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hand striking
Aug. 30th, 2010 10:19 pmWhatever art you chose, whether it be boxing, Gong Fu (Kung Fu for those who do not know pin yin), Karate, or even kicking arts like Tae Kwon Do, you need to learn how to keep your hand safe while striking. For most arts, the most efficient method for hand protection while striking is by making a proper fist. The fist disperses force received while amplifying force given.
One of the first lessons you will get in an art is on fist creation. Here are the main points to keep in mind.
FIST CREATION
1. Curl in your index, middle, ring, and pinky fingers. Fold them in at the middle knuckles and then at the big knuckles at the base of the fingers. Make sure they are tightly curled in. This reduces injury, but still allows for squeezing that amplifies strength.
2. At the moment of a punch's impact, squeeze your fist, and then relax the moment the impact has passed.
One of the first lessons you will get in an art is on fist creation. Here are the main points to keep in mind.
FIST CREATION
1. Curl in your index, middle, ring, and pinky fingers. Fold them in at the middle knuckles and then at the big knuckles at the base of the fingers. Make sure they are tightly curled in. This reduces injury, but still allows for squeezing that amplifies strength.
2. At the moment of a punch's impact, squeeze your fist, and then relax the moment the impact has passed.
The meanings of Fear and Worry
Jul. 7th, 2010 09:35 pmA Martial Artist needs to deal with the concept of Fear. What is Fear and how does it affect our life? There are few, if any, pursuits that make us face our fears so directly as Martial Arts. In other activities, we start off slowly. In tennis? We hit a ball lightly and practice the basics before feeling the fear of a full match. The same is true for other sports. For Martial Arts? We are getting punches thrown at us the first day. We are faced with limbs flying at us, with the concept of very real pain. We are faced with someone physically confronting and moving our body in ways that it is specifically not designed to go.
We must face Fear at the outset in Martial Arts.
To be a successful Martial Artist, we need to define Fear. Here then is my definition.
I think that fear is a paralyzing emotion. It wraps us in ourselves and makes all action is perceived as painful. The actions are perceived as such because fear is such a selfish action that makes us so absorbed in ourselves that anything that causes us to interact outside of ourselves is seen as pain.
I feel that worry and fear are the same emotion, people just use the word worry to hide the selfishness of the emotion.
DO not Fear or Worry, my friends. Give to others completely, and you will transcend Fear and Worry, and improve as Martial Artists.
What do you think about Fear? The more we discuss this emotion, the more we can figure it out to defeat it.
We must face Fear at the outset in Martial Arts.
To be a successful Martial Artist, we need to define Fear. Here then is my definition.
I think that fear is a paralyzing emotion. It wraps us in ourselves and makes all action is perceived as painful. The actions are perceived as such because fear is such a selfish action that makes us so absorbed in ourselves that anything that causes us to interact outside of ourselves is seen as pain.
I feel that worry and fear are the same emotion, people just use the word worry to hide the selfishness of the emotion.
DO not Fear or Worry, my friends. Give to others completely, and you will transcend Fear and Worry, and improve as Martial Artists.
What do you think about Fear? The more we discuss this emotion, the more we can figure it out to defeat it.
I am frustrated by my seemingly endless stream of injuries incurred during Martial Arts practice. From a hurt wrist that clicks when I move it in various directions, to a shoulder that clicks as well, to a knee that clicks, to a broken foot that never healed fully, to a bruised tailbone that continues to ache, I seem to be a man constructed of weakening parts, waiting for the slightly stiffening breeze to break apart their tenuous hold on each other, destroying my structure of a body.
I rest, but I do not heal fully. I get frustrated at not healing, and exercise lightly, but that either exacerbates the problem, or does nothing to either heal or hurt the area, remaining a neutral action. I have tried massage, rest, hot water, gentle martial arts, but nothing has helped. Perhaps I should just go to the doctor, but I am not sure how much they could help either.
I write this to ask you, my few readers, what should I do? I do not want to stop practicing martial arts, but I do not want to become more permanently injured, either.
I rest, but I do not heal fully. I get frustrated at not healing, and exercise lightly, but that either exacerbates the problem, or does nothing to either heal or hurt the area, remaining a neutral action. I have tried massage, rest, hot water, gentle martial arts, but nothing has helped. Perhaps I should just go to the doctor, but I am not sure how much they could help either.
I write this to ask you, my few readers, what should I do? I do not want to stop practicing martial arts, but I do not want to become more permanently injured, either.
The dojo at night
Jun. 11th, 2010 01:12 pmThe Dojo, literally “Way Place” in Japanese, is a place with a purpose that is very specific and very nebulous in turns. Specific because it ostensibly deals with Martial Arts, the study of effective combat against fellow humans, and nebulous because that study seems almost comically ubiquitous once a certain depth of study is reached. This almost contradiction in purposes is reflected in the myriad shapes of Dojos.
There are small one room Dojos, belying their importance and the amount you can accomplish in them with their almost claustrophobic conditions. Filled with training tools, each tells a story. The size of the Dojo makes one feel overwhelmed when inside, unable to escape the raw emotion present in the training materials, absorbed into them through countless hours of work. These Dojos, born out of necessity in areas where training was either frowned upon or outright outlawed, are still in use today because their Spartan furnishings do not provide distractions from the arduous task of finding oneself. Michael Clarke, a Martial Artist who lives in Australia, has a Dojo attached to his house. The room is sublimely organized, with tools all in their proper place. The tools are in their homes, ready to be used, like books in a library, ready to help the user transcend his location .
There are exceedingly large Dojos, like the Kodokan Judo Dojo in Tokyo Japan. This mammoth 8 story building, a proclaimed “Mecca of International Judo” This Dojo, filled to the brim with Judoka (Judo Practitioners). The top two floors even include a Judo research library! Clearly, for Judo, this place becomes more than a simple Dojo; it encompasses all of what Dojos should be.
And what is it that Dojos should be? What is the “Way” that these “Places” are trying to get us on, what path? With places of such varying size, with various equipment, some with libraries and some without, for what common path could they exist, and what tools are really necessary for the realization of that path?
One of the most basic philosophical questions is this: why are we here? While this question may have occupied prehistoric man’s mind to a limited extent, the needs of survival were of paramount importance, pressing all other concerns t o the fringes of thought. We have divorced ourselves from the quagmire of survival, and allowed our minds a freedom, as far as we know, unique among creatures. There is a price to be paid for such freedom, however. The price has been a surplus of free brain space. This brain space, since the beginning of history, has been dominated by the questions of our origin as a species, and why we exist at all. Why are we the only creatures with higher thinking power and, more importantly, what do we do with this power?
To divorce ourselves from the struggle and whimsical nature of hunter-gatherer survival, we created places and homes. These new technologies allowed us to collect surpluses of food for times when roaming herds of animals were scarce. This, along with other technologies, allowed us to surpass the pure physiological needs. Being faced with new questions, we have created new places, new homes, to help us answer them. Most of the places are religious structures: Temples, Churches, Synagogues, Mosques, and Shrines. We humans make constant trips to these places to understand our greater purpose. While religious spaces are the most oft discussed and recognized, there are other spaces that accomplish similar goals. The Dojo is such a space.
A Dojo is linked directly with study of Martial Arts. To understand their power as spiritual spaces imbued with the ability to transmogrify persons, a quick trip into the history of Martial Arts is in order. The subject itself is as amorphous and nebulous as the study of human culture itself, fitting perhaps, because human histories are defined, by and large, by the wars in which they engage and their worth is dictated by the amount and size of the victories they obtain. A small vignette is in order that, like a small piece of a fractal, embodies all of the elements of the larger work.
One of the world’s most famous Martial Arts is Karate, its ubiquity making it a pseudo-synonym for Martial Arts; much like Coke is for all soda. An art born on the islands of Okinawa, a place between Japan and China, Karate was created to aid the Okinawans in defending their homes from Japanese and Chinese aggression. Their art was taught in family houses, behind closed doors, as the practice of Karate was outlawed by the occupying Japanese quickly after they learned of its existence.
A great exponent of Karate, Gichin Funakoshi, the founder of Shotokan Karate, trained in the smaller, family style dojo of Yasatsune Azato (run out of his own house). He moved from that Dojo to train with other Karate masters, all with small family Dojos. Eventually, Funakoshi, through an exhibition of Karate in Tokyo, implemented Dojos in schools, and created an organization for Karate, the Japan Karate Association, in 1955. The organization he created, like a large Dojo that helps thousands find their Way in the world, accomplished the same goal as the small, family Dojo in which he started on the island of Okinawa. This was Funakoshi’s way of giving the comfort of that family Dojo to the entire country of Japan. In this way, martial arts give comfort and stability to the people who study them.
A few words on my own Dojo. My Sensei (teacher) ran the Dojo out of his home. While the back yard, the “Dojo” space was clean, with boards for sparring, and other weapons and tools to aid in acquiring skills, his home was anything but clean and orderly. The house is the messiest abode I have ever seen. Boots frolic with shirts on the floor, while the kitchen houses an almost constant, overflowing pile of dirty dishes, crusted with week old foodstuffs.
All this being said, the ability inherent in all Dojo to help those find their path is still prevalent in my Sensei’s house, which we sometimes use for training when his neighbor, frustrated with having a Dojo in his back yard, forces us to train indoors, where the noise is less noticeable. The chaotic nature of the house matters not a whit for personal development, as training only involves the people and the tools, and the detritus matters not in the endeavor.
So what is the use of all of this? Who do there need to be various shapes and devices used in Dojos? I have focused only on Karate, but Dojos exist in all forms of Martial Arts. These places, these Dojos, exist to allow us a place to find our path through the world. Since we are all different, and our paths are found in different pursuits, the Dojo changes, filled with the tools and items needed for the users to find their path. The Dojo becomes a reflection of their worldviews, of their minds, and of their souls.
While understanding and conceptualizing a library can be accomplished by visiting one, sitting amongst its stacks of shelves, and reading its books, conceptualizing a Dojo is more difficult, because getting the full feeling of one cannot be accomplished by a simple visit. The environment is too alien, the customs and too strange, the people perhaps too loud or demanding. There is a sense of calm that emanates from your very soul when you experience a proper Dojo. Therefore, I leave you with a meditation. Take a deep breath in through your nose. Breathe in for 4 seconds, hold your breath for 7 seconds, and breathe out for 8 seconds. Remember to breathe out through your mouth. As you breathe, close your eyes. Imagine your breath matches the waves on a beach, as they lap against the shore. The in breath is the water receding from the shore, and the out breath is the water coming back to the shore. Slowly breathe, focusing on your breath, the time, and the waves. Go ahead, do this 5 times, 5 in breaths and 5 out breaths. When you are finished, come back and read.
Do you feel that sense of calm, that stability? That is what it feels like to be in a Dojo.
There are small one room Dojos, belying their importance and the amount you can accomplish in them with their almost claustrophobic conditions. Filled with training tools, each tells a story. The size of the Dojo makes one feel overwhelmed when inside, unable to escape the raw emotion present in the training materials, absorbed into them through countless hours of work. These Dojos, born out of necessity in areas where training was either frowned upon or outright outlawed, are still in use today because their Spartan furnishings do not provide distractions from the arduous task of finding oneself. Michael Clarke, a Martial Artist who lives in Australia, has a Dojo attached to his house. The room is sublimely organized, with tools all in their proper place. The tools are in their homes, ready to be used, like books in a library, ready to help the user transcend his location .
There are exceedingly large Dojos, like the Kodokan Judo Dojo in Tokyo Japan. This mammoth 8 story building, a proclaimed “Mecca of International Judo” This Dojo, filled to the brim with Judoka (Judo Practitioners). The top two floors even include a Judo research library! Clearly, for Judo, this place becomes more than a simple Dojo; it encompasses all of what Dojos should be.
And what is it that Dojos should be? What is the “Way” that these “Places” are trying to get us on, what path? With places of such varying size, with various equipment, some with libraries and some without, for what common path could they exist, and what tools are really necessary for the realization of that path?
One of the most basic philosophical questions is this: why are we here? While this question may have occupied prehistoric man’s mind to a limited extent, the needs of survival were of paramount importance, pressing all other concerns t o the fringes of thought. We have divorced ourselves from the quagmire of survival, and allowed our minds a freedom, as far as we know, unique among creatures. There is a price to be paid for such freedom, however. The price has been a surplus of free brain space. This brain space, since the beginning of history, has been dominated by the questions of our origin as a species, and why we exist at all. Why are we the only creatures with higher thinking power and, more importantly, what do we do with this power?
To divorce ourselves from the struggle and whimsical nature of hunter-gatherer survival, we created places and homes. These new technologies allowed us to collect surpluses of food for times when roaming herds of animals were scarce. This, along with other technologies, allowed us to surpass the pure physiological needs. Being faced with new questions, we have created new places, new homes, to help us answer them. Most of the places are religious structures: Temples, Churches, Synagogues, Mosques, and Shrines. We humans make constant trips to these places to understand our greater purpose. While religious spaces are the most oft discussed and recognized, there are other spaces that accomplish similar goals. The Dojo is such a space.
A Dojo is linked directly with study of Martial Arts. To understand their power as spiritual spaces imbued with the ability to transmogrify persons, a quick trip into the history of Martial Arts is in order. The subject itself is as amorphous and nebulous as the study of human culture itself, fitting perhaps, because human histories are defined, by and large, by the wars in which they engage and their worth is dictated by the amount and size of the victories they obtain. A small vignette is in order that, like a small piece of a fractal, embodies all of the elements of the larger work.
One of the world’s most famous Martial Arts is Karate, its ubiquity making it a pseudo-synonym for Martial Arts; much like Coke is for all soda. An art born on the islands of Okinawa, a place between Japan and China, Karate was created to aid the Okinawans in defending their homes from Japanese and Chinese aggression. Their art was taught in family houses, behind closed doors, as the practice of Karate was outlawed by the occupying Japanese quickly after they learned of its existence.
A great exponent of Karate, Gichin Funakoshi, the founder of Shotokan Karate, trained in the smaller, family style dojo of Yasatsune Azato (run out of his own house). He moved from that Dojo to train with other Karate masters, all with small family Dojos. Eventually, Funakoshi, through an exhibition of Karate in Tokyo, implemented Dojos in schools, and created an organization for Karate, the Japan Karate Association, in 1955. The organization he created, like a large Dojo that helps thousands find their Way in the world, accomplished the same goal as the small, family Dojo in which he started on the island of Okinawa. This was Funakoshi’s way of giving the comfort of that family Dojo to the entire country of Japan. In this way, martial arts give comfort and stability to the people who study them.
A few words on my own Dojo. My Sensei (teacher) ran the Dojo out of his home. While the back yard, the “Dojo” space was clean, with boards for sparring, and other weapons and tools to aid in acquiring skills, his home was anything but clean and orderly. The house is the messiest abode I have ever seen. Boots frolic with shirts on the floor, while the kitchen houses an almost constant, overflowing pile of dirty dishes, crusted with week old foodstuffs.
All this being said, the ability inherent in all Dojo to help those find their path is still prevalent in my Sensei’s house, which we sometimes use for training when his neighbor, frustrated with having a Dojo in his back yard, forces us to train indoors, where the noise is less noticeable. The chaotic nature of the house matters not a whit for personal development, as training only involves the people and the tools, and the detritus matters not in the endeavor.
So what is the use of all of this? Who do there need to be various shapes and devices used in Dojos? I have focused only on Karate, but Dojos exist in all forms of Martial Arts. These places, these Dojos, exist to allow us a place to find our path through the world. Since we are all different, and our paths are found in different pursuits, the Dojo changes, filled with the tools and items needed for the users to find their path. The Dojo becomes a reflection of their worldviews, of their minds, and of their souls.
While understanding and conceptualizing a library can be accomplished by visiting one, sitting amongst its stacks of shelves, and reading its books, conceptualizing a Dojo is more difficult, because getting the full feeling of one cannot be accomplished by a simple visit. The environment is too alien, the customs and too strange, the people perhaps too loud or demanding. There is a sense of calm that emanates from your very soul when you experience a proper Dojo. Therefore, I leave you with a meditation. Take a deep breath in through your nose. Breathe in for 4 seconds, hold your breath for 7 seconds, and breathe out for 8 seconds. Remember to breathe out through your mouth. As you breathe, close your eyes. Imagine your breath matches the waves on a beach, as they lap against the shore. The in breath is the water receding from the shore, and the out breath is the water coming back to the shore. Slowly breathe, focusing on your breath, the time, and the waves. Go ahead, do this 5 times, 5 in breaths and 5 out breaths. When you are finished, come back and read.
Do you feel that sense of calm, that stability? That is what it feels like to be in a Dojo.
The point of training
Jun. 11th, 2010 11:53 amI pen this with a heavy heart. Wow, that sounds so cliche, doesn't it? Organs do not gain or lose mass to suit our literary or emotional needs, yet we manhandle phrases, manipulating them, "turning" them with our oafish, clumsy hands, trying to grasp that which is, at its very nature, ephemeral. I also do not really pen it, because pens are not involved in this construction, but saying I type this belies importance, places it one step above "I text this with a heavy heart".
It is appropriate, I suppose, to start this journal when my sensei has left for Japan. He has taught me for two years, and is now leaving for two years; I cry while the Libra in me smiles.
I remember when it all started, how I came to train with Rafe. Were this a movie, the orchestral score would start (hopefully I would have a heroic score by Hanz Zimmer, but I would most likely get a comedic one by Randy Newman). I walk down an alleyway in the bad part of town, stupidly late at night (que orchestra [Zimmer] or "Walkin along, late at night, dangerous part of town, robbers jump out, scary fright, my pants just turned brown" [Newman]). Robbers jump out, knives in hand. One of them says some slick line like "Yer money or yer life!" or "It's not safe walking out here at night, you could get hurt!" Rafe would jump in and, with a flash of martial arts prowess so fast I would only see blurry fists and feet, all accompanied with that "whoosh" sound and the "crack" as they hit the robbers, you know, to show it really hurt,, he would dispatch the hoodlums. Thus would begin a lifelong love of martial arts.
Ah, for things to be that extraordinarily generic and generically extraordinary. The way it actually happened was more commonplace and more extraordinary than I could have imagined.
We had gone to middle school together, where he was a year behind me. I only remembered him as a thin, goofy kid with a pony tail. We hung out on the bus, and saw eachother at school. Our interactions were minimal, however.
We met again on a train platform, as we waited to travel into the city. I was going to class for Elementary Education, and Rafe was traveling to Temple to take a class. We had the stereotypical moment of recognition and "how the hell are you, you big so and so!", which was made not so stereotypical when we realized that we actually had things in common (a love for martial arts and exercise physiology), and that we were both teachers.
We chatted the whole ride, and he invited me to have a free lesson with him. Being a frugal lover of awesome things (not a lover of awesome frugal things, VERY different), I smiled and said sure. I went a few months later (life intervened and conspired to keep me from awesome, as it so often does), and had my first lesson.
After showing him the scant bit I knew (small bits of Capoeira, a smattering of Tai Chi) I sparred him. The sparring, where Rafe danced around me like I was standing still, showing me, with light touches and pokes, where I was vulnerable. Everytime I thought of making a strike, he was countering it, and moving it so that it met his designs, aided him in finding leverage over my body. From that eye-opening you-know-nothing-about-martial-arts moment on, my training began,
I say all of this to explain why it is I train, and why people should train.
I had a martial arts lesson where I was taught that I knew nothing, yet I went back to it. Why would I do that? To keep doing something when you have such a humbling experience as an introduction is a way to eliminate your ego. I train so that I can continually know how little I know. It keeps me humble, but also allows me to find out more things.
The training we do is not about destroying opponents. Rafe did not destroy me when we sparred; he taught me. The Martial Arts I learn is all about teaching others, not about destruction. Far too many people are obsessed with Arts that are "good on the street". They are so focused on combat effectiveness that they miss the spiritual aspect of Martial Arts.
Those schools, those "street ready" schools, are backlashes against the full spiritual Tai Chi schools that have cropped up, where the form of the art is more important than that form's effectiveness.
There is a middle path, where most schools do not tread. We can study the art of movements without ignoring movements that are not aesthetically pleasing, and we can study the effectiveness of movements without dissolving into slightly more evolved "fight clubs". Come with me on this journey as we try to discover what good training is, how to participate in it, and what the use of Martial Arts is in the age of guns, those "great equalizers" in terms of fighting. Training for form? Not purely. Training for fighting? Not entirely. Training for Budo, the art of fighting? absolutely
It is appropriate, I suppose, to start this journal when my sensei has left for Japan. He has taught me for two years, and is now leaving for two years; I cry while the Libra in me smiles.
I remember when it all started, how I came to train with Rafe. Were this a movie, the orchestral score would start (hopefully I would have a heroic score by Hanz Zimmer, but I would most likely get a comedic one by Randy Newman). I walk down an alleyway in the bad part of town, stupidly late at night (que orchestra [Zimmer] or "Walkin along, late at night, dangerous part of town, robbers jump out, scary fright, my pants just turned brown" [Newman]). Robbers jump out, knives in hand. One of them says some slick line like "Yer money or yer life!" or "It's not safe walking out here at night, you could get hurt!" Rafe would jump in and, with a flash of martial arts prowess so fast I would only see blurry fists and feet, all accompanied with that "whoosh" sound and the "crack" as they hit the robbers, you know, to show it really hurt,, he would dispatch the hoodlums. Thus would begin a lifelong love of martial arts.
Ah, for things to be that extraordinarily generic and generically extraordinary. The way it actually happened was more commonplace and more extraordinary than I could have imagined.
We had gone to middle school together, where he was a year behind me. I only remembered him as a thin, goofy kid with a pony tail. We hung out on the bus, and saw eachother at school. Our interactions were minimal, however.
We met again on a train platform, as we waited to travel into the city. I was going to class for Elementary Education, and Rafe was traveling to Temple to take a class. We had the stereotypical moment of recognition and "how the hell are you, you big so and so!", which was made not so stereotypical when we realized that we actually had things in common (a love for martial arts and exercise physiology), and that we were both teachers.
We chatted the whole ride, and he invited me to have a free lesson with him. Being a frugal lover of awesome things (not a lover of awesome frugal things, VERY different), I smiled and said sure. I went a few months later (life intervened and conspired to keep me from awesome, as it so often does), and had my first lesson.
After showing him the scant bit I knew (small bits of Capoeira, a smattering of Tai Chi) I sparred him. The sparring, where Rafe danced around me like I was standing still, showing me, with light touches and pokes, where I was vulnerable. Everytime I thought of making a strike, he was countering it, and moving it so that it met his designs, aided him in finding leverage over my body. From that eye-opening you-know-nothing-about-martial-arts moment on, my training began,
I say all of this to explain why it is I train, and why people should train.
I had a martial arts lesson where I was taught that I knew nothing, yet I went back to it. Why would I do that? To keep doing something when you have such a humbling experience as an introduction is a way to eliminate your ego. I train so that I can continually know how little I know. It keeps me humble, but also allows me to find out more things.
The training we do is not about destroying opponents. Rafe did not destroy me when we sparred; he taught me. The Martial Arts I learn is all about teaching others, not about destruction. Far too many people are obsessed with Arts that are "good on the street". They are so focused on combat effectiveness that they miss the spiritual aspect of Martial Arts.
Those schools, those "street ready" schools, are backlashes against the full spiritual Tai Chi schools that have cropped up, where the form of the art is more important than that form's effectiveness.
There is a middle path, where most schools do not tread. We can study the art of movements without ignoring movements that are not aesthetically pleasing, and we can study the effectiveness of movements without dissolving into slightly more evolved "fight clubs". Come with me on this journey as we try to discover what good training is, how to participate in it, and what the use of Martial Arts is in the age of guns, those "great equalizers" in terms of fighting. Training for form? Not purely. Training for fighting? Not entirely. Training for Budo, the art of fighting? absolutely
Hello, journal world. My name is Oliver, and I am writing this journal to document my martial arts training, and also to document my random thoughts and musings about life or about teaching, my day job. I do hope that the topics covered will be useful, but if they are not, they will at least be useful to me.
