<<<They train harder, it doesn't mean they train better.>>> Yes it does. That's the whole idea. No-ones doubting the dedication of generations of atheletes, but nutrition, science etc have gotten better and rather than sitting on their arses people have used these advancements to push themselves to new heights. You've got a pretty idealistic view of the past. If things were so good back then we wouldn't have moved on Telsun: I'm not picking a fight with you (I'd lose!!!) but have you ever trained in a thai boxing/boxing or vale tudo group? I think you'll find they push themselves harder than the average karate class.....if you've got a karate club that really push the CV you're lucky and more power to you!!! Unfortunately that's the exception, not the rule
Hey Stump, I'm sure you would do better than you would admit in a fight with me!! Yeah you're right. I have trained with boxers & kickboxers and their fitness training was extremely demanding. My karate class does put a very strong emphasis on fitness, as my Sensei is fully aware of the importance of being fit. He was also a veteran fitness champion when he was in South Africa (he has never told us but some of his associates have! Typically modest). I wouldn't put it far behind the fore mentioned styles but, yes, I would put it way above the karate class norm. Although in saying this Karate will offer the average person some benefit.
I very much doubt if people had as much honour back then as you imagine. Street fighting is not a game, or a sport played according to the marquess of Queensbury rules. In the 1800s, as now, it has to be hard, brutal and short or it's no use.
I agree with Knight_errant. Robbers, hooligans and muggers were probably not more honourable than they are now. PS: That's a pretty macho rant you got for a signature, goatnipples
What I meant by homor was that they probably went hand to hand 1st off instead of just pulling out weapons and fighting like bitches. I still think that arts that were made because of war like muay thai don't need to change because they are straight forward and to the point. Arts like kung fu need to be more contemporary in order to help you survive.
I think the big challenge in taking karate back to its roots lies in the systems we study and that they impose requirements that are at odds with the way karate was practiced 100 years ago. Today, students, as a rule, practice relatively infrequently. A couple of times a week, maybe three, an hour and a half per session, sometimes two. Yes, many practice more, but this is the norm for average students in many, many karate schools. We do know something about how karate was practiced 100 years ago. First, Itosu said you should practice 2-3 hours every day. Unfortunately, we can't change the fact that we have busier lives now, and many of us simply have too many commitments to practice much more, at least over the long term (10-20 years). But what is really different is how we practice. In Itosu's time, there was a heavy emphasis on kata, and a heavy emphasis on practical fighting, or ti. But the way kata was taught was far different. Funakoshi said many masters knew only one kata, or perhaps a few. Funakoshi said it was common for a beginner to practice Naihanchi for 3 years before learning a second kata, and also states that under Itosu, that is the way he learned, even though he had years of training under Azato at the time. One of Itosu's top two students, Yabu Kentsu said you need to practice a kata 10,000 times to make a kata one's own. Higaonna, Miyagi's teacher, was known to have students do only Sanchin for many months, before teaching another kata. What is important to realize is that with the 2-3 hours per day, and heavy emphasis on kata practice, these "beginners" cranked up 10,000 reps relatively quickly. Motobu was said to practice Naihanchi up to 500 times per day. If you can do that for a month, you can get to 10,000 reps. My guess is the average karateka studying 2-3 hours per day, had no problem getting to 10,000 in a year, and probably did so much faster. Now, in our 2 classes per week we do warmups, conditioning, kata, self-defense, kumite, bag work and sometimes kobudo. But here is the unfortunate part. We learn kata quickly, and require them for rank, guaranteeing that only the most dedicated will ever get near 1000, let alone 10,000. And with so many kata, with so many movements, it is near impossible to practice bunkai with partners to make even a small percentage of movements truly useful. Why don't we go back to just a few kata? Because we are locked in systems that require kata be taught at a rapid rate. Over the years a few masters "collected" kata, and now we have to practice them all. IMHO, this is a prescription for lousy self defense. -Kakushidi
They also had to walk 10 miles barefoot in the snow everyday to get to the dojo, uphill both ways. Ituso taught "school" karate, constinant repetition and strict discipline to keep kids in shape, follow orders, stamp out individualism and prepare them to join the army... He also wanted to preserve a cultural art unique to his small country. Karate is not well designed for self-defence/fighting. That doesn't mean it is no good, just not very good at that.
This seems like quite a romantic view of the past. As long as there have been people, there have been other people willing to take what doesn't belong to them by force, and with absolutely no moral considerations about harming their victim. What on earth makes you think that such people would go "hand to hand" if they had a choice to do otherwise? No, they'd lurk in the bushes and hit you with a big stick before you even knew you were being attacked. Consider that back then they didn't CCTV, fingerprint evidence, DNA evidence or any other type of forensic evidence. It was just you and them on a lonely path in the dark of the Okinawan (or Chinese or whatever) night. Similarly why would a karateka defend themselves with only their hands if they had a weapon available. You would be stupid not to use a weapon if there were one available. Violence is very rarely conducted in an honourable manner. More often, its just a question of how brutal it is. I firmly believe that one aspect of old style karate was that it was intended to equip you with the skills to deal with violent assaults. If it is not fit for purpose now that is more to do with the changes that have been made to karate over the course of the 20th century. As for Muay Thai, what makes you think it was an art made for war? Surely an 'art of war' would teach about using the weapons of war, which might include things like blades, projectile weapons and firearms, rather than knees, elbows and shin kicks. Mike
The notion that Itosu taught "school" karate is not completely accurate. Itosu did introduce karate into the school system, and to do that made changes. Karate had not before been taught to large groups for short periods. It was made safe for children in much the way Kane created Judo because JuJitsu and AikiJutsu was not really safe for children. That was in the early 1900s. Prior to that and up until his death, Itosu taught in the earlier tradition. Yabu Kentsu and Chomo Hanashiro, both who had trained for years under Matsumura, and who had distinguished themselves in combat, remained with Itosu. And he trained several who would go on to form some of the major styles we have today. He taught in Shuri, which was the major town in Okinawa, every evening. As was customary, there was no charge for instruction, but he was very selective in picking his students, and trained a relatively small group. Funakoshi was born in 1868 and began training in the early 1870s, which precedes the advent of "school" karate by 30 years. He is one of the authoritative sources on the history. When he writes that it was common for masters to practice just one or a small number of kata, it is likely to be accurate. He talks of how masters would specialize, be really good at one thing, and Itosu would take him to those masters to learn what they did well. There was an openness in sharing in the karate community. Other sources note that Choki Motobu, a reknowned brawler, practiced and taught a small handful of kata, and when practicing kata, spent almost all of his time on Naihanchi. I support the argument that Itosu's school karate represents really bad fighting, yet this is the norm in most systems today. But what most people don't recognize is that the practice of so many kata is what makes the effective use of these movemens near impossible. To have something be truly reflexive, and fast and strong you have to do it thousands of times. It seems all sports but karate recognize this. Good Pro golfers can hit close to a thousand balls a day, baseball players swing bats hundreds of times a day. I could go on and on. Only in karate do we "run through our kata". Typically that means doing each movement once, maybe twice. Think of it. Your life could depend on your instanteous execution (both incredibly fast, and incredibly powerful) of a series of movements designed to overwhelm a larger attacker. And for this, you practice it once, perhaps a few times per week. It is truly laughable. But really truly sad, because this is the way so many practice, yet it is such a bad way to train in fighting. -Kakushidi
Andrew Green said, They also had to walk 10 miles barefoot in the snow everyday to get to the dojo, uphill both ways. Maybe in an earlier ice age 10 or 20 thousands years ago. However, Okinawa is about 27 degrees latitude, a little South of Orlando Florida. Not a heck of a lot of snow there. -Kakushidi
kakushidi are you saying that kata should be done more often? Baseball players practice with imaginary balls coming at them while swinging bats and basketball players imagine shooting free throws. This is much like kata but then again the baseball players actually do a lot of hitting baseballs and basketball players actually shoot a lot baskets with real balls. Kata has a place but to be effective in self-defense you have to practice situations and reactions to them as realistically as possible. Some schools do this some just do kata or a little of both (but not enough of either). I'm of the mind that originally it (Karate) was used for combat and it was somewhat effective. Have the techniques changed all that much? Or is it the way it's taught? It really has gotten away from what it originally was used and trained for. If it wants to survive at least in the west it needs to make its way back to its original roots. Otherwise it's going to end up like a lot of Chinese martial arts. People are leaving them by the droves and not many people are filling in for the ones that are leaving. The argument that it would be to dangerous to teach in a pure combat context is baloney combatives like krav maga, Eric Paulson and others like that do it all the time. If people want exercise let them do soccer or Tai chi. How do I defend Karate as a legitimate martial art for self-defense?
Blue Bloater said: "kakushidi are you saying that kata should be done more often?" What I am saying is that with so many kata, there is no way to make any of the movements truly effective. You can never get the right number of repetitions for any of them. Virtually every boxer, and thai boxer has combinations they do with great repetition. For those that are right handed, a common combination is left jab, right cross. And this combination is often used after some parry. Parry with the right, followed by a left jab then a right cross. Very common. How many times to boxers do this combination. A good professional boxer in his mid thirties will have done this hundreds of thousands of times. And there are many ways to practice it. In the air, against a bag, with resistance (say with weights when on your back), and against partners. There are some on this forum and elsewhere that like to belittle this notion of massive repetition. If that is the case, why do boxers keep up the thousands of reps, after they have already done tens of thousands? The simple reason is that the more reps, the better the technique. The more reflexive, the faster, the more powerful. Karate was practiced that way once. Massive repetitions. And unfortunately, it is no longer practiced that way in many, many schools. I advocate good fighting, and I, like many others, believe the key to that is massive repetition. In the air, against the bag, against a partner. They are three legs of a triad. All are important. There are those that question whether the movements in kata represent effective fighting techniques. And there is good reason to question this. Most of the applications people use and teach are horrible fighting combinations. But kata is greatly misunderstood. And this is true even by many Okinawan masters. And it is certainly true of many Japanese masters. Just go to www.usankf.org. Select training, then videowerks, and pick a kata. Then pick the analysis option, and you can look at horrible fighting combinations. These "interpretations" are just not good fighting. Let me give you a good example. Pick Kanku Dai (Shotokan). One absurd movement is in application 12. Imagine you are facing straight ahead, and an opponent is 90 degrees to the right, one of the worst strategies is to spin 270 degrees counterclockwise. You turn your head away, rotate on the same point he is targeting, and have no chance whatsoever of blocking a good strike. To make it work in the video (and the dojo), the attacker has to have his strike end nearly two feet shy of the defender. In fact many of the applications shown have the attacker's strike end short of the defender. What else is lousy? Well, most use a single counter to the abdomen. Application 6 ends with a block, App 9 with a single backfist. I could go on and on. It's all bad. I have great fighting techniques for Kusanku Dai. And all I did was think about these techniques and how they could be used effectively. It's not all that hard. The movements in kata can be really effective, but you have to use them the right way, practice them thousands of times, and do extensive partner and bag work, just like any other fighting system. -Kakushidi
Andrew Green said: "The point was that the truth tends to get exagerrated more and more as we get further away from it." What "truth" are you referring to? We have historical references to the period. Funakoshi wrote texts in the 1930s and 40s. Yabu Kentsu's statement was made prior to 1938 (He died in '37), Itosu's 10 principles were written before 1916, the year he died. Which part of the historical record do you dispute? What is the exaggeration you claim? -Kakushidi
All of it, none of it, some of it, we have no way of knowing. Do you believe everything that someone today uses to market themself and their product?
