It’s 6:00am the
morning of the 3rd day of a three day seminar with Iain Abernethy
from the UK. I woke up with my mind immediately
shifting into gear going over what we did yesterday (Saturday) and Friday
night. Therefore this review. To place this review in context, I have spent
many many hours traveling to go see some of the top instructors in the martial
arts teach in a variety of different arts that I’m interested in. There are many more that I haven’t seen and I
know from being on the mat working with other instructors who run schools or
teach part time that there are many instructors out there that can teach and
could give seminars as well. I also know
that my main area of interest has been in the Filipino martial arts (FMAs) so I’m
not a “karate” sensei of high rank in a traditional organization nor am I
writing from that view point when I say that hands down this was one of the
best and one of the most enjoyable seminars I’ve attended yet in the martial
arts as a whole.
Iain is a
great communicator, an excellent technician, and as a whole had his material so
well put together that like I said, I woke up thinking on how I could adapt his material to what
I do to in order to make what or how I teach better for my students. Ultimately that is why I’m here to get ideas
on how to improve my study of karate (and TKD) and to see if I can bring techniques,
ideas, drills and concepts back to my school for my students. I have always felt there was a disconnect in
the way karate was taught (I use karate as a general term for karate and ITF
type or inspired TKD). This is a big
reason I gravitated more to the FMAs because I liked how things were tied
together; in fact it was through studying the anyos (forms) of Modern Arnis
that got me interested in studying the applications of my TKD kata. Iain helped provide me the answers as to not
only why there was a disconnect, what the disconnect was and how it got there,
but also inspiration on how to solve the problem.
Iain started
off by explaining his view on kata applications by explaining or I should say
tying in historical references of writings by Okinawan masters of karate and then over time how things went as
it karate moved to Japan. It wasn’t like a
boring lecture rather it was like getting a history lesson from Dan Inosanto on
the FMAs (and how they came to America and such).
It helped frame the context of the subject at hand. This would continue throughout the weekend
providing insight into techniques and into the katas and into the men who
created or taught the katas in the early days of karate.
Then he
started off yesterday explaining the techniques found in the katas and had us
practicing them in a flow drill. This
was unique in my experience because I had always learned the bunkai
(application) of a move as a set apart move, ok if I was lucky maybe 2-3 moves
but not Pinan Shodan as a whole flow drill with combative applications. Understand what I mean here, Pinan Shodan not
as 15 different techniques or individual moves (I’m just using 15 as a random
number here to illustrate the point, it is 6:00 am remember) but as a whole
drill that flowed from one technique to the next. So you would start at the opening move and
practice it, he would then add a second move and then you would practice both,
a third move and you would go through all three techniques and so on till the
end of the kata. All of the while he
would explain what the techniques could mean how they fit into the kata, humorous
stories which fit into the presentation etc. etc. OK now image going through Pinan Shodan -
Yodan in this format.
At the end
of the day after about 8 hours of being on the floor (we got maybe 1-1 and 1/2
hours in break time overall) we were getting pretty brain dead and yet the flow
drills still stayed with us, or I should say parts of the flow drills stayed
with us. Enough so that it wasn’t just a
couple of moves here and a couple of moves there. At the same time we should remember why this
move is this way or that etc. etc.
At the end
of Friday night's session I was up till 2:00 a.m typing my notes from that 2
hour lesson, I managed to recall about 10 pages of drills and notes on the core
principles of the katas (what they teach) and specific drills to back these
up. This set the ground work for
yesterday’s workout. (I took these from
my hand written notes at the seminar.)
So I know I have about a week work ahead of me to go over and type out
yesterday and today’s lessons and many months/years of working to implement
this kind of material into my curriculum.
So why call
this review Back to the Future? Because
I believe it is by going back and researching our katas and applying them in
this manner that the future of the art lies.
Whether it is applying pressure point techniques (like so many other
teachers do), or the more combative type of techniques such as like Iain was
showing; having an alternative to the “traditional” sparring mode type bunkai
applications I believe is the future. As
this type of teaching method takes hold I believe the art becomes more
realistic and more interesting to the public at large. Hopefully we can then teach more and more adults
instead of having karate and TKD becoming just a kid sport in the U.S.A. I’m not sure how many adults attended the
seminar, I only saw 1 kid or teenager, but there were about 50 + black belts
(and a few under black belt rank) working together. This shows me that there is
interest among other instructors into this material who in turn hopefully will
pass it on to their students and so on.
At the end
of the day this was a great seminar and training experience and I highly
recommend his (Iain’s) seminars (or any of his material really), to anyone interested
in application principles in the study of kata for the Japanese or TKD arts.