My Kama Drill

Friday, December 15, 2023

My Kama Drill

When I was a new instructor in 1980 and as I had no Isshinryu instructor who lived near me, I was also attending many open karate tournaments in my area to push myself. I met and made friends with many other instructors I competed against and became open to their invitations to visit their schools to train with them.

I began to take advantage of their kind offers, to go and train, not to learn their systems. However, I also worked to remember and practice whatever i was shown because I had made the effort to attend their school. Some of those dojo offered very good training and i remembered almost everything I experienced.

One of those instructors was Tristan Sutrisno where i traveled down to Hazleton Pa to his dojo early in that year for the workout. Tris was a great competitor in his fathers very unique Shotokan.

When he discovered I really could recall what I saw and trained with we gradually became faster friends.

I believe it was around my 3rd or 4th visit when he was teaching his brown belts (Dave and Eddie) a kama form, Chosen No Kama Sho. As I was there he also taught me. Then on my next visit he taught them and me the 2nd kama form, Chosen No Kama Dai.

His kobudo forms built on the same embuses as the first form, with more complex technique series. Over the years I found this with his Bo kata series too.

About 9 years after I began studying the Chosen No Kama kata, one day when Tristan was giving a clinic for my students he took me aside and made some more changes to my Dai kata.

Then about 15 years into my study I found it increasingly difficult to make the many handling changes in the form. likely this was the first sign of what would decades later develop into my current disabilities, unfortunately I just attributed that to aging.

Having the same students for over 20-35 years allowed me the freedom to look into long term student development. These kama kata were nor for the kids or adults in my program. They had no need to learn how to slice in bodies in any case.

But I had worked out how various long term kobudo studies would lead to force enhancement of karate, developing skills to enhance the ability to perform as one ages and strength and power naturally declines.

So. the Chosen No kama kata were only for my most senior students.

However, I was never content for as gifted as those kata were, I still felt a need to develop a different kata only for my own practice. Something simpler yet stll effective. Thus, I developed my own kata drill to fit into my condition.

This is the Kata drill I developed.

Bushi No Te Isshinryu Kama Drill I created 2011

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3epeCzMp-k