Fitness and Skill

 There is only so much time for training. We all have obligations and responsibilities that come first. 

As a martial artist, I’ve had to find way to fit my training into my life. 

As a Sensei, I try to give my students the same flexible mindset.

But even when we have time to train, there's another decision to make: what should I train in the time that I have?

In answer to that, I see two extremes:

Fitness Improvement

You can learn to punch and kick pretty quickly. From there, an entire world of fitness routines opens up. Drilling basic techniques will get you fit, especially when you add in work with striking pads, kicking shields, and heavy bags. Traditional karate also has many conditioning drills to toughen your body in order to absorb blows and deal out damage without hurting yourself.

Skill Development

You’ve seen the movies and read the stories. An ancient martial arts master whoops some young’uns by using his superior martial skill. A student must study diligently for years to unlock the deepest secrets of their style. The secret principles of Goju-ryu exist within the kata… so why are you wasting time hitting the heavy bag? Get cracking on your distance, your timing, your techniques, your balance...

Any karate dojo is going to have a mix of fitness improvement and skill development.

For example, in college I had the chance to train at an Isshin-ryu dojo (that’s a sister style to Goju-ryu) for a summer. The Sensei was a former competitive kick-boxer and his classes were like a boot camp. 30 minutes of calisthenics – pushups, sit-ups, squats, jumps, rolls, jumping rope – followed by 30 minutes of drilling basic techniques, solo or with partners. It was the fittest dojo I have ever trained in. The ratio there must’ve been 80% fitness focused… maybe even 90%. That is certainly a valid strategy, both for a business and for self-defense. That conditioning would’ve let any student run circles around any attacker, or outrun them altogether. Plus all that sweating together is good for camaraderie.

The dojo I studied at tended in the other direction. Fitness on your own time, we were there to work kata and technique.

 At Lantern I’m roughly aiming for 2/3^rd of the time working on skill development. You can do pushups on your own (and you should!) and we can preserve class time with Sensei and with training partners for working on those skills.

Now obviously this division isn’t as clear as I’ve made it out to be. Kata training will improve your technique, but it can also be physically demanding. The more physical drills, such as striking focus mitts, is still a time to refine your technique and skill. It’s rare that any activity is 100% at one extreme.

It is also worth mentioning that this split isn’t the same at every stage of training. In the beginning of training, a student really needs repetition. Repeatedly practicing the techniques or performing the kata so that the movement becomes natural takes times and effort. So I suspect most beginner students may feel like fitness is the focus after the tenth time punching up and down the dojo. But the skill work is still there!

I’m writing this to give you an idea of the strategy behind the training. We need to be fit enough to do the technique effectively and we need to be skilled enough to do the techniques effectively. Which means that quality training will develop both aspects – the fitness and the skill.

Welcome to the blog for Lantern Dojo!

 Hello all,

Welcome to the blog! I intend to use this space to record some of my thoughts on martial arts training and teaching. Please check back for updates.

-Sensei Ryan Payne

What is a karate “style” and does it matter?

When karate was being developed on Okinawa there weren’t formal styles and the teaching and transmission was much more individualized. People usually learned from a specific person in a variety of formal and informal situations, like in back yards or above shops.

Over time the first differences in karate on the island were geographic. You started to get differentiation between “Naha-Te”, “Shuri-Te”, and “Tomari-Te” in the city of Naha, Shuri, and Tomari, respectively. (Here the “Te” means “hand”, the same as in Karate, which means “empty hand”.)

When the Okinawans began promoting karate in Japan around 100-150 years ago, the different styles began to be named, developed, and promoted, to be more in line with Japanese martial arts like kendo and judo. (The karate ranking system was taken from Judo for the same reason, to make karate more palatable to the Tokyo crowd.) Oftentimes the name of a dojo or association in Japan would be taken as the name of the style, such as in today’s popular Japanese karate styles of Shotokan and Kyokushin.

The style that I study, Goju-ryu, was only given a name when the founder’s senior student was asked for a name after demonstrating the art in Japan. He responded “half-hard, half-soft” style and Miyagi formalized this a Goju-ryu (hard-soft school) afterwards.

Alright so styles are a modern invention, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t actual differences between styles to be aware of.

The first key distinction I would make is between styles of Japanese karate and styles of Okinawan karate. Okinawa is part of Japan, but it has a unique history compared to the rest of the country and therefore a unique culture. (A parallel for the US would be the Hawaiian Islands – part of the country, but clearly a unique culture.)

• Karate was introduced to Japan before the Second World War and was adopted and promoted by Japanese universities as a way to develop strong, obedient soldiers for the Empire. Japanese karate tends to be more discipline-focused and militaristic (martial would be good word) with a heavy emphasis on drilling, conformity in technique, and discipline. There is a heavy emphasis on forging the spirit and, in my opinion, a deep and powerful philosophical connection to Zen and the old samurai tradition.
• In contrast, Okinawan styles of karate tend not to have such military bearing in the training. There is some of this, for sure, especially since most of these styles were brought to the US by US military personnel, but even then I’ve found a heavier emphasis on individual training over group drilling. The techniques are also slightly different, with Okinawan styles focused on getting closer to an opponent and using more grabbing techniques and strikes with more than just the knuckles. Okinawan karate styles also tend to practice bunkai, the analysis of kata movements, much more and oftentimes will incorporate Okinawan weapons training (kobudo).

In more recent times, Okinawan karate has begun to be described as a civilian self-protection art instead of a martial art. This really resonates with me and I think it better reflects the history as we know it. Okinawan karate was never used by a military force, instead it was developed at a time when a civilian (farmer, fisherman, etc.) may need to protect themselves from an attacker (a bandit, a pirate, etc.) in a way that would end the threat while minimizing injury to the defender. It is a very different mindset and situation than a soldier would find themselves in.*

For all the Okinawan styles – Goju-ryu, Shorin-ryu, Uechi-ryu, Isshin-Ryu – I believe they are much more closely related to each other than any Okinawa-Japan connection. Again stemming from the history of how each art was developed and what the founders of the style were trying to create.

Does it matter what style you choose? In my opinion, not really. The variety between styles is dwarfed by the variety within dojo of the same style. As a student, you really need to answer three questions

1. Is this a place I can get to often enough?
2. Is this type of training something I want to do?
3. Is this a place I can learn?

A good Sensei at a close dojo will trump style any day.

 

*A competing interpretation is that many of the martial arts on Okinawa, particularly the weapons, instead come from Palace Guards for the Ryukyuan King in the time when Okinawa was an independent kingdom. There’s probably truth here, although I haven’t looked into it closely. For the purpose of this article, I think the point still stands. Bodyguards are very different from soldiers on the battlefield.