Are We Having Fun Yet?

 

There was a blogger that I used to link to that lived in a dojo at some kind of an enclave that housed aikido students (the blog has since been removed). He was an ushideshi, literally, a resident disciple. The deal was you go to Japan for about a year, live in a temple with the master and the other deshi, train, do chores, go shopping, and do household miscellanea, all the while angling for a black belt. The implied real goal was to become immersed into Japanese culture and the concept of budo, martial arts as a way of life, which along side of self defense techniques has a moralistic, spritual core. Ruffians and scrappers need not apply. I deeply admire anyone who aspires to a year of sacrifice to such commitment (and money). Clearly this is not a path for those who think they're less-than-serious martial artists. Not everyone is seeking a 'way of life.' 

I recently saw an internet meme that read "Martial Arts Is Not A Hobby", but as I see it, martial arts can be anything you wish it to be, especially if you're doling out monthly payments to a place in a strip mall. Then I saw this on reddit:

 

My daughter is 11 and has some focus issues and joining Tae Kwon Do class helps her tremendously with physical fitness, discipline and she thrives on the structure of it. I've had at least 5 MMA bros tell me that Tae Kwon Do is fake, BS and not real fighting. Like [...] dude - she's 11 years old, not a cage fighter and she likes standing in a line and kicking.

 

Roughly half of adults 18 - 44 consider themselves a fan of combat sports. Small wonder 'MMA bros' is a thing. Aside from kids who make up a sizeable portion of just about any traditional martial arts school, adult practitioners of martial arts benefit from discipline and staying fit too. But very few join a club to actively compete or to test their wares to see if it works. I've taken my training seriously, but I also enjoy the social interaction an adult class can offer. Being a karate hobbyist has afforded me the ability to enjoy my pastime with good cheer and at times a sense of humor. Laughter, it is said, is good medicine.  

 

I've noticed a hallmark of many high ranking instructors is their sense of humor, no doubt to offset many years of teaching the art of physical mayhem. Ever see the movie Full Metal Jacket? For his portrayal of a US Marine drill instructor, R. Lee Ermey should've won an award for best debasing wisecracks. Ermey, who in real life spent more than a decade in The Corps, was originally brought in as a technical advisor for the film, but his rendition of how an actual DI really behaves was so impressive that they decided to just give him the role. Many of his lines were unscripted and improvised by him. Absolutely brutal, but admittedly some of his rants were pretty funny. It's no coincidence that karate first came to the US courtesy of Marines stationed on Okinawa in the 1950s, and fortunately few of us ever had a sensei like Gunnery Sergeant Hartman. But for something as hard and painful as karate training in a legit dojo, having some laughs and fun in moderation can go a long way. Or to quote an iconic line from another military movie, "Lighten up, Francis."

Teen Girl Defends Against Attacker

 
The following is a story taken from a news report dated 5/26/25:

 

A 13-year-old girl in California fought off a man using her jiu-jitsu training and broke his ankle when he tried attacking her on her walk home from school.

Police in Carmel, Calif., are now looking for the teen’s attacker. Police say the suspect ambushed the girl by hiding between two parked cars and stepping out to punch her in the face...

For three years, the 13-year-old has been taking jiu-jitsu classes at the Carmel Youth Center with Michael Blackburn, who teaches at the center...The teen applied what she learned in her class when the man tried to attack her...

“She punched him, she got him in a headlock, kneed him a couple of times, spun him around, threw him on the ground,” Blackburn said...“She had stepped on his foot doing all this, and when she threw him on the ground, he broke his ankle.”

The teen was able to run home safely but her attacker is still on the loose. According to the local outlets, Carmel police do not have any solid leads on the man but have released a sketch of what they believe he looks like. 

The suspect is believed to be around 6 feet tall, muscular and now has an injury to his left foot inflicted by the teen who fought back...

 

As stated, the unnamed teenage girl has been training in an unspecified style of jiu-jitsu for three years. This ended well, of course, but the 6-foot burly perp is still out there limping around. I'll edit in an update if they nab this slimeball.  This shouldn't happen to anyone, least of all a child.

Amazing—thirteen years old! Kudos to Sensei Blackburn and his Carmel-by-the-Sea dojo for teaching this young lady right.

Toxic Masculinity

There was a movie a few years back called The Art of Self Defense. Despite the unassuming title, the film explores the pitfalls of encountering the wrong dojo to train at. The lead character is a milquetoast pushover who's afraid of his own shadow. After getting beaten and robbed he decides he's had enough and ends up taking karate lessons from a deranged sensei who encourages his new charge to be a violent psychopath. The student takes his misguided teachings into the real world with predictable results. I won't spoil things by revealing more, but not surprisingly, the story does not end well. Cultish behavior is nothing new in the martial arts, and with the advent of social media, young men are finding inspiration in the rather vile corners of the internet. 

My son asked me recently if I ever heard of a retired kickboxing/MMA competitor named Andrew Tate. I hadn't, so with a little digging I found that after Tate retired from competition he started to monetize online courses on how to get rich and "male-female interactions." His Hustler's University turned out to be a pyramid scheme targeting young men who were buying into his hype to become an alpha male. An alpha is the apex of male aggression and dominance hierarchy in the animal kingdom. Primatologist Robert Sapolsky has studied this in non-human primates and its relation to the highly stratified social structure of baboons*. In humans, being an alpha male is associated with narcissism, entitlement and even misogyny. In layman's terms, human alpha males are highly predisposed to just being assholes.

Tate's net worth supposedly puts him in the neighborhood of 50 million USD, but has since been kicked off numerous social media platforms (where he earns most of his money) for inciting violence and dehumanizing speech, particularly aimed at women. As of this writing, Tate sits in a jail cell in Romania awaiting a judge's decision regarding Tate's (and three others') involvement in a human trafficking scheme using women to create pornography for profit, among other charges including rape. I don't know if Tate's years as a world champion martial arts competitor led to his self-indulgent dysfunctional worldview of male dominance. Maybe he got messed up as a kid. A long held psychology axiom states that events that occur during childhood can reveal themselves in unpredictable ways later in life. I doubt that an undertaking in a traditional martial art style during his formative years would've put him on the right path (budo), but who knows? Would an early-life intervention have made a difference in a guy like Tate?

Jason Wilson runs a youth program for troubled boys in Detroit called The Cave of Adullam Transformational Training Academy, a quasi-martial arts facility that "is not a martial arts school but a Transformational Training Academy." Wilson, the chief instructor who cites a background in jiu-jitsu, judo, and kempo (but doesn't hold rank in any of these styles), teaches young men in a traditional dojo-setting the values needed to become an upright man and a decent citizen. Wilson muses how some martial artists can attain a black belt in their chosen style, but remain a white belt in the game of life.

"When I first started the CATTA, there were many “Scared Straight” programs in Michigan, and I had even participated in a couple", says Wilson. "However, I quickly discovered that inflicting trauma will never help a boy release it but instead teach him to suppress it. Nowadays, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a Scared Straight or Bootcamp program because discipline without love is ineffectual."

Maybe that's the antidote to toxic masculinity in young men: The understanding that the best and even worst of us have an innate need to love and to be loved. And the sooner the better. As The Beatles famously sang, "Love is all you need."

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!

*Robert M. Saplolsky 2017. Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst. Penguin Press.

Teenage Samaritan Defends Kid Against Bully

When 16-year-old Roman Rodriguez walked out of his father's Kenpo karate school in Holyoke, MA little did he realize that his training mettle would be sorely tested. Thereupon he witnessed an 11-year-old boy with mental disabilities being harassed by a group of rowdies. The apparent ringleader was a strapping 14-year-old at six foot and 220 pounds. When Roman intervened, the instigator - identified only (and ironically) as "Angel" - attempted to hit him, but was summarily taken down by Roman. "He's a lot bigger than me, so I only knocked him down and restrained him," the 16-year-old, who has earned a purple belt, said. "I wanted to avoid things getting worse."

Unfortunately things did get worse.

The bullying Angel runs home and returns to the scene with his mother to settle the score. Apparently picking on young kids who are mentally challenged is a rite of passage for aspiring punks. Only now our Angel is brandishing a large kitchen knife ! It would seem Angel and his mom have some disabilities of their own, proof that bullying and sociopathic tendencies are not merely learned but highly heritable traits.

Thinking quickly and smartly, Roman ran back into the karate school where his father Ricardo was getting ready to close for the day.

"I witnessed this kid's mother encourage her son to stab mine. She was instigating a fight," Ricardo said. "My first reaction was to protect my son, but also to avoid any kind of tragedy."

Within minutes, officers of the Holyoke Police Department were on the scene. The 14-year-old was charged with assault with a dangerous weapon. His mother, Jomery Rivera, was charged with disorderly conduct.

Reflecting on the high-intensity situation, Ricardo said he is proud of his son. "Just as I taught him, he defended someone who couldn't defend himself."

The "best part" came a day later, Ricardo said, when another of his students who witnessed the incident, 11-year-old Timothy Colón, gave Roman a certificate of recognition to thank him.

"It emphasizes what I already knew; he's a really good kid," he added.

I see a black belt in this fine young man's future. His father is rightly proud.

Anko Itosu's Ten Lessons of Karate

Anko Itosu (1832-1916), an Okinawan Shuri-te master, was a progenitor to what would eventually develop into one of the major systems of modern karate: Shorin-ryu. Shorin is the Japanese pronunciation for the Chinese Shaolin (small woods). Itosu's most famous students were Choshin Chibana and Gichin Funakoshi, the latter who brought karate to mainland Japan (c.1920) and adopted the colored belt system from the indigenous art of judo. Hitherto there was no 'ranking' system in karate, but it would take some years before the belt system caught on in karate's birthplace of Okinawa. Funakoshi was especially interested in developing karate as a budo form -- a life skill as it were. Actually some of his ideas, such as teaching karate to children and to sedentary adults for exercise and health, were likely taken from Itosu.

In 1901 Itosu introduced a modified version of karate to the Shuri Jinjo Elementary School. He removed some of what he felt were risky techniques and developed new, short practice forms that kids could pick up easily known as pinan kata. Within a few years Itosu secured teaching jobs at colleges and in 1908 wrote a letter to the Education Department on Okinawa which summed up his philosophy on karate, or as it was more commonly referred to at the time as To-te (lit. China-hand) or tode:

Tode did not develop from the way of Buddhism or Confucianism. In the recent past Shorin-ryu and Shorei-ryu [a forerunner to Goju-ryu] were brought over from China. They both have similar strong points, so, before there are too many changes, I should like to write these down.

1. Tode is primarily for the benefit of health. In order to protect one’s parents or one’s master, it is proper to attack a foe regardless of one’s own life. Never attack a lone adversary. If one meets a villain or a ruffian one should not use tode but simply parry and step aside.

2. The purpose of tode is to make the body hard like stones and iron; hands and feet should be used like the points of arrows, hearts should be strong and brave. If children were to practice tode from their elementary-school days, they would be well prepared for military service. When Wellington and Napoleon met they discussed the point that "tomorrow’s victory will come from today’s playground."

3. Tode cannot be learned quickly. Like a slow moving bull, that eventually walks a thousand miles, if one studies seriously every day, in three or four years one will understand what tode is about. The very shape of one’s bones will change.

Those who study as follows will discover the essence of tode:

4. In tode the hands and feet are important so they should be trained thoroughly on the makiwara. In so doing drop your shoulders, open your lungs, take hold of your strength, grip the floor with your feet and sink your intrinsic energy to your lower abdomen. Practice with each arm one or two hundred times.

5. When practicing tode stances make sure your back is straight, drop your shoulders, take your strength and put it in your legs, stand firmly and put the intrinsic energy in your lower abdomen, the top and bottom of which must be held together tightly.

6. The external techniques of tode should be practiced, one by one, many times. Because these techniques are passed on by word of mouth, take the trouble to learn the explanations and decide when and in what context it would be possible to use them. Go in, counter, release; is the rule of torite [lit. releasing hands].

7. You must decide whether tode is for cultivating a healthy body or for enhancing your duty.

8. During practice you should imagine you are on the battle field. When blocking and striking make the eyes glare, drop the shoulders and harden the body. Now block the enemy’s punch and strike! Always practice with this spirit so that, when on the real battlefield, you will naturally be prepared.

9. Do not overexert yourself during practice because the intrinsic energy will rise up, your face and eyes will turn red and your body will be harmed. Be careful.

10. In the past many of those who have mastered tode have lived to an old age. This is because tode aids the development of the bones and sinews, it helps the digestive organs and is good for the circulation of the blood. Therefore, from now on, tode should become the foundation of all sports lessons from elementary schools onward. If this is put into practice there will, I think, be many men who can win against ten aggressors.

The reason for stating all this is that it is my opinion that all students at the Okinawa Prefectural Teachers’ Training College should practice tode, so that when they graduate from here they can teach the children in the schools exactly as I have taught them. Within ten years tode will spread all over Okinawa and to the Japanese mainland. This will be a great asset to our militaristic society. I hope you will carefully study the words I have written here.

— Anko Itosu. Meiji 41, Year of the Monkey (October 1908).

In spite of some bold claims such as making the body like iron, taking on ten attackers and references to militarism it is said that Itosu never had to use karate in a real confrontation in his eighty-three years. This is either a product of immense luck, especially during his time, or more likely his virtue and character that were forged from his life of training, perfecting, and teaching karate.

SOURCES:
Mark Bishop 1999. Okinawan Karate: Teachers, styles and secret techniques. Tuttle Publishing.
Shoshin Nagamine (trans. by Patrick McCarthy) 2000. Tales of Okinawa's Great Masters. Tuttle Publishing.

Abuse of Power

Recently a karate school owner told me he picked up an entire family of students courtesy of abuse attributed to their former instructor. Apparently the young boy spilled water on the deck and was summarily back fisted in the chest by the burly sensei. Great marketing ploy. One wonders if this genius has a good attorney to counter these episodes. Sadly, stories of this ilk are fairly common. In fact this particular account is relatively tame.

The following comes from a news report concerning a judo club in Japan:

A Japanese court on Wednesday found a martial arts instructor guilty over the death of a six-year-old boy, a court official said, in the first criminal case over judo training in Japan.

It is the first criminal case filed by Japanese prosecutors against judo trainers, according to a victims' group, despite over 100 child deaths blamed on harsh training or hazing between 1983 and 2010.

The 36-year-old instructor, who owned a private judo club in Osaka, admitted he threw the boy excessively in training. The boy died in November last year from brain swelling, local reports said.

In Japan, judo hazing has a lengthy history and I suppose it was only a matter a time before this practice had a trickle-down effect to the kids' class.

Whenever there is a rigid hierarchy in place with passive or helpless bystanders there exists the propensity for anything from bullying to full blown physical abuse. We see this in institutions such as prisons, public schools, hospitals and nursing homes.

In 1971 the social psychologist Philip Zimbardo conducted an experiment at Stanford University to simulate a prison environment using students as prisoners and guards. The "prisoners" were even picked up at home donning jail garb and brought to the basement of the school's psychology department to begin their "sentence." But the experiment had to be stopped after just six days as the behavior of the "guards" far exceeded the expectations of Zimbardo and his colleagues. Prisoners were subjected to being sprayed with fire extinguishers, cleaning toilets with their bare hands and performing pushups with the guards standing on their backs, among other things I'd rather not go into.

This sort of dehumanizing behavior can translate into the power structure of a martial arts school. Some sensei let their own sense of power get the better of them. As one blogger puts succinctly:

The instructor's ego is one of the most dangerous opponents the student will ever face. Sometimes it is obvious. Martial arts has a hierarchy and a power dynamic and in too many places competency is not tested and compassion is assumed. It is a sweet spot for bullies and predators. Where else can you hurt people and they pay you and say, "Thank you, Master." What bully wouldn't get off on that?

Indeed. The following illustrates thusly:

DISCLAIMER: explicitly violent

The Modern Bully

Has anyone noticed the new War on Bullying? Bullying has been getting a lot of press and has become quite the catch phrase. Bullying or peer intimidation pervades many aspects of our daily existence: in the workplace, schools, and now especially, the internet. Facebook and other social networking services have been linked to a number of suicides committed by distraught teenagers being harassed online. Perceived psychological abuse has its way of being just as damaging as the physical kind. Of course bullies shaking down smaller and weaker kids for their lunch money still happens and the new anti-bullying legislation being proposed probably won't have much of an effect in public schools where "zero-tolerance" is already in force. I can't blame the school system for trying. It has been suggested that the Columbine High School massacre was carried out by a pair of chronic victims of classroom bullying that went unchecked.

The psychological profile of the modern bully has been updated to include characteristics of entitlement and narcissism from the classic version that depicts the bully as a self-loathing coward who may have been (or is) the victim of abuse, especially at home.

Children enrolled in martial arts are taught the virtues of respect and self-reliance in addition to self-defense. One wonders how many youngsters who start off as shy and awkward (perfect bully fodder) really manage to break out of their shell to lose their victim mentality. How many kids can honestly say that - thanks to karate or whatever - they now can ward off the neighborhood punk with panache? To say nothing of the internet and the effects of cyberbullying.

Higher Education

The more I see the less I know for sure. - John Lennon

In the late nineteenth century the general consensus among scientists was that science and technology had almost reached its apex. Knowledge had replaced spirit. Man in his intellectual smugness thought he had all the answers. But as the twentieth century progressed it became apparent that science could not unravel all of the mysteries. In fact if anything, the advent of scientific achievement only created more wonder and questions. The more so-called knowledge we acquired, the more we realized that we hadn't even scratched the surface.

Sound familiar?

When I first began training in the martial arts, I always asked questions. Alot of questions. The higher ranks didn't seem too perplexed with anything, I figured they already knew the material. But as I continued to train and research, I found the well to grow deeper and deeper which I found to be a bit disconcerting, if not downright annoying. "Technical shipwreck" was a term Draeger used to describe what happens when a student gets too bogged down with details. I've endured some brutally hard training sessions, but on more than one occasion I've left the dojo feeling like my brain was on fire.

I've noticed that smart people tend to do well in the martial arts. Kids that do very well in regular school are quite often the target of bullies, if for no other reason because they're such good students. But ultimately, brute force is no match for the intellect if you know how to play it right. Knowledge really is power. It is said that the great masters were always thinking about their art; imagining fight scenarios with one or more assailants, armed and unarmed. Has anyone ever practiced kata in their heads while at work or home? Einstein conceived many of his theories in physics using gedanken (thought) experiments, usually during reposeful moments. Meditation can work wonders for solving certain problems that seem insoluble.

Earning a black belt is often equated with getting a high school diploma. The analogy then is that the subsequent ranks (dan) become like college and post graduate degrees. A few high ranking instructors have actually taken the title of Professor, as opposed to the Japanese equivalents of Hanshi or Shihan. Even they still regard themselves as students. Learning never really ends. As Einstein once noted, knowledge is alright - it's discovery that's really fun.

Hockey Fight Club

A Canadian summer hockey camp has recently been set up to teach the "science" of ice hockey fighting for players between the ages of 12 and 18.

Hockey has had a long history of mayhem in the professional ranks. Fights that erupt between players are seen by many as an inevitable, even favorable part of the game. Naturally, these tendencies are picked up by impressionable youngsters in an attempt to emulate their heroes. With the high impact nature of the sport, along with its resident "goons" or "enforcers" who mete out punishment with on-ice fisticuffs, some kids are justifiably fearful of getting busted up during a game.

Enter Trevor Lakness, the general manager for Puckmasters, a hockey training center franchise, and Derek Boogaard, a professional player with the Minnesota Wild, to come up with the idea for a hockey fight camp. At 6'7 255 lbs., it's tough to imagine anyone giving Boogaard much of a challenge, on or off the ice. But supporters insist that the camp is really about instilling confidence in kids through teaching self defense techniques should a fight break out during a game.

Says Lakness: "It's no different than karate - why do people put their kids in karate? It's protection, it's an art."

The Art of Ice Hockey Fighting. You can't make this stuff up.

The Kids Are Alright

Before anyone reads this any further, rest assured that this is not an indictment against the idea of children in the martial arts. As a father of three, I understand and appreciate the role martial arts can play in the development of a child. Children (ages under 14) make up about 85% of the student bodies of most martial arts schools. That's quite a figure; it makes you wonder how many of these schools would even exist if it weren't for kids. A few traditional schools will not accept enrollees younger than teenage. Others actually advertise accepting three-year-olds. Is the concept of teaching the martial ways to youngsters actually tenable? Isn't teaching martial arts to children, especially pre-pubescent children, just some glorified form of babysitting?

Certainly, there are some sincere, competent instructors who are more inclined and capable of bringing out positive attributes and changes in children than others. Furthermore, some schools are involved in community services: police athetic leagues, and other youth programs designed to eliminate drug use, gangs, and other harmful peer-pressure related activities. On the opposite end of this spectrum lies the McDojo, a derogatory term used to describe martial arts schools that, among other things, exploit the tremendous influx of revenue that kids can bring in. Quantity, not quality, has become the credo for these "schools". In the martial arts, kids need to learn discipline, respect, and especially self-worth to prepare them for the growing years.