Karate Nobody

I think there is a valid argument in holding back knowledge from a student, especially in the context of the martial arts. There are advanced techniques – some of which may hurt the student (looking at you nunchaku ) and some of which the student could use to seriously hurt others – that require a certain maturity in the student. I’ve written before about the short and brutal Core Bunkai , most of which end with twisting the neck to wrenching the head. Those techniques are serious and I would reserve them for a serious student that has the right mentality about them. I’ll also point out that many Okinawan styles rely on closing and grabbing, something which requires a high level of skill in and of itself regardless of any follow-on techniques. There’s a good chance a novice wouldn’t even be able to apply certain advanced techniques successfully even if they did “learn” them. So controlling some knowledge is part of being a Sensei, as is determining when a student is ready for more. T...

One of the more startling things I took away from my second-to-last conversation with my old Sensei – one of the things that made it the second-to-last conversation (see The Schism ) – was when she asked me how I was incorporating karate into my life outside the dojo. It is a good question, but what startled me was that my sensei even had to ask it. It showed how far apart we had become in our practice and how little involvement they had in my day-to-day. Let me start with inside the dojo – we were a few years into COVID at the time of this conversation so my training was entirely in my home dojo, a space that she had seen pictures of and could see it was quite spacious. I was reviewing kata and bunkai every night after my kids went to bed in preparation for my sandan exam so karate was pretty front-and-center in my life at that time.  However, karate was still a major part of my life in the years before COVID. I had joined a local Goju-ryu dojo that trained once a week for a ...

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 ac...

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...