We had a great visit from Sensei Ravey over friday, saturday and sunday. He made the trip down from QLD to sunny Canberra to share some of his experiences.

Sensei Ravey was the head of IOGKF in Australia after 12 years training and teaching in Japan at the Yoyogi Dojo in Toyko with Sensei Higaonna. 20 years ago he formed his own association TOGKA. I was great to see everyone coming back together to train. Was a bit of a reunion as well as some of the instructors from my style were shodans and nidans 20 years ago training under Sensei Ravey.

A interesting point of note is despite there being little contact between the associations in a formal sense the shift has been quite small. The kata's and applications were identical from what i saw. The basic techniques were also very much the same. The real difference i noticed is in the supplementary exercises, some of the conditioning and strength exercises Sensei Ravey does seem more old fashion or is it traditional.

This poses my question, with so called traditional schools, which i would include my style in. How traditional do you go. I would argue that all the techniques and the kata and applications have been maintained to a standard set by Higaonna Sensei ( i realise you could argue wheather his version is accurate but not the point of this) Between the IOGKF all students at a given level be it in Australia or any of the other 43 countries would be very similar in terms of these basics, kata etc. So i could go to any IOGKF dojo in the world even 30 years ago and the kata i know would be the same. However i might have used creatine supplements, have a physio for back problems, use some new fangled resistance weight machine, do no pushups in my dojo due to some new court case and so on. The old dojo i visit might use Makawara, Chishi, lots of now bad stretching etc.

So should we preserve things like stretches even if science shows its bad, conditioning, certain pushups or two person strength exercises etc. Even weights such as iron rings etc

For so called Traditional styles should we perserve some of these old training exercises even if just for historicial sake. I feel they are good to know and give a better understanding of the style but for training purposes should only be used when appropiate.

Thoughts?

Cheers
Freek

Hi Freek,

I was talking about this very subject 2 nights ago with an instructor, let's call him Instructor A.

I started Shotokan with JKA in the 70's, and was graded by M. Nakayama, so I would consider that to be tradition exercises and training.

Years passed, I trained in a few diferent styles, and started a Dojo where Instructor A began his Karate career. I left that style before he got his Shodan, and now that he is a Nidan going for 3rd, he is now my instructor.
We often chat about the old days and compare them to both the "older" days of the 70's, and the newer days (now).

I would like to keep training 100% traditional, keeping everything as close as possible to the original (whatever that was), but Instructor A rightly points out that if that were the case, there would be very few students, there would be a lot more accidents and injuries in the Dojo, and there would be a lot more senior karate-ka out there with damaged joints, etc.

Modern aspects of training, such as kinesmatics, understanding of physiology and improved training methods are definitely better, especially for learning self defence and tournament kumite, but I would like to learn more of the esoteric side of karate, with more emphasis on the philosophical aspects of doing 1 stance and 1 block up and down the hall for 4 hours instead of the jumping-spinning-reverse-roundhouse-with-half-twist kick that may score a point at the next tournament, or have your would be assailant in stitches (laughing) on the ground.

Maybe I'm just getting old, but I kind of liked all of the apsects of the old traditional training.

++ This is not meant to offend anyone who can actually do a jumping-spinning-reverse-roundhouse-with-half-twist kick. I just envy you. Lots. ++

It would seem silly to carry on with an exercise that has scientifically been shown to be damaging. On the other hand, be wary of assuming that something is new simply because its better. I'm sure there are many cases of old practices that have been thought to inferior, simply because modern researchers have not actually understood them properly.

Mike

i agree its like a big circle, we run around banning every exercise we can think off only 5 years later to change back due to another better study.

Another thing i have questioned is at what point are the exercises introduced and how fit are the students. Dare i say more and more marshmallow shaped students are starting, in todays world its harder to have different exercises for different student even though its more appropiate. But keeping in the world wide PC trend we change to a small range of simple PC exercises that dont exclude anyone based on size or shape. We havent gone down this path as yet and you are expected to have a certain fitness when you come to training, but i have seen this change in many sports.

It would be ideal to have general exercises with some traditional aspect, then individual exercises slightly taylored based on body type as kata use to be. However with more and more instructors not knowing more than 3 months karate they cant be expected to also know anything about fitness training.



cheers
Freek

I think that some of the exercises that were done in the old days were pretty phsycho and it is good that these have changed. If people train like that their martial arts career is shortened drastically, and whats the fun in that.

A couple of months ago I was at a cafe having breakfast with Hanshi, when this guy came up and introduced himself to us and said how he used to train in kyokushin karate. He was telling us how hard they used to train and about all the crazy things they did at training and how soft most clubs are these days because they dont train that hard. Then he went on to tell us about how much he would like to be still training but he couldnt because his knees were stuffed and he had arthritis in his knuckles from makiwara training and there were a couple of other things he mentioned that were stuffed because of the hard training he had done in the past. This guy is only 32 years old, we have since become friends and have done a bit of training together, but he really is stuffed from his past training, so now he will sometimes help me teach a class every once and a while because he loves karate and it is too painful for him to train.

I love my training and I enjoy training hard, but you have to do it sensibly. I want to be doing this for my whole life not just for a couple of years. So I think it is good that some of the exercises have changed.

I like to keep every thing else traditional though. Shihan gave me a dvd for xmas this week which was really interesting, it was a doco about Gogen Yamaguchi Hanshi. It has footage from the 1950's and 60's of Yamaguchi performing all the Goju katas from Taikyoku up to Superumpei ( hope I spelled that right), and I am really pleased to say that the way we do them is exactly the same, it was a real eyeopener for me to see the katas havent changed in 50 years.

I think that this is great and we dont plan to change anything we want to keep it as close to the source as possible. Occasionally I will go and watch a NAS tournament and I really cringe now when I see the way that other clubs have altered the katas to make them look better for tournament. Or maybe its just the way that they interprit the kata, which is OK I guess, but for me I prefer to keep them as close to the source as possible and personally I think they look better done the old way anyway.

So I guess we do traditional karate but use modern training methods.

Thats my ramble

Rocket

Rocket makes some good points. Where is the line between keeping something because it is traditional and keeping something simply because "it's always been done that way"?

I suppose e.g. the performance of kata could be taken as something which is traditional and maintained within a school because there is unlikely to be any valid reason to change it. But other things can and do change.

For example, I finally got around to reading my copy of Shigeru Egami's The Heart of Karate-Do and it shows some things like changes in stances from what he describes as the "old way" to the "new way". One such change is that it describes the old form of kiba-dachi (horse stance) as having the feet turned in and the knees bowed out and the new form as having the feet pointed ahead and the knees bent over the toes. But it also shows other things such as the infamous bunny hops as being a great exercise to perform. Please note that this book was published in the 1970s and while modern shotokan still uses the "new" kiba dachi, anyone with any sense has long since abandoned bunny hops since they've been found to be horribly damaging to the knees.

So things do change over time and we should expect them to, though it doesn't mean changing just for the sake of change. Likewise there's no real reason not to change something when there is a valid reason. Karate was portrayed as something which could be undertaken by anyone - even women, the elderly and the infirm. (I'm not trying to be funny BTW) Therefore we should not expect to have a cutoff date for training either but be able to continue into our twilight years...

/* pictures Matt doing Tensho in the nursing home corridors while the staff try to clean him */


Mick

I am finding the more i train that i am effectively doing two styles of karate at the same time.

1. It is very clear that Sensei Higaonna has created a snapshot in time for his version of Goju and is trying to perserve his style, this changes very little and only with a lot of research.

2. The second style has the same kata and basic applications but involves doing training using modern equiptment, more scientific stretching etc. Different applications ie from alternate starting positions or grabs etc

So i feel like i should have two Black Belts one in 1940's Goju and one in 2001 Freestyle Goju. For me it works as i like the history and traditional aspects of the style. But its nice to have some modern interpertations as well, in case i have to use it. Most the time training is geared to the modern aspects but its fun to spend a week or two every now and then using chishi etc

cheers
Freek

I wonder if anyone sees it as a bit strange that Funakoshi wrote of the karate he was teaching in his later years being very different to the karate he learnt in his youth and that he fully expected it to continue to change, and yet most groups seem to try very hard to not change but preserve things the way they've always done them. Sometimes this is done in the name of tradition, but surely the tradition handed down ought to be one of changing to embrace better methods and adapting to the needs of the times?


Mick