Category Archives: Shin Gi Tai

The Applied Karate Show Episode 15 – Joe Berne Sempai

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Applied Karate #015 (mp3 – 40MB – 84 mins)

DOWNLOAD EPISODE 014 OF THE APPLIED KARATE SHOW

JoeBerne

Well folks, my intentions about getting a monthly podcast out were pure. Following on from the September episode with Chris Denwood Sensei, I recorded the October episode in plenty of time, only to have a bunch of gremlins strike. They seem to be resolved now, so hopefully we’re back on track.

Our guest for Episode 15 of The Applied Karate Show is Joe Berne, Sempai, a Seido practioner and blogger behind the Karate Conditioning blog.

Joe began training in Seido Karate in 1988 at the Karate Club of his college, the State University of New York at Buffalo.  The class was taught by Shuseki Shihan Christopher Caile (who went on to create Fightingarts.com, a well known website with content about a variety of martial arts).  He trained there, and at the style’s New York City Honbu dojo, through 1994, at which time he earned his shodan in Seido Karate.  A variety of injuries and life issues kept him away from training, but he returned in 2006.  Then living in Maryland, he began training under Jun Shihan Kate Stewart, and has remained there since then.  He recently earned his sandan at the 2011 Gasshuku in upstate New York.

Joe began studying strength and conditioning informally in high school in a vain attempt to qualify for the (American) football team.   He resumed his studies with a vengeance after taking up karate again in 2006 as he tried to use science to make up for the damage done by over a decade of a sedentary and hypercaloric lifestyle.  He has made a part time job out of reading and viewing everything available in the field of strength and conditioning that can relate in any way to martial arts performance.

The wide ranging discussions with Joe covered such topics as

  • Joe’s introduction to, and background in, karate
  • Strength tools (including the wonderful kettlebell)
  • Training for martial arts skills
  • Stretching for karate
  • Training for injury avoidance
  • Nutrition tips and the Paleo diet

This was a fascinating interview with a karateka who has clearly invested a lot of time and thought into his training and the strength and conditioning program required to support it. I heartily recommend you visit and subscribe to Joe’s blog Karate Conditioning.

Applied Karate #015 (mp3 – 40MB – 84 mins)

DOWNLOAD EPISODE 014 OF THE APPLIED KARATE SHOW

Shin Gi Tai: New Book By Mike Clarke, Kyoshi

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Shin Gi Tai: Karate Training for Body, Mind and Spirit (aff.) is a new book by Mike Clarke, Kyoshi (guest on Episode 4 of The Applied Karate Show podcast).

Mike Sensei is a classical karateka of the Okinawan Gojuryu line who emphasises the complete development of the individual, looking at aspects beyond the physical skills emphasised in many dojo. In his own Shinseidokan Dojo in Launceston, Tasmania (Australia), Mike Sensei accepts and trains only a small handful of students who focus on traditional karate methods.

Shin Gi Tai follows on from previous books, the latest of which was the excellent work The Art of Hojo Undo: Power Training for Traditional Karate (aft.).

The following text from the back cover of Shin Gi Tai provides an excellent overview of what the author is emphasising in the book:

Prepare to have your beliefs challenged about what karate really is.

Within these pages, you will discover traditional karate; along the way, perhaps many of your own beliefs about karate will be confronted. You might have a body capable of mastering karate’s physical techniques, but do you have a mind with a level of awareness that is able to grasp the true spirit of karate?

For adults only. Regardless of how many people you can defeat in combat, the deeper aim of karate has always been to conquer your own ego, and by doing so, you increase the likelihood of avoiding conflict. When you can control your ego, you have a chance to establish peace in your life: this is the tradition of budo karate.

Shin Gi Tai has a literal translation: mind–technique–body. A karate-ka’s mind (shin) must be developed ahead of his technique (gi) if he is to discover a sense of balance within his body (tai). While the mental and physical aspects of karate are daunting and causes many to stop training, if you can just endure the early years, say–the say – the first decade–then there is opportunity for real and lasting benefits.

Budo is a concept more often discussed than put into practice, and yet, as part of traditional karate training, it has the capacity to dramatically change lives for the better, but only if you are prepared to move past the obvious and strive to understand the philosophy and the morality of budo.

Your life is yours, your karate is yours, accept ownership of both and reap countless rewards.

The concept of Shin Gi Tai is a personal favourite of mine, as I believe that what separates karate (and other classical forms of budo) from pure sport-oriented fighting systems is the emphasis on developing a strong general knowledge and knowledge of the theories and principles of the art, and an open-ness towards introspection and self-discovery.

Shin Gi Tai: Karate Training for Body, Mind and Spirit (aff.) is available now from Amazon and other sources in paperback. I am not sure if it will be released as an eBook, although there is a Kindle Edition of The Art of Hojo Undo (aff.), so I am hopefully we will see this soon.

Book Review: How To Win a Fight by Lawrence Kane and Kris Wilder

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Htwaf lg

Prolific martial authors Lawrence Kane & Kris Wilder (guest on Episode 3 of The Applied Karate Show podcast) have done it again, with a brand new book targeted to young people (actually young men) helping them to win in physical conflict.

How to Win a Fight: A Guide to Avoiding and Surviving Violence (aff.) is purposely written and illustrated with a tone and layout that the authors hope will get the message through to a large audience who needs to hear that fighting and violence is hardly romantic, is generally not “fair”, and rarely resolves the issue.

To get their message across, Kane and Wilder teamed up with veteran DC Comics artist/illustrator Matt Haley. The comic-book style imagery engages the mind and tells the story clearly and succinctly. With the popularity of comics in recent story telling (see TV shows like The Big Bang Theory, Heroes, and even NCIS for examples), I applaud this approach, and really enjoyed the parallel approach with the detailed written descriptions.

I like it that How to Win a Fight takes a pragmatic view of violence, detailing how most seemingly random violence is unnecessary and is for the most part avoidable. The authors describe the pre-incident indicators that lead up to violence, and describe how to recognise these and (critically) avoid them!

The book continues into detail into escape and evasion techniques, then describes the mental and physical techniques that are vital if the encounter is unavoidable. Unusual for a self-defence book, the authors then describe what to do after a fight, including aspects of first aid and the need for first aid training, dealing with the police and possible legal problems and the post-traumatic stress aspects.

How To Win A Fight is a terrific book that tells a sobering and realistic story of violence, and is one that all karate and martial arts enthusiasts who study the defensive aspects of the tradition should own. It’ll be on the reading list for my students at the Kengokan Dojo in Sydney, Australia. The message is important, and I love how Kane and Wilder have worked hard to get the message through to the group of people that most needs it.

Messrs Wilder and Kane teach Goju Karate at West Seattle Karate, and are the hosts of the always excellent Martial Secrets podcast.

Buy How to Win a Fight: A Guide to Avoiding and Surviving Violence (aff.) on Amazon.com now. On sale from 4 October 2011.

Stretching in Karate

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Paul and co. at the Karate Cafe podcast have started a new series of “minisodes”. The latest (minisode 7) features a brief update from sports trainer Matthew Matson.

In this update, Matthew provides a brief update on flexibility, which he defines as “strength through a range of motion”, as opposed to pliability. He also differentiates static stretching, active stretching, PNF stretching and dynamic stretching.

An important point is that static stretching can actually lead to injury, and should be avoided in all situations except for rehabilitation, postural correction and post-workout. This is somewhat challenging as many traditional and contemporary martial arts schools use static stretching prior to training.

In the Kengokan Dojo, I have been reviewing our warmup exercises progressively over quite some time, and have removed most static stretches, instead emphasising active and dynamic stretching. Static stretching is left for after class, if at all.

Thanks to the Karate Cafe crew for this great minisode. Listen here.

Contrast Hydrotherapy for Recovery

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Inspired by an excellent post on Recovery after Martial Arts Training over on the MarksTraining blog, I thought I’d post an article on Contrast Hydrotherapy that I’ve previously posted over on the website for my dojo.

Have you ever experienced muscular soreness and stiffness following a grueling training session? Not the type caused by actually injuring yourself, but the type that reminds you that your muscles and connective tissue have been working, and that they now need to recover. If so, then you might want to consider contrast hydrotherapy as a form of active recovery.

Sometime ago I attended a 2 day kettlebell instructors course here in Sydney, Australia, conducted by Don Stevenson of Octogen Fitness, Australia’s leading kettlebell instructor. Although I’d been keenly using kettlebells for 8 months (at the time I originally wrote the article several years ago) as an augmentation of my karate training, this course worked at a level of intensity that had me feeling pretty sore and stiff.

During the training session, Don mentioned that he sometimes advises his personal training clients to undertake contrast hydrotherapy to aid in recovery. Maybe it was just me – I was in a group of fitness professionals that know a lot about this stuff – but the term contrast hydrotherapy was new to me.

Pretty much as soon as I got home I could feel the soreness levels rising, and I knew that the next day I’d really be feeling it. So, not wanting to climb the stairs to my office, I grabbed my wife’s computer and Google’d the term.

I found a couple of articles discussing contrast hydrotherapy as a form of treatment for acute conditions, but it took a little bit longer to find something discussing it as a strategy for recovery. When I did, I hit gold, with an article disucssing its merits and the protocol apparently used by the Australian Institute of Sport.

The protocol is this – alternate a period of exposure to hot water with one of exposure to cold water, and repeat. Twice.

There are 2 versions of the protocol – one where you have a bath or spa available, and the other for where you just have a shower.

Bath Protocol

  • Bath for 3-4 minutes in a hot bath (37C-43C)
  • Shower for 30-60 seconds in a cold shower (12C-15C)
  • Repeat two more times (for a total of three circuits)

Shower Protocol

  • Shower under hot water for 1-2 minutes
  • Shower under cold water for 10-30 seconds
  • Repeat two more times (for a total of three circuits)

How did it work? Well, for me, very well indeed. Where my soreness was around 7-8 (on a scale of 10) in several major muscle groups, immediately after the shower it reduced to around 3-4. The next day, when I would traditionally “feel it” the most, it was still around 3-4.

Now, as I understand it, there are few studies proving that contrast hydrotherapy works. And to date I can only provide personal anecdotal evidence of a single experience. So it may not work for you. But I reckon its worth a try…..