Sunday, March 17, 2024

Shimabnku KUMITE - Sherman Harrill - Part 1


This section is dealing with hand grabs. 





        a.   Left hand hold right wrist (Straight hand grab)

              From Seisan, pull the hand back to the release position and strike to the solar plexus.


In Chart One, as taught by Tom Lewis, Number 5 was the Right Foot steps back when you are grabbed as you deliver a left side block, followed by a right punch. 

[Which is a reversal of the opening of Seisan kata.]


Against a left grab of your right wrist, Shimabuku Tatsuo technique simply stepped back with the right foot and chambered the right hand, which pulls it right out of (or away from) that grab and followed with a right front punch into the opponent's chest.


The stronger your kata practice, the more precise your chambering movements in the kata, the stronger your release from their grab.


Two hands hold one wrist.

 



Step in and grab your hand from the top, drive the elbow up to the chin for a strike followed, with a backfist. This can also be done by going underneath grabbing your fist stepping forward into Seiunchin doing a elbow strike reinforced with the other hand.


For the first counter, after they’ve grabbed your wrist with both their hands, you reach across the top of their hand and grab your own wrist. As you step forward (with the foot of the hand grabbed) as you drive your elbow up, the arm crossing across their arm becomes a lever into their arm, and the combination of your driving force, and the pressure of the crossing arm bearing down, you strip your arm free, opening the backfist into their face.


For the second counter, after they’ve grabbed your wrist with both their hands, you reach underneath their arms and grab your fist. Then the foot of the hand grabbed, steps in and the forward (with a crescent step) into Seiunchin and you do a cross elbow strike into their arm.


Alternative choice, for the third counter, after they’ve grabbed your wrist with both their hands, you reach underneath their arms and grab your fist. Then the foot of the hand grabbed, steps in and the forward (with a crescent step) and out in Seisan, as you use the re-inforced block section of Seiunchin to pressure both their arms from the inside out. This will break the grab and put them in a twisted controlled position, ready for a counter-attack.


Left hand hold right hand, from side position  (hand grab from side).


From Chinto, hand grab is from over the top, trap his hand and go into a hand bar.


When your right hand is grabbed from the side with their left hand, as in a mirror image of Chinto’s opening, your left foot will step back as you shift into right cat stance to the side. Your right hand will circle clockwise away your hand staying on your centerline, and then continue the circle shifting back towards the opponent. As you do this your left hand grabs their wrist. 


The wrist grab and turn towards them, presses their hand down between your wrist grab and your right-hand pressure. You slide your right palm down their palm and lock it in, then press their hand back (into a hand lock) which I believe is the hand bar in question.


Alternatively, you can do this by bringing your left hand up underneath their arm, and just use it to pressure their wrist/hand. Of course this is more pressure sensitive skilled, and prone to escape if not perfect.


Right hand holds right wrist   (Cross Hand Grab)


Thumb on the top, bring the hand to the outside and over the top striking to the throat with a shuto strike. The left hand will go underneath the right arm in a open palm to protect the ribs.


This is against a cross hand grab, grabbing the side of your wrist.  Using a motion such as in Kusanku kata’s ‘feeling in the dark section’ or the double knife hand kame of Wansu, your right hand (thumb on top) rolls over the top of their hand (at the thumb) releasing their grip, and then you strike into their throat with a shuto strike. As this occurs your left hand goes underneath the right arm with an open palm to protect the ribs.


If they’ve used the grab to grab your sleeve, you use your left hand to grab their wrist, weakening the thumb and then you proceed as above.


This can also be done with a larger motion, by bringing the right hand back to your left ear, as your left hand presses across their right arm.  Then follow with your right shuto strike.



Right hand holds right wrist from top (Top of the hand cross grab)


Grab comes from over the top, from Seiunchin reinforced block traps the hand and goes into backfist strike to the nose.  


One choice would be to begin using the motion of Seiunchin kata’s reinforced block. They’ve grabbed your hand from on top, your left hand grabs their wrist and presses down. That grab weakens their grip, and your right hand rolls down and clockwise out, to backfist into their nose.


Alternately, when grabbed your hand circles clockwise, your left-hand presses into their hand as you do the reinforced block to the right. This rolls their arm over and you continue with the kana and step through, your right hand grabbing their arm as your left-hand strikes into their nose.

 


Saturday, March 16, 2024

Goju Ryu Tensho Kata & Bunkai (Morio Higaonna)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nhx7BKnTBlw




Hangetsu (Kata & Bunkai)

 

Comprehensive explanation of Shotokan Karate kata,  Hangetsu. Footage from Nakayama's Legacy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3p8eqLEsvkc



Hangetsu is the Shotokan version of Okinawan Seisan as taught by Funakoshi Ginchin.


A variety of Ueshiba videos

 O'Sensei Morihei Ueshiba "Tessen"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiutRRDA_2s




O'Sensei Morihei Ueshiba "Bukidori & Jomochi"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0nL3ePJ3B4




O'Sensei Morihei Ueshiba "Aikijo"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzmdRWMbku4




"AIKIKEN" O' Sensei Morihei Ueshiba and Morihiro Saito (tanren uchi)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iR5MKfFXS3M





Usheiba and Developing Aikido



Usheiba Sensei as he developed his Aikido out of Diato Ryu and other systems he studied, is a case study in the role of change in a martial art. 


If you look at his book “Budo” from the 1930’s you clearly see his use of strikes as precursors to the throws and locks. His art in those years has been categorized as very fast and brutal. The students from that era who continued to teach after WWII, continued that very fast, hard aikido tradition.




After WWII, Usheiba modified his training, opened the circles of his techniques and stopped showing the strikes. The art continued to change until a quite different tradition came. So much so there are layers and layers of different aikido traditions until those who have no brook with any combatitive tradition at all and are more a ‘rolling religious exercise, IMO’.




But I suspect a very close study of Usheiba will find no difference in the underlying nature of those traditions.  In the 30’s many of his 

students were preparing for military service.  If a person as superior shifting ability they don’t have to strike an attacker to stop them to set up the aikido technique. But superior shifting is a long hard study.  If you’re trying to prepare people in a short time, the art of striking, atemi, serves to make up for lack of the other advanced skills.  Most likely that was Daito Ryu’s military traditions, too.  Make it work on the battlefield.


Then after those strikes, very small sharp circles to project the attacker sharply, or to rachet them into a lock using pain as the throwing mechanism.


After the war, with military aspects dropped (as much an influence of the US occupation I suspect) the circles grew larger, using shifting as the important skill to maneuver your opponent, and so forth in unending layers.


Usheiba’s training incorporated so many different layers, the students who taught likewise reflected the times in which they trained, as well I’m sure as their own future studies and growth allowed, too.



So, drop the word Karate Kata, and incorporate the word Aikido Technique, and you are back to the same arguments and questions. The real difference, however, is Aikido has done a fantastic job documenting their different approaches and offers many keys in its development thusly.

 

Friday, March 15, 2024

Judo's Kano started the KeikoGi and Kyu Dan.

 Originally posted by Steven Malanosk 


But he got the idea, for the JuDoGi, from watching Chinese martial artists, practicing in their common clothes, and realized that the dress of the day, for the Japanese4 martial artist, was too constricting. 


Kind of a roundabout way, for the KeikoGi, to make its way to Okinawa. 


It's interesting how stories get started or from where they come. Much of the time, it does come from "sensei" and in many cases is just wrong. I was told, as a twelve-year-old that jujutsu was over two-thousand years old. At thirteen, I found better sources of information. 


I really do like the stories which spread such as the one above. Besides the above quote concerning the judogi and Chinese martial arts comes the dirty belt theory, amongst others. Interesting especially since the Chinese invented soap. It was brought to Europe by Marco Polo, presumably. 


However, Kano came up with the keikogi, one thing does persist about Kano. He was the first modern academic to truly study budo in an attempt to find the manner to express technique in the most efficient and least abusive manner. If this is true, then why would Kano have looked to China for the best in training clothes? Although for his time, he was probably a very liberal thinking man, taking note of most anything which would help him, he was, at that time, very much the patriot. 


 



The other story of the black belt was that when a student didn't have, or broke the sash which closed his dogi, Kano tore off a piece of his hakama bottom to make an "obi" for the student. There are many variations on this story, but this comes as close to Kano's "invention," the work-out clothes, including the black belt. 


Kano did not invent kyu grades in any manner. He did, though, call his very first beginning students Shodan for the more literal reason and put that on a scroll/certificate. The judogi wasn't done over- night, neither did the dan-I system of grading one's training level. Most likely, the kyu grade came along with the first dojo in the US, the Seattle Judo dojo, or just as likely, from Europe where almost certainly, the French Judo Federation under the direction of M. Kawaishi, along with other countries of Europe, came up with the multitude of colored belts we have now. Some say it was Mikonosuke Kawaishi's doing, but it did make its way from Europe in the 1950s. Whether a brown belt or even a kyu grade existed is much discussed in some books and articles, but they are guesses, at best. I asked a student of Kenneth Kuniyuki, one of the original students at the Seattle Judo dojo, about this, and he didn't know, and with Mr. Kuniyuki to be about 93 this year, an answer isn't likely to be forthcoming. When Kuniyuki moved to Southern California and found the Nanka Yudanshakai, the brown belt was probably being used, but only at Ikyu. 



Back to the judogi or keikogi. This first began with a jacket (uwagi) with short sleeves and any manner of shorts which was little more than underwear in many cases. The body was protected to a point, but the legs received mat burns as did the elbows, so longer pants came in which reached the knee, at first. Again an improvement but not nearly what is seen today. The pant was lengthened to protect the knee from mat burns and later padding was added which improved the protection to the knee. Meanwhile, the uwagi was being lengthened in the sleeve to just beyond the elbow where it stayed until a short time ago. I have the jackets I wore in the sixties and the sleeve did not extend much beyond the elbow even then, and as someone reminded me of recently "your arms are too short" which does give you an idea that perhaps I had a longer sleeve than did most. 


To sum up, the work-out gear took a relatively long while to arrive at what we have today. Pick up a double knit judogi and you can feel the weight. That is some weight, and for quality dogi today, one can easily spend over three-hundred dollars US. My first dogi was eleven dollars US. Add a colored belt, eg, black obi, the wider three-inch variety, and you can add another twenty easy, but Mizuno does ship its complete dogi with a white one and one-half inch obi, but at any particular size the 1 1/2-inch belt is about six to eight inches longer than the same size obi in the three-inch variety. That's one I don't understand, but in my early days, we dyed our belts. 


 



Kano may indeed have invented the dogi, but he almost always was to be found wearing hakama and kimono when teaching which were always black or dark colored, the opposite of the off-white, natural cotton colored judogi. By the 1920s, they were being sold seemingly factory made. While Kano would often pose in a dogi and black belt, that was the only color belt he ever "invented" or had anything to do with. The only other color was off-white, which became known to be worn by Mudansha, and there were only two grades of training, yudan and Mudan, and whichever number of dan grades one believes existed at any given time. Room was eventually made for 12-dan, but no one in judo, and by the Kodokan has ever been graded this high. Some have been graded to 10-dan posthumously, and a very few while still living. Someone else must be given the credit, or the blame for such kyu grades. As Kano never would stand in anyone's way if they were to add more colors, it makes the waters even murkier. As he said of Judo in the Olympic Games, "Judo is NOT a game, and I would not promote it as such, but neither will I 'stand' in anyone's way who chooses to do so. He was no longer an official with the IOC when he was quoted (Quotes are lacking in budo history. Mostly, they come hammered out as being "accurate" but the actual quotes are those of historians. History is opinionated if it is anything. One needs to do the research onself and attach the nearest meaning of what one finds. 


Nothing is ever as it seems. 


__________________

Mark F. Feigenbaum


Formal Upper Body Ippon Kumite Techniques

 David Evseeff’s

Formal Upper Body Ippon Kumite Techniques

from the book Isshinryu Karate-Do

David D. Evseeff author Mar Jean Olson  (Editor)

1996


Victor - Personally I do not know of another complete Isshinryu technique listing.



01 Inside block, reverse punch (solar plexus)

02 Inside block, reverse uppercut

03  Inside block, reverse uppercut, reverse reiken (throat)

04 Outside block, reverse punch

05 Outside block, reverse twist punch (head)

06 Open-hand block, nukite strike (throat/eyes)

07 Inside reverse forearm block and grab, inside spin, elbow strike (solar plexus)

08 Outside reverse forearm block and grab, outside spin, elbow strike (kidney)

09 Step into attack (horse stance), lunge punch

10 Inside block, “Chinto pivot”, reverse haito (throat)

11 Outside cross-body block, “Chinto pivot’, reverse haito (throat)

12 Outside shotei block, step into opponent, reverse multiple haito strikes (groin)

13 Inside haito block and pull, reverse punch (solar plexus)

14 Haito cross-body block and pull, reverse twist punch (neck/mastoid process)

15 Step into attack, outside upper forearm block, reverse punch (face/throat)

16 Step into attack, inside upper forearm block, reiken strike (face/throat)

17 “Kusanku sidestep” avoidance, “Chinto pivot”, reverse punch (head)

18 Inside reinforced block, reverse reiken (head)

19 Outside reinforced block, uppercut (head)

20 Outside cross-body haito block, pull away, escape

21 Outside reverse cross-body shotei block, reverse grab, reverse tettsui (throat)

22 Outside cross-body shotei block, reverse grab, lunge reiken (head)

23 Outside cross-body shotei block, reverse grab, elbow strike (head/throat)

24 Inside block, step in, post head, eye gouge

25 Drop to knee, reverse punch (groin)

26 Cross-body shotei block, reverse punch (head)

27 Rising head block, reverse punch (solar plexus)

28 Rising head block, lung reiken (face/throat)

29 Shotei cross-body block (stepping into a horse stance), double hook punch

30 Inverted outside forearm block, reiken strike (face/throat)

31 Inverted inside forearm block, reiken strike (forearm/head)

32 Outside shotai block, “Chinto pivot”, haito strike (head/throat)

33 Hip reinforced empi block, reiken strike

34 High kiai, lunge punch (head)

35 Double inside rising haito block, double eye gouge

36 Double inside rising block, double hand head grab, head strike



About David Evseeff

I am currently an independent researcher based in Medellin, Colombia. I received my B.A. in Religion and East Asian Languages & Literature (Chinese) from the University of Florida, and my M.A. in Chinese Literature from the National Taiwan University (NTU). I also studied at the Shaanxi Normal University (陕西师范大学) and studied Chinese internal martial arts while doing an academic exchange in China. During my 6 years of living in Taiwan, I also worked at the Center for Chinese Studies (國家圖書館,漢學研究中心) at the National Central Library. My research interests include the novel "Dream of the Red Chamber," the history of Chinese literature, and Okinawan Isshinryu Karate (一心流空手道), which I have practiced for 30+ years. Yes, a very eclectic mix of studies and research!



https://isshin-concentration.blogspot.com/2014/10/david-evseeffs-book-on-isshinryu-karate.html