I first learned “Karate” from a dojo that mixed shotokan, wado-ryu, early WTF taekwondo, with some basic judo and police type restraining techniques as “self defense”. The best part about this school was my first teacher, not the style or methods they used, but the personal one on one instruction I had recieved when learning the basic techniques was priceless. I didn’t stay long but what I learned never left me, I practiced nearly everyday since then and for about 5-6 years I did nothing but basics.
From here I realized not all Karate or taekwondo was the same. I started reading as much as possible on every aspect of martial arts, Karate, Judo, Taekwondo, Boxing, Wrestling, etc…This was around the time the internet first came about and I was finally able to get ahold of videos. The myth of martial arts to me quickly faded, knowing that all skill in any endevaour was just hard work on your part, so I never really got drawn into the style vs style, or school vs school silliness. I kept to what interested me and adopted what worked from anything I did, always favoring the Karate movements, they always seemed right to me. The way my mind works, the way I like to train, the reasons I train, Karate, and in particular the kata aspect was what I’m mostly drawn to.
“Budo is about the creation of self before the foe.” – Kodo Sawaki
I studied the works of Chokki Motobu and oddly enough, Gichin Funakoshi. I had been personally working through Naihanchi/Tekki kata for a few years before I had the chance to train briefly with Chosei Motobu in 2005, the son of Chokki Motobu. This is where I learned the standard Naihanchi bunkai and Chokki’s 12 fighting techniques that have become widely available now.
Much of what I know about real Karate I learned from studying everything I could find about actual fighting and self defense. What I feel I did was closer to what the original intent of Karate was. I may have learned the movements first as a child and then what I was defending against, but I ended up throwing it all away when the one step nonsense didn’t work. And I began working from what I now know as, and what Patrick McCarthy calls the “HAPV”, habitual acts of physical violence. All the applications that worked for me and that have worked in combat sports, I found in the various movements in Karate and kata. The knowledge and experience that I ended up with was not how to use the movements in Karate, but how Karate techniques were created and developed in the first place. When this happened, and happens to you, what you realize is all styles and all techniques that actually work on a resisting opponent, are Karate techniques. And if you don’t think they are, keep in mind the originators of your beloved Karate used what worked from whatever style they encountered and understood it as all in fighting, nothing less. So if it is NOT in karate, and it works, then it should be, and it’s up to todays Karateka to put it in.
Today, I firmly believe in Patrick McCarthys research on the history of Karate. My experiences and personal study have verified everything I learned through his work. I’m continuing on in my studies not by holding on to tradition, but by creating and developing my own personal tradition, my own personal karate, and my own personal katas. It’s what makes sense, and it’s what interests me the most.
“Man, the living creature, the creating individual, is always more important than any established style or system”. – Bruce Lee
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