HIS Karate-Do

This is for those who are interested in “how we got here”.  Back, over 25 years ago, a fellow instructor and friend of mine and I decided that we wanted to teach our children Karate-Do the way we thought it should be shared.  His idea was to train our own children in his garage, which I felt was a somewhat limited venue and made less than full use of two veteran instructors.  One thing led to another, and we ended up founding a dojo with him as Chief Instructor and Vice President, and myself as Asst Chief Instructor and President.  It turned out to be a good dojo with a membership of between 50-70 karateka.  I felt that we offered good quality training in the art of Karate-Do and folks enjoyed training with us, while we truly enjoyed sharing our perspective on Shotokan with others.  My initial purpose for this endeavor – training for my children – was fulfilled, as my son made it to ikkyu (high brown belt) while my daughter achieved her shodan there.  I had a great time with that dojo for nearly 10 years. Everything was going well, but over time two things nagged at me: The necessary cost of incorporation, taxes, rent, insurance, etc were all charges [...]

Well, here’s a Youtube video of a brother and sister (they were around 10 and 6 years old at the time of filming) practicing the Heian Katas and Tekki Shodan.  Sensei Peter and I thought you might find it interesting since the majority of our group is practicing one of these half a dozen katas (Shotokan actually encompasses 26-30 katas, depending upon the dojo, so you can imagine that it does take a while to learn them all).   At the same time, we thought you might find it inspiring as the two siblings have good basics, form and speed.  They’re very serious students from Japan.  Since they practice the Shotokan style of Karate-Do, you should find the movements the same as ours with a few very minor differences.  These children (Mahiro and Masaki) likely spend time practicing their karate on a daily basis, which is a big reason that they are so accomplished in the art.  We don’t expect you to do that, but just think how much better you could be if you practiced your techniques with this intensity for a couple of hours every day. Please note that there is no extra movement – they quickly thrust and lock into each step with precision and kime.  They [...]

When I was a kid, I remember coming across a strange drawing that depicted the general parts (and proportions) of our brain that controlled the various parts of our body.  Most of us have seen it in biology class in school.  Sometimes this type of diagram is labeled a “homunculus”, though that can also refer to a small humanoid.  Anyways, it always stuck in my head because of how distorted the parts of the body appeared to be (big face, tongue, and hand, followed by tiny everything else (like the trunk, hip and leg regions).  Doesn’t it seem ironic that the largest and strongest muscles in the body are controlled by such small parts of the brain, while our facial muscles, mouth and tongue, along with our hands are controlled by huge portions of our brain matter? Upon further reflection however, it should make perfect sense to the karate student.  We spend a huge amount of our training time, struggling to control and coordinate the large and powerful muscles: the legs and feet which make up our lower half, along with the hips (which connect upper and lower parts of the body), back muscles, shoulder muscles, abdominal “bricks” (for those who still have em, [...]