We do use tai sabaki and unbalancing techniques in shotokan. I train in very "vanilla" shotokan and we use it!
Bah this is getting silly. I don't care how many Shotokan classes you claim to have observed or been to, but your portrayal of Shotokan is nothing short of ludicrous.
to answer the original question: presuming my current school is 'off limits,' i would probably go with whatever dojo i found to spend the least time on japanese terminology, kata, rote drills, useless stances, and other obsolete methods, and the most time on sparring, cardiovascular conditioning, and actual fight training. but that's just me, and this thread is titled "karate bashing."
ONLY bunkai techniques? Every style has bunkai on their kata.. Something more advantage maybe than that?No? You said ''NEED to defend myself against a katana any time soon''.Maybe not against a katana but what about against stick? Or knife? I don’t think that Shotokan techniques (step back age uke ,then gyaku zuki) will help you Idori (knelling techniques) are traditional jujitsu techniques that teach you a lot of thinks so you can break them and use them if you sitting on chair even if you stand. And off course there are plenty other techniques and pair work that you can learn not only how to defend and hit but how you can use Nagasu (Body evasion or flowing movement used against an opponent),Inasu (Counter attacking simultaneously or attacking as your opponent starts his attack, using the opponent's movement and body weight to break his/her balance, or counter attacking combined with the art of Nagasu),Noru (Not to resist your opponents attack but to bend with it, using your own bodyweight for maximum effect to control and unbalance your attackers posture.)and much more...
i studied bushido kai in high school. but if i had to pick 3 i would say goju ryu, isshin-ryu, shotokan. i personally love most martial arts. a few i care nothing for but i love karate. its crazy because in the 60's and 70's karate guys talked bad about kung fu styles. i heard a term used about kung fu being called finger painting lol!! they sure dont call me a finger painter!
Actually, you're wrong there. Just the other day someone tried to mug me using an oi zuki jodan. It was pretty scary. But my almighty step back left leg zenkutsudachi age uke, gyaku zuki saved me. Although at first he was on the wrong leg, so I had to ask him to change round. He did. And he lost. Sucker. Also, so you've apparently proved your shotokan knowledge by saying you've studied with some greats (that's nothing. I studied with Funakoshi himself...). So what grade are you in Wado?
Generally just because I've found them to be unrealistic. There may be some instructors who teach good techniques that they 'found' in the kata, but I tend to think that those techniques are based on the instructor's knowledge of other martial arts rather than the kata anyway- and I tend to believe in drilling. If you can't consistently drill a technique with an opponent in a systematic way, it's not really workable. That's my humble opinion, anyway. Although having said that, I like the kata more and more these days.
Acer it seems to me like you come from a good traditional Wado Ryu club and at face value know your stuff. The thing is though, by your reasoning any style that isn't Wado Ryu that doesn't have umpteen million techniques taken from Jujitsu is limited, not just Shotokan. In a way I guess you're correct. Not in the fact that Shotokan is worse than Wado but that any style is limited, you can pick holes in everything. I understand there may be a bit of a language barrier and its hard to convey meaning on a forum but nearly all your posts since joining the forum are coming off as if you think Shotokan is crap because it isn't Wado Ryu which in your eyes it probably is, I'm glad you like the style you study. I don't understand why you're on a crusade to prove it to the world though and get your little digs in along the way? There's crap Wado Ryu, Shotokan, Goju Ryu the list is endless. If you look at a syllabus sheet and say "Right these dudes don't do such and such a technique, that must mean the whole of Shotokan sucks" or "boxing doesn't have knees and elbows like Muay Thai its limited". I can't comment from an informed stance on Shotokan as I haven't practiced it so I don't know what techniques it does and doesn't have but I'm sure what it does have trained right it does it well. Id rather know a handful of techniques that cover as many bases as possible, drill them constantly and feel as confident as i can that I can pull them off in a highly charged situation as opposed to lots of shiny fancy techniques that are going to do sod all and cause me to freeze if some brick-poo-house waves a fist at me. Sometimes less is more. If you think Wado Ryu is the be all end all of Martial arts/Karate styles then I would say it is you who are limited. My (very long winded) point is nearly any martial art taught well by a competent and open minded instructor is good for what it is, its not infallible, nothing is. Sorry if any of this is going off on a tangent, when I start talking I rarely stop :ban: Anyway when did the thread title change to "Shotokan bashing"? (Grrr you made me feel the need to type more than two sentences )
Maybe the OP should have posted his thread in General Martial Arts forum as the likelyhood of non-Karate stylists would have been more likely to read this and respond with thier possible choice of Karate styles? That was the original subject the OP intended for his thread right? What a student of another martial art would choose if thier options were limited to a style of Karate. Learning what those choices might be would be interesting and entertaining both. There also exists the possibility that Karate students might better understand how non-Karate students percieve the art form and of equal or greater importance why they have such a point of view. Please allow me to elaborate on the last statement. Having previously been a long-time student of JKD there existed opprotunities for speaking with a lot of martial artist that represented different art forms. There were a fair number of different occasions when somebody had negative things to say about the schools of Karate. What I found interesting about that was few of those making such remarks had prior Karate backgrounds. Maybe some of the Karate bashing refered to by the OP comes from people relying on second or third hand information to assess the validy of the Karate styles and the art form in general. Which I don't think is neither a fair or reliable way of doing things. This particular thread might provide usefull to Karate students from thier learning what others think Karate is like. And could prove usefull to students of something else by clearing up some of the misconceptions out there and presenting Karate for what is there. Please don't allow that kind of potential to be lost by getting into the "my Karate is better than yours" routine.
I think you're absolutely right in believing in drilling. If you can't consistently drill a technique with an opponent who resisits it's not workable. Where you're wrong, IMHO, is in assuming any Instructors who find good techniques in kata are teaching unrealistic techniques. I think the people who are leading the way in this area (Ian Abernethy, Stuart Anslow) are far from teaching unrealistic techniques. Look at Ian's Kata Based Sparring DVD for example. The people making the running in kata study these days are the people who specifically do practice them against resisting opponents, a point that is missed by many opponents of kata. When it comes down to it, kata should just be drilling. Cheers, Mitch
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bT_nHDferXM"]Gichin Funakoshi deel 2 - YouTube[/ame] You know the rest of the story? Motobu student (he was also a Judoka) kick Funakoshi ass in front of all his student! Thank God forr him Ohtsuka was present and using his jujitsu techniques beat the judoka in 3-4 sec and rescue poor Funakoshi lol
Whichever style had the best awamori. Anyone who thinks Drunken Style exists only in Kung Fu hasn't seen the Goju Karate guys where I come from.
Everyone? i've certainly never heard it any sources to quote? Oh and nice ippon kumite video , but nothing that particularly sets the world on fire and nothing i haven't seen in various shotokan classes/courses either
opss my mistake.this is the right [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bT_nHDferXM"]Gichin Funakoshi deel 2 - YouTube[/ame] Ok I changed it. Now its make sense..
Meh that clip was a bit vague to say the least , do you know when this challenge is meant to have taken place , or how old funakoshi was at the time? Your referenced clip keeps referring to the "ageing master" and "the young challengers" , if he was indeed an old man is it really any wonder he deferred to one of his younger students ?
I didn't have the sound on, but I didn't see anything that particularly showed any kind of duel. Where exactly is the challenge?
