Mikio Yahara - Old style karate

Until I read the article on Yahara on the Shotokan way magazine website, i knew very little about him. The article is excellent and well worth reading, I have included the links below to take you straight to it. Yahara is famous for many things in karate but he particularly well noted for the number of penalties and disqualifications he received in his competition days. He is a fierce fighter who is obsessed with the one killer blow. He is generally critical of competition, or sport, karate as he believes that karate is about generating enough power in your technique to finish the fight within seconds. A competition demands that each competitor moderates the damage he inflicts upon his opponent. The old karate notion that control is proof of good technique is something Yahara excepts as being true but he seems to take the idea of training deliberately not to inflict serious damage is a perversion of what shotokan karate is. Yahara is very clear in his message that every karate technique needs to delivered with maximum power and strength.

He is clearly a very capable and charismatic karate-ka. I hope I have the opportunity to train with him at some point in the near future.

Yahara article part 1

Yahara article part 2

Jion, Jion, Jion.

After grading to 3rd kyu in February, and in preparation for the European championships in Italy, I have started to learn the big four kata (Bassai dai, Enpi, Jion and Kanku dai). Bassai dai is a kata that I feel you can learn quickly. This is probably because you are exposed to the kata from a low grade, you watch and observe the higher grades practicing and you watch carefully because you know that it's the black belt kata. If you want your black belt then that's the kata you are going to have to do. I love Enpi, the kata is so fast and agile, which is where it's power comes from. It requires physical strength on behalf of the performer and good balance to match. Kanku dai is also a kata that I think suits me. Control and fitness are two skills in high demand for a good performance of Kanku dai, along with a solid grounding in basic fundamentals. Jion?

The picture above shows Thomas, Helen and sensei John performing the opening move of this kata. Right from the outset the kata is akward and tricky. You need to land in a solid stance (heel first) and then move fluently into moves two and three. The kata gets even more difficult with excessive hand movements during the age uke gyaka zsuki section. Trying to perform the badly named swastika block in back stance with you momentum moving at a right angle to your forward motion is very challenging. The hammer strike and heel of the palm strikes in kiba dachi are also very unusual attacks in karate and very difficult to generate the necessary power. I also feel the kata doesn't flow in anyway, it jerks and lunges as you try to execute each sequence. Most annoying of all is that most of the people i talk to actually like this kata, there must be something I'm missing.

More practice needed I think.

An old karate video

Me, in 1995, doing a demonstration with Haxby and Wigginton karate club.

I've tried to embed this video but it hasn't worked. So please follow the link below. Thanks.

95 demo video

All in a year...

I started training when i was 10 years old. I trained for a year and a half and attained the level of 5th kyu. Then i stopped! I did not put a gi on again for another 10 years. I started training again in late April 2007. That means that in a few weeks time I will have been back in training for a full year. It's been a fantastic year and I feel as if I have got myself back up to the standard I was when I stopped all those years ago. Two gradings, four weekend courses and about twenty injuries later, I am as excited as I was when I started. Returning to training has been about the best thing I've done in a long time! I'd like to thank Sensei Mike, Senior instructor at Haxby and Wigginton, for all his help and guidance over the past year along with Sensei Ian. Thank you, also, to Sensei Keith, senior instructor at York.



Hopefully, the next year will be even better than the last.

The karate blogger

I have, since I came back to training, resisted the temptation to create yet another karate blog. There are millions out there on the world wide web and nearly all of them are bad, wrong or both. There is something slightly pretentious about a blog, it kinda indicates that you, as a blogger, have something to say that everybody else will want to read. That is why I want to make it clear that I am going to use this blog to document the lessons I learn in karate, the highs and lows, as a way of helping me to remember what I've done. You are all welcome to follow me along the way and if anyone can offer advice then please do, it will be much appreciated.