Wastelander

Gamaku: This is the musculature between the bottom of your ribcage and the hip joints. In context, for karate, this is referring to engaging this musculature to support your structure and facilitate the generation and delivery of power into your techniques. Hara: The belly. This can be used to highlight that specific area of gamaku, as it ignores the musculature along the sides and back, as well as around the hips. Often discussed in relation to the tandan, as well. Tanden: The lower belly/center of gravity. Usually used to highlight specific feelings and positions of the hips that you accomplish through gamaku engagement, although it is also discussed in terms of balance and breaking balance. Koshi: The hips. In context, for karate, this is generally talking about "koshi wo hineru" (twisting the hips) as a method of power generation, but can also be used to discuss other hip motions. Chinkuchi: Muscle, sinew, and bone. This is a structural concept, essentially. In context, for karate, it is used to discuss the idea of bone and joint alignment, as well as efficiency in muscular engagement--specifically, only engaging the muscles you actually need to perform a technique, and nothing extra. As far as how these all fit together, I don't personally use "hara" in my teaching, at all. I have found that I don't really have any need to specify the belly when discussing gamaku unless I am specifically talking about the tanden, and hara is more vague than that, so it just isn't necessary. Tanden and koshi are both part of gamaku, since the tanden more-or-less sits in your pelvis and the koshi are the lowest connection point for the gamaku muscles, and while your legs drive the movement of koshi, gamaku is used to orient the tanden and connect the koshi to the upper body. The alignment of all of these structures is part of chinkuchi, and chinkuchi is also when you are able to only use the minimum necessary muscles to accomplish a movement, allowing you to generate power while also being relaxed, fluid, and fast.

I often run the three Naihanchi kata back-to-back-to-back, as it saves time removing the extra yoi and bowing, although that isn't quite the same as what you're trying to do with it. As aurik mentioned, Shuri-Ryu does have a version of Naihanchi which is basically the distilled combination of material from Naihanchi Shodan, Nidan, and Sandan, which they call "O-Naihanchi," although they generally claim that this is how Naihanchi was originally done, which is not the case. There is zero evidence to support the theory that those three kata were ever one long kata, and a good deal of evidence to support that some form of Naihanchi Shodan was the original Naihanchi kata, and Nidan and Sandan were created later--Nidan by Matsumura Sokon or Itosu Anko, and Sandan by Itosu Anko, depending on who you believe.

Happy birthday to KF, and thank you to Patrick, the rest of the staff, and all of our members!

A lot of styles have adopted the same or similar mechanics over the past 100+ years, which likely come from Itosu Anko, as even some past masters who didn't train directly with him often learned his karate in school. That said, there ARE still styles with fundamental differences in mechanics. For example, KishimotoDi doesn't make use of hip rotation for power generation, but almost every modern karate style does. Motobu Udundi tends to "float" on the balls of the feet, but almost every modern karate style does not. Modern Shotokan and Kyokushin have made their motions so large that the mechanics can't help but be fundamentally different from the Okinawan styles they came from.

Perhaps you have been taught to do it differently, but your ankle really has very little to do with the pivot while kicking, because you should be twisting your entire leg at the hip. You may have heard the phrase "open your hips" in discussions on kicking, and that refers to this. The only flexibility you should need in your ankle is enough to either lift the heel or the ball of the foot slightly off the floor, depending on which way your style kicks.

Hello, everyone, As some of you may know, in addition to being a martial artist, I am also a bladesmith, so I am constantly thinking about knife designs, their uses, and their pros/cons. That said, I don't have much formal knife training, in a martial arts sense. I'm curious to get your input on the knife designs you like best for your martial arts--not necessarily specific brands and models, but design features. What length of blade do you like best? What blade shape? What handle shape? What tang style? Etc.

Unfortunately, kobudo weapon makers are hard to come by, in general, and many only make some of the weapons, not all of them, so it is going to depend on exactly what weapon you're looking for. It will probably be easier to find a bo maker than a sai maker, for example.

Haisai, everyone, Lately, I've been seeing a lot of videos on social media from various different martial arts schools from around the world where intermediate (and even some advanced) students lack basic structure and alignment. Obviously, different styles will do things differently, but there are still some fundamentals that are pretty much universal, since there are only so many ways to use the human body to effectively combat another human body. For example, when punching, I very often see these students with their wrists cocked back in the natural gripping position, rather than having their knuckles aligned with their forearm. When in front stances, I often see front knees buckling inward instead of being positioned above the foot. I also notice that many end up with their torso leaning backward in a variety of different stances. I had to correct all of these fundamenals within the first 3 belt ranks, and would never have been allowed to progress beyond those beginner ranks with the form I have been seeing. Within Okinawan karate, the concept of chinkuchi (muscle/sinew and bone) is a very important structural focus, and while I realize that not all karate styles know what chinkuchi is, I would think that the idea of proper structure and alignment would be something all instructors understood the importance of. I am curious as to your experiences with this sort of thing. Did you have to learn these fundamentals early on, or were you allowed to progress into intermediate or advanced ranks without them being corrected. If you were allowed to progress without them, do you know why?

The idea that hikite generates more punching power, while popular, doesn't hold up under scrutiny. That idea seems to have been popularized by Nakayama Masatoshi and Kanazawa Hirokazu, with MANY people referencing the famous illustration comparing the mechanics of punching to an engine, with an axle running up the center of the body, and the arms being pistons attached to it. The explanation being that pulling one hand back will make the body rotate around that axle, naturally forcing the opposite side of the body forward, generating more power, and that this is an example of Newton's Third Law of Motion (every action has an equal and opposite reaction). On the surface, that does sound logical, but there are several flaws in this premise: The body does not actually have a rigid axle in the center, and doesn't rotate evenly around it, nor is power generated from that axle outward The body is capable of rotating regardless of what you do with the arms Pulling one arm back as you punch with the other side moves some of your mass AWAY from the target, reducing the power delivered to the target This interpretation of Newton's Third Law is completely incorrect, because the push/pull mechanic does not actually represent what he meant by "equal and opposite reaction" Additionally, we must recognize that the idea of pulling a hand to your side or hip while punching, without using that hand for a combative function, is tactically unsound. Doing this is a good way to get punched in the face, and is an example of shi-te (dead hand), which is a cardinal sin in classical karate. Of course, most karateka recognize this, but brush it off by simply saying "you do it for training, but not for real fighting." My question, then, is this; how does your martial art train for "real fighting," then? If your standard training methodology in a martial art teaches you to do something that is a dangerous bad habit for fighting, then you have to do additional, different training in order to un-learn that habit in order to be able to use your martial art, which means you are either wasting your time with training the standard methodology, or with the fighting training, depending on what you are training for.

I left that organization at the end of 2019, but they did require the Pinan kata for all students. They didn't dictate what order the kata had to be taught in, or what kata were associated with what ranks, just so long as you knew all of the kata by 5th Dan. Removing the Pinan series for adults was a change I made based on my discussions with my late Sensei on removing redundancy in the curriculum, but I wouldn't have been able to do that if I had stayed in the Shorinkan.

Recently, I've been sharing some footage from my KishimotoDi Sensei's previous visits to the US, and I've had some folks not understand the quadrant concept that is illustrated in a few of those videos, so I thought it might be worth explaining. Essentially, KishimotoDi simplifies technique selection by looking at all incoming attacks from the perspective of having 4 areas you can enter into--inside-over, inside-under, outside-over, and outside-under--instead of trying to identify the specific attack and figuring out how to deal with that attack. An easy way to visualize this is by looking at a straight punch, since all 4 quadrants are equally accessible from that attack. You can move to the inside of the arm, or the outside of the arm, and you can make contact above or below that arm. The same options exist for all other attacks, but their trajectory can make some quadrants more easily accessible than others. For example, a haymaker still has those 4 areas around it, but because it is swinging from the outside to the inside, it is much easier to access the inside-over and inside-under quadrants than the outside-over and outside-under quadrants. By using this concept, KishimotoDi essentially classifies its techniques based on those quadrants, instead of taking the more common "if they attack with X, defend with Y," approach. All you need to know is which of those four entry vectors is available, and pick a technique to fit into one. I suspect other styles do something similar, so I'm curious to know if yours does this, or if there is a different concept used when it comes to evasion and technique selection.

The Bujinkan increased the number of yudansha grades from 10 to 15, I think sometime in the 80s, so 12th Dan is a real rank in that organization, even though basically every other traditional art and organization only uses 10 yudansha grades. As for the system, itself, it is largely cosplay. They present ninjutsu as if it is a specific martial art, but it isn't a martial art, at all. Ninjutsu is, essentially, spycraft--camouflage, disguise, poisons, assassination methods, etc. Real ninja/shinobi were just samurai who also learned spycraft, so the martial arts aspect of ninja/shinobi is literally just Japanese jujutsu, and every clan had their own system of jujutsu, some of which are still around, today. A lot of the material in the Bujinkan is pretty typical of most jujutsu styles, but a lot of it is definitely material that hasn't been pressure tested, and can get pretty esoteric. Masaaki Hatsumi supposedly learned several jujutsu systems and blended them together to create the Bujinkan's martial arts material, and I honestly don't know where he got the spycraft aspects, which they don't seem to actually do much of, but I suspect it is almost entirely taken from theater and film. The fact that they dress in stereotypical ninja garb reinforces that theory, because real ninja/shinobi did not dress that way, they dressed to blend in with the people they were going to be around while they were spying. The outfits they are wearing in the Bujinkan are Noh theater stagehand costumes, designed to make the stagehands disappear against a black backdrop. This became associated with ninja/shinobi because the way that Noh theater presented mysterious assassinations was by having a stagehand use a weapon to kill a character, so you were supposed to be seeing a weapon floating in the dark, and have no idea who was wielding it. That made people essentially assume that assassins would wear the same outfit so they could hide in the dark.

Thank you to everyone who voted, and congratulations to all of the winners!

I have noticed that Uechi-Ryu tends to do a lot of isolation gripping, where they grab onto something and hold it in place, rather than pulling it. In that context, I think it makes sense to use hikite as a way of freeing up your hand to strike with it.

Oh, it's definitely controversial. Some people get REALLY mad about it. My view, though, is similar to Yabu Kentsu, who said "if you have time to practice Pinan, practice Kusanku, instead," although there is also material from Passai and Chinto in the Pinan series. Basically, the Pinan kata were developed by Itosu for his school PE karate program, and while they do have valid and effective applications, almost all of those applications can be found in the older kata. Additionally, I've found that teaching the Pinan series and then teaching Kusanku, Passai, and Chinto actually makes it MORE difficult for students to learn the older kata, not less, as is often claimed. It takes a long time for them to be able to stop mixing up the kata, because there are such similar sequences. I don't have any issue with the concept of yakusoku kumite, but the way that most yakusoku kumite is designed is just bad. The distance is too large, the techniques are applied impractically, the attacks are unrealistic, etc.