Much has been going on in my world, and I appologise for the lateness of this issue.  I’ll do my best to keep them coming more regularly, but hope that you will enjoy the content and other information when it does come out!

In this issue there’s a bit of a round up of a couple of items of Budo News, a review of the book Hidden Karate, and a short article on Kettlebells for Karateka.

I hope you enjoy this issue.

I’ve had this book for a while, but with a large reading list, only picked it up last night.  I will do a full review on this book in an upcoming issue of The Essential Karate Newsletter, but I have to say that my first impressions are that this is an amazing book.  It addresses the topic of a kata in a way that I’ve never seen before, and regardless of what style you practice, do yourself a favour and get a copy fast.

The Way of Sanchin Kata: The Application of Power is one of those books that might just be revolutionary.

New Book: Timeline of Karate History, by Hokama Tetsuhiro, Sensei
An English translation of Hokama Tetsuhiro Sensei’s “Timeline of Karate History” is now available, fresh from the printers today! 1000 copies were printed.

I have had the pleasure of meeting Hokama Sensei, and have a copy of this wonderful book in Japanese and now in English.  Knowing the translator, Joe Swift Sensei, I knew this would be an outstanding book before I’d even received it.

In short, for karateka and others interested in karate history, this is a must have book for your library.  Well written, it is a great reference source to cross reference various historical facts.

For more information, please visit this page.

Shorinjiryu Karatedo Australia Joins the Shorinjiryu Kenyukai Watanabe-Ha Karatedo Federation
For more than a decade, Shorinjiryu Karatedo Australia has been an independent school following the lineage of the founder of Shorinjiryu, Shinan Kori Hisataka (1907-1988).

Having built links to other Shorinjiryu schools through the umbrella organisation Shorinjiryu Shinzen Kyokai, we have forged a relationship with a direct student and successor to the founder, Kaicho Shunji Watanabe, Hanshi 9th Dan.  Watanabe Hanshi recently visited Australia, and during this visit he invited our group to formally join his organisation.  We are delighted to have this direct link to the founder, and as our Australian Joint Chief Instructor, Shihan Jim Griffin stated, as an organisation we have looked back to move forward.

Shorinjiryu Karatedo Australia will henceforth be known as Shorinjiryu Kenyukai Watanabe Ha Karate Australia.

For more information, visit the Shorinjiryu Kenyukai Watanabe Ha Karate Australia website.

New Television Series: The Human Weapon
A new television series has made a debut on The History Channel in the US.  Called The Human Weapon, the series appears to follow in the tradition of series like the excellent The Way of the Warrior and the more recent Deadly Arts.

First impressions always count, and I must say that this book is beautifully presented.  Clearly a great amount of effort was put into the exterior look and feel of the book, and it immediately made it to the top of my reading pile.  Second impressions also count, and reading the author’s bio was interesing as it was clearly written in a poor version of Janglish - that hybrid of Japanese and English.  I must admit to worrying about the overall quality, but my concerns were reduced when I set out on reading the intro - clearly the translator did an excellent job on the actual content of the book.

Hidden Karate makes an attempt to provide a set of rules for interpreting the bunkai (analysis) of the application of karate’s kata in a meaningful way.  In so doing, the author attempts to provide a cultural context about how and why the real meanings of the movements were hidden, and then lays day 20 or so “rules” by which each movement of a kata can be analysed.  He then applies this approach to the 5 Heian (Pinan) kata, and also to the first Naihanchi (Naihanchin Shodan) kata.

To be honest, I quite like the approach taken by the author.  With rules along the lines of a primary attack is a punch, kick or strike, and that the effectiveness of a strike is greater if an opponent is immobilised, a good game plan for interpreting kata is provided, whilst continuing to rest on karate’s primary weapons augmented by the locks, holds, strangles, etc.

This is kind of refreshing in an age where many have interpreted karate kata as being primarily responses to very close range, grappling encounters.  Although those aspects are clearly catered for, I am a believer that our primary weapons tend to the longer range punch, kick and strike scenarios.

In all, I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to see an approach to kata application that sits somewhere in between the primitive punch and kick only scenarios, and the grappling only scenarios that seem to have some favour today.  You may not agree with everything (I don’t), but there is some good food for thought.

Visiting Okinawa in 2005, I was interested to note that dojo of all styles, including Shorinjiryu, Goju, Shorinryu and others all featured hojo undo equipment like iron sandals (tetsu geta), gripping jars (nigiri game) and strength stones (chi-ishi), a kind of weight on the end of a stick.

Clearly development of functional strength is important to the senior masters, so why then is it so under-emphasised in most Western dojo?

I think that there are at least three issues at hand.

1. Hojo undo equipment is hard to get in the West;
2. Proper training regimes are not passed on, and most karate instructors have little training in the theory and practice of strength and conditioning; and,
3. Western style weights and training are readily available, with training regimes available.

Lets put the first 2 issues aside, for now.

In my opinion, Western style weights systems are limited in their martial application compared to traditional forms of strength and conditioning, unless specific programs are developed and implemented.  People like Iain Abernethy are clear exceptions to this rule, but Iain has invested a lot of time and thought into learning about weights and how best to integrate them into his training regime.

In actual fact, free weights like dumbells and barbells are mostly fine and can be readily adapted.  But the machine style weights found at many gyms and home setups are very limited.

For functional strength, we don’t need to build big muscles.  We need instead to develop whole body strength that drives power from our core to our extremities.  Kind of like throwing a punch or kick.  We need to challenge all muscles in the chain, including the antagonistic ones that are activated in pulling back from a lift (or punch or kick).

Traditional weights like the nigiri game and chi ishi meet these requirements well.  The off-centre weight and the ballistic exercises test the individual and work a range of muscles, joints and connective tissue.  Trouble is they’re not so easy to get, and even harder to get valid programs for.

This is where the Kettlebell (aff.) comes into play.  A Russian form of traditional strength and conditioning has been brought into the modern era by several individuals, notably Pavel Tsatsouline (listen to the Applied Karate Show podcast interview with Pavel) in the US and more recently, Don Stevenson in Australia.

Kettlebells are available in the US, Australia and around the world now, and excellent training support materials are available.  For starters, I’d recommend Pavel’s Enter the Kettlebell DVD and book (also available from Australian Kettlebells).  With thes, you’ll be swinging, snatching, pressing and doing Turkish Getups in no time, and in no time, these exercises WILL help you improve your functional strength for martial arts.

Properly executed Kettlebell exercises are whole body exercises.  The concept of “isolation” does not exist, and the off-centre mass of the bell has been described as the closest thing you can get to a real fight, due to the way the weight stresses the muscles (including the stabilising and antagonistic muscles for any movement), and forces you to maintain balance,

The great thing about Kettlebell training is that it is highly applicable to karate training, and has validated training regimes and instructor training.  Having done the Kettlebell Instructors Course with Don, I will incorporate kettlebell training as an optional training aspect for senior members of my dojo.

Feedback is a wonderful thing, and I’d appreciate anything you can add to any of the content.  Send me an email to newsletter@essentialkarate.com.

Sincerely,