Japanton – Chronicles of Anton in Japan!

Once again the time has come for the Canadian Shihan Tai Kai.  Oh I will be there this year to bask in the teachings of instructors form across the country.  Last year I regrettably missed it due to circumstances beyond my control.  Not this year, I am currently writing this post from the comfort of the hotel bar in which I am staying.  (Drinking a Sapporo no less!)   So I hope to see many of my friends here and look forward to sharing the training ideas as best as I could understand them on Japanton.com and when I get home.

Your life is on the line, practise well.

I have been relaying old stories about my training and the mistakes I made.  Like when I did a bad roll and couldn’t roll over that shoulder for three weeks.  Or the time I had to use my T-shirt to stop the bleeding from a cut that I got on my head.  Doing little demos of what I thought techniques were supposed to look like.

The reason I have been sharing these stories is  so that you know there is always room to improve.  I do not look back kindly on my past training.  I always am critical of what I have shown and what I have done.  The second I get comfortable with what I did yesterday I will stop improving.  I need to always look critically at my technique and find ways to improve.

Look back and see your mistakes, use them to learn and push forward.  Our art is one where you can improve as you get older.  Your understanding of distance and your use of timing are not skills that diminish with age but improve.  Remember that you can always find a way to improve.

Your life is on the line, practise well.

As I have progressed in Budo, it has become an increasing concern of mine that I will stop progressing as a martial artist.  What I mean to say is that I will reach a certain level of skill where I feel satisfied and get complacent in my pursuit of knowledge and skill.

It is easy to sit in your dojo and go over the same techniques that you always do again and again without trying anything new.  I can show Ura and Omote gyaku every class and insist that there is no need to work on other techniques until you aster those two.  This is not however how I want to do things.

I want to train with my students and get better.  I need to attend seminars and classes by other instructors with an open mind looking to learn something.  I need to go to Japan and get knowledge from the source.  I need to train with people who go to Japan so that we can try to absorb Hatsumi Sensei’s feeling from them and bring it to our own training.  Most of all I must never become a teacher, always a student looking to learn at every opportunity.

This is a hard thing to do.  Being so far away from Japan, and in most of Canada’s case so far away from other clubs.  The distance, the time, the money they are all worth the sacrifice to me.  My training will make this world a lot smaller because I will travel to train as much as I can.

Isolation is a progress killer, don’t let it happen to you.

Your life is on the line, practise well.

Now this is a delicate subject around the Bujinkan because there are two camps in this who can not seem to reconcile what I think are small differences.

The first camp follows the philosophy that since the techniques of the Bujinkan do not require strength or speed, just distance and timing there is no need for any real physical training.  Further if you focus on your physical strength you will rely on it too much as well as take away from valuable training time on technique.

The second camp has been of the idea that the point of not needing speed and power comes after years of training and thus before you reach that level of mastery you need to have strength and speed and slowly you will rely on them less.

So as you can see both of these ideas have their merit.  In the Edmonton Bujinkan Dojo however we follow this philosophy:

The techniques of the Bujinkan can not be mastered unless you have mastered your own Body.

What I mean by this is not that I am looking to have students whom are super athletes, but those whom are aware of their physical limitations.  The goal that I have in mind for myself and those with whom I train is a freedom to move in their bodies.  With out that ability to understand your body, I doubt one would be able to master the techniques of the Bujinkan.

For most of us whom do not suffer from physical limitations which they have to overcome, we should strive to keep our bodies in good shape so that we are able to enjoy our lives and training for years.  I don’t expect that as I age I will be able to break any weight lifting world records, but I do expect that I will be able to keep flexible and mobile.  Light exercise and stretching will keep you feeling good and moving well so that you can master the techniques of the Bujinkan.  Our goal is to move like Hatsumi Sensei (b. December 1931) when we reach his age.  Don’t forget that protecting your life also means taking care of your body.

Your life is on the line, Practise well.

As many have noticed, and noted I have not posted in quite some time.  There is a simple explanation for this; I needed work.

I have been training so much over the past few years I forgot that sometimes you have to take care of other things in life.  Since I got a new career I needed to spend some time focusing on that.  But don’t worry I now have a handle on my new work and am getting ready for the next round of Japan.

Please look forward to more training with and posting by me.

Your life is on the line, Practise well.

Running a martial arts class can be difficult.  It becomes very much more difficult when I don’t see effort put into training.

The skills that we are trying to teach can be frustrating from time to time.  I have had my share of failures in training.  We however are training an art of perseverance and this includes our training itself.  You must be able to put aside your doubts and train.

When you doubt your skills train.  When you lack confidence train.  When you feel uneasy train.  The skills that you can attain through training, no one can take away from you.

When I see you take control of your training it encourages me to help you progress that much more.

Your life is on the line, practise well.

I am often asked what to study at home.  When this question is posed, I often stick to the safe stand-by’s san shin, the koshi sanpo and ukemi.  These are good things to practise, but I have some advice which has helped my practise over the past year.

As I have discussed before in writing and conversations, the kata of the Bujinkan are difficult to train on your own.  The majority of the kata rely on facing an opponent.  You receive an attack respond to the attack and end up folding your opponent into a pretzel to finish them.  How can you possibly practise that by yourself?  The answer is visualization.

Using your visualization, you can create an opponent based on your experience.  With this opponent in mind it becomes possible to train your technique effectively even at home.  I challenge you to give it a try, you will be pleased with the results.

Your life is on the line, practise well.

I was having a discussion with a good friend of mine on the various wings of the Bujinkan.  Things that were mentioned were; the spiritual wing, the publicity wing, the translation wing and the badly undermanned fighting wing.

That’s why I decided that I want my students and myself to help bolster up the fighting arm of the Bujinkan.

There are a lot of different things people try to attain through the martial arts.  I have decided that though I can not speak for others, more than anything I wanted to become strong.  My goal was and is to become a stronger fighter than anyone.

I do not profess to be anywhere close to this goal, but I have a lifetime to chase my objective.  I hope that those whom are chasing different goals still have something they can gain from training with me.  I will just want to be clear about why I train.

This same friend gave me a challenge of his own.  It has created a second goal for me to pursue.  I am trying to create a life worth protecting.  I will discuss this in a later post.

Your life is on the line, practise well.

In the martial arts there are few things as underrated as visualization.  I am not referring to crossing your legs into a full lotus whine saying ohm, though that in itself can be a good way to practise the concept.

This is a tool which athletes use, they set a clear goal, get a clear picture in their mind of accomplishing that goal then proceed with the physical action.

Recently we have been working on our tsuki (thrust, often refereed to as a punch), following the concept of visualization, you would go through some steps.  Let us assume you are practising with a heavy bag.

1.  I articulate a goal.  “I will move through kamae and send the heavy bag swinging while keeping my body relaxed so that I can throw a second attack if necessary.”

2.  Create a mental image of yourself accomplishing the goal.  “Take a moment ot see the tsuki being done and the desired result being accomplished.”

3.  Do the bloody technique.  “nuff said”

This is something which you should be doing with every technique while training.  It will make your home study easier, in some cases it is near impossible to effectively train Bujinkan technique without visualization.  I will get more into this when I write about self training.

I have been asked recently to explain the kata of the Bujinkan.  Not to explain how to do each kata, but rather how they are to be studied.  I will try to give a brief contrast between Bujinkan Kata and Karate Kata/Chinese Kung Fu forms.

In the Bujinkan arts the form generally consists of few moves.  The most involved kata that I have seen to date are around 12 moves at most.  In san shin you have as many as 4 distinct moves and as few as 2.

When I compare this to my experience in Karate and Kung Fu, the forms are generally much longer with many parts.  When I was learning the forms, I was taught that each sequence, the series of moves before a direction change is another opponent.  If this is true; which I have no reason to doubt, one of those sequences is the equivalent of a Bujinkan Kata.

Kata in the Bujinkan are treated like bujkai in karate.  Bunkai is when you take a portion of a kata and work it against a live opponent.  This allows you to get a feel for the technique and its variations.

The very nature of Bujinkan kata create an issue when it comes to self study.  It is difficult to practise a kata which relies on feedback of an opponent by yourself.  There is a method to accomplish this.  I will discuss visualization in the near future.

I hope this clarifies the subject of kata in the Bujinkan if even a little.  Your life is on the line, practise well.