can benefit from the training itself rather than just from the health point of view. Sports kumite has its merit and it’s good to develop the competitive spirit for young people, but I don’t find it useful for older people at all. I still have another rant about the way some dojo teach kata, but I will leave it for another writing(at least I will have another topic in mind ^^).

My Small and Humble Training Room

Finally my training room has its own matts. So mirror is there, matts are there, makiwara, hojo undo, and some other handy stuffs for training. It’s a small 3×4 room, but I’m so happy that I can finally have my own room for training. Well, it will not be dedicated fully for training, but also for guests that might want to use the room. So most of the time the room will be empty and available for training. It will be suitable for up to three people training, more than that will be too much Although it’s small, many things can be done inside. With the matts, throws and submission can also be done. Thanks for my wife to understand my obsession on karate! Nowadays, I can’t imagine life without karate anymore So, no more excuses for being lazy, the training room is just a few steps away!!!

Why I Choose Karate?

Why not other sports? Why not other martial arts? In short, karate was my first dedication to physical exercise, I wasn’t quite good in sports or any other physical exercise, but just like some kids at my age that time, seeing Jean-Claude van Damme was always exhilirating. I took up karate during my junior high. My dojo only had less than 10 students maximum, so my sensei was able to watch the individual one by one. The training was hard and we were exposed to kumite from the beginning. Doing karate made my ability in other physical activity far better. Maybe that’s one of the cause I left karate also, besides some other reasons of course(my first sensei went on hiatus, friends leaving the dojo, bored, etc). I left karate after less than four years and pick up football until I moved to Singapore. I didn’t have any mates to play with, then the idea of picking up martial art again came to my mind. I actually kept practising on my own during my absent from karate, so I was able to pick it up again quite fast when I resumed my training.

All that talk, but still the question remains, why karate? I was always interested in martial arts, that’s my first reason. Of course I picked karate by chance, I was tagging along with my friend to his dojo, and although I was only intending to watch, but my sensei asked me to join the training, after that, I decided to join. If I was exposed to other martial art first, then I might not picked up karate. But, since I left karate and pick it up again, kept training until now, there must be some other reasons.

First and foremost, it has became integrated with my life, I read karate for my past time, I eat to practice karate better, I dream about karate from time to time, my circle of friends are karate related, I often think about karate, basically almost all aspect of my life became integrated with it. Secondly, karate can be practiced, practically, until I die. Unless I lost all my four limbs before I die, I will keep practicing it. Karate is different from other sports and some sports based martial arts that relies on physique. If it’s practiced correctly, the practitioner should be getting better and better regardless of age. Of course compared to sports based martial arts, the progress is longer to at least be able to defend oneself. Some people might say, why spending 10 years to be able to properly defend ourself? There’s a lot of martial arts out there that can transform you into a fighting machine in two years time. It’s really a valid argument, why should people wait for 10 years? They’d be lying on their back if they meet with trouble on the street. My answer is it depend on your own preference. Chinese martial art also take years to be called decent, tai chi practitioner might even take longer than 10 years and still not able to defend themself if they don’t understand the concept. So why people still practicing those traditional arts? I certainly won’t be able to answer for all the other practitioners, but for me, the pre-arranged form called ‘kata’ is the answer. The depth of information inside kata are enormous, mastering even one kata is extremely difficult, but if we can master the concept, understand the meaning of the movements(bunkai), integrate the kata to ourselves, then 10 years of training is considered short. Most practitioner that doesn’t practice kata, usually will leave karate. I didn’t like kata, and because of that, I got bored because the training becomes very one dimensional, nothing else to train except for competition style kumite. I wasn’t able to progress, and leaving was very much an option back then.

I understand that some martial arts practitioners are sceptical with kata or tao lu(in Chinese Martial Arts). Why do kata when we can just learn some kicking, punching, throws, submission techniques without it? Just learn those techniques, practice it with your partner, spar, spar and spar. The progress is very fast compared to traditional approach. Once again, these arguments are valid. But for me, kata or tao lu is the soul of the art. I will not talk about “do” or “the way” concept, but the kata the richness and depth in kata is worth the time to master it. There’s so much to learn in it, and practicing it is also some sort of a meditation, physical training, mental training blended into one. There’s a different kind of feeling when I do my kata, I feel like I am immersed into something that I don’t understand, and I always want to feel it again to understand it more. It might be an ecstasy to a practitioner. Of course kata is not equal kumite. The ability to fight is not only from kata, but it is from our kihon(basic), hojo undo(suplementary training), conditioning, kata and bunkai(application) as my sensei once said. Neglecting one of it, will result in a kumite without backbone. Meet a practitioner with a strong backbone, he/she will be pummeled easily.

And why is it karate can be practiced until we die, and we will still achieve progress? It’s because physically we have our peak physical condition. Most athletes will go down the hill very fast after 35 years old, even if they still train the same amount of excercises or even more. It is the law of the nature. That’s why we rarely see in competition sports that needs physical ability, athletes above 35 years old. The younger athletes has more to give physically, the older won’t be able to compete with their speed, power and agility. Karate is different, the older we get, the better we should be. One very good example is Higaonna Sensei of IOGKF, he’s about 70 years old by now, and I don’t think anyone will dare to challenge him to a fight. He’s still very much active, and still able to kick anyone’s ass. What is the difference, won’t karate also needs physical ability? Yes, but we’re building out body to be able to move economically, effectively and also in conjuntion to the concepts found in kata. Advanced practitioner doesn’t use to much power when delivering techniques, but with a proper body mechanic, correct posture and the ability to move the whole body without wasting the energy, even when the muscle power dwindling as he/she aged, it will not hinder the technique. Hmmm… why is it possible might be the question. Punching is punching, why is it different? To explain it will take a long time, but in short, all of it can be found in the bible, the kata itself, training will be the long answer from me, by training, we will understand those aspects a lot better than words can say.

Makiwara

Makiwara and sandbag, which one do you choose? For me, both! Most of karate practitioners, in my opinion, don’t really have an issue incorporating sandbag in their training regime. It’s considered modern, fairly easy to use and doesn’t punish the user as makiwara does. Makiwara, on the other hand, considered an antique, more difficult to use and punishes the user if he/she doesn’t know how to use it properly. It’s a general opinion in the world of karate. I will not be discussing about how to use the makiwara, since, the best way to use it is to see it yourself and do it on the spot. The learning curve is longer than sandbag, but it’s really worth all the peeled skin I got during learning. It’s not an easy training tool to use definitely. Usually it sits around the corner of the dojo, with most of the people ignoring its existance as if it is only a part of the dojo with a mystical presence on par with the pictures of the masters and the shomen. Some curious people, specially the beginners will try to use it, but since it’s more difficult to understand, most of them will not give it a second try. Some other people that continue to use it will stop after they feel the reverb, peeled their skin or feel the pain on their knuckles, only a few survivors left. These are true in dojos that has makiwara and don’t really require the pratitioners to use it. Of course it’s a different situation in dojos that requires their practitioner to embrace it. Many may be against the usage of makiwara, but for me, it’s one of the tools that really helps me to develop in karate. It teaches focus and correct posture. It also teaches us to respect our opponent by demanding good techniques to be delivered to its padding. Bad techniques will not do, it will hurt you instead. It also requires dedication and determination when using it, half-assed dedication got no reward when punching it. It is also very versatile, plenty of techniques can be practiced with it. With all those benefits, does sandbags still needed? For me, the answer is yes. I’m using makiwara to better my techniques, while I’m using the sandbag to develop the power. They’re complementing each other and really do wonders in my training.

Attending Training

The first and foremost beginning of the class is not when the class itself started. But it is actually starting when we starts to shift our mind to training, at any time. We might have training tomorrow, but when we think about whether or not to come for the training, it is already started actually. The decision making to attend our training is a very important measure whether our training will be fruitful or not. I have a regular job myself, and sometimes I feel very tired, or running on deadlines, or maybe just plain bad weather. Those reasons are usually becoming our consideration to actually go for the training or not and of course, subsequently, determines whether or not our training for the day is actually a failure or a success.

Maybe we have prepared for the training the day before, the next morning, we bring all the training bag and office apparels to our office. In the afternoon, suddenly the rain pours down heavily and make us thinking if the rain doesn’t stop, we will not go for the training. Eventually one hour before training starts, it still drizzles outside, we want to go to the training, but in the other hand, our comfortable bed feels like a better choice in this cold weather. Or maybe the rain has stopped, but our body feels tired after working for the whole day. These examples show that training doesn’t begin when we bow to the shomen, but it can even begin one day before, when we fold our gi and pack our obi inside our bag. Going for our training is always difficult for everyone, but we have to strive to attend the training. This is also karate training, a mental and spiritual one. I am really impressed with Goodin Sensei’s article about a woman that is recovering from cancer but already very eager to resume her training. Hopefully I can always remember the story whenever my mind roams away from my training. please read the article here.

The Feeling

The training session was quite different last night, compared to other regular sessions, the theory portion was more than usual. One of the point I pondered most is the ‘feeling’. According to my sensei, the ability to ‘feel’ can be acquired through constant training and thinking. It’s the epitomy of the karate adage ‘bun bu ryo do’ – literally means something like ‘the pen and the sword is in one accordance. This proverb tells us that not only physical training is needed for our karate, but also the ‘book’ or in other words, we need to cultivate our minds also. My sensei said that the word ‘keiko’ or training is formed using two characters: ‘think’ and ‘old/ancient’. It basically says that mind cultivation is also very important in our karate journey, without it, we might not be able to maximise our training and the growth level might be very slow or even stuck in our current level. The ‘feeling’ might be acquired through constant training, but without studying it, we won’t be able to utilise the ‘feeling’ to further enchanced our karate. This ‘feeling’ is internal in our body, although the movement might look the same when we do a technique with or without a feeling, but the result can be very different. Karate growth level is not a linear growth, it’s more like plains and sudden hike like ladder graph or steps. The plains might be very long, but our persistance and perseverance in training are the one who brought us to reach the next level. Most beginners quit karate because of this typical plain in karate. It can be very short, like a couple of months or even days, but it also can be very long, maybe one year or even ten years. That’s why we need to cultivate our mind together with our training in order to minimize the length of the plain we went through in each level. Once we got the ‘feeling’, it will never be lost.