[quote]Sifu wrote:
I took a look at the video. I’m not trying to be a jerk but it’s kind of hard to tell much just from watching people free fight.
Knees and elbows are good in close techniques that are great for the street and having mats to practice takedowns in free fighting is good. Obviously you guys aren’t afraid to get smacked around which is a good thing.
I went to the official website and did a google search and found there is an instructional video which shows basic upper body techniques and kicks, it also included a kata. But there isn’t really enough to tell other than it is essentially kyokushin kai with grappling elements included and some other assorted bits and pieces.
One thing to understand about the free fighting is this. Thanks to the advent of karate tournaments in the middle of the 20th century the various styles had the opportunity to come up against each other, and there has really been an exchange of ideas, so that over the last 50 years free fighting has evolved in a similar direction.
A huge influence on this evolution has been Isshinryu. A lot of styles are using our principles now in their free fighting. But if you go into the dojo’s of other styles their basics and kata’s look nothing like how they are free fighting.
Isshinryu basics and kata’s look very much like our free fighting. For example we don’t corkscrew our punches and we don’t lock out our elbows when we punch, in basics or free fighting.
Go into a Shotokan class and watch basics and you will see everyone in deep stances throwing corkscrew punches with locked out elbows. But watch them free fight and they will be using shorter stances and throwing vertical snap punches that don’t lock out just like the Isshinryu people.
But if you had gone into a Shotokan dojo fifty years ago you would have seen the free fighting that looked very different from what you see today. You would have seen deep stances and locked out punches and kicks.
So that is why it is hard to tell much from looking at free fighting. Because we are all reading from the same page, a page that was mostly written by Isshinryu.
If would be interested to know what kata are you guys are using. Isshinryu’s nickname is “the masters style” because of our kata. There is only one true Isshinryu kata Sunsu, which traditionally was only taught to black belts, the seven other hand katas come from Shorin ryu or Gojuryu.
Those non Isshinryu kata are all blackbelt level kata’s in their original styles hence our nickname. So that is another advancement we have, we don’t waste time with pinan’s. Our white belts start with Seisan which is a black belt kata from Shorin ryu.
Unfortunately the teaching of Seisan to white belts costs us more students than the groin kicks. We don’t always throw you to the wolves with the free fighting but we do with the kata.
Here is another interesting bit of history. Back in the 1920’s when the Japanese first asked the Okinawans to send them a karate master to demonstrate karate to them the unanimous first choice was their toughest fighter Choki Motobu.
The Okinawans were all set to send Motobu, till some sensible soul pointed out that Motobu was a barbarian who loved to fight, ate with his hands, was an Okinawan nationalist who fiercely hated the Japanese, who had taken on and defeated entire groups of people and that if he behaved in Japan the way he behaved in Okinawa the Japanese would have to bring in troops to shoot him.
So instead they chose to send a man who was a teacher of Japanese ettiquete who had impeccable manners and was the perfect example of a polite Japanese gentleman, Gichin Funakoshi. When Funakoshi had written a book on Japanese customs he had used the pen name Shotokan.
Here is good look at a healthy O’sensei Shimabuku at his dojo in Okinawa doing Kusanku kata. O’sensei was known for his front snap kicks and you can see it here. You also get to see his rapid fire snap punching Tatsuo Simabuku Kushanku Isshin ryu founder - YouTube
Here is a video of O’sensei Shimabuku demonstrating seisan kata. I would like to point out that at the time of filming he had a cold and had to do 14 more kata afterwards so he wasn’t trying to impress anyone, this was meant for educational purposes only.
Here is a more traditional version of seisan. Othsuka Seisan kata - YouTube
Here Shimabuku does chinto Chinto Kata - Isshinryu Karate & Kobudo - YouTube
Here is a traditional version of Chinto
Here is an Isshin ryu fighting demo from a fairly new school in the Netherlands. - YouTube
Here is Albert Mady who is from across the Detroit river in Canada. Master Mady is the same height as me but thicker. He spent many years working as a bouncer in a biker bar. You could always pick out his full contact fighters when they showed up at our tournament, because they would be carrying their gear in the same gym bags that they us for their hockey gear. So here is a tip. If you are at a full contact tournament and you see Canadians show up with hockey bags run like hell.
Here is a mere yellow belt doing seisan. Sadly he is showing a better technical knowledge of Isshinryu than all the Isshinryu black belts who have videos posted. I think the explanation for this is Isshinryu is the only system he has studied. Whereas the others have studied other styles which they don’t want to give up so they have bastardized their Isshinryu instead. There has been a lot of that unfortunately(we’ve been a system since 1954), and it is something to be aware of when looking at Isshinryu stylists, because you might not be seeing the real deal.
I am mainly a kickboxer these days. Daidojuku was a good experience and was the only thing close(that and judo) to my grandmother’s house when I stayed there in the summer.
Daidojuku is Kyokushin with more liberal rules and grappling. Azuma who formed Daidojuku was formerly with Kyokushin. These days in Japan(and alot of other countries besides the states) if you compete it is very difficult to get away from the Kykushin influence. Just the mechanics of how they throw techniques is very good and to deviate from the technique would leave you with something not as good.
Kyokushin has weakenesses created by the rules that govern their competitions. Guys are not very good at punching to the face. So they have some problems intially when they fight in K-1. Daido juku has holes in their defense, as you can see in that clip.
The Netherlands clip was interesting but those guys weren’t very good skill and technique wise. It kind of reminds me of the First World Kyokushin tournament. But in that tournament they had some very good fighters.
Things have evolved since then. Well they would not really pass muster with many karateka or kickboxers I know in Japan. Youtube is down right but guys who I think showed what truly great technique are: Shokei Matsui(current Chairman or Kyokushinkaikan), Midori Kenji(chairman or ShinKyokushinkai), Yamaki Kenji(runs a dojo in America these days), some of the Brazilians, Francisco Filho, Feitosa, Gary O’neil or Australia, Andy Hug(formerly Kyokushin,then Seidokaikan and K-1), Nicholas Pettas.
These days there are many guys who have very good technique polished over years and many competitions, it is quite surprising how many Japanese I meet who have very good technique. Many cross over into kickboxing, and do well. It only got that way from hard training and hard contact and years of practice.
I don’t remember practicing much kata when I went to Daido juku as a child. It was just sparring, conditioning, and technique, bag work, mitt work. Lots of conditioning, hundreds of kicks, hundreds of squats, lots of mitt work, sparring until you cannot stand. That was just the mentality in Japan back then, still is in many places.
You have alot of interesting information and probably know more about karate than most Japanese.