Saturday, November 29, 2025
Shoryn Ryu karate, Kyudokan. Mazato Higa
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOQMoIL2fe8&t=1s
Thus was born a long line of Masters of this system fast, dynamic and strong system.
A direct successor of this ancient lineage, the late Dai Sensei Yuchoku Higa, known as "the strong fist from Okinawa", founded his Dojo as Kyudokan.
His nephew, Sensei O. Mazato Higa, 9th Dan, is currently in charge of spreading the Kyudokan School all over the world.
His Karate is explained and developed with such clarity that it can be said it has become a "scientific Karate". Accompanied by his student and representative at the Iberian Peninsula, Renato Graziosi, 6th Dan, Sensei Higa shows on this DVD the excellence of a Style and a Karate School which keeps the Tradition and Spirit as valid as when it emerged.
Friday, November 28, 2025
The manner of breathing is either hard or soft.
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Simplest answer: it is the way I was taught to practice the Isshinryu Seiunchin Kata. For my first 25 years it was my favorite kata practice. Then I got to the point all of them were my favorite kata.
I know longer know how I was originally shown the kata. Almost immediately thereafter Mr. Lewis formed a yellow belt team, to perform Seiunchin for a demonstration. We were drilled in a specific performance incorporating hard breathing and normal breathing. Both Slow and Fast movements.
Thereafter that is the way I practiced that kata.
I know others did it differently. But in those days much was not discussed. You did what you were shown. And in those days applications of kata movement were not studied, it was just soldier on.
Hard movements, intense breathing, Fast movements, normal breathing, both within the same kata practice.
This was years before I realized there was a difference between Japanese karate practices and Okinawan ones.
I was not around others in Isshinryu, just kept my practice up, and then this is how I taught it.
Years later studying under another instructor who trained alongside my senior instructor on Okinawa, I asked him about the breathing. He explained the instructor may have exaggerated the breathing so everyone could hear him.
Again years later, another senior instructor sharing kata practices from those days, did it the same was I was trained, stating that he was shown to practice it this way as a Chinkuchi training practice.
I do not have the ultimate answer, it is just what I do to this day.
This is one of my students back in 1989. The video record does not capture the breathing, but it is there on the slow movements, as I taught him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oq0KS5EaBwo
In time I came to understand more about the potential of breathing.
How inhalation during a technique could cause you to draw into the target.
What the difference was between how the definition of a technique mattered and that exhalation within a technique could add power to your technique and then how inhalation between techniques would also add to the use of techniques.
Also the reverse also was possible. Thus as you controlled which version you were using made you did more un-read-able by an opponent.
I then worked out a way for black belts to train in each method, for training is necessary to utilize breath.
To breathe is to exist.
Isshinryu Bo - Bo sparring, Isshinryu Bo - Sai sparring
Angi Uzeu Bo - Bo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3G38NKRjVg
Reese Rigby Bo – Bo, Bo - Sai
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6nhie0vsHc
Motobu Bo sparring
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKNMi6fggus
Sherman Harrill teaching the alternate Bo - Bo Kumite
Just to keep things in scope, these were students in Agena.
Helps to remember how young they were.
Most of them only trained in Agena for a year or a year and a half.
Charlie Conners, John DeSantis, Sherman Harrill, Gary Baker.....
i have had the pleasure of meeting them all.
Between the four of them, they developed the enbu (演武) version of bo tai bo kumite and bo tai sai kumite used in demonstrations.
in 1998 Charlie Connor and Gary Baker attended the Fall Seminar in Carson Iowa, afterwards we went back to the Dojo. John Peterson and myself demonstrated the bo tai sai kumite that they developed.
Sherman Harrill alternate Bo-Bo kumite and other stuff
From a clinic he gave in Derry about 2000
2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-gMzf_KvSM
3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwPDEj9uCiw
I believe this may be the only copy available of this anywhere.
Skill
I remember when Young Lee was first training with me, I made a point about the use of the hips was necessary to develop as skill advanced in his karate.
To show him what I meant I had him watch Donald O’Conner and Gene Kelly dance in Singing in the Rain. Both of them were and are incredible dancers, but there is a visible difference in their capabilities as they dance.
While Donald is extremely good there is a vast difference between what Gene would do as they danced.
What you need to do is concentrate on their hips while dancing.
Donald is very energetic when he dances, and his footwork is as good as Gene’s.
But where Donald in energetic, Gene simply floats through his dances. He keeps his hips in total control as he moves.
It would be best to show you what I mean.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oe4yPhohfEs
They dance together numerous times in the movie. Watch them dance and observe how Gene effortlessly keeps his central body core in greater control.
As I said IMO both are great dancers, but also IMO Gene has a higher level of body control.
And in my opinion the same holds true for karate movement.
A boy draws ninjas in school
Nov 5, 2013
The school principal who fears for the safety of other 8 year olds in school because a boy draws ninja, and soldiers is spouting non-sense.
For there are plenty of other un-safe activities. consider pencils, pens, books, Laptop computers all can cause severe impact activity. Or outside school activity like baseball or softball can be used for severe impact too, or dance and soccer can become used for kicking activity, or football and wrestling can be used for body impact. Allowing youth to wear shoes can cause stepping in walking be turned into a weapon.
I train youth in karate, and have done so for 35 years, proper training teaches youth to run away with confidence, except when they are threatened or others are and there is no other rational choice.
If you start with fear, you can’t stop.
For it takes years for serious defense.
Never have I had a student with training abuse it. A rational response would be to teach the youth the difference between fiction for fun and reality instead of trying for an over reaching quick answer.
But that is too rational for this non-competent administrator who really doesn’t care about instruction, just covering their butt and promoting fear instead of teaching.
And this is who is charged with running a school.
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