Karate is better than jujitsu. Yes, that’s exactly what I’m going to say. But before we get too far down that road, we have to set the table.

I’m going to explain this to you in a way that when we are done you will agree with me. And I’m also going to point out something significant. So, hang on while we go to the top of the mount and we take the high-level view. Let us go to the high castle view. And answer the age-old question, “Is it the style that makes the person, or is it the person that makes the style?”

What Style of Karate is Best?

The question is of course what style is best and that’s a good question. The question is asked by a lot of people that enter into the martial arts, “Hey what am I supposed to do?” “What would be a good art for me?” “How should I approach this?” You know it’s the person that makes the style and style it makes some instances.

Sometimes the style does make the person. Sometimes that person is needing an anchor in their life. Martial Arts can provide that anchor. They are needing some discipline and some function. Those things can be found in the martial arts.

Other times the person ascends past the structure of the art. So, it is a Yin-Yang symbol. You can be either one they tour on one another sometimes something can be more emphasized than the other. Going through a bad patch in life? Going to the dojo, putting some discipline in, bringing some order It’s a great thing. Ascending past the techniques we know of some that have done that, but they are few and far between. You get the picture it’s the middle ground. It’s the Goldilocks Rule. I love the goldilocks rule. I’m a big believer in that, not too hot, not too cold, just right, find the middle path.

When the argument of what style is the best, the conversation turns into a technical mishmash. At one level you don’t hold your fist like that when you hit, you hit like this. This is going to make a difference it’s going to generate more power. It’s going to fit the body.

The Proper Tool is Why Karate is Better Than Jujitsu

That’s the difference between using a Finishing Hammer and using a Ball-Pean Hammer. They’re the same fundamentally, they work the same but they are different in the margins. It’s about tools and in some environments Karate is better than Jujitsu.

There’s also the trap in that argument that you’re trying to build the better mousetrap and yeah you are. But do you need to? Maybe something wasn’t transferred correctly and you’ve discovered something new. That’s quite possible. Today with the information we have out there about techniques, and movements. There’s a lot out there. You might discover something that improves your art.

A Third Option

Then there’s the argument about the principles. The principles are better. So, you’ll hear people say there are principal-based karate. Great that’s good what you’re doing there is you are moving away from the jumbled toolbox of tactics. You are actually ordering your toolbox in a way that allows you to access the correct tool for the correct job.

The third version, is in the podcast linked below. Again, karate is better than Jiujitsu – listen and you will agree.

Larry Tatum & KenpoThe Best Style of Karate to Learn for a Great Life<...

The Big Mistakes. There’s a lot of umbrellas that this idea of big karate mistakes can go under. We are going to focus on two.

In today’s world, you saying something stupid gets you fired. You don’t just get fired you wide-up losing your career. There’s a difference between a job and a career. You work hard you get to the place you are and then you say something that could be interpreted as insensitive, you lose your career. You don’t get to work anymore.

Two Distorted Moments

All that time you prepared and we’re taking that away from you. Now let’s not starting to fall into politics because it’s not about politics. I’m going to say 24 hours before this post somebody said something stupid, not criminal just stupid. There’s a distinction between criminal and stupid, although they can be the same thing. People can truly apologize, it is unlikely to make any difference in how they are treated.

Mobs

Mobs are not known for being smart. I would say that most mobs are often at the lizard-brain level. Mob Justice, we don’t like the sound of that never have. The reason is that mob justice doesn’t take into consideration what’s happening. Contents and context are stripped away. Things become brutal they become vindictive, and they become cruel.

You lose your job, you lose your career, you can’t provide for yourself or your family anymore because we said so.

A Real Event With No Results

We shift to another form of injustice and this is a real case. The Director of the Department of Employment Securities for Washington state Susie Levine lost 600 million dollars of taxpayer money.

She did this by opening up, removing firewalls, and security computer protocols, to allow for more expeditious discernments of unemployment financial aid.

The criminals standing around and with their computers saw the green light taking the money. The government department discovered it a month later. Then of course waited another month to report the theft.

Levine still has her job. Nobody has been reprimanded, nobody’s lost their job, nobody’s been downgraded, nobody’s been put on administrative leave nobody has been held accountable.

How do these two instances relate to karate? How to we avoid the big karate mistakes

The Big Bloody Book of Violence:

The Smart Person’s Guide for Surviving Dangerous Times: What Everyone Must Know About Self-Defense

When it comes to karate and karate organizations, running a martial arts school, or your part of a martial arts school, leadership is important. The buck stops at the top. The leaders need to bring clarity of vision and accountability.

Vikings

A taste from history about responsibility, and expectations. The Vikings used the crystalline Sun Stone to navigate in cloudy weather. As a result, somebody was responsible in making the correct calculation. Setting that ship off to its next adventure.  That is trust and accountability.

It is about using the tools at your disposal to guide the ship and to ...

The end of karate. We’re going to dive into the end of karate. Yes, the end of karate as we know it. No, it’s not that large of a topic, but actually, it is a large topic for us as karat-ka. You’ve likely experienced the end of karate or possibly not. Rest assured my friend it is coming.

The End is Always Coming

You never know when you’re going to die. A little bit of hyperbole there, but then it isn’t. You don’t know when you’re going to die at least a lot of people. There are cases where you do know you’re going to die.

You go into hospice because of an illness and you are given a couple of days or weeks to live. You don’t know the specific date or time but it’s inevitable. It’s inevitable for all. There could be an execution at 11:05 on Sunday done by the state. I don’t know. So, to say that you know you don’t know when you’re going to die is not true but it is true for the majority of us, most of the time.

10 Rules of Karate for You

The End is Everyplace

That idea applies to relationships. Think about some of the relationships that you’ve had in your life. If you are driving over at 5:00 pm to visit and end a relationship that’s a drop-dead date. This relationship is going to end today. You have agency over that moment and the results of your choice.

Saying, “This is my last class.” that’s a very real thing that happens. There are also those times when you don’t know. You also have that idea, naively so, and believe that it’s not going to change. When after 9 months you now have triplets that change your world. And more than likely karate isn’t going to be part of your life for a long time.

No one sat down and penciled out on the chart on the wall of their office, saying, “Right about here I want to go with February 19th, yeah let’s go with 5 p.m. February 19th, we will have a pandemic.”

Planning for The End

Nobody sat down and planned that out. So, you get the end. You get the end of karate and your karate training. Sometimes you get a choice to choose it, the time and date and sometimes you don’t. No, you don’t know when you’re going to die as we said, and you may never know when it is the last time you’ll be on the floor together.

I remember being in the locker Room in a high school football game. I was my Senior year and it was the last game of the season. The Coach announced, “This is the last time most of you ever going to put on pads.” It never occurred to me. Even though I was a senior and I was playing the last game it never penetrated my thick skull this was the last game.

You Don’t Always See it Coming

You’re not always cognizant, you’re not always paying attention.

You can find those stories yourselves the question that might be coming up here is, “What am I supposed to do?” “Am I supposed to treat every training session as a delicious tort with a cup of coffee and relish every moment?” The moment is out of your control. You can’t manipulate these moments. You can only control how you see it respond to the event.

More on The Topic In The Podcast Below

Enjoy the rest of this idea in the podcast listed below. See how humor, acceptance, and realization can aid you in making adjustments. And see the moments around you that are as inevitable as the ...

The 1 Idea for Bunkai. Now here’s the one idea. Let’s set the table by looking out from this perspective. There are a lot of interpretations. There’s a lot of ideas that bounce around about how bunkai works. How bunkai should be done. How one should feel their tactics. Some people say tactics are great but you need to be principle-based. True.

That’s all good, and we want to go further. I may give you a new idea or an old idea couched in a new container. You can take it to the floor and have more fun with the idea. A bit more relaxed and have a great time with it, we are going to do that today.

Comedians & The 1 Idea for Bunkai

What is there that is more naked as an entertainer than to walk out onto the stage with a microphone. If you are a singer, you at least have a band backing you up. If you are in a band, you have other members that you can rely on.

When you are a stand-up comedian it’s you there’s that little thin mic stand. You can tell the pros because they take the mic out of the stand and they put it to the side not hiding. The performers are as naked as you can be. Even clowns have balloon animals and greasepaint. Applying a good idea for Bunkai leaves little room for a counter and is as good as a pure joke.

When you are doing your karate it’s you, and another person banging and clanging. It is as raw as the comedian and their crowds. If you speak to a comedian, you may hear them talking about watching the act in front of them getting destroyed by the crowd.

They are measuring the crowd at this point. They are looking out at a surly bunch. It’s Friday after work they are hammered, there’s a bachelorette party down in front. The pros know that audience won’t pay attention.

An on-the-fly Assessment of Bunkai

The little trick lies in watching that crowd in getting an assessment. The comedian is seeing how can I make the crowd come along with them. How can they make the crowd enjoy the show and not eat the comedian alive? Not too dissimilar from the karate application. My point is there’s the assessment. I’ve got a surly person who’s drunk, whose marriage collapsed. They’re looking for any opportunity to eat somebody alive, to share their pain.

Let’s take a very simple scenario. If a drunk, a drunkle, a term we coined in the book a Dirty Ground, is at the family picnic. Things are going sideways and they’ve decided they’re going to give you a shove. You know they have a snootful and a bad attitude.

They may give you a shove. You parry, shift offline and they are down on the lawn nobody is hurting. The incident is over that’s the way that a comedian handles the heckler.

The 1 Idea for Bunkai & Spontaneity

Todd Barry is the king of deadpan humor. You know that blank, impassive face, the matter-of-fact response. His Netflix show called, I believe, “Todd Barry, The Crowd Work Tour,” is a masterstroke of Scripted Spontaneity.

If you, as an audience member, have any weakness it is on its way to an exploiting. Crowd Work is extemporaneous like working some applications in karate. When your partner gives a weakness it’s ...

Karate Respect – 2 Way St. Social media is a world of wonderful nuggets, a lot of oddities, and some abject cruelty. I found myself laughing out loud at a truth spoken in a tweet about what expect. The guy on Twitter welcomed the new member with something like, “Please be patient, your contrarian attacker will be assigned to you shortly.”

It spoke to the swift brutality leveled out from people on the platform at anybody the loiters too long. The social media platforms are not to blame. They are as responsible as a spoon making a person fat. It is the people who make the platforms what they are.

Karate begins and ends with respect

A meme that never goes away, it comes and it goes, but it never goes completely away. That meme is the “Karate begins and ends with respect.”

Words are known to set the tone of your day, and the internal conversation is vitally important, and the external. Karate Respect – 2 Way St., but we knew that right?

Stolen valor is a heinous act. The act of getting a military uniform and pinning medals on yourself and then acting as if you served in the military, that is stolen valor. Wrapping yourself in the cloth doesn’t make the respect real. Stolen valor is the act of a child, it is insisting on rights and privileges without earning them. And in this case of Stolen valor is thievery, lying, and demanding privilege.

Courtesy and Respect – 2 Way St.

Respect being earned means that it is not just the uniform, but the orientation of the person inside that uniform. Of course, we are talking about what color your belt is in this instance. And it is also about the orientation of the karate-ka.

The sacrifices, or otherwise that allows you to grow in the martial arts and earn your place. Your earned place where you may gain some form of respect. You know earned respect. And the reverse of that is the courtesy you show knocks the sharp edges off the world when you afford courtesy and respect to others.

This is of course far more regarding this idea in the podcast where we touch on George Washington, and St. Francis. Yes, a General and a Saint. (heck let’s throw Mark Twain in there too.)

Enjoy this post, and listen to the podcast for more in-depth ideas below.

A few other items you may find of interest

Karate Can Be The Worst ActorChallenges MetKarate and Your Designed Commitment

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KRIS WILDER

Kris Wilder is a martial artist based in Seattle Washington. He has authored many martial art books, including the classic, The Way of Kata. Making no apologies for his obsession of Football he can be found telling any who will listen about the nuances of the Canadian Football League.

4 Changes to Better Your Karate. Here are the four items that will better your karate and accelerate your learning. The first one, and in no order of importance is Ritual.

Karate Ritual

Ritual, no it’s not what you think. That is a charged word. Karate does have a ritual, a learning ritual. It involves a uniform, a designated area. Clearly defined roles and even where you stand. That is a ritual and it is significant.

COVID-19 has demonstrated that kids do not like online education. In the city of Seattle, one school has reported a failure rate increase of 600%. The ritual of walking into the school, the bells, the class changes, well the failure is evident.

It is the lack of ritual making the learning hard. Of course, there are other aspects involved in this failure rate. For our purposes, we are focusing on the loss of ritual. The loss of ritual is profound and damaging. Of the 4 changes to better your karate, this is retaining one to help you reach your goals.

Making Mistakes for Better Karate

Making Mistakes, correcting mistakes. It is helpful to know what not to do, the idea that not knowing what to do is just as important as what to do is an idea that gets little traction with me.  The bandwagon of celebrating your errors, your mistakes is not a wagon to get up on and hitch a ride. No, fix them, but do not celebrate. Learn, but don’t celebrate a failure.

Click to hear a sample

Use Burst Learning in Karate

Burst learning is learning in a short increment of time. The 100 repetitions of a technique are not of value in many cases. And the idea of practice making perfect is of course incorrect. Perfect practice makes permanent perfection.

The loss of form is no way to go through life. The lessons from weightlifters of the perfect form should be observed and copied. Life is too short for bad coffee and bad technique. Both should be honored in my book. Now on to the forth of 4 Changes to make your karate better.

Teaching Karate Makes Your Karate Better

Teaching others. You can learn a lot from teaching and you and it wasn’t always that way. Back in the day, it was about the Sensei teaching everything. And God help you if you got caught trying to assist others. We see things differently today. Let the information flow and keep the quality high.

4 Changes to Better Your Karate key points:

* Adhere to a ritual* Learn from mistakes* Engage in burst learning* Go ahead, teach others

ConsistentThe Best Style of Karate to Learn for a Great LifeHow to Spot a Great Karate-Ka

See how we can connect. Click on my picture.

KRIS WILDER

Kris Wilder is a martial artist based in Washington state USA. He has authored many martial art books, including the classic, The Way of Kata. Making no apologies for his obsession of Football he can be found telling any who will listen about the nuances of the Canadian Football League.

Do you do traditional karate? The question is do you do traditional martial arts? And what are the traditional martial arts? Is he classic form that is passing on from generation to generation correct in the new light?

Karate Classic or Modern?

What we are engaging in is a classic, like Shakespeare, Hemmingway, or the new path often based in science? Science has made our lives better. Has science made our martial arts better. Is it prudent to ignore science in lieu of tradition?

What about honoring the people that we work with and the masters of the past. Are we forsaking their teaching because science can prove the tradition is ineffective? What if the old way is ineffective or even damaging to your body? Are we insulting those that have come before? Are we insulting the instructor standing in front of us, alive, breathing, and living a dedicated path?

Real Karate Technique or Other?

A conversation with a police officer and the contradiction of what he learned. What he learned in his defensive tactics police training and what the dojo was teaching him. One raw and effective, the other stylized.

The contrast of the analog and the digital world. The old-time farmer and the veterinarian are examples of how the world is being seen. Dealing with A sick horse in different ways. The old farmer and the veterinarian are examples. Each is a product of time.

Convenience is the driving factor and truth may well be about situational use. That sounds nasty. The driving truth is, often truth is driven by convenience. Yet it is an effective use of time and mental energy. We like a resolutions lining up the vision we are having of the world. With that resolution we are done. We file that away and move on. Ease and convenience are the earmarks of the choice.

The Best Instructor Lives Down The Street

Then the convenience begins, then rationalizations come. “Well, maybe not the best teacher, but the style fits me.” “Maybe not the best teacher but the class times are perfect.” You can see the rationalization of convenience. And that convenience addresses the question of, do you do traditional karate?

And for the record, the martial arts school you choose need not be an A+ school on all the checkpoints. It is better to train, than not to train.

This is the recommendation I make to my students when they are relocating. Find a place you enjoy that is convenient, forget about style. So yes, I have been putting my money where my mouth is.

New Cars and Las Vegas

New cars, Las Vegas, and the good deal – that often does not exist. You may have gotten a great deal on the new car; you may have broken even in Las Vegas. However, Vegas is not built on breaking even. The hotels and fountains indicate people leave a lot of money in that city.

Traditional Karate and the constant of change. Change is inevitable and the game of telephone is a real-world example of change. the ancient Greeks spoke to it as well. (See Heraclitus)

There are values to modern martial arts and classic forms as well. The value is all born of purpose.

Larry Tatum & Kenpo10 Rules of Karate for YouRoland Warzecha – Swords

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Karate gifts shared for you. Recently I went to the newsletter and asked the folks on the newsletter to share a karate story of impact. An impact the martial arts have had in their lives. The goal wasn’t to get a pontification about the value of martial arts. You know a listing of the benefits in a person’s life. I wanted to get a story, a moment that shifted life. A shift, a moment all going forward was an experiencing in a different light.

Karate Folks Came Through

Here are their stories. Stories makes it sound like a fable. But these are not fables or myths, these are heartfelt and real moments from martial artists. Many of these with a great experience.

My expectation is some of these stories will elicit a head nod from you. A moment of shared acknowledgment across the electronic waves of our world.

You will find some of the names and places that have been redacted, a fancy word for withholding. The reasons are sometimes obvious and other times the person wants it kept that way. Other times those names are out there for full glory.

Positive Lessons in Karate

The stories are dominated by positive lessons. One thing you will be found in the positive stories often begins in the negative. That is a testament to the people in the stories. It is also a witness to the transformative power of discipline. Then discipline coupling with action all within the martial arts.

One of my old karate instructors used to put his hands on his hips. In that superhero pose declaring, “Karate is the furnace in which we forge the iron of our wills.” He was half-joking and relating a truth as well.

Karate or martial arts, in general, is a path that leads in many directions. Those directions are as diverse as the people engaged. Think of it as karate gifts shared for you, from many directions.

Here are some of their stories. Some beautiful, and some sweaty and gritty. Enjoy them and as always feel free to share this information with anybody you feel may benefit.

Goran Powell – Karate / ZenThe Art of War AudioRory Miller & Violence Dynamics

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KRIS WILDER

Kris Wilder is a martial artist based in Seattle Washington. He has authored many martial art books, including the classic, The Way of Kata. Making no apologies for his obsession of Football he can be found telling any who will listen about the nuances of the Canadian Football League.

How to Spot a Great Karate-Ka, Number 2 of 2. Last week was body control, and the ability to learn a move quickly.

Here is the link to the first half of this presentation: How to Spot at Great Karate-Ka Part 1 of 2

The wind blows for both the oak and the willow, one survives. Yielding, and blending. The ability to bend to the situation. The ridged martial artist has a limited time to do what they do. Speed, power, and the removal of the senses.

The Willow Tree Bends in the Wind

Rock concerts that used my foolishness to diminish my senses. Well, I was onboard with it to be factual.  Youthful choices are not always good choices. The construction site proves an immutable truth about transition out of hard physical work. That transition is not negotiable.

Number 3: How to Spot a Great Karate-Ka

The order of the environment is often determined by the physical ability the people. Are they ridged or are they flexible. I submit longevity is building around blending, and yielding.

https://kriswildercourses.teachable.com/

Number 4: How to Spot a Great Karate-Ka

The ability to take in all of the elements that surround us and sometimes science is not your friend. And yet still useful and successful. The ability to take in the elements of the moment is an earmark when you are trying to spot a great karate-ka. The key is the small vision and the high ground.

The saying is, “Correlation is not causation.” That saying has an important role in how we are seeing the world. Laser-like focus and a broad vision? it is necessary to understand coloration, lack of correlation, and cause.The whirring of the environment and still have the information useful is key.

Number 5: How to Spot a Great Karate-Ka

The final item on How to Spot a Great Karate-Ka. The great know when it is “Go Time.” Think of it as seizing the moment.

Go fast, do it instantly

The energy of the moment. The use, the expenditure of energy to gain what you want and need. Extra energy we are spending is not a good choice. The bank account of energy is a way to measure. Without energy, or depleted energy we are inescapable in taking action. Demands of replenishment and stress burn that money in the account. Without the energy, you can’t Carpe Diem. Now a quote from the band Pink Floyd, “…wasting the hours in an of hand way.” That is some heavy contrast Seize the day – or waste the day.

The Total List of 5 Items in How to Spot a Great Karate-Ka1. Body Control2. The Ability to Learn Quickly3. Blending4. The ability to take moments into consideration5. Seizing the Moment

Here are a few other links you will find interesting

How to Spot the Great Karate-Ka 1 0f 2Lateral MoveKarate and Your Designed Commitment

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KRIS WILDER

Kris Wilder is a martial artist based in Seattle Washington. He has authored many martial art books, including the classic,

How to spot the great Karate-Ka. There are five ways to spot the great Karate-Ka. Today we address two of the five ways to spot the great practitioner of karate. The Japanese names don’t exclude the other martial arts worlds, such as Savate, or wrestling. It is just the environment of which I spring. As humans we seize on the flash, it is the way we are hard-wired. However, the great karate-ka know this and understand it.

The jingle of the keys in our collective faces is what we are built to do. It makes sense from a survivability standpoint. The movement out to the corner of our eye.

The peripheral vision, the flinch away from danger, or the focus on the bright object in front of us. It is our nature.

An overlooking of the tinge of fear is a poor choice when it comes to survival. The News outlets use their position to terrify and scare the collective mind. Using the nature of the human mind to flinch at danger and taking advantage of human nature. This is now out in the open for all to see.

How to spot the great Karate-Ka? Body Control

Not the most important aspect of the conversation, body control, it can be number one, or regarding circumstances, it can drop a place or two. So, know this is the place we start.

The mind, and your brain come together to make the body perform. And the great performance is based on the ability to control their body. And control the body in an unusual environment. Can they get extraordinary performance out of less than perfect circumstances?

Great Karate-Ka Are Learning Quickly

The ability to learn quickly. The great karate-ka have an overarching view of martial arts moves. The ability to learn quickly is based on a system of recognition and understanding use.

Think of it this way, you are often prone to visualize an opponent in front of you as you practice your kata. It helps you contextualize the movement and aids in the recall. The great karate-ka do that in a flash of thought. Content and context are instantly understood and applied. This comes from years of experience and an intelligent process of analysis.

The Rule of the Belt

You have seen this happen multiple times in your training and teaching. The belt separates the lower half of the body from the upper half of the body.  The unskilled practitioner falls prey to the Rule of the Belt only allowing focusing on the hands or the feet, but not both at the same time. The performance of a combination movement is not possible. The Rule of the Belt makes clear the lack of ability to unify the body for the beginner. The Rule of the Belt does not exist in the great karate-ka.

These are two of the five ways on How to spot the great Karate-Ka.

10 Rules of Karate for YouGoing Deep The Best Style of Karate to Learn for a Great Life

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KRIS WILDER

Kris Wilder is a martial artist based in Seattle Washington. He has authored many martial art books, including the classic, The Way of Kata. Making no apologies for his obsession of Football he can be found telling any who will listen about the nuances of the Canadian Football League.