Welcome to my Karate presentation!

I have chosen to do this CAT-course presentation on Karate because it is a passion of mine and it has been a way of life for me for over 20 years of my life.

I love to share my life experiences of Karate with people who are interested whenever possible.

2.My background

I started training Martial Arts, through Wushu Kung Fu in 1982 at the Lois Lin Academy in Stockholm, Sweden.

After having spent 1½ years in Switzerland. I came back to Sweden and was highly overweight after having eaten heaps of lovely Swiss chocolate and drank buckets of nice German beer.

I had met my future husband Guss 3 months earlier and together we decided to get some exercise and get ourselves fit. He had trained Judo in the UK for years; he started when he was 10 years old and got up to brown belt. He also had trained some Chinese Marital Arts and Karate before he moved to Sweden. He was the one to inspire me to take up Martial Art in 1982.

The Wushu training was very intense and fun. My fitness and flexibility increased extremely well and of course I lost a lot of weight too.

In 1983 we decided to move to UK and study. At first we wanted to find a good Kung Fu club to continue our training but there was nothing around. In stead we started to train Tai Chi sword with a guy called Kevin Fox. He also ran a Karate club on Sunday mornings and after six month in 1984 he convinced us that karate was just as fun and effective as Kung Fu so we started to train Goju Ryu karate with him.

We both graded to 1^st Dan Black Belt in 1988 and shortly after that we opened up our own club outside Portsmouth, which we ran for a year. In 1989 we moved back to Sweden and opened up our own club in Stockholm in 1990. Then returned back to the UK in 1991 and graded to 2^nd Dan Black Belt.

We moved to NZ in 1996 and in January 1998 we opened our own karate club in Deanwell School. In July the same year the New Zealand karate association assessed us and I was awarded my 3^rd Dan Black Belt.

My 4^th Dan is scheduled for September 2004….

3. A brief History of Karate

Karate means ”Empty hand” but it originally meant ”Chinese hand”. It changed its meaning during the 2nd World War due to the intense hatred that had developed between China and Japan during these War times.

Karate struggled for a long time to get recognised as a Martial Art by the Japanese but finally in 1933 karate became a acknowledge by the Japanese governing body.

In the beginning Legend has it that Karate was developed by the Okinawan farmers who needed to protect themselves without the use of weapons due to the fact that the Japanese had introduced a ban on all weapons on the islands. The farmers would practice fighting technique by using agricultural equipment such as rise sticks, staffs, hay knifes and “Empty hands”.

This has actually shown itself to be just a romantic myth; in fact, it was the upper classes and the merchant classes that took Karate from China to Okinawa through trading and academic contacts during the early 1800’s.

Another Legend tells us about how Martial Arts came to China from India through a Buddhist monk called the Bodi Dharma who travelled to the Shaolin Temple and introduced training as a part of the monk’s daily rituals. These fighting skills were used to defend the monastery from bandits and villains. This is only partly true as the entry for Martial Arts from India to China came mostly through trading and academic contacts etc.

The young people of Okinawa who moved to China to establish businesses or to get educated learned the Chinese Martial Arts and brought them back to the islands where it was intergraded in to the already existing Martial Arts which existed in Okinawa at that time.

In the early days, Martial Arts knowledge was passed on from teachers to students through a system of apprenticeship, a teacher would only take on one or two students. Later on it became more standardised when Martial Arts School were set up, mainly as a source of income, Different styles were established depending on which academic school you went to. Karate then drifted to Japan.

Martial Arts had been around in China for many centuries where it was very much part of the Chinese culture. It was divided into two main areas, the Northern Chinese styles, which were acrobatic and athletic, greatly influencing the Chinese opera and circuses from which most Kung Fu films are based.

Then there were the Southern Chinese styles, which were less acrobatic, and more self-defence orientated, which is where karate got its inspiration.

Today many researchers believe that the Indian Martial Arts actually had roots in ancient Egypt and ancient Greece and throughout its history it has continually evolved and changed.

There are many myths connecting Martial arts to mysticism and healing using universal forces called Chi or Ki, but these have all shown themselves to be completely fictional despite desperate attempts of ”New Ager’s” clinging to the notion of ancient lost wisdoms.

The most common facet of Karate today is of sport Karate (Kumite and Kata) that has been refined to conform to sport rules with the aim of being accepted as an Olympic sport but there are also many clubs that try to stick to the traditional karate training methods where karate is considered to be a self-defence system rather than a sport.

4.Karate Training

 When you have found a suitable karate club you want to join you can expect some specific training methods to take place.

“The place of practice” in Japanese is called the Dojo. This is the hall or room you will be training in. You will most probably be asked to take shoes of as you enter the hall because all Karate-ka “students of karate” observing the tradition to show the highest respect for the Dojo. Each club will have specific rules and etiquette to follow.

The instructor will call out when training is about to start and students may line up in order of their grades, highest grades from the left and then the colour of the belt will put student in correct order, however some clubs let people mix in any order throughout the training.

Depending on the club’s traditions you might do a “seiza” which means that you will knee down and meditate for a few minutes. This is just so that you can clear your mind to focus on your karate training and forget about other stresses for the next hour and a half.

The physical training will start with a warming up which will take aprox 40 min. The warm up routine will include fitness training, conditioning, stretching and hardening exercises. These will be done both individually and in pairs. Then you will move on to do Karate Basics, these are your fighting tools of Karate, such as stances, blocks, punches and kicks. Each style of karate will do basics in a slightly different way.

The next important part of the training is the Kata practice. Kata is a form, which includes self-defence patterns. Each karate style will have different amount of katas in their syllabus and some styles can have up to 20 different Katas, which each student needs to learn. With your kata practice you will then practice these self-defence applications with a partner, this is called Bunkai. Bunkai is the heart of karate and once you have perfected your self defence techniques you should be able to practice them in your Kumite training (Free Fighting).

The Kumite, Free-fighting practice will take place with a partner. This is controlled sparring without any full contact to the body. Each club will have set rules for how much contact is aloud but in general minimum contact is expected.

5. What do you need to train

Some people think that karate training is a very costly sport!

In fact, when you start your karate training you can just join in with tracksuit pants and a T-shirt. You might have to pay a set fee to join the karate club and then you probably have to pay a fee per school term to cover the hire for the Dojo.

Once you have trained for some time you might want to buy a karate Gi. This is a karate suit, which will either be white or black depending on the club you belong to. A white Gi is most common when training Karate.

You also have to have a belt to tie around your waste. These belts will differ in colour depending on what grade you have achieved. The colour generally follows the order of white, red, yellow, orange, green, blue, purple, brown, brown 1 stripe, brown 2 stripe and then the Black Belt, each club will have slightly different colour schemes.

When practicing Kumite, Sparring you need to have gloves, shin and arm pads plus a mouth guard. This is of course to protect yourself from bruising and smashed teeth.

Because of the intensity of training you will sweat a lot so bring a water bottle and a towel. You will be expected to train in bare feet no shoes are allowed in the Dojo.

6. So Why train Karate?

Karate is, together with other Martial Arts, one of today’s fastest growing leisure activities.

Adults  and children of both sexes are attracted by the enhancement of coordination between mind and body as well as the great fitness karate training offers.

There are also, of course, the self-defence benefits of karate and the self-confidence it provides. Such confidence is particularly beneficial to women who have to cope with potential treats in society.

The competitive aspects of a fighting sport might attract some people and for students with a great competitive spirit there is the enjoyment of joining a competitive Karate club. Sports karate is a very highly organized sport and gives the student lots of opportunities to compete at all levels.

Some people might take up karate training just be to come out and meet people and have some fun along he way.

What ever reason for starting karate and providing that initial interest and enthusiasm survive beyond a beginners course, most individuals then go on to discover the special qualities of karate.

The karate student will continue to develop their training to further his/her progress and the driving force of that students training will be the constant challenge of self-improvement and the increasing development of the harmonious reaction between mind and body.

The body’s reaction to messages from the brain begins to quicken more and more: eventually happening so quickly that the individual may not even recall having thought about the action beforehand.