Innholdsfortegnelse for April/May 2020 i Black Belt Magazine

▶ Grandpa Syndrome Kids these days are soft. I know, we’ve heard it a million times, usually right before we’re hit with a “back in my day” monologue by some aging martial arts instructor in an ill-fitting gi. I like to call these guys “grandpas.” They never miss an opportunity to wax poetic about the past, when karate was tough, their sensei was semi-magical and only the strong survived the training. They hate the current times and deride what they see as a preference for flash over substance. Read the post on blackbeltmag.com. ▶ Snobbery Is Hurting Your Academy How many times has a potential new student walked into your academy and given you the rundown on their training? “I did taekwondo for five years,” they begin. You wait for…

Eacherd Bogdan: I assume you mean real, useful martial arts, not made-up-for-a-story martial arts or obscure no-fighting, non-working, power-at-a-distance martial arts. Of these, capoeira is probably the best and weirdest working martial art. It assumes that the practitioner might well be tied up, cuffed, manacled, on his back or belly; might have his legs cuffed, might have to pick up a sharp rock with his feet to enhance his strike or steal a knife or a razor blade to hold in his toes to open up an opponent with a kick. Those funny handstand moves you see in video games are from capoeira — because you can do them with your hands cuffed. There’s a lot of spinning kicks, thrust kicks, head butts, deceptive motions and rough-and-tumble ground fighting. The…

SOME CENTERS also include weight rooms, basketball courts and pingpong tables. The price for training is generally just $10 a month. The Vietnam national san da team trains on the fourth floor of one such center in Hanoi, not far from the city’s business center. While climbing the stairs, I would spot locals practicing karate, taekwondo, vovinam and a host of other martial arts. Once on the fourth floor, I’d walk into the san da training hall, and if not for the huge Vietnamese flag, each time I’d think for a moment that I was back in China. The hall was long and wide and had space for 50 athletes to train at the same time. The floor was covered with mats so they could execute throws without fear of…

WHEN I SAW STAR WARS in 1977, I loved how the lightsaber duels looked like sword fights in a Toshiro Mifune samurai film. It also was obvious that the combative use of the force mirrored the way chi is portrayed in kung fu flicks. The influence of Chinese martial arts films on the battles that take place in the Star Wars universe has only grown over time. In Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker, the force’s fantastical use even found inspiration from the outrageous exhibitions of chi power seen in Chinese wuxia movies. In Rise of Skywalker, the last of the ragtag resistance plans to destroy the First Order’s evil grip on the galaxy, with the epic war of wills between the Jedi and the Sith poised…

I quizzed Steve DeMasco on the mental side of using the big cats of kung fu in combat: “What’s going through your mind? Is it something like, ‘I’m going to move like a cat’? Or is it more about envisioning the fury of a tiger killing and eating a water buffalo in Africa?” “It’s about being calculating,” De-Masco replied. “You’re calculating how the fight will take place because cats calculate. That means you evaluate and plan. No cat sees its prey and thinks, Oh, there it is — boom! They stalk it. There’s a whole strategy involved. “So when you fight like a cat, besides focusing on the breathing, you have to be calculating. Do that for years in the dojo and it becomes natural. You learn to plan. Let…

“I’ve done sport karate my entire life, and now I’m applying that same dedication to my stunt training.” There’s a saying in Hollywood: Fame is fleeting. It also can be translated as “Easy come, easy go.” These menacing mantras have been the downfall of many a celebrity. The road to success requires a laser-like focus on details, as well as the tenacity to stay on task. Black Belt’s 2019 Competitor of the Year learned those lessons at an age when most of her friends were attempting to master training wheels on their bicycles. “I started dance and gymnastics before I was a year old in a Mommy and Me gymnastics class,” Mackensi Emory recalled. “When I was 5, I started dance and did more gymnastics classes, along with piano lessons.…

Daito-ryu aikijujutsu served as the technical foundation for the art of aikido. Morihei Ueshiba, the founder of aikido, trained from 1915 to 1935 under daito-ryu master Sogaku Takeda. In 1922 Ueshiba received an instructor certificate from Takeda — one of only 40 handed out to the 30,000 students he taught. Compared to daito-ryu, aikido is a popular martial art. It reached its peak in the United States when seventh-degree black-belt Steven Seagal regularly used it to subdue all sorts of evildoers in his movies during the 1990s. Daito-ryu never enjoyed a cinematic champion. In fact, it’s known mostly to aikido practitioners, and even then, the majority have only limited knowledge of its history and techniques.…

Aikido is one of the best-known martial arts in the world, yet the meaning of aiki is not well-understood. Most people, including many of the 1 million who study aikido today, are probably familiar with Morihei Ueshiba’s famous interpretation — namely, universal love and harmony. In the classical Japanese martial arts, however, it has a different — and definitely more combative — meaning. Ueshiba’s own teacher Sogaku Takeda defined aiki as “the ability to defeat an enemy with a single glance.” The word “aiki” literally means a fusion or meeting of energy. It’s no accident that it’s an anagram of the word kiai (focusing the spirit), and indeed the distinction between the two is blurry. In the koryu arts, the application of aiki first appeared in kenjutsu schools and referred…

Asia’s biggest MMA organization ONE Championship was in Tokyo recently to promote upcoming events by way of the ONE Century Martial Arts Fanfest. The event featured a collection of competitions, seminars, games and meet-and-greets, which made it everything a martial arts and fight-sports fan could ask for. That included appearances by current MMA champions Demetrious Johnson and Angela Lee, as well as MMA legends Miesha Tate and Yoshihiro Akiyama. The two-day event at Bellesalle Shibuya Garden kicked off with some competition. The morning of Day One opened with a two-hour Shin Karate amateur tournament. Although it was a traditional martial arts tournament, it took place in a boxing ring at one end of the venue and featured young competitors who could populate the next generation of ONE Championship fighters. At…

Alaska Juneau Karate Academy 8800 Glacier Hwy. #106 Juneau, AK 99801 (907) 723-7314 sensei@juneaukarate.com California Blain Cort’s Total Self-Defense 2955 McMurry Drive Anderson, CA 96007 blaincort@gmail.com Dr. Z Authentic Jeet Kune Do Academy 1319 20th Ave. San Francisco, CA 94122 (Additional school in Los Angeles) jkdsifu1@gmail.com Jeet-Kune-Do.com Golden Tiger Karate 9501 Flushing Quail Bakersfeild, CA 93312 (661) 345-4371 goldentigerkarate@yahoo.com Kuk Sool Won - Rohnert Park Martial Arts 311 Professional Center Drive Rohert Park, CA 94928 (707) 494-1151 Kuksoolwonrp@yahoo.com Red Dragon Championship Martial Arts 1603 Garnet Ave. San Diego, CA 92109 (858) 263-4212 info@martialartspacificbeach.com Connecticut American Colleges of Kombido 24 Leete St. West Haven, CT 06516 (203) 623-1729 d.hodge@snet.net New England Rendokan 1845 Silas Deane Highway Rocky Hill, CT 06067 (860) 628-1022 Info@ner1.net Florida All American Martial Arts & Krav Maga…

One of Konishi’s more interesting contributions to karate’s early development had to do with the establishment of the art as a real form of combat. MOST KARATEKA will recognize names like Gichin Funakoshi and Choki Motobu. Far fewer know anything about Yasuhiro Konishi — even though he was a pivotal figure in the development of karate in Japan and its evolution as a budo. Konishi (1893-1983) began training in the Muso Ryu of jujitsu at age 6. Shortly thereafter, he joined the Takeuchi Ryu, another school of jujitsu. Seven years later, he began training in kendo. He attended Keio University and became the university club’s kendo coach. Konishi was a person who was utterly occupied by budo. One of the kendoka attending Keio University at the same time was Tsuneshige…

LOOKING FARTHER BACK in history, however, one comes across the term “pit fighting” in reference to a hard form of Hawaiian kempo — which at one time was known as kajukenbo, yet another hybrid martial art originating in Hawaii in the late 1940s. The name kajukenbo, of course, is formed from the first letters of the names of the arts that constitute it: karate, judo, jujitsu, kenpo and boxing. Not a bad mix at all! Kajukenbo still survives under that original moniker, with some branches calling themselves Hawaiian kenpo. Note that Hackleman uses Hawaiian kempo with an “m” to emphasize the harder approach to training and fighting that he advocates. AS YOU’VE NO DOUBT noticed, the arts I’ve discussed so far are Eastern in origin. Pit fighting, however, also has…

LIFE GETS BUSY, especially when you’re a person who likes to get stuff done. For people like you, there might not be any excuses, but there are certainly reasons that getting things done gets tough unnecessarily. There’s only so much time in the day, and any minute you waste on something pointless is a minute you could have spent practicing your martial art. Your aversion to wasting time is even more likely to be an issue if you’re a parent. For example, think of how much time and effort you invest in wrangling your children into a change of pants for their martial arts class. Now imagine what you could get done if you didn’t have to do that, not to mention the money you would save. Now there’s a…

Because of the internal nature of training in the tiger, black-tiger, leopard and snow-leopard styles, practitioners can expect their organs to be strengthened, Steve DeMasco says. “Breathing properly provides [a great] benefit. You learn to sink the air into your lower abdomen. When you learn how to control your breath and force it down, you’re exercising your organs. You’re pushing air into that space. It strengthens the organs so that when you can coordinate your movement with your breathing, everything becomes much more powerful.”…

Bill Wallace was “Fast Billy” before he became “Superfoot.” When he joined the full-contact karate circuit, his pal Joe Lewis remarked that Wallace owned a quick left hook. Here, Wallace shares a story about when he first learned of this attribute: “It was my first fight ever when I was a senior in high school. I weighed 125 pounds and was 5 feet 10 inches tall. If I turned sideways and stuck my tongue out, I looked like a zipper. “This junior picked on me all year long. He was on the football team and outweighed me by a lot. One morning in May, he started in on me, and I finally agreed to fight him. It was to be at a location off school grounds after school, so instead…

The jeet kune do conversations one sees on social media are reminiscent of the Los Angeles freeway system: They lead all over the place. Everyone who posts has his or her own “true” interpretation of what constitutes JKD. Unfortunately, most of it is not based on mastery — or even solid comprehension — of the subject. Instead, it’s based on simple understanding and hearsay. Yet plenty of people out there think what they read is correct. Among the dubious claims one comes across is this: “JKD is an amalgam of a number of different martial arts, and Bruce Lee picked whatever was useful, discarded what was not and called it his own style.” It’s time someone debunked this myth and then explained what JKD actually is. FROM THE SOURCE Initial…

“The first techniques are called the hiden mokuroku,” Katsuyuki Kondo says. “They are divided into five sections, which are called kajo. Each kajo has standing techniques, seated techniques, rear techniques and half-seated techniques. There is a reason for this: If you are standing, you can move your hips. When you are sitting, you cannot move your hips in certain ways; you are more restricted. You have to be able to execute techniques without having the freedom to move.”…

• “The shotokan schools around the world tend to have an average standard that is higher than the average standard of many styles — not because the style itself is superior but because there is a teaching method to the shotokan system that I think is much better than any other system.” So says Alex Sternberg who, of course, practices shotokan. • When asked about the prospects of karate making it into the Olympics, Sternberg says, “1984 seems to be slipping pretty fast by us. At the end of this year (1980), if it’s not accepted, we can pretty much forget about it for ’84.” Fast-forward to 2020: Karate finally will debut in the Olympiad. • A second-place winner at the first U.S. Open Judo Tournament, held in San Jose,…

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BLACK BELT: Have you ever seen a “fair fight” outside of competition? How did it unfold? Dr. AnnMaria: Nope. And I’ve seen a lot of fights. (From the Editor: For those who don’t know, Dr. AnnMaria De Mars is a former world judo champion and the mother of Ronda Rousey.) BLACK BELT: Go here to read “Is Karate in Need of a Makeover?” Mike McGrath: Karate needs to return to [its] roots. I have trained that old way since starting 35 years ago. No makeover is required in the dojo where I train. Tom Smith: In my teens and 20s when I trained traditional Okinawan goju-ryu karate, it was more like the article describes. Unfortunately a lot of the stuff my sensei did to toughen us up would get someone…

HIS LATEST SUCCESS, a division title at the World Master IBJJF Jiu-Jitsu Championship, came after more than a decade away from competition. “To be honest, most of the reason I came out of retirement was to lose weight,” said Chivichyan, 56. “It was good motivation to train harder, and I ended up dropping 25 pounds to make my division.” Prior to competing in 2019, Chivichyan had been out of the combat sports since 2008, when he jumped into a judo event on a lark and won his division. Before that, he’d been laid off for 10 years. That’s a far cry from his youth when he competed twice a month. GROWING UP in Armenia, then part of the Soviet Union, Chivichyan started wrestling when he was a child and later…

SO I LOOKED UP some examples of this person’s training, and lo and behold, there wasn’t anything that could be called groundbreaking or that could be construed as “forward leaning.” There were obvious influences from boxing, escrima and Brazilian jiujitsu, as well as other disciplines — as there is in most combatives instructors’ curricula. The “attacks” used to set up the demonstrations weren’t novel or unique in any way. Some incorporated weapons, some were multiple-assailant situations, some were transition events (standing to ground, ground to standing) and some were confined-space situations. I THOUGHT A LOT about his statement and remembered World War II footage of U.S. Marine Raiders training with Filipinos to learn the essential elements of escrima, arnis and kali. Similarly, I remembered James Hipkiss’ World War II–era instructional…

Black Belt: Are there monks at Shaolin Temple who specialize in the fighting systems inspired by these four big cats? Steve DeMasco: Yes. In the beginning, the monks learn a variety of things, but then they gravitate to the animal that best suits their body style. BB: So it’s not just about what they like. It’s also about what they’re good at. DeMasco: Yes. When you see somebody doing a monkey form, he’s not going to have a build like me because I’m a guy who is best suited for the tiger. BB: Can an experienced Shaolin monk look at someone like me and say, “You can never be really good at this cat. However, that cat could work for you”? DeMasco: They would never say it like that. They…

Because so many martial artists have trouble using their kicks against live opponents, I asked Bill Wallace to outline the keys to kicking a moving target with a reasonable amount of force. His answer: Use the opponent’s strength against him, choose a reliable technique, be quick and don’t kick too hard. Because that last one seemed odd, I asked him to elaborate. “The real bugaboo is people try to kick too hard,” Wallace said. “Boxers always terrified traditional [martial arts] guys because most of them got the living heck knocked out of them. That’s because the boxer is used to [going] hard. Throw your kick hard, and you’ll end up right in his wheelhouse. He will knock you out.” Wallace reveals how the situation often unfolds: “You’re a puncher, standing…

Daito-ryu aikijujutsu is definitely not the world’s most popular martial art. It’s not even close. However, it is one of those mystical Asian parent arts that everyone seems to have heard of. How often have you witnessed a writer or instructor claiming, “Our art is a modern version of aikijujutsu,” or “This wrist-escape technique comes from aikijujutsu”? In actuality, relatively little is known about daito-ryu aikijujutsu — other than the fact that its high-level techniques have a reputation for speed and effectiveness. Yet from this system are said to have evolved aikido, hapkido and judo, according to some researchers. This alone makes daito-ryu worth investigating. In this article, Seigo Okamoto, a daito-ryu aikijujutsu sensei from Japan’s Saitama prefecture, and two of his top American students provide some answers to the…

Katsuyuki Kondo: Yoshida was a student who received the kyoju dairi certification from Sogaku Takeda. Yoshida introduced Sogaku to Morihei Ueshiba. Within daito-ryu, Yoshida was a famous instructor. The way I met Yoshida was that my teacher Hosono was in the hospital around 1963, and I went to visit him. Hosono told me he was sick and could not teach me anymore. He told me to go to Yoshida and gave me a formal introduction. Yoshida lived in Namekawa in Hitachi City in Ibaraki prefecture. A trip to Yoshida’s dojo was two and a half hours to three hours by train. Yoshida lived there with his wife. He was 82. I was 18. In Yoshida’s home, there were stacks of books from his research and study. When I signed the…