One of the characteristics of karate training is repetitions of basics, Sensei Nishiyama used to start the class with hundreds of kizami/gyaku zuki followed by hundreds of kicks. Some researchers believe that it takes about 10,000 repetitions in any art or sport to achieve mastery or expert level of technique. Repetitive practice makes the difference […]
The way you move and align yourself will influence whether or not you will have musculoskeletal pain as you grow older and how severe. It is also important in how good of an athlete you will be, you cannot put yourself in weird alignments and expect optimal performance. Dr. Shirley Sahrmann (Washington University Physical Therapy.)
This is one of my favorite Budo quotes, describing the optimal mindset for fighting/self defense. One must keep the mind calm and the spirit strong, however the mind must not be carried away by the spirit and vice versa. The other day in class, during a timing drill I mentioned the importance of this mental
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
