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.

Makiwara

Makiwara is the name of a wooden plank we have at the dojo. It is used for one of the most vital trainings of karate, making muscles stronger and keeping your wrist straight. From my personal experience I know that training your punches and kicks in this plank is very important since I once saw a man brake his wrist in a championship. The makiwara shows us how we are hitting and what we need to improve; if your wrist is not straight you will soon learn that because you will feel that it hurts when you punch. The makiwara also is good because it makes our bones stronger for our punches. When we hit the plank our knucles get "used" to hitting strong objects, this makes them harder and more tolerable to the force that we feel after punching something. The last benifit that comes from training with the makiwara is making your punch faster. When you do not train in the plank you usualy use the strengh of your muscles to hit fast. For karate there is nothing as wrong as using strengh to hit. In karate we hit with the force that comes from twisting our waist, this makes the punch almost twice as fast as any punch make with your arm muscle only. The makiwara shows you if your getting it right or not since the impact of a punch that uses pure muscle force will me much greater on you. You can usualy brake it down to; if it is strong and hurts, your doing it wrong For this type of training to work one has to be very determined in karate because it is usualy only used for the black belts and must be used with wisdom since you can very easily brake your wrist and peel of your skin (which I already did like 10 times and it burns like hell).

Karate-ball

Yes, go ahead and and giggle but in fact karate-ball is a 100% original invention of our dojo and has proven to be ver fun and warming up. Karate-ball is improvised with what we have at our dojo, it has the basic rules of soccer but with a agression rate about 50 times higher. We usually play this game when no one is in the mood to stretch and we have to warm up, it usually takes 20 minutes. The goals are made of two regular plastic chairs with openings in the front and side, one is placed in each side of the court and goals are scored by kicking the small soft ball in by the sides or the front of the chair. The nice part of this game is that when someone has the ball you can usually tackle them, grab them, kick them, punch them, jump at them, and in some rare cases - bite them. Its not the type of fighting to hurt but just to get them away from the ball. This makes us so tired that sometimes we can't even practice after. On normal days the black belts win (teams are black belts versus others) but not always. Karate-ball is fun and very warming up, the bad part is that since I am the most tounting and irritating student I usually get kicked the most. xD

Flexibility

Even though this may sound very futile, about half the time we spend in class is always spent stretching. This is not just to keep the muscles in order and ready for action but also to increase the high of kicks. There are many different ways we stretch in karate class, one type of stretching includes a black belt who leads all the others in what to do, and the other way is with a partner, this type is meant to only increase your kick height by pushing your legs apart or forcing you down until your head touches your feet. The main problem with stretching is that when people begin karate classes they don’t know their limitation, for your flexibility to increase you must always push yourself to the limit but not enough as to hurt your muscle. When white belts join, they see all the black belts with huge openings and flexibility and try to imitate, often enough they get hurt and don’t practice for almost two weeks. Stretching also brings another great characteristic to your muscles, they make your muscles stronger. Sometimes part of the stretching is to stay in a very hard position that makes your leg hurt or your back for one minute or two. In these situations your muscle slowly becomes stronger and more accustomed with each position that one latter had to use in sequences and exams. As boring as it may seem, karate is based on long and often painful positions to endure your muscles and increase your openings.

Championships

Championships occur almost twice a year in São Paulo. They don’t happen often because karate-wadokai is not the most popular of the styles, it was the karate taught in Japanese universities and thus only learned by few of the upper class society. There are two types of competitions in tournaments; fighting and performing solo sequences. Last year I won the São Paulo tournament for sequences and got second place for fighting. The importance of these tournaments is not only to get practice with new opponent that you never fought before or to get opinions on your performance by different teachers but also to teach the students spiritually. Before each tournament the founder of wadokai in Brasil always gives a speech of the importance of karate. In the tournament we learn how to use everything that we learned in class and use it into practice, this includes all moves like kicking and punching but most of all includes sportsmanship and self-control. In karate you can never actually hurt your opponent; to get a point is to get a kick or punch close enough and with your arm or leg slightly bend so that you show you could have destroyed your enemy, but you controlled yourself. This relates back to the ethical importance of karate, we fight for defense and self-growth, never for revenge, show ourselves or any other unethical reason. If one is to actually hurt the opponent you receive a warning and your opponent gets a point. Tournaments help remind students that there is much to learn, and that self-control and ethics comes above winning dishonestly.

Karate in School

Other than to defend myself from any frequent attacks coming from my friends and being able to hit them faster, karate is a very significant influence for my grades and for my daily life at chapel. Discipline is indubitably the most important secondary effect of learning karate. I learn discipline because martial arts work in a hierarchal form. Starting with the sensei, or teacher, then to the oldest black belts and going down to the newly joining white belts. I began of course as one of the students which had to obey every word from almost anyone, this lead me to learn faster and to really follow orders accurately and without question. As I grew and changed belt I answer only to the black and brown belts of the academy and can teach and command almost everyone since most students are below me. But commanding new students and teaching is not just having easy tasks done but it teaches me to have responsibility with my powers because they can be taken away. I do not use them to enjoy myself or to frustrate others but to make the new students learn as much as possible and move on faster. These teachings are also very helpful in chapel because I learned to follow orders from teachers and to respect them and to respect my buddies. Indeed it is very helpful to follow orders and to respect others as well as give orders meant for the good of others and for a community-based goodness.

My Karate Life

I started karate about four years ago. Since then I have worked very hard and go to class four times a week to improve my skills in all areas. Today I am a purple belt, (which is the just two belts before black belt) and I have obligations to fulfill whilst being one. Karate acts on my everyday life, not only in the dojo but also outside. I learned not to get into fights, I learned how to treat my superiors and above all I gained a significant amount of discipline in my life. Just two days ago I was walking to my karate class and a girl who had done shopping accidentally dropped about eighty reais and didn’t notice. No one saw anything and she continued walking about twenty meters in front of me. I picked up the money and ran to give it back to her. I don’t know if I would or not have done it if I did not have karate values and meditations in my life, yet I gave it back and felt great for doing so.

Karate Introduction

Karate has been a very successful and important martial art in the last years. It was developed in Japan during the post-Shogun era and lives until today with over ten different official styles of it. Karate represents more than just a fight, a master in karate is mentally and physically connected and in a perfect harmony with his soul. Such an art has become very popular and is growing all over the world to become more and more famous. It is also a noble art for a true master only uses his skills for personal defense or for the sake of teaching others the hidden secrets of such art. Since its start, karate has developed and has been exported to many different countries in every continent. Such an art is not for those who wish to seek fights and to hurt others, it is only for the nobles who seek their spiritual and physical improvement together with the improvement of their motor skills and defense.