One rhetorical device used in arguments is referred to as the “straw man”, and you’ll be able to tell when you see a straw man argument in action when somebody ascribes a quality to the opponent, and then criticizes that opponent for that quality.

Here’s a pretty decent example: there are people who clearly know better, who criticize the stances of traditional Shotokan karate, suggesting that people can’t fight or spar well from such low stances.

Now, that’s just a silly argument, although it’s a true statement of fact.

Because when you look at videos of Shotokan Karate Tournaments, you’ll see that nobody is using one of those very low stances, because they’re not fighting stances!

They are stances for training, not fighting!

Remember, Shotokan Karate is a carefully graduated sequence of exercises that produces a predictable result, which is a martial artist who is flexible enough, and strong enough, and can move freely enough, to execute techniques in the syllabus of Shotokan (which includes just about everything!) easily and without, you know, falling down!

So now you know what a straw man argument is, and you know that it’s being used whenever somebody (who usually knows better) suggests that Shotokan stances are too low for sparring and fighting.

Because that’s not what they’re for!

And, yes, every now and then somebody makes that argument, and even causes it to show up in print. On the internet.

Oh, well. People do what they do for the reasons they do ‘em, and they keep doing ‘em, and no amount of fact can dissuade somebody who wants to believe that his style is the only true way!

Myself, I kinda like Shotokan Karate because it’s easy to see (from the other students in class) about what I’ll be able to do in another ten years or so, and that works for me!

Now, if you want to watch a Shotokan stylist discussing stances for purposes of fighting or sparring, here is Lyoto Machida doing exactly that!

I’ve been having fun with this karate blog for the last couple of days.

I finally figured out how to plug in videos, and there is a wealth of video material about karate and martial arts, so I get to have guest instructors like Sensei Nakayama appear at this virtual dojo, and Sensei Nakayama is available to teach 24/7/365, which is very good indeed.

I also have a platform for my opinions about traditional karate, Shotokan karate, supplemental training exercises, and my opinions about the efficacy of Shotokan karate, Tai Chi and Aikido and boxing and MMA and wrestling and the Fairbairn techniques as self-defense.

And that’s fun, particularly when I remember the mere five books (six, if you count the two-volume set twice) that were available to me when I started my martial arts travels after a rough year in 5th Grade at Emerson Grade School in Phoenix, AZ.

But don’t think that mere knowledge can help you in a situation requiring self-defense skills; you are going to need practice of some kind, and the more the better, because your mind may remember pictures you see on the internet, but your body remembers what it has practiced.

One of my next projects is to contrast short learning-curve technique sets with Shotokan, which has a technique-rich syllabus, and a very long learning curve.

Critics of Shotokan karate suggest that it takes too long to learn the syllabus.

I agree that it takes a long time to learn the syllabus in Shotokan; I’m still working on it, and I will be for the next twenty years or so.

Since I enjoy the training, the extended and extensive syllabus is a feature to me, not a flaw.

But for no other reason than fun, I plan to discuss some short-learning curve technique sets, including the Fairbairn Syllabus, and a version of Prison Fighting Techniques on DVD that impressed me (actually, about half of the techniques impressed me), and the LINE System used for a while by U.S. Marines, the combatives systems (similar to Fairbairn’s) taught by the great, late Carl Cestari and five or six other shorter-learning-curve self-defense systems, and contrast them with Shotokan.

And I’m interested in the current version of Krav Maga being taught in Israel, so I’ll take a look at what’s out there, because it gets field tested on a daily basis in a way similar to, but far more extreme than, mixed martial arts.

So there’s more to come, and we haven’t scratched the surface of Shotokan, at that!

I’m going to screen the four-dvd set by Lyoto Machida, because, after all, he is a life-long Shotokan student who had done very well indeed in the unbiased, intense experimental training ground of mixed martial arts.

Once I get my dvds, I will screen them, and I will tell you how well I liked them in this very karate blog.

This much, however, is clear.

Not everyone who studies Shotokan Karate is going to be a world-class competitor and tough guy, anymore than a young lady who takes a year of ballet will be a ballerina starring in Swan Lake in a professional ballet company.

Not everyone who studies Shotokan Karate will have the abilities of Sensei Nakayama or Sensei Funakoshi or or Sensei Tanaka or Sensei Koyama (I got to watch Tanaka demonstrate when Sensei Nakayama brought him to our class with Sensei Koyama at Arizona State University; Tanaka’s a pretty serious guy. And that was a more interesting class than the usual class. Kinda like a visit from the Pope, if you’re Catholic).

And that’s just common sense.

If you are a serious practitioner of any martial art, you spend a huge amount of time in training, conditioning and practice; waaaaaaaaaaay more than a recreational practitioner.

One reason boxers are such effective fighters, in general, is that they are filtered at the both the front end and the tail end; those who are not tough enough to endure the training because they have glass jaws and low pain tolerances are shaken out. At the other end, those who want to have what we generally refer to as normal lives, with a predictable paycheck, drop out.

That leave very highly motivated guys with high pain tolerances and cast-iron jaws and guts who run five miles a day and lift weights and do a million sit ups and hit themselves in the face, and you can teach techniques to guys like that, or not, and they’ll still be very tough guys.

But if you take a wimpy little guy who weighs 135 soaking wet, and he trains twice a week in any traditional martial art whatsoever for a period of twenty years, and you toss him in a ring with Mike Tyson or Mourad Oumakhanov, he will become a floor ornament very quickly.

Big, tough guys tend to beat little fragile guys, all other things being equal.

Martial arts in any context are about trying to make things more equal than physics and biology would otherwise dictate.

And you get out of a martial art what you put into it.

So if you practice an esthetically pleasing martial art (Tai Chi as taught most places in the United States) from a non-combative oriented instructor in a Parks and Recreations Class, and you take one class per week for five years, and you become pretty good at the long set, you probably ought not expect to be able to hold your own against a Golden Gloves boxer, who has bled and sweated and suffered several hours a day over a decade for his art.

Getting used to having somebody trying to knock your head off is probably pretty good preparation for a situation where somebody is trying to knock your head off, you know?

In that context, it’s also good to recall that in the good old days, formerly known as “these trying times”, kumite in Shotokan Karate was essentially without rules-that is, one guy said “hajime”, two guys fought like crazy, then everybody went to the hospital. Ditto with matches between Universities in Japan. Made the Japanese hospitals very busy after University Clubs had their gentlemanly matches.

In any case, Lyoto Machida has studied Shotokan Karate for almost the entirety of his life, and he indicates that he worked hard at that, as well as his grappling study. I’ll be interested in what he has to say about karate as an effective martial art.

Because in his hands, it clearly is an effective martial art, you know? And he says that’s because of his discipline. I tend to believe him:

A gentleman named W.R. Mann has written extensively about traditional karate.

He doesn’t think a lot of it, but he’s very smart, and he’s very experienced, and he writes very well; and therefore his thoughts deserve attention.

One of the dozen or so criticisms of karate he argues is that practicing traditional karate can make you stiff and rigid.

I certainly agree that it can.

Huh?

Well, I’ve already written about the thing that all martial practices have in common, that being trying to teach the correct balance between tension and relaxation.

So one traditional style of karate, Goju-ryu, is famous for working to make you so stiff and hard that you can barely move, in the practice of the first Goju-ryu kata, Sanchin.

But ultimately, if you persevere in your study of Goju-ryu, you turn into Morio Higaonna, and you hit like a cannon and move smoothly and with relaxation when you are no longer young.

The reason I use Goju-ryu as an example of traditional karate and stiffness is the syllabus of Goju-ryu tries to make you stiff in the beginning, and then builds the correct balance from there; and in exactly the same way, Tai-chi Chuan builds excessive relaxation in the beginning, and then puts some starch in the techniques when you become a little more advanced.

And how about my instructor in traditional Shotokan Karate, JKA 8th Dan Shojiro Koyama?

Well, now we’re moving in an area where I have both knowledge of facts, and preconceived ideas and prejudices, and they work like this: Sensei Shojiro Koyama is a very smart guy. He realized early in his practice that he wanted to be a little faster than most folks, so he’s always emphasized speed and “whipping” movements in his practice and his teaching. That is, relaxation in technique is a special interest in his dojo.

The good news here is that my opinion isn’t evidence, but the magic of motion pictures means that I don’t need to be a good witness!

So please take a look at Sensei Koyama, and you can judge for yourself whether karate makes you flexible, strong, coordinated and healthy. At 73 or so, when this film was made:

Well, what’s karate?

There are differences between karate styles, but karate is a graduated series of exercises that are designed to produce students who can defend themselves, using either techniques associated with sparring (if the attack is at distance) or techniques embedded in the kata (if the attack is up-close and personal, or if it involves weapons).

Does karate contain the most effective series of graduated exercises for unarmed self-defense?

On that issue, opinions differ.

As a matter of fact, on that issue, tempers flare!

Now, I know some guys who could use karate techniques to defend themselves against Sherman Tanks.

But some folks believe that only mixed martial artists, or boxers, or wrestlers, or Gracie guys can fight, and that karate guys can’t.

Now, I know that some karate guys can fight, and they fight well. Both at distance, and up close and personal.

But I ran into some well-written articles that takes the position, roughly speaking, that the study of karate is a waste of time.

For now, here are the articles: and remember, I disagree with them!

And remember, the core of the argument that’s being made below is the definition of “traditional karate”. I’ll be talking about the arguments in them one, by one, by one, over the next few weeks.

But the guy writes well, you gotta give him that, even if you disagree with his conclusions!

And if the link gets broken, the article I’m talking about is written by W. R. Mann, and the topic is why traditional karate is useless for self-defense.

Uh. No.

Why would I even ask the question?

Well, because a lot of other folks have said it, and published it.

I have to respond initially that any reports of the death of karate have been greatly exaggerated.

Now, is karate today exactly the same as karate in Okinawa two hundred years ago?

Probably not, exactly. Except some places.

But living things grow and change.

In Okinawa, teaching karate was done in secret, and typically in very, very small classes. Of one student, for instance.

But in order to teach karate to large numbers of people who had never seen it before, new strategies were in order.

Remember, neither Sensei Funakoshi nor Sensei Nakayama had the internet as a tool.

So the strategy of sending real, live instructors to many countries to teach large classes was about the only game in town.

And it worked beyond the wildest imagining of anyone in Okinawa two hundred years ago.

Was the entire body of knowledge transmitted to the entire world?

I doubt it; but that process continues today.

The Arizona Karate Association Dojo is located at 6326 N 7th St, Phoenix, Arizona, 85014-1544; Call the Dojo at (602) 274-1136! Or see the OFFICIAL website of the Arizona Karate Association – and remember that my Shotokan Karate Blog is only an unofficial blog, with no ability to speak with authority on any karate-related subject.

I’m just a student. Give me another twenty years of training, maybe then I’ll have actual opinions.

And remember, never ever hit anybody or kick anybody, because you might hurt them or yourself!

I recently stumbled on another nifty Shotokan Karate Blog, called Shotokan Karate-art of the empty hand.

Here’s what I like about that blog: everything.

The author has nifty videos, nifty analysis, and nifty bunkai.

Overall, nifty stuff!

He also talked about a list of the top ten sorts of violence that show up, at least in the United Kingdom.

I liked it a lot, so here it is, courtesy of magpie, a smart Aussie:

In 2004 using Home Office statistics, CCTV footage and witness/victim interviews Jeff Nash published a paper outlining the most common forms of attack in the UK, he found that following were the most common Habitual Acts of Violence;

1. One person pushes, hands to chest, which is normally followed by the pushee striking first, to the head.

2. A swinging punch to the head.

3. A front clothing grab, one handed, followed by punch to the head.

4. A front clothing grab, two hands, followed by a head butt.

5. A front clothing grab, two hands, followed by a knee to the groin.

6. A bottle, glass, or ashtray to the head.

7. A lashing kick to groin/lower legs.

8.A broken bottle/glass jabbed to face.

9. A slash with knife, most commonly a 3 to 4″lockblade knife or kitchen utility knife.

10.A grappling style head lock.

————————————————————————————-

Now, the next thing to think about is this: which of the kata we practice has the best bunkai for use against 1 through 10 above?

I plan to track down a few other “top ten lists” of habitual violence; I’ve seen a few before, and they are not identical to the list from the U.K., although they are similar.

You are unlikely to be attacked with martial arts-type techniques in the outside world, because a bad guy has to practice those sorts of attacks, and bad guys hate to practice; so you might as well prepare for the attacks that actually show up in the world outside the dojo.

And the kata do contain defenses against precisely these sorts of attacks, not leaping reverse back kicks.

I’ve mentioned Andre Bertel previously here in my little Shotokan Karate blog.

He had the privilege of studying directly with Sensei Asai, a Shotokan Karate Master. Yeah, with all capital letters.

Really.

All of the advanced Shotokan masters moved in somewhat different directions after they had absorbed the syllabus of Shotokan, exactly the way that some boxers focus on mobility, some on power, some on evasion, and some condition themselves so they don’t care if they get hit.

My impression is that Sensei Asai thought it might be a good idea to get out of the way of attacks, and it might be better if the guy who was striking at him wound up looking at the sky and contemplating the error of his ways.

Hence, the really, really cool techniques that Sensei Bertel teaches in this video.

Now, if you’re a beginning Shotokan student (and by the way, I certainly am), you probably don’t understand that Sensei Bertel’s techniques, which look like a love child born of Karate and Aikido, with a marriage conducted at some later point in time by William Fairbairn, are all implied in orthodox Shotokan Karate.

In fact, you might say that all of Sensei Asai’s techniques are ultra-orthodox, because Sensei Asai was for a time the head of the Japan Karate Association.

But orthodoxy is only important sometimes and in some places. If someone wishes to rearrange your face, it is little defense to tell him that you practice only the purest and most orthodox of techniques.

On the other hand, if you sweep aside his technique, stun him with an inner arm to his vagus nerve, and gently place him on the ground to contemplate the errors of his ways, you get to keep your nose in the center of your face!

And that might be a good thing, depending on your feelings toward your nose.

NOTE: I have a friend with vast medical knowledge, which I lack. If you practice any martial art, you’ll get a broken nose, EVENTUALLY. I don’t care what art you practice, noses are wimpy. I was told (and I don’t know whether it’s accurate) that when you go to the emergency room with your broken nose, you want to ask them to let you wait for a plastic surgeon or an eye, ear, nose and throat specialist. The reason is that you’re more likely to get a repair that doesn’t involve a deviated septum, whatever that is.

ALSO NOTE: In Okinawa, the birthplace of karate, there were a lot of teachers and a lot of styles. It was normal practice to study multiple styles and to study with multiple teachers. There is no disloyalty in studying as much as you can in as many ways as you can, from books, to videos, to live classes. On the other hand, if you are studying techniques with conflicting techniques, that can scramble your synapses.

For instance, the idea of keeping a shoulder UP to guard against counters shows up in some boxing classes; the idea of keeping shoulders down so that power can be generated properly is standard in karate classes. There is no real contradiction there (boxers pop their shoulders up at close range when they might get countered, not at greater distance when it would slow down their punch), but you may be confused.

In fact, if you’re like me, you’ll just stay confused!

3 October had arrived… & not too soon!

We started the day off with a class presented by Sensei Soon Pretorius, of kihon… the theme being DO NOT ASSUME! After many assumptions we moved onto kumite, I partnered with John Rust & let my ribs know that they are alive!

The second session was taken by John Rust, working on the 5 heian kata, taking two things out of each kata & working them in detail. In between this standardization was done on things that outside dojo(s) were not doing the same as the Academy.

The third session Sensei Soon did Bassai-dai, Jion & Jitte.

After all the hard training it was time for the dan grading!

Nerves set in with every one! This was noticeable outside the hall where everyone was going through their kata… no offence… it was a bit late!

In the end the was a 50% pass rate, which says the Academy has definitely increased the criteria for passing dan grades!

Well Done to David for getting Shodan & Sherilee for getting Nidan. Myself (& I hate doing this, but I have received over 100 mails asking, so this is said under my breath) Yondan.

So basically if I was playing the old Mario Bros, I would be on level 4… where things get exciting.

Thank you every one for the support & also thank you to the Academy leadership for the excellent weekend!