Went to a new club to train this evening. New in the sense that it was new to me. The club itself has been going for a decade or so. Thus, been around for some time and a reasonable amount of members. However, as seems to be the normal, more kids than adults. Even so, there was a dozen adults and a couple of dan grades.
Went through the usual warm and basics to get the joints, tendons, and muscles warmed up and flexible. Particularly as nobody told "Winter" that it's time is over and it should relent and hand over to Spring. It actually snowed today!
Anyhow, I digress. The warm up and the basics were a good solid workout. We then moved onto some more combinations which tested my co-ordination, balance and flexibility! We then moved onto some pair work.
This was the fairly straightforward "attack, block & counter-attack". All seemed well but i noticed the the face punch from my partner stopped several inches from my face. Good, you may think. But this is a martial art and as a Dan grade of nearly 30 years I am sure I could handled a punch that did actually intended to hit the target.
But no....if i did not move the punch would still be 6 inches short of the target. This infuriates me as I thought "What is the point" tends to run through my mind in this situation.
I was taught that the "Art" in martial art was also to denote the expertise you gain through training. Which meant, the "art" was to know when to pull the punch within millimetres of the target or to let it go through.
Do we really practice martial arts today? If sense, we do not....
Monday, 8 April 2013
Friday, 5 April 2013
Tokaido Japan or is it China
Seems like Tokaido has finally succumbed and has "out-sourced" it's manufacturing to a Chinese company based in China (of course!).
It is sad to see that such a top quality brand name was struggling to keep going and has had to resort to taking the route it has. It keeps telling everyone that quality and design will not suffer. I hope that will be the case. Although when I now see a Tokaido gi being sold for under £20 one does have ask the question about quality.
Ok, before I get shouted down, I am not saying you cannot by quality at £20 but you have to admit, you definitely not going to get the quality you paid £100, £150 or £200.....are you?
Tokaido appears to taken the fight for it's survival down the cheap gi's and is now making and selling polycotton gi's associated with cheap imports from India, Malaysia, and Pakistan.
I just don't feel the same about these "new" Tokaido's.
Ho hum....
It is sad to see that such a top quality brand name was struggling to keep going and has had to resort to taking the route it has. It keeps telling everyone that quality and design will not suffer. I hope that will be the case. Although when I now see a Tokaido gi being sold for under £20 one does have ask the question about quality.
Ok, before I get shouted down, I am not saying you cannot by quality at £20 but you have to admit, you definitely not going to get the quality you paid £100, £150 or £200.....are you?
Tokaido appears to taken the fight for it's survival down the cheap gi's and is now making and selling polycotton gi's associated with cheap imports from India, Malaysia, and Pakistan.
I just don't feel the same about these "new" Tokaido's.
Ho hum....
Wednesday, 3 April 2013
Associations and Splinter Groups
Wow...
I was recently speaking with an Instructor and yet again he had decided to "move away" from the association he was part of. It was a sad moment.
He clearly still has strong feelings for the association which he had been a part of for nearly 20 years. Grew from 10th Kyu to 4th Dan in that time. I asked the reason for the move. At first he didn't want to talk about it. Slowly he made mention of how the organisation had changed. How is was more about the money now. It was too restrictive in where people could and more importantly, could not train.
So for one more time a split had occurred in a thriving association.
Since the 1960's when Karate got a foothold in the UK we have seen Japanese/Okinawan styles flourish. Grow. Become large associations boasting 10,000's of members. Then from 1980's ( a few before this time) we saw splits occur within these big associations. Large chunks of clubs and members heading off down a different route.
Everyone of complaining of similar issues as the ones I mentioned above. Strange how that even these splinter groups end up with their own splits and the people/groups moving away complaining about the same thing again.
A couple thoughts come to mind.
Did this not happen when Karate was "growing up". We had schools set up by teachers who spawned great students who then went off and "perfected" their own version of what they had been taught. Or added other aspects of different training to their core learning. This all helped to see different styles which added to the richness of we called Karate today.
Without these splits would we have been stuck with a single way performing Karate with very little variation over time?
On the one hand, all these splits should be good for Karate. Adding variety to the pool of martial arts.
On the other - have really seen any new variants of a style?
I was recently speaking with an Instructor and yet again he had decided to "move away" from the association he was part of. It was a sad moment.
He clearly still has strong feelings for the association which he had been a part of for nearly 20 years. Grew from 10th Kyu to 4th Dan in that time. I asked the reason for the move. At first he didn't want to talk about it. Slowly he made mention of how the organisation had changed. How is was more about the money now. It was too restrictive in where people could and more importantly, could not train.
So for one more time a split had occurred in a thriving association.
Since the 1960's when Karate got a foothold in the UK we have seen Japanese/Okinawan styles flourish. Grow. Become large associations boasting 10,000's of members. Then from 1980's ( a few before this time) we saw splits occur within these big associations. Large chunks of clubs and members heading off down a different route.
Everyone of complaining of similar issues as the ones I mentioned above. Strange how that even these splinter groups end up with their own splits and the people/groups moving away complaining about the same thing again.
A couple thoughts come to mind.
- Do the groups that split away from an association just end up becoming the kind of group that they complained about - it certainly would appear so.
- Is it all about......MONEY?
- In many cases it would appear to be a big contributing factor.
Did this not happen when Karate was "growing up". We had schools set up by teachers who spawned great students who then went off and "perfected" their own version of what they had been taught. Or added other aspects of different training to their core learning. This all helped to see different styles which added to the richness of we called Karate today.
Without these splits would we have been stuck with a single way performing Karate with very little variation over time?
On the one hand, all these splits should be good for Karate. Adding variety to the pool of martial arts.
On the other - have really seen any new variants of a style?
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