Karate, 7/18/15

For a long time now, I've wanted to train karate as well. I've always felt like it would round out my martial art identity, so to speak, since I've been lacking a striking art. I trained in Tang Soo Do when I was a teenager, but that was more than 25 years ago. I've dabbled in it a few times since then, but never trained seriously.

I've always been drawn to shotokan karate for a few reasons:

The lineage (even though Funakoshi hated the idea of karate being splintered into different styles, and said they are all just "karate").

The popularity - There is more supplemental material out there for shotokan than any other style.That's a big deal if a lot of practice will have to be done solo.

Greater standardization - it's easier to know what's expected from you in shotokan.

Given how much more popular karate is than aikido or judo, you would think I would be able to find some training pretty easily, but I haven't. My schedule won't allow me to train both karate and judo on weeknights, and it's turned out to be pretty difficult to find teachers who are willing to do private lessons on Saturday mornings. Long story short, I finally found someone willing to give it a go, and this morning was my first lesson.

Shotokan guys, for better or worse, are pretty concerned about precision; doing a technique "right" and not "wrong" from the get-go. I can think of pros and cons to that approach, but for now I like it. I feel like, as in aikido, when we practice something "correctly" for thousands of reps, we will subconsciously recognize when we vary from it or something isn't quite right. I really like having a baseline.

We covered a ton of material today, and my plan is to work on it daily at home.

Stances:

• Front stance
• Back stance
• Horse stance

Strikes:

• Reverse and Lunging punches
• Knife hand
• Back fist

Blocks:

• Rising block
• Down block
• Inside block
• Outside block
• Kife hand block

Kicks:

• Front kick
• Side kick
• Back kick
• Roundhouse kick

Movement:

• Walking in front and back stances
• Hip rotation

Kata:

• I ran through heian shodan. He said I would have passed my first belt test based on my performance, but he did make 3 tweaks I need to work on: longer stances in my knife hand blocks at the end, a contract-and-expand chamber for the knife hand blocks, and a fuller front stance on the hammer fist at the beginning.
• He taught me heian nidan up to the first kiai.