Not a contradiction, but rather compliment each other. In Shotokan karate we strive for the beauty of one finishing blow technique (Todome), one of the unique aspects of our karate is kime (mental and physical focus), or how to to deliver the total energy of the whole body, in the shortest instant, to intended line […]
The principles that make karate technique effortlessly powerful, will also keep you injury free. That is one of the beauties of karate! In karate we are striving for the “beauty of one finishing blow technique”, and also, I believe, that we are striving to train and keep improving till old age. Those 2 concepts are
Efficient technique and injury prevention go hand in hand Read More »
Sen literally means “ahead”, “before”. It implies that when opponent initiates attack, committed, that is a moment of Qio (chance), the best moment to catch opponent is while moving, committed, the split second that he/she cannot change thir power direction. The ideal is to hit the opponent at the decision to attack, before the physical
Sensei Nishiyama repeatedly said: “power need direction” What does it mean? There are few components to this. First component, One does not need to be as strong as opponent, but should be able to integrate the whole body, and produce force from the body center, using ground reaction, to any direction, instantly. We must learn
Sensei Nishiyama used to repeat “eye, face guiding (the) body (when changing direction), Eyes, face setting the body at kime, when eye(s) stop this is kime”, “kime is from eye” or “at kime nothing moves, even eye(s) don’t blink”. We all know that at kime we make pressure to floor and sharp total body contraction,
Group of healthy controls was compared with a group of karate black belts, who are able to perform rapid, complex movements that require years of training. Researchers chose to investigate karate experts’ ability to generate extremely high impact forces as this ability is not replicable by novices, and the mechanism used to achieve this feat
When you climb a mountain and you see a peak, you think “oh, this is the mountain top, let’s push and get there to the end of the journey”, when you get there, you realize that there is another peak you could not see until you got to where you are, and than you keep
In karate body dynamics and inside muscle action are the main sources of power (of course, controlled my the mind, so we could say the mind is the main source of energy). Body shifting is one of the 6 body dynamics. Shifting is used to produce force as well as to adjust distance, and it
Aiko San always surprised me with her depth of understanding, intuition and wisdom. One evening about 10 years ago, I was doing kata and Aiko San was standing with her back to me, and all of the sudden she turned around and said: “you are using too much top power”, and I felt it was
I wrote in the previous article that Aiko San could correct my technique without looking at me, just by listening to the breath. Why is that important? because while at the beginning levels we focus on external form, and mechanics of technique, at the higher levels the breath controls the techniques, all aspects of it,
