Before I start, just wanted to say that I seem to write and drift away with ideas and thoughts being disconnected at times – well many times. If you feel that my writing style sux I apologise, but then again, this little blog is simply feelings and views where everyday life sparks something enough in me to want to type away without having to be concerned about grammar or structure, or trying to please everyone with nice opinions.…. and this time is no different haha. Disconnection and personal opinions coming right up.
So one close mate of mine who has been residing in Japan for over a good decade, just sent me some recent pics of him in his various martial arts dojos. His main background being aikido, however, religiously trains in judo too, at the same time squashing in karate lessons whenever he can. One motivated martial artist who is the jack of all trades it seems!
Let’s slightly go off track now, but for a long time now I have always wondered why people who do karate seem to feel they have to learn unrelated things, learn kata from as many styles as they can, or things like possess random objects/weapons into their karate. I’ll be more explicit and list down exactly what I have witnessed.
· Karate and Arnis;
· Cutting paper with bokken in a karate club;
· Incorporating Naihanchi kata into Goju syllabus;
· Integrating Judo;
· Simply having samurai swords and/or shinai (kendo swords) in the club…
Why? Why? Whyyyyyy??? Delilah . . .
The list goes on and on…. Just like to add one more quick “Are you fecking serious?” story here if I may. I was contacted recently by a gentleman who sounded super frantic on the phone and was begging us to teach him kobudo. Not exactly kobudo, but tonfa specifically. Why, because he had bought out the entire stock of them at the local martial arts shop and wanted to teach his existing karate students. Ummm, why would you teach something you don’t know anything about? To maintain student interest maybe, to gain a larger market share of students? More is more? More is better? Pretty sad for the majority out there who seem obliged to satisfy student needs, sorry I meant paying customers in the martial arts world. I didn’t even inform this story to my 2 amigos as similar inquires are such a regular occurrence.
If I were to receive $1 for every inquiry that has resulted in my eyebrows scrunching up, I could have retired by now… Oh dear… Well that was the final straw, and my karate phone number now disabled. I simply didn’t want to add anymore facial wrinkles to my prince charming looks.
People in general always want more and more and never seem to be satisfied.
(The video below is not so related, nevertheless a nice video on the outlook of life)
In terms of karate, if one is craving extra knowledge or understanding, all it takes is a little bit of digging, and more digging, and then dig a little deeper to learn within yourself. Yes, at the early stages a beginner student requires a sensei to lead and guide the way, but for the so-called sensei themselves out there who are forever needing to implement fresh and wonderful “extras” into their curriculum or club, they should begin by looking at themselves first.
It’s not difficult, everyone has that inner ability to explore and search. Is it feasible for anybody? I truly believe so! Do you have the patience and persistence? Do you have a genuine passion for karate or is it all about the dollars? Do you love the art of karate enough to place routine time and effort into it? If so, put those vikings swords or whatever unrelated weapons away, and before feeling the necessity to do/have/teach/chop/possess/cut/learn new random kata or blah blah more – start searching within yourself and what you are actually doing! I know that I have more than a million lifetimes worth of karate things I can work on and dig a lot deeper into without even the slightest urge or thought of seeking more. Who would have thought karate could be so cluttered with so many extras….