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Just a nobody...

Hello hello. Seems fitting to start with an entry about myself and what this blog is for. I’ve been training in the martial arts (specifically one art) for 30 years starting from the time I was a very young child. It’s been a constant in my life and remains one of my passions. But within the karate world I’m not really anyone special. I’m not part of an organization. I’m not a champion competitor. I don’t own a dojo and I’m not in demand on the seminar circuit. I’ve never written a book or made a DVD of my fighting methods. I don’t have my own line of karate gi. No ancient scrolls either. A trip to Okinawa is still just a line on my bucket list. I’ve risen to the rank of Sandan, 3 rd degree black belt, which is… if not a low rank, not a particularly high one. I’ve had some great experiences dabbling in other martial arts, and intend to keep doing so, but my through-line has been Okinawan Goju-ryu Karate-Do. It is the art that made me, the one that fits me best, and where I move
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Recent posts

Is This A Test?

 Two things need to be true for a test to be held… or maybe I should say be valid . If one of them is missing, you have a problem. If both are, you no longer have a test. I’m not sure what you have in that case, something between a theatrical performance and a reality show? Anyway, the two key things are - The student needs to believe that the test is an accurate evaluation of their skills. Does the test actually test the skills they have been developing? There’s certainly a place for stretching or taxing the student during a test, but generally most of the test needs to be “on topic”. The student needs to believe that the examiner is qualified to administer and evaluate the test. If you don’t think the examiner is qualified to judge you… then what’s the point of the test? Whatever comes out the other end isn't meaningful. I ran hard into both of these before I separated from my old Sensei. We had planned to hold a rank test, but I fell ill and had to postpone it. This was a
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The Thematic Bunkai Model

 Now that I’ve described the two competing bunkai paradigms that I’ve worked within – the Core Bunkai Model  that I ascribe to and the Flexible Bunkai Model  which I grew up ‘learning’ – I thought I would take some time to describe a third model that is common and, I think, also useful. While I was struggling to understand the Flexible Bunkai Model,   I stumbled upon a critical book called Four Shades of Black by Gavin Mulholland . This book is a must-have for any Goju-ryu practitioner. Mulholland has a clear point to make and he drives it home in a beautiful and illustrative book. I can’t recommend it enough. The basic idea is that the Goju-ryu kata form a progressive curriculum so that the student develops more advanced karate skills as they move through the kata. The book uses the first four Goju kata to illustrate the point (Gekisai Dai Ichi, Gekisai Dai Ni, Saifa, Seienchin). Each kata gives the student a new area of study and a new set of skills to develop. You move from the
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The Schism

I can’t get too far into this blog without talking about the split with my long time Sensei. It’s been a few years now, but it is the defining event of my martial arts training, at least recently. First, let me provide a bit of context for what this relationship looked like – This was a nearly 30-year relationship, spanning my early childhood through to my adult years. It revolved around one of my truest passions in life (karate), but devolved into something I was no longer comfortable with and that began to truly depress me. The martial arts world is abound with notions of loyalty (to the teacher, not to the student), periods of endurance and testing, and secret or hidden knowledge. I think I fell prey to my hopes and imaginations as much as anything else. I began training when I was 4 years old. In my younger years, this Sensei was really the main instructor. That changed when she took a leave of absence from the dojo after having her first child. This leave coincided with very
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The Flexible Bunkai Model

In the dojo I grew up in – and the organization I stayed with for nearly 30 years – the end goal of training was what I came to think of as the Flexible Bunkai Model . (As opposed to the Core Bunkai Model I talked about in an earlier post). In the flexible bunkai model, the student is exposed to many many MANY kata and corresponding bunkai. This dojo trained the 8 classical Goju-ryu kata plus 20 other kata from different Okinawan styles. All the kata were ones the organizations Founder learned on Okinawa – as an example, the syllabus included Sunsu kata, the final Isshin-ryu kata created by Shimabuku because our Founder trained with and was contemporaries of Tatsuo Shimabuku. I think many of the supplementary kata were like this – historical records from the founder of our organization and preserved as a part of that history. In addition to preserving these kata as a history of the organization, I thought many of them were useful and continue to train in them today. Nijushiho, Soc
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Core Bunkai

 I don’t know if it has subsided yet, but there was a period of time – let’s say 2005 to 2015 – where bunkai exploded. Suddenly the karate world was all about kata applications.   I think this coincided with the maturation of the internet and social media. Suddenly there were YouTube channels and Facebook groups that really spread the word about bunkai and how to practice it. They also spread the word about bunkai books and DVDs. I really enjoyed this and think it was good for the art as a whole. I certainly feel that I took advantage of it.* The dojo I grew up in always practiced bunkai applications. It was part of the testing requirements for each kata, but that is where it ended. There were allusions to “layers” of bunkai or higher-level applications, but the kata were never revisited to extract these applications and we never did “deep dives” into a single kata. Looking back, I view many of these bunkai as superficial, block-kick-punch level bunkai. My bunkai practice today
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