Sorry it's been a while since I blogged here - rest assured, I haven't been sat twiddling my thumbs!

​Over the past few months we've been juggling a pretty big house extension plus two new additions to our family - a beautiful baby girl called Isabelle Rose and a pet dog called Cookie!  Added to the work I've been doing to help progress our dojo up here in sunny Cumbria, it's been a little hectic to say the least!

​However, things have started to settle down a little and so I should now be able to squeeze a little time here and there to get back blogging for my website.

​Thanks to those who have kept in touch regarding the second instalment of my Naihanchi book series and my sincere apologies for letting the original planned release date slip.  The good news is that I'm back in the saddle (so to speak) and just this week I managed to finish drafting another chapter.  It is my aim to give this project priority over the next few months and once it's finally published I'm sure (or indeed I hope) you'll all consider it worth the wait!  Nevertheless, your continued support is always very much appreciated :-)

​OK - so now let's get down to the reason I sat down to blog today...

Here's a short video taken in the dojo a little while ago, where we spent some time looking developing the ability to strike effectively at multiple angles using the same hand, utilising some of the lessons on body dynamics taken from Naihanchi Kata.

For the sake of the drill, I chose four key trajectories to work with (up, hook, reverse hook and down) and we looked at how best to join them together with smooth transitions from the core, whilst still aiming to create 'shock' at the end of each blow as if they were single fully committed shots.

For traditional karate practitioners, striking hard and with full intent to switch of the threat to facilitate safe escape safety should make-up our primary strategy for physical self-defence. It is simply the most clinical way of ending a confrontation. Other skills gained through the holistic study of kata bunkai (such as limb control, clinch work, joint attacks, throwing, choking etc.) may then act as secondary support options, to be applied when things don't go to plan, and aiming to return us back to a position of dominance whereby we may continue on with our primary striking options. Therefore, neglecting the development of effective strikes during your dojo training is from a pragmatic perspective, a recipe for disaster.

It's been a while since I posted a video to my blog, so here's a 15 minute tutorial covering my Naihanchi Kata limb control drills!

Naihanchi (or Tekki) Kata is the core form for all Shuri-based karate styles, providing the essential framework for their functional combative strategies. My dojo syllabus has a number of limb control drills that come from the lessons given within the movements of Naihanchi Kata and the video below is a sample tutorial for one of these.

Part of the second volume of my book series on Naihanchi Kata will feature the combative analysis of the form as a progressive and sequential learning tool for building a fundamental strategy for self-defence.  Here's a brief snippet from the current draft, which will give you a flavour of some of the subjects covered...

"Being able to demonstrate three or more combative applications for each movement of Naihanchi Kata may seem on the surface to be an impressive feat and a worthwhile endeavour. However, I have always felt that unless these discrete applications can be incorporated into a fully integrated strategy that helps to express the interconnected lessons and principles given by the form, then in terms of bunkai, you are merely scratching away consistently at the most superficial layer. I would like to suggest that there is not only a pragmatic reason for the movements themselves, but also a pragmatic reason for the particular sequence prescribed by the kata and it is this sequence, not so much the isolated movements, that holds the real potential, reveals the bigger picture and thus, is worthy of much deeper exploration." 

The third video this week features more recent footage from the dojo on the subject of entangled arm locks from Naihanchi Kata and progressing on to how they may be abandoned if things aren't going to plan.

Although joint attacks should be considered only as a support strategy for self-defence (the primary strategy being of course percussive impact), in my opinion, they should nevertheless still be studied as part of a holistic combative methodology.

Here's another new video - wow...that's two in one day!

This one shows some footage in the dojo from a few weeks ago when we were exploring some fundamental push hand patterns and limb control sequences inspired by Naihanchi Kata.  Skill development using close-range tactile reference is important for traditional karate practitioners, since the movements of kata were originally designed to cope with these distances for effective self-defence.  Therefore, pretty much any kata sequence may be applied from connections obtained from such drills.

Hi Everyone - here's a new video just uploaded to my YouTube channel!

The video features some footage taken in the dojo earlier this week, when we were exploring a sequence from Pinan (Heian) Godan Kata, as inspired by a couple of my students.  This particular application features a couple of elbow joint attacks and a take down before a choke using the stance and the characteristic lower cross block as an attack to the opponents fingers.

Last weekend, I was invited to teach a seminar down south in Reading UK.  We covered lots of subjects over the course of the day, but here's a few minutes of video footage from the event, where I'm providing some advice on close-range power generation and specifically, the use of 'whipping' energy in Tetsui-Uchi that's often seen to be a trademark of Shuri-based karate systems.

In the video, I discuss and demonstrate the requirement to sequence the joints so that energy may perpetuate from the floor, up through the body and out of the striking limb.  I also emphasise the need to utilise gravity by being in control over your state of balance.  All of these principles can be found in most (if not all) traditional karate techniques.

Now that I've finally fixed the audio problem on my computer here in the office, I've been busy reviewing the video footage taken at my applied karate seminar in Malta in December last year. My intention is to share with you all a selection of short tutorials from the weekend to offer a flavour for some of the topics covered.

The first day of my seminar in Malta focused almost entirely on the four 'uke' (age/soto/uchi/gedan) movements and their subsequent appearance in a number of kata across the styles. The video below shows one of the drills I covered to help participants understand the numerous ways in which the technique of Gedan Barai (lower sweep) may be applied combatively.