Iain Abernethy is a great guy, and an incredibly effective teacher of practical karate!

Bunkai for Kanku-dai.

The karate video is only for fun. The real meat is the lecture. Listen closely, Grasshopper!

And then there is this, which experienced martial artists already know.

You don’t need to worry about black belts. Oh, sure, they know some stuff.

But grey belts? Be very respectful.

Very.

Take a look at the video above; looks to me like a lot of stuff that practitioner is doing can also be done using Shotokan Kata.  And if you look at the following video, you’ll see a batch of Tai Chi applications, which also look pretty much like things you can do with…Shotokan Kata!

Now, there are only so many ways to fight; most people have a couple of arms, a couple of legs, and one body and head. With a reasonable number of ways of attacking targets with percussive techniques, and a lot of ways to take people down off their feet. And then there’s this: elbows bend only one direction.

I can’t get enough of Tai Chi instructors dropping people over their legs, because that’s one of the things that a front stance is for!

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They are quite expensive, and they last forever (my old heavyweight Tokaido Gi, which I wore in college in 1969, is still perfectly functional. But I now prefer a size five to a size four).

Tokaido was one of the first companies to modify the judo gis that were previously worn by karate students, and which were good for jacketed wrestling, but which tended to come undone a lot during karate practice.

Now, Sensei Nakayama and the other founders of modern karate could have simply decided to have karate students practice in sweats, or in jeans and t-shirts, or in suits and ties (see “Practical Karate“, and you’ll understand where Bond villain Oddjob’s costume originated).

Instead, they generally gravitated toward the beautiful blue-white karate gis manufactured in Japan by Tokaido.

Since those gis show up in what are to me sacred texts, like “Karate, the Art of Empty-Hand Fighting“, and the “Best Karate” Series, they are for me the Platonic Ideal of the Karate Gi.

Because there is so much care that goes into the production of a Tokaido Karate Gi, and so much attention to detail, Sensei Koyama calls them “Armani Gis”. He has a sense of humor.

And I proudly wore my Tokaido Gi to my first Dan Exam, which I passed by the grace of God and the fudging of the rulebooks for old guys.

Sensei Koyama has told me that I am going to qualify under the guidelines of the JKA for my Nidan Examination in several months.

He was very amused (he finds me very amusing, because when I do things right in the dojo, it is only by accident) that I had placed my precious Tokaido Gi, gift of Sensei Koyama, in a safe place where it could not be lost, or damaged, or stained. Or remembered. And I told him I was going to go on the Kuroobiya Website to get another one, because I wanted to wear my Sunday-best Gi to my Nidan Exam, so when I goofed up my kata, again, I’d look good doing it!

And when I told him that I was going to buy another one to replace the one in the perfect hiding place, he laughed for a while.

And then he went into his office and brought me another one.

p.s. in my other Shotokan Karate Blog, I have written extensively about different brands of karate gis, and various places to purchase them, and karate gis not to buy.

Different karate styles practice competition in different ways.

Kyokushin Karate is particularly interesting to me.

The exponents of the style work very hard, as you can see, to develop high levels of physical conditioning, and are able to withstand substantial kicks and punches to the body and legs.

In some ways, their sparring matches are a war of attrition, and wearing an opponent down is clearly part of the strategy of this style.

One of the strong points of this style is a very good roundhouse thigh kick delivered with the attacker’s shin. Hurts like crazy, and it can temporarily paralyze the leg and end a fight.

But as I watched these matches, I couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if the best amateur boxer in the world sparred with the best amateur Kyokushin Stylist in the world (same weight class, of course).

My conclusion is that the boxer would have an advantage, because boxing permits full contact blows to the jaw and chin with the fists, and that’s a very effective way to turn lights out, and fast.

On the other hand, against most fighters, the durability of an experienced Kyokushin Exponent would be a big advantage.

Shotokan Karate produces many excellent practitioners; however, the no-contact aspect of Shotokan Karate suggests that conditioning to deal with being hit is an area a Shotokan Karate Practitioner might want to consider.

p.s. Note that all sparring becomes optimized for a particular set of rules. So the stance for bare-knuckle boxing was different from the modern boxing stance, because the rules and the tools (boxing gloves) changed. The reason a Kyokushin Exponent keeps his elbows very low is not because he’s dumb; it’s because he’s smart. The rules of engagement in Kyokushin dictate that smart folks keep their elbows low to interpose in front of some of the punches to the body. A smart boxer, on the other hand, keeps his hands higher, because the rules of engagement in boxing permit punches to the head!

When I watch a serious karate exponent demonstrate, I tend to sigh, and say “I could do that, with a lot more practice!”

But, you know, there aren’t enough hours in the day!

And Sensei Kanazawa has always had good technique, and also spars very well. He bested Enoeda in the first All-Japan Karate Tournament, and Sensei Enoeda was very capable indeed.

This is a lovely JKA video, and it starts artistically.

And slowly!

On the other hand, if you keep the faith, you’ll see some interesting karate techniques, and very, very good technique at that.

Above are some impressive breaking demonstrations by Sensei Oyama, the gentleman who killed bulls by hitting them with his knife hand strike, and several of his students.  His style of karate is called Kyokushin, and students of that style often focus on full-contact competition, and do well in that discipline. They allow kicks to the head, but not head punches, which I find interesting. Their kicks to the outer thigh are impressively painful. Kyokushin Karate schools tend to emphasize breaking more than Shotokan Karate schools.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               Do Shotokan Students and Instructors ever break stuff (the practice of breaking hard objects with empty-handed karate techniques is called tameshiwari)?

Well, yes; some folks expect to see it at demonstrations, and it’s not terribly difficult. You can make it look more difficult, or make it look scarier (by setting the bricks on fire, for instance). Sensei Nishiyama recounted demonstrating breaking for the U.S. Military during Shotokan Karate exhibitions directed by Sensei Nakayama. Sensei Nishiyama indicated that he never failed in a break that he was asked to make, but that he did experience soreness, pain, and swelling after some breaking demonstrations.

That did not surprise me.

Now, is breaking hard and brittle objects utterly without meaning in the martial arts? No. It does demonstrate that a high degree of percussive force can be generated by a trained practitioner.

It can also demonstrate a high degree of hand- or fist-conditioning, which prepares a fist to encounter a hard object.

I’m not wild about the idea of smacking anything like a brick with my knuckles; I like my knuckles. On the other hand, when I was a kid, without any training, I attempted a bunch of breaks to see what would happen, because I’d seen breaking demonstrations in karate books. And I normally bruised my hand pretty well, and often broke stuff, like cinder blocks.

There are a lot of ways to demonstrate the power of a punch or a strike; you get to see a nice demonstration of power when a heavyweight boxer hits a heavy bag, for instance. Or when a trained practitioner of Shotokan Karate hits a makiwara. Or a heavy bag!

But if you ever want to try breaking an object made of ice or glass, for instance, I’d pretty strongly suggest that you don’t. In fact, don’t try breaking anything, at any time, unless you talk to a fully qualified Sensei and Medical Doctor first. I remember a photograph of a gentleman who had broken the neck off of a partially filled beer bottle (don’t ask me why). He attempted the same demonstration at some later point in time, and the amount of blood that was distributed around was pretty impressive. I believe there was also tendon and ligament damage, but I might be wrong.