PMABM Newsletter #7

For this newsletter, we'll look at a video of another style I learned. Yes, it is none other than the very first style I formally learned - Matsubayashi Shorin-Ryu Okinawan Karate. Here's a memorized kumite (sparring) exercise:



Even though I don't teach forms and the only memorized movement sequences I teach are in the earlier levels of training, I don't discount them. We can still learn something from them. They were a valuable training aid to martial artists of old and they were an aid to me in the beginning of my development. I concluded that kata or forms were only one of many ways to transmit martial arts principles and teaching methods expeditiously and concretely.

A few ideas garnered from karate: karate chops ARE effective; kicks should be kept low; don't roundhouse kick; torque when you strike; stepping should be natural; breathe out when you strike; belt rank is not applicable in kumite; make the strike go from point A to point B as efficiently as possible; train the ridges of your body to hit well; train the rest of your body to take hits well.

And here is the founder of the Matsubayashi style, Shoshin Nagamine, in his late 80s doing the first black belt kata or form exercise:



Talking about old guys who can still move, here's a bonus video of Johnny LaCoste in the late 1970s. Johnny was one of the many grandmasters of Filipino Martial Arts. Here he is in a rare video with Dan Inosanto when Dan was just starting to incorporate Filipino Martial Arts in his Jeet Kune Do. I would love to be in my late 80s and still be able to move like these guys did. Watch from 2:50 to about 5:40. And if you want to see a crazy kali solo drill, it's starts at 6:36.