General

Evaluate and adjust your Karate training to meet your goals.

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Have you taken a good look at your Karate lately? Do you evaluate where you are at, where you are going and adjust your training based on your goals? Are you training for the sake of training even though it might not be helping reach your goals? This is one area that I haven’t given as much attention as I should have over the last few years. After my last rank examination, I spent a lot of time evaluating my training and what I need in order to improve my weaknesses. I have been taking advanced classes for at least two years now if not longer but I feel that somewhere along the line, I missed or never got a solid grasp of kihon fundamentals. How could I have gone through five plus years of hard Karate training without doing such simple things as tightening my core when I punch …

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The road between brown and black belt is long.

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I have read many times about how there is so much pressure on Karate students when they finally reach brown belt. Could it be true… After moving past all of the other color belts, the hard working brown belt is only one belt color away from Karate nirvana. I have even heard that the brown belt student is considered the black belt apprentice by some. At this point, the Karate student has learned all of the basics and can execute them with some proficiency. I never understood many of the comments about this being the time when many students leave Karate even though they are so close to black belt. A few Karate exams ago, I finally started to understand why so many people find this time the hardest. When I passed my first part of my brown belt test to 3rd kyu, I thought that I really had a …

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Are you sore from training? Listen to mother and soak in Epsom salts.

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For many years, whenever I was sore from working out or training hard, my mother told me to take a hot bath and add some Epsom salts. For over 40 years of not listening, I never used Epsom salts but one day recently, I gave them a try. I didn’t think I would get much from them but was I wrong. So much pain but so much relief… My hips and legs were extra sore from a hard Karate class the day before, and if you read my training blog at shotokanplanet.org you can see how I abuse my body in Karate class, so I turned on the hot water and poured about two cups of Epsom Salts in the tub. After just a few minutes of getting into the tub the pain in my hips and legs started to subside. It was almost like magic. I had soaked in …

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