Karate is very simple!

I tell my students everyday that if karate was easy, anybody would be able to do it.  And it's true, I standby that statement.  If it was easy, anybody could do it, but that doesn't mean that karate isn't simple.

The concepts surrounding karate training are very simple.  We utilize the most basic of geometric designs as a blueprint of how karate techniques should be executed: a straight line.  Certainly there are other paths and courses that can be used for a variety of techniques, but the first lesson that all new white belts are taught involve straight lines.  This is for a very basic reason, straight lines are simple.  The beauty of karate is its simplicity.  There are very few gimmicks that one needs to make their karate effective.  One might argue that kicks like mawashi geri, and strikes like haito-uchi and uraken-uchi might not travel in straight lines, but the point isn't the trajectory of the technique.  The point is the idea that the body travels in a straight line, straight toward the target.

Even if one's technique arcs around toward impact, one's body moves straight forward.  It's in this simplicity that one can develop their greatest level of impact and power.

As Sensei Otis says, "Karate is very simple."

Contact in Kumite

If you’ve ever been hit with a really solid punch to the face, you know exactly what I mean when I say that it’s an eye-opening experience.  The world gets all shaky for a second or two, and if you’re unlucky enough to have been hit on the nose your eyes will start getting watery, and you’ll be slightly blinded for a few seconds.  To put it shortly, you’re a sitting duck, just waiting to be killed.

Most self-defense situations begin with surprise attacks, not with two people squared off, facing each other and waiting for the other person to make the first move.  Karate is typically trained, and taught, as a dueling art and then touted up as a viable source of self-defense tactics and maneuvers.  This is a dangerous claim to make.  I’m not trying to denounce the capabilities of a well-trained karate-ka, but the caveat in that statement is that one must be well-trained.

Sadly, one important factor of training tends to be overlooked in the typical Shotokan dojo; and that is the concept of taking a hit.  While we all train to punch the air, and perform beautiful kata, it’s the rare dojo that engages in a sufficient level of impact training.  For all of those dojo that utilize punching bags, and other impact training equipment, there are a select few that engage in effective and useful kumite.  By useful kumite I’m, of course, referring to semi- to hard-contact sparring that occurs within a realistic maai, or fighting distance.

Among these few, solid dojo, it’s very rare where contact to the head is allowed or espoused.  The general paradigm is the idea that if one is able to stop one’s punch a millimeter from skin surface, then one will have the ability to follow through when needed.  I can’t help but disagree.

If you train to stop a millimeter away, then that’s what your body and your brain will remember to do if you need to punch somebody for real.  You play the way you practice; you fight the way you train.  If you train to limit contact to such a great extent, then you will fight in the same manner.  The point of training is to practice what you will put into use when the time comes.  There’s a huge difference between using less power in kumite and pulling one’s punches short of contact.

Utilizing the feeling of getting hit, I believe, will greatly increase one’s chances of surviving a surprise attack.  Not many attackers will step out into the open, and threaten the victim, they attack by surprise, and either grab or hit the victim.  Knowing how to deal with getting hit can take one a long way to surviving and getting away.

Breaking in

I must say, it's incredible how challenging the PT routine is that I wrote about in the previous post.  I'm no meat head that spends hours in the gym, but I keep in fairly good shape and lift regularly.  All the same, I've been sore for days after doing the first day of the routine.  So much so that I had to pass on doing it yesterday and had to do it today.  That is, in and of itself, promising because I know that it will remain challenging throughout the coming nine weeks.  The tricky part, unfortunately, is finding the time to get out on the road.  I took it very easy this week with running as I have issues with my knees and I really pushed myself on my first outing.  My legs are still sore from it (the fact I've been pushing myself in the dojo every night this week notwithstanding).

I'm going to have to play with the schedule a bit until I can settle comfortably into waking up at 6am and running.  It used to be old hat for me while I was swimming competitively to be up at 5am, and in the pull by 5:30 without any problems, but lately it's become an issue.  I know I can already feel the huge benefit from the first run, probably psychological, but I don't care.  I enjoyed it immensely, and felt great afterward.

On the bright side, as challenging and difficult as the running/PT has been, the dojo training has been equally challenging and equally beneficial.  I can already see the difference in my karate, but the question is whether this will translate to competition success...we shall see I suppose.

Anyway, onto the PT and then hitting the sack, wish me luck!

Back on the road

Prior to leaving on vacation in India, I'd downloaded a book to my Kindle titled, "Relentless Forward Progress: a Guide to Running Ultramarathons," by Bryon Powell and Eric Grossman.  Prior to purchasing this book on my Kindle, I'd read the book "Run!" by Dean Karnazes, a well known author and ultramarathon runner.  Having read Karnazes' previous books, I had developed a keen interest in running and specifically running marathons and ultra distance races.  Thus, leading to my injuring my knees.  I tried to take on way too much, way too soon, without enough training time.

After reading "Run!" my interest in running was piqued once again, but having been tempered by experience, I know better than to jump in head first without significant work up and conditioning.  Reading "Relentless Forward Progress" further helped strengthen my resolve to start running again, but this time with more consideration for my health and the health of my joints and limbs.  Thinking about how to ease back into running, I remembered my days in high school.  Back then, a friend and I had been so interested in applying to the Naval academy at Annapolis and becoming Navy SEALs, that we were constantly doing research on-line about them and their physical preparation.

One such search brought me to a page that had a well structured and well written, preparatory workout for prospective SEALs.  There were two workouts, one for those people that have never truly followed any particular PT routine, and a second for those with a solid athletic base (ie. swimmers, runners, wrestlers, etc.).  Doing a secondary search for this routine in the past few days, I've come to see that this workout has been written and re-written numerous times by various authors and webmasters.  The structure of the running workouts is very simple, 3-4 days of running every week for 9 weeks (I write the workout below).  The PT routine (push-ups, sit-ups and pull-ups), on the other hand is extremely difficult and demanding, which is what I love the most about it.  Eat right, and rest well, and I think you will see huge results.

Anyway, so after finding the workout in high school, I never really had the opportunity to pursue it fully due to my rigorous swimming workouts, and school work.  I always vowed to begin it again, and I feel like this might be the perfect time to do it.

Running Workout: (goal pace is 8:30/mi.)

Week 1: 2 miles/day, M/W/F

Week 2: 2 miles/day, M/W/F

Week 3: rest, high risk for stress fractures

Week 4: 3 miles/day, M/W/F

Week 5: 2/3/4/2, M/Tu/Th/F

Week 6: 2/3/4/2, M/Tu/Th/F

Week 7: 4/4/5/3, M/Tu/Th/F

Week 8: 4/4/5/3, M/Tu/Th/F

Week 9: 4/4/5/3, M/Tu/Th/F

Physical Training:

Week 1: 4x15 pushups

              4x20 situps

              3x3 pullups

Week 2: 5x20 pushups

              5x20 situps

              3x3 pullups

Week 3: 5x25 pushups

              5x25 situps

              3x4 pullups

Week 4: 5x25 pushups

              5x25 situps

              3x4 pullups

Week 5: 6x25 pushups

              6x25 situps

              2x8 pullups

Week 6: 6x25 pushups

              6x25 situps

              2x8 pullups

Week 7: 6x30 pushups

              6x30 situps

              2x10 pullups

Week 8: 6x30 pushups

              6x30 situps

              2x10 pullups

Week 9: 6x30 pushups

              6x30 situps

              3x10 pullups

So there you have it, 9 weeks of working out, 3-4 times per week.  I wrote in a previous post, that cardio is a non-essential exercise for karate-ka, specifically because we don't receive cardiovascular benefit from running complimentary to our karate training.  The only way to find physical benefit for your karate is to make all of you running high intensity interval training (which is extremely demanding, and dangerous to do more than twice in a week), or to use the fartlek method.  Fartleks generally take any given set distance and break them up into a number of higher and lower intensity intervals without stopping in between.  The high level intensity can be determined by simply looking to run fast to the next tree or the next sign, and then dial back the pace to recover and then do it again.  I'm going to attempt to mix the two methods together to acquire maximum benefit from the running.

Day 1 was yesterday, I ran the 2 miles in 18 minutes, at approximately a 9 min/mile average pace.  Not bad for my first day back in the saddle.  I'll keep you updated as I continue with the running.  I need to do the PT workout today as I forgot to do it yesterday.

Let's see how much this helps me, and how long my knees hold up.  Wish me luck!

Shaking the Rust Out

Finally my legs are waking up!  It's going to be a rough month preparing for America's Cup, but I think I'm making pretty good progress so far.  Kanku Sho is starting to shape up again, and Sochin is still working pretty nicely.  I'm going to have to keep drilling them and get them sharp again.

My toe is still causing me some issues, I don't know how I'll be able to perform the first move in Empi if that's what the judges select for second round.  Hopefully the NSAID and stretching regimen I've been working on will do the trick by go time.

This week it's time to start up at the gym again, but strictly plyometrics for the legs and weights for the upper body.  I need to develop explosiveness more than anything else now, so that's what the plyometrics are for.  The best part is that they'll build my legs up pretty well also.  The tricky part this month is going to be regulating my diet properly.  I can't afford to eat like crap if I'm going to be ready in time.  So hopefully after today I will be able to stick to a healthy diet for the month (maybe the habit will even stick after that!).

Wish me luck!

Lead or Jello?

First night of training, and I can't decide if my legs are feeling like or like Jello...or maybe just feel like one or the other at different times depending on what I was trying.  Class tonight was very basic, it was just running through katas; starting from Heian Shodan and working up to Kanku Dai.  After that I broke off and started working on individual katas.  America's Cup is coming up fast (only a month and change left), and I'm really going to need to shake the rust out of my hinges soon if I'm going to perform at the level I did last year.

I've decided that I will focus on Kanku Sho, Sochin and Gankaku for my tokui-kata choices, with Kanku Sho as first choice.  I'm feeling pretty confident about the JKA division for kata, kumite is going to be a rather different story.

Working on my own I ran through Kanku Sho several times over, reacquainting myself with the kata.  To say 'it's been a while' would be more than an understatement.  Two weeks without training, and my kata has suffered greatly, but luckily it came back to me over time.  The real issue was drilling the two jumps in the kata. The first jump is very similar to the jump in Empi, and in that way the jump was easier to manage.  On the other hand, the second jump is a different beast altogether.

Here is where my legs began to betray me; I couldn't determine whether or not they felt like lead or like jello.  Creating height in the jump, and I felt like I was carrying lead weights, maintaining a stance after the jump and my legs were more like jello.  It's amazing how different they felt within the context of one sequence of moves.  Luckily the rest of the kata went well, now the next step for me will be to reawaken the spring in my legs.  This week I'm going to need to focus on Kanku Sho, almost exclusively.

The other issue I'm having is my big toe, with the pain I'm feeling in flexing the toe I can't fully complete the first move in Empi...which is annoying, as I love the kata immensely and honestly hope that it is the kata chosen by the judges during the second round at America's Cup.  I'm going to have to stick to a steady regimen of working on the range of motion in the toe, as well as regular NSAID intake to reduce inflammation in the injured tendons.

Well, I have a month...hopefully I can manage it all.  Wish me luck!

McDonald's instead of training

So it looks like I won't be able to throwdown with the local Indian JKA dojo, family friends keep getting in the way!  Instead, I think I'm going to make my friend take us to the local McDonald's instead.  I've always wanted to try their food in India, now's my chance (I hope!).

On the bright side, I'll be heading back home tomorrow night, and then it's time to get back to work.  America's Cup is coming up fast (February 12th, in fact), and I really need to shake the rust of my joints and get my ass back in gear.  It's going to be a crazy, busy, exhausting month!

Wish me luck!

Vacation training

It's been several weeks since I've posted...and furthermore, it's been several weeks since I last had a good training session.  I've been in India, specifically Mumbai, since December 25th, and my God has it been one hell of a trip!  It's been non-stop fun and moving around, and I can't wait to be home again.  My younger brother put it most aptly, "Visiting India is about two things: eating and shitting."  Sounds like a cynical view to visiting your Mother-land and visiting your family, but when you consider the amount of food that gets shoved down your throats on a daily basis (mostly all high-fiber vegetables) you can understand why it would be like this.

That hardest thing for me has been not being able to train, not really being able to even workout in any way.  The air here is horrid, and while I can probably get away with running, I'd prefer not filling my lungs with all the dust and smog.  Plus, I'm still recovering from the weak knee, I'd rather not risk injuring them again while I'm in a foreign country.

Luckily, I've been able to get in contact with the local JKA group in Dadar, Mumbai.  Turns out, the hombu dojo for JKA India is right around the corner from my grandmother's home, which is where I've been staying.  After one and a half, very long, weeks, I'm going to finally be able to get in one solid two hour training session...the night before I head back home!  Frankly, though, I have no expectations...I don't really know what to expect.  Being a JKA group, I can only imagine they will be little different from the types of training I've grown accustomed to over the years.

I'm just looking for an opportunity to walk onto a deck and throw down, not necessarily in just kumite, but overall karate training.  From kihon to kata to kumite, it's all about the ride and putting in the effort.  Good thing I remembered my gi!

Anyway, it's another long and busy day here in India, and there's no rest for the wicked.  I'll write more on Monday night after I get back and let you know how it goes.

Wish me luck!

P.S. Happy New Year!