Traditional Karate and Martial Arts

This one may well fall under the rant category or even the humor category so proceed with caution. I see a lot of people out there advertising Traditional Martial Arts or Traditional Karate. First off, my opinion of Traditional Martial Arts is that the word Martial is the key focus.  Taika didn't want his art referred to as Martial.  He chose "Life Protection Arts" because the word martial has the meaning of war.  He was teaching students to protect their lives and the lives of others.  Not fight a war.  Though kobudo (weapons) training was a historical part of his art, his focus on this dwindled over the years because you just might get a few looks carrying that 8' naginata onto the subway.  In his final years he trained with three weapons regularly; His Glock 9mm, his cane and a break apart Jo/Tan bo.  If you are going to teach a traditional martial art, please by all means suit up in the armor of the old days, give your students long polearms, swords or even flintlocks (they had them as early as 1270 A.D.) and teach them all of those skills.  Don't put them in padded foam helmets and chest pieces and tell them they can't strike all the vulnerable spots (below the belt, back, groin, back of the head), put them in a confined ring with rules and time limits without weapons and shout BEGIN!  In Japanese of course.... Martial Arts is a phrase that refers to warrior arts.  If you take your students to the gun range, then that is more accurate. As far as Traditional Karate, I will make this brief.  Though the name migrated from Tote or Tode or Todi or just Te or Di over the years, if you want to be Traditional you have two choices; Knock up some woman and teach the oldest male heir (this may take numerous tries and practice does make perfect). -or- Join the military and get good enough to teach them. Again this is a slightly silly unrealistic somewhat intentionally funny though consequentially maybe possibly run on sentence rant for my amusement.  I was bored on a Saturday waiting on students to arrive... Oh, and people were giving me grief for not blogging very often.  Lee "Di" Richards

A Basic Question

The following is a basic question I've been pondering for a while.  Tony and I have been teaching together for many years now and continually revise our curriculum.  Over the years our thoughts have changed from our stock indoctrination how to teach each student in a way that is best for them, the individual.  This constantly changes over time and I'd like to think that we are becoming better instructors.  One thing that has bugged me lately, and I can't believe it hasn't popped into my head before, is why are we teaching each kata in the raw skeletal basic form.  I was talking to some other black belts one day about how we teach each student a little different, depending on their abilities.  We've had students that can't walk and chew gum at the same time when they first entered the dojo, and we have students that are quite naturally adept.  When teaching the former I will rarely stray from the initial skeletal version while they are first learning a new kata, the latter I will usually get a little more detailed with them.  Not all karateka are created equal by any means. During this discussion I was showing how with some students I start mixing in kake strikes and other higher level motions as they progress.  Then it dawned on me that I was actually adding some 'kake' motions to certain students skeletal kata forms as they got higher in rank.  Then I had one more revelation - that perhaps I'd been doing it wrong all along.  The following question popped into my head; "Why are we showing basic kata to brown belts at all?" I don't know if I am crazy, or what but it suddenly dawned on me that I've got two higher ranking kyu students that are going through the Pinan series now.  Note to others, we teach the Pinan kata last, not in the 'tape order'.  I won't go into the why of that now, but that is our choice.  They get all 12 before any shodan test but the Pinan are last.  At any rate, if you have students that have been training for 4-6 years to get to the upper kyu ranks, why should they be learning a kata and doing basic blocks and punches at this point.  I'm really starting to think that perhaps that is a little bit backwards.  By this time we have them regularly doing kake strikes, advanced punches, etc.  Why teach them a baby basic kata version?  Why teach them like they are still white belts? I'm not sure at this point how to continue, but this was a bit of a revelation to me.  Even if you teach your kata in the 'tape order' for RyuTe® readers, then your brown belts would be doing baby basic versions initially of Pasai, Kusanku and Ni Sei Shi.  This doesn't seem logical to me now, though apparently that is how we (our current and predecessor school) had done it for 35 cumulative years. I'm still pondering this departure from the norm and would welcome the thoughts of others. Lee "Di" Richards