Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Overload?

Not sure if I'm doing too much or not enough or not on the right track? My goal with karate/martial arts training now is to understand how karate functions as a fighting science/art as well as to gain "functional spontaneity" with it. In order to discover a pedagogical approach to help me in that endeavor, I've begun training in Wing Chun and now I've just started doing Danzan-ryu jujutsu. So it's Wing Chun 3x/week and jujutsu 2x/week. As I've mentioned in previous posts, Wing Chun is fascinating to me because of the similarity of its movements (not all) to the movements done in the kata of the Matsubayashi-system of karate in which I began my training (I mean, I'm sure there are similarities in the kata of other systems of karate but I've only done Shorin-ryu). I'm no expert at karate by any stretch so I could be completely wrong in my analysis, but to me at this point in my training, there are similarities. The reason I've begun jujutsu is because I know from my reading that this was a skill that was incorporated into karate training "back in the day". There is an article by Charles C. Goodin, a historian and karate practitioner/teacher out of Hawaii who wrote an article in which he cited this historical reference:
When Kentsu Yabu came to Hawaii he was asked what the difference was between Karate (which then meant "China Hand") and Ju Jutsu. His reply was remarkable. Think about Ju Jutsu for a moment. Its curriculum is vast. Yabu answered that Ju Jutsu was only 10% of Karate. This was more than an idle boast. We know today that pre-public school system Karate had a comprehensive grappling element, often called Tegumi or Tuite.
Just to give context, Kentsu Yabu (1866-1937) was one of our Okinawan masters of karate who, according to Shoshin Nagamine's Tales of Okinawa's Great Masters, was a "senior disciple" of another Okinawan karate master, Itosu Anko.

Anyway, my point is that I'm not sure if I should just be focusing on one art or if I should just be doing what feels best? I mean, I've never done two new arts at the same time. When I was living in LA, I took up judo for 5 months in addition to going to the karate dojo. But that experience was too much for me physically. Slaving at a job 8 hours a day, then running off to judo or karate was too taxing on my system. But this time around it's a bit different. The way that Sifu LeBlanc teaches Wing Chun is not as physically demanding as the way my Sensei taught us his karate. And so far, the way that Sensei Mike teaches us jujutsu is not as physically taxing either. But according to Sifu LeBlanc, because I'm just starting out in the Wing Chun system, I have not yet been exposed to the more physically demanding drills/exercises. And I'm sure the same goes for jujutsu, although Sensei Mike has not explicitly stated such. And also, I just quit my job as of last week so perhaps all of these factors are what allows me to not feel so tired to do the training. I don't know. We'll just have to see what happens in the next month or so. I may just end up having to focus on one or the other.

Elbow SMASH.
- Hiji Até

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