When we started out for the first time in karate, we were excited. We  knew nothing and the idea of black belt was so far removed it hardly entered our mind. And if we were honest with ourselves, we didn't think we would make it anyway. We started forward with dreams as our only expectations. We were white belts.                                                                                                            

This experience isn't much different from when a person starts out on the path of adulthood; fresh, innocent, and just excited to start moving forward in life; simply white belts in the training of life.

For a while it was great. In karate we started to learn a couple of moves, memorized a few beginning katas, and started to bounce around a little in kumite. There were no expectations and poor performance was predictable. Life was great. We didn't even know what we didn't know. We were blue belts.

This was exactly like the twenties. We were young, naïve, and everyone including ourselves knew we didn't know anything. We were trying to learn what was going on in life and searching to find out who we were. We had moved from white belt to the first color belt of life.

Then it started to get a little more complicated. We moved to green belt, now intermediate students. Skills started to get better, awareness of the big martial art picture improved and we became more dangerous, mostly to ourselves.......................................................... 

Ray Hughes

Scottsdale Martial Arts Center

SMACUS.com 

rhughes@smacus.com 

Robert Hunt

Adrift

          Once karate migrated from Okinawa and found fertile ground in Japan, everything changed. Linked to its Okinawan source, anchored by the old teachers and centuries of tradition, it remained, at least in intent, a fighting art with applications. Once unhinged from those roots, it emerged as whatever someone imagined - a sport, a capitalist's dream, a political platform, a movie.

            When a boat breaks loose of its mooring, it drifts in whatever direction the currents lead. Such was karate outside of Okinawa. With no seniors around, with no heritage to which to be true, it drifted, and the inevitable shore on which it ran aground was...sports.

Funakoshi Gigo

            The first Okinawan to introduce karate to Japan was Funakoshi Gichin. He was also one of the first to significantly alter the art. He and his son Gigo made many of the innovations that eventually became modern Shotokan - the wider stances, the exaggerated side kicks. Gigo died at the end of the war years, Funakoshi died in 1957. His student Nakayama Masatoshi continued to innovate and is probably the person most responsible for turning Funakoshi's Okinawan karate into the Japan Karate Association sport vehicle.  

Funakoshi, Gigo and/or Nakayama created kata like Unsu (from Mabuni's original version) and Empi (from the old Shorin version of Wanshu). Nakayama's goal was to create routines that would be sport applicable - more athletic in nature (than martial).        

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To contact Robert Hunt  

steelmoon@hushmail.com 

Dr. Sam Sterk

This is the first of several articles to help you improve your Karate Performance using Mental Preparation.

In college, I took two years of Japanese Karate and began to appreciate the mental aspects of the sport. Later, I continued my Martial Arts training which eventually earned me a fifth Dan. In 1983, I was presented an award, by the NY Institute of Martial Arts for, "Pioneering efforts in understanding how the mind plays an important role in martial arts training and in competitions."  

Much has been written about how elite athlete who used mental preparation techniques performed much better than athletes who were not mentally trained for competition. I have a number of questions for you to help you look at your own performance in Martial Arts.

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