November « 2005 « The ‘Practice Karate’ Blog

Archive for November, 2005

How many of us associate traditional karate with Mr. Miyagi?

Monday, November 28th, 2005

On Thanksgiving day last week (November 24th) the actor Pat Morita died. ‘The Karate Kid’s’ Mr. Miyagi, the humble and funny karate instructor played by Pat Morita, is well known even among kids who weren’t around when the series of four ‘Karate Kid’ movies was produced.

When I think of Mr. Miyagi, I daydream of the old-school Sensei, where humbleness and tradition and hard work mean everything! Tonight, four days later, Pat Morita’s death still bothers me.

Well, today I remembered that I had the pleasure to train under Pat Morita’s stunt-double from those karate movies. I briefly wrote about that here.

I mean, I know that Mr. Morita had no formal karate training before the movies. He played other characters (I’m only slightly familiar with Arnold from ‘Happy Days.’) But to me, and to probably alot of other people, he’ll always be the humble and funny karate Sensei.

Posted in Martial Arts As A Way of Life | No Comments »

A very,very nice promotion ceremony.

Sunday, November 20th, 2005

Our karate school puts on a very (, very) nice Black Belt promotion ceremony. I’d seen it a couple of times. I was promoted through it Thursday night.

It involves the lighting of candles, each pair the color of the belts earned along the path to Black Belt. At each color the meaning of that rank is read as the candles are being lit. The reading means more to the audience; I wasn’t paying attention to that, I was trying to keep the wax off the carpet!

As a 10+ year karate-ka, and a Black Belt in another style, I found the experience satisfying. Partly because of my history with a past school – you can read about that here. It’s a little verbose, you’ve been warned!

After the ceremony we eat, and the other students make a big deal out of sitting you down and waiting on you. Big fun! Actually, it was humbling and even a little humiliating. Yes, humiliating, and I mean that in a good way! Part of that ‘living up to the rank’ commitment.

If you don’t award your Black Belt promotions in a significantly different way than your lower ranks, change your Black Belt ceremony now!

Posted in Training History | No Comments »

The excellent question was: “Why are we training stances?”

Wednesday, November 16th, 2005

It was the three-stance exercise that formed the question in her mind. The innocent question was asked by a young adult white belt. And I had to think a bit to answer it for her level. This class’ ages range mostly from about 12 to 16 years old. A few other adults, lower ranks, were also looking at me to hear what I had to say. After all, their legs were burning – I hoped – and they wanted a good answer.
Well, the quick reason was that training stances with proper tension in the legs and body makes all techniques – kicks, blocks and punches – stronger. (My answer was something along that line.) I can’t believe this meant much to her since she is just getting started with her training.
But there are many more reasons for training stances! What are they? And how does this ‘proper tension’ thing make a block stronger? Or any other technique stronger for that matter? Sure, done correctly, the legs get stronger. Doh!
So my task is to explain reasons for training stances. And explaining them to a white belt might be the biggest challenge. Sounds like a Sweat Blood! e-zine article to me.

Posted in The Basics | 1 Comment »