Elite Sports reached out to me, a while back, and was kind enough to send me one of their Bulgarian Bags, for free, to test out and review. This is a hojo undo kigu (supplementary training tool) that I have been interested in trying out for quite some time–and I even have a tire inner tube stashed away specifically for the purposes of making one, but I never got around to it. This has provided me with the perfect opportunity to try one out, not only for myself, but for those who follow this site and my social media. While traditional Bulgarian Bags are made of leather, the Elite Sports B ..read more

An antique hand drill, which would have been the inspiration for calling military practices “drills” Drills are a hallmark of martial arts training, the world over, regardless of art or style, and they come in many different forms, with different intentions. In general, though, how do we define what a “drill” is, and how do we know if they are any good? Originally, “drills” referred to military exercises, and were so named because soldiers would march in circles, or be made to turn in place, and from above this resembled the turning of a drill. Although this origin is certainly martial in na ..read more

Most karateka spend a great deal of time learning and practicing kata, which is fitting, given that the kata are templates for the curriculum of karate, but as the art has morphed into a tradition-based art over the past century, the way that people train and practice kata has changed. As recently as the mid-20th Century CE, kata were regularly taught differently to different students, and an instructor may not even teach the same selection of kata to every student, as instruction was more tailored to the individual than to teaching large groups of people. Over time, not ..read more

Most martial artists have seen the so-called “Wing Chun dummy,” which is actually called a muk yan jong in Cantonese, or mu ren zhuang in Mandarin, meaning “wooden man post.” This training tool was widely popularized by Bruce Lee and, more recently, the Ip Man series of movies, starting Donnie Yen. While these dummies were developed for Chinese martial arts, their popularity in martial pop culture has led to their adoption by practitioners of other arts, including karate. What many karateka do not realize, though, is that their art already developed a training dummy of its own (LINK, LINK ..read more

Ulf Karlsson (left), Luis David Munoz (center), and Noah Legel (right) after an impromptu training session in the park On February 4th, 2020, Ulf Karlsson landed in Phoenix, AZ for the first time in nearly 6 years. For those who are unaware, Ulf Karlsson is the foremost expert (outside of Okinawa) in the rare style of Shuri-Te called KishimotoDi, and is the only person to be granted a Shihan license in the art by the Bugeikan on Okinawa. On his last visit, he spent two weeks with myself (Noah Legel) and my late Sensei, Richard Poage, teaching us KishimotoDi, as well as teaching a weekend-long ..read more

Rika Usami, a superstar of modern sport karate, performing kata at a tournament As most people know, karate comes in many different flavors, and each flavor has its own variations. There are countless karate organizations, styles, and sub-styles, and each has its own take on the art. The vast majority of these are, in some way, involved in sport karate, to some degree. While it tends to be quite easy to look at sport karate and identify it as such, it can still be useful to look at it with a more critical eye to determine what, exactly, makes something “sport karate,” and how are the different ..read more

Coach John Potenza (left), Noah Legel (center), and Ed Morales (right), after the Catch Wrestling seminar at NAK Martial Arts, Gilbert, AZ On Saturday, October 12th, 2019, I attended a Catch Wrestling (Catch-As-Catch-Can) seminar with John Potenza of the Old School Grappling Catch Wrestling Association (LINK), which was hosted by Ed Morales of NAK Martial Arts in Gilbert, AZ (LINK). For those who are unfamiliar with Catch Wrestling/Catch-As-Catch-Can (LINK), it is a no-gi folkstyle submission grappling art that was founded in England in the late 1800s, as a blend of a number of regional grappl ..read more

Students training in the garden dojo of Miyagi Chojun (founder of Goju-Ryu) Many people claim to teach “traditional karate,” and even advertise it as such, but what does that mean, exactly? If we define the word “tradition,” as the dictionary does, it means “a long-established custom or belief that has been passed on from one generation to another,” or “an artistic or literary method or style established by an artist, writer, or movement, and subsequently followed by others.” In terms of martial arts, both of these definitions tend to apply, although “generation” can mean “generation of stud ..read more

KishimotoDi style patch designed by Fredrik Nyberg The art of KishimotoDi (AKA, Kishimoto-Ha Karate/Shuri-Te) is an interesting look into the Shuri-classified (or Tomari-classified, if you prefer to look at it that way) karate of the past, before its popularization by Itosu “Anko” Yasutsune and his disciples. As this style is is rare, only a small number of practitioners around the world study it, so it has been largely untouched by the preferences that drove the development of the karate most people see, today. If one were to compare the solo kata practiced in KishimotoDi–of which their are ..read more

An example of the kokutsu-dachi (back-leaning stance) used in modern Shotokan, compared to the kokutsu-dachi depicted by Funakoshi Gichin (founder of Shotokan) in his book, Retan Karate-Jutsu Karate has, like all things, changed over the course of time, for a variety of reasons, from sociopolitical considerations, to sports science and movement theories, to simple aesthetics. Breaking down the myriad changes that have taken place within it would be an impossible task, but one can isolate some specific examples for study, which make for an interesting look at the development of the art over t ..read more