This last weeked, four Ryusei black belts got together to train at Matt Mannerow’s home dojo in Hanover, Ont. Peter Zehr, Matt, Evan Bray and I spent Sunday investigating joint locks and joint lock reversals, resulting in sore wrists and new insights. Evan was also introduced to Rohai kata and will continue to learn this…
Keiko Fukuda, the world’s highest-ranking woman judo practitoner died at her home in San Francisco, on Feb. 9, at age 99. Not only did Fukuda-Sensei learn her art directly from the founder, Jigoro Kano, she broke new ground in her lifetime dedication to the art. The granddaughter of a samurai and jujitsu master, she was…
To start out the New Year on the right foot, I held a workout on New Year’s morning at 11 am, attended by my students KC, Carminha and Vareena, Matt Mannerow, an instructor with Grey-Bruce Ryusei, and my senior Ted Jungblut. The theory is that if the workout is traumatic enough, that the rest of…
A student passed me a link to this episode of a television show called Samurai Spirit. The show focuses on have Greek-Danish karateka and K-1 full-contact fighter Nicholas Pettas. It tells how, as a young man, he was beaten and so turned to karate to toughen himself up. He went to Japan as a teenager and…
This is a link passed on by Terry Valentino of Koshin-ha Chito-ryu. The above video is footage of the San Zheng of Luohan Quan performed by Master Liang Shou Zhong in the 1980s. The YouTube description says: “In Fujian, there are over 5 different lineages of Luohan Quan recognized (three of which are in Fuzhou, one…
Karate is not a martial art. Neither is judo, aikido and many other of the, uh, whatever-they-are arts. OK, fighting arts. Strictly speaking, ‘martial’ is something that pertains to war. So martial arts are war arts. In feudal Japan, martial arts would include systems using swords, spears, bows and arrows, even later guns and other…
