In the case of all physical disciplines, of course including karate-do,
the basis for development—physically, technically, mentally, emotionally and
spiritually—derives from actual practice.
Unambiguously, theory and ‘thinking about karate’, whilst
important, is counterproductive when it “takes precedence over actual
training”. In all cases, thinking is secondary to training/practice. To restate
what I said in my opening sentence: “all of the non-physical benefits of
karate-do practice, and budo training in general, come from doing the hard
yards in the dojo”.
This is an area where Japanese karateka, generally speaking,
are far superior to their Western counterparts. Fundamentally, they train and
just get on with it. Contrastingly, Westerners tend to over-theorize, come up
with many creative answers (especially in the case of kata applications) and,
in many cases, even significantly change techniques, kata, drills etcetera.
Like it or not, this to me is the loss of the traditional
Japanese budo karate, which keeps things very simple and `effective in the real
world’… It is this very `simplicity’ that causes things to become far more
difficult. What I mean is that “simple things require much more depth; and
therefore, much-much more practice”. From this perspective it is easy to see
why the `creative theoretical path’ is a much easier one.
By the way, the photos from this post are from my practice of
Gojushiho Dai kata today. This follows some high level advice from Nakamura
Masamitsu Shihan, not pertaining to this kata; nevertheless, resulting in my training of it (here, broken down into kihon and also at formal dojo keiko). Such advice
only comes when we put ourselves on the line physically… Sweat, blisters, calluses
and bruising are prerequisites. Subsequently, we grow to understand ourselves better, our strengths,
limitations and kokoro.
Just some food for thought, Osu.
© André Bertel. Aso-shi,
Kumamoto-ken. Japan (2014).
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