What was I thinking?

There's been more than one occasion where I've thrown up my arms and said "screw this" when it comes to writing my book on solo karate kata. I mean what the hell was I thinking? Well I was thinking I want to help people. Still it can be very frustrating, and even though I'm on the fifth rewrite, I am dedicated to getting this thing out in a timely manor. Unlike George RR Martin, I've actually been writing. The good news is that this rewrite is really focusing in like a laser on the principles of individual kata practice, the benefits and it's universal applications. Unlike many other explanatory books on karate this one doesn't skirt the issues or contradictions in karate. Many experienced karateka know intuitively what I'm writing about, but I think they've accepted the get to your armpit via the asshole method of getting to the core of karate. They know but can't put their finger on it.

Despite the reception it might get, I feel that it is my honor bound duty to get the book done and out, so I can move on with my damn life. I am fiercely on the side of the students when it comes to teaching. What is convenient for the instructor is irrelevant. What matters is what is best for the student, or the learner. So even though I might be tearing out what's left of my hair, I hope that the book will be at least a small contribution to the ongoing conversation that is modern karate.

For Children

How would you make shooting a gun beneficial and completely safe for children?

I don't know what you would do, but I know what I would probably do. I'd take the ammunition out of the equation. The gun isn't dangerous, outside of being a crappy club, without the ammo. This is the only way to make this completely safe with children, without very close and careful supervision. There's no way in hell I would hand a bunch of loaded Glocks over to a group of five-year-old children. Now without ammunition there is really only so much you can do, so instead of focusing on marksmanship, I would focus on dry firing the gun. It would be about the meditative qualities of focusing on the fundamentals of marksmanship. Sight alignment, sight picture, breath control and trigger control. It would be about striving for the perfect synthesis between these four aspects, instead of hitting a target. Now without ammunition I wouldn't even need to use real guns. I could hand out toy guns with sights and still get the same effect. Now to keep a safe and competitive environment and so the kids don't get bored, I set up a duel using Nerf guns for them where the first one to get hit with a dart, even if both are hit, is the winner.

Sound familiar.

This is basically what happened to karate. Strip away everything except the principles without a goal or a map for application and focus on the derivative zen effects of the activity. Because it was taught to children, and kids would hurt each other just by accident if they were taught how to apply it practically.

Everyone now is pretty much just trying to put the pieces back together after it was consciously smashed in the name of progress.

Please help me spread karate to the masses. Share this blog post and help karate become the creative individual pursuit it was always meant to be.

Kata for Creativity

A single kata affords us an astounding amount of creativity, despite it being a fixed set of movements. The movements themselves are not representative of technique, they are rather representative of efficient and effective body mechanics for physical violence. Each movement is merely a template for producing kinetic energy in a useful manner. It is up to the individual practitioner how this energy is applied. Karate therefore becomes more about how you apply the kata, rather than how well you perform the kata. It also allows for the karateka's own personality, tactics and style. This is how kata is used creatively. There may be value in the calligraphy style zen exercise of kata, but the creative application of kata means you keep growing, you keep pushing yourself and keep learning.

Isolate Sections of Kata

If you want to understand a movement in a kata, you have to play with it. You need to isolate it from the rest of the kata and focus singularly on that action. Maybe for a few minutes, maybe for an hour or maybe for a month. Practice your whole kata at the beginning of practice and then pick a section, which you are going to work on without any preconceived idea of what you'll find and let your thoughts develop naturally on the movement. Practice outside of the lines of performance, move freely, repeat the movement in place, flow, go slow, go fast and go too fast.

When we practice the whole kata, we only get a short glimpse of each little part. Here and gone, here and gone. There is no time to "meditate" on each movement. There is literally no time to focus on the more important parts of the kata. Structure, body mechanics, power generation, force vectors. The parts of a movement that make it useful. The template for function. Without intimate knowledge of these aspects application is made much harder.

Structure, body mechanics, power generation, force vectors equal function. The formula. When we plug in the context, the position of you, the position of the other person and the environment, we get the application. Function plus context equals application. If we know the context, but don't know the function of movements we will fail. If we know function without context, we fail.

Breakdown the kata, breakdown the movement and study these different aspects until you don't need to think about them. This will come naturally like any learned skill. You think, think, think, think, and then you don't think. Think now, so you don't need to think later.

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Plans for the Future

I've got a few projects going on at the same time. The blog is one. I'm trying to keep up with this thing. The book is the second, which is making progress. Life got in the way, but it's my daughter, so who cares. You mean I need to stop working to spend a few hours playing with a baby. Sounds terrible. Not. The third project will be videos, which I had almost abandoned. They won't be bunkai videos for the most part, because I don't have confidence in technique based training. It will be a ground up teaching and study of the Seisan kata, but the principles can be applied to all kata. I'm not promising video quality as good as Karate Culture, because their filming is just awesome.

I'm dedicated to spreading karate, so I think that putting out the most useful karate instructional videos for the average person who wants to learn something fun and physical is the way to go. If you read the blog you know that I think most of karate is essentially ego and monetarily driven, which creates a huge amount of artificial barriers to what is an awesome system for transmitting a martial art. I want karate practice to be as common and as varied as Yoga, where people think nothing of heading out to the park to practice a kata, they learned on the internet or from a library book.

I'm basically hitting the mind, body, soul in three mediums. Book, blog, and video. Three prong attack. I don't want to leave someone out because they learn visually, emotionally or logically.

In Okinawa

I was just thinking today that I saw the best punk rock version of Brown Eyed Girl by a band playing in a downtown Naha bar. I wonder what ever happened to them.

If you don't live your values

If belts don't matter? Take off your belt.

If rank doesn't matter? Stop using your rank.

If the uniform doesn't matter? Take off the uniform.

If karate is humbling? Make yourself humble.

If you don't live your values than they are worthless to you. They are merely talking points.