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.