My personal FAIL

So, i have been training for about one year to become a brown belt. And all this time I am waiting for one exam, the end of year exam. Turns out that it was scheduled for the day we come back from WOC. The exam starts at 9:00 and we arive at 10:00, but even though, i dicided to give it a try. I signed up and all and when WOC was over i took the plane. I was hopping to arive at 10 and quickly go, luckely I would arive in the exam at 10:30, enough to pic up the progress and start. Well, for some reason we arived at 11, meaning I would arive at the exam at 11:30 if I had luck. For this reason I could not go and actually missed the exam. The next one is only in March 6 so at least I got a lot of time to train more and garantee that I will pass with an 'A'. The other thing that will at the very least be benificial is that the exam will be during an intensive karate weekend that occures once a year. This weekend is designed to make everyone at least one best higher and to learn new moves and techneques. I will participate of this event and this brings great status and reputation to a person. It is very important to become a black belt, and the exam is not only going to judge your skills but also your field of influence and how recognized are you in karate.

Dan and Kyu

Karate obviously works with a level system starting from the worst (white belt) to the best (black belt). But in between these color markings there are centuries of traditions and meanings. All the belts which are not black belt are called Kyu. Kyu meaning class refers to the class that the student is in before he is an actual teacher. The Kyu grading system starts as a countdown, you begin and 10th Kyu and move onto 1rst Kyu. At the moment I am 3rd Kyu (purple) and have the 2nd and 1rst Kyu before I get the black belt (both of those are brown belts). After that you become a Dan which starts as 1rst as you become black belt. Dan in Japanese means a step or grade; at this point you can be considered a teacher and not a student, even though you never stop learning. The Dan counting goes from 1rst Dan to 10th Dan. Usually all of the Dans have the same belt (black) but in some styles a very high Dan can have some exotic colors. There is another very intrusting thing to learn about Dans. Depending on the contribution you had to the karate community, you might gain a Dan after you die. This usually occurs as a sign of honor and valor to high members of karate society. If you are a 7th Dan and you die you might just make it up to an 8th Dan. Another important thing to learn is that just because someone is a high Dan doesn’t mean he is actually better at fighting or teaching; very high Dans usually show status and contribution even though they still require tough exams that occur only in Japan. Often enough a 5th Dan is a very only person who looks very wise but surely can be beeten in a fight since they cant even move well. The greatest Dan alive for the wado-kai style is an 8th Dan which is a relative of the founder and one who trained for many years with the founder of wado-kai.

Exam

So this post is about the exam I am going to have on the 28/11 and I am really very anxious. To start out, the exam begins as 8:30, and my plane will only arive from WOC at 9:30 so I will probably not be able to do it. After the exam, which is a group demonstration of combos such as punch kick and so on, there is a tournament. The tournament is part of the exam and is very competitive because winning the Katá or fighting tournament can mean a passing in the exam. In my case I am going from purple belt to brown belt, which is a very hard test since it is already very advanced. I talked to my karate teacher and he said that if I dont make it to the first part of the exam but do a really good job in the tournament I can probably get the brown belt. Even if I dont, it is always good to be noticed and present amoung the karate community; the more important you are and more you appear the greater your dedication will be, making the examiners more linient on you since you practice a lot. I really hope to get there in time because I want to become a brown belt. If someone asks you about what belt you are and you say purple it doesn't mean anything; in fact purple is the second belt in aiki-do, yet everyone knows that bieng a brown belt means you are one belt before black belt.

Weapons In Karate

Karate, as I spoke many times before, is a martial art that involves your arms and your legs. Though it is very rare to actually get to learn how to use weapons in Karate, some sensei's show and teach them for students. My sensei chose from the Dojo's arsenal only one weapon to teach me, the katana. The point for this was not for any self-defense, physiological or actual training with weapons, it was to enhance my karate training. Many exercises that I have to do with the katana involves muscles that I need to strengthen and that are hard to strengthen only with karate. These are muscles located in the shoulders and chest. But swords are not the only weapon that can be taught in karate; the staff and the daggers are also used. I am really in favor of these types of trainings not only because they help me to get out of the routine of katá and fighting sessions but also because I really enjoy learning they things, especially when I know they will help me later on. The katana training also helps to correct my posture, a key element in karate katás, even though it may seem trivial. The last advantage of learning how to use a weapon is that it is very awesome, and if one day I am mugged and I happen to have a katana in my back pocket: I know how to use it!

Karate in Brazil

Even though it may sound strange, karate is popular in Brazil, maybe it is not shown in sports television but there are many participants. Brazil officially harbors eight of the eleven official styles of karate, only behind Japan, which has all official eleven and a few other Asian countries. The probable reason for this, or at least a part of the reason why Brazil has so much karate is because Sensei Buio, who is the founder of three styles here in Brazil was very close to some of the Karate founders in Japan. He imported Karate here and thought a great deal of student, including my teacher and I. He is the one who examines my training and judges if I am worthy of getting a new belt. He was also very close with the founder of Wado-kai, the style which I practice. This is probably the most important reason why karate is taken seriously in Brazil, not like other countries. There are many good examples of this, particularly in my Dojo, two black belts already moved to the United States and within one year each of them had won the North American Karate Championship. This is very important, at least for my training, to have a serious martial art teacher, it defiantly enhanced my performance and influenced me to take it more seriously.

Karate in the Olympics

As sad as it may seem, golf was voted more likely to join the Olympics than karate. The Olympics already includes many different fights such as taekuondo and judo and they did already invite karate but they refused. The real problem with karate in the Olympics is that people don’t want to see katás, only fights. As I mentioned before, karate is a deep and philosophical martial art, the Karate representatives did not acknowledge going to the Olympics without a kata tournament (which is the most important and the one which is most contemplated in any karate tournaments). This brought up a very controversial issue because who should be really responsible to judge if karate is or not worthy of joining the Olympics only as kumite (fights)? Going even further, how can we judge which karate-style should be performed as katas, could all styles be performed? Or only the official ones? Who decides what is karate and what isn't? What are the rules since some styles allow hitting and others dont? Personally, I take karate seriously enough to think that it is best not to be in the Olympics than to show the world that we are about fighting and hitting; we - not like other martial arts - still hold true to the old ways of meditation and morals. But there are those who join it so they can learn to fight and hit others, rarely they get to high belts though. Maybe one day they will realize that it is worthy having more martial arts and giving them space to show what they really mean, but until then, I rather not participate in a superficial tournament of fighting meaningless matches.

Katás

Katás, as I already said in my blog, are sequences or series of moves that are perfromed individualy . A katá always starts and ends in the same position, this positon is called yoi. Until now I already learned many different katás, such as the katá fundamental, pianidã, pianshodã, piangodã, pianyodã, among others. All the katás that start with the pian (bigginer) are the katás for the belts bellow brown belt. After that they change names and do not have a specific word to define them, examples are the baasai, cuchanco, and the tinto. These are much harder and will take a karate student in average one year of very hard training to do it well, and many more to do it perfectly. For me to go to my next belt which is brown I have to know the baasai which is the first of the superior katás, the piangodã which is for the green belts and the piangodã which is for the blue belts. Not only do I have to actually know their order and specific moves but also to perfrom them perfectly and with streangh. Even though a kata might not seem very helpfull in practical terms since it is usually slow and has moves that you would never ever even think of using in a fight they are very essential for the karate studante. In a fight, you dont have time to think one your attack and defence, it is all spontaneaus, the role of the katá is to provide you with an arsenal of moves that might not seem usefull but that can come in handy at any sudden point.