Recently, we had two karateka pass 3rd kyu (brown belt) and I said to them,
'Congratulations on passing your brown belt, you are well on your way to black belt. Now your karate gets easier but it is harder and black belt is not important but it means everything!'
Many questions and emails later I decided to write this article, hopefully this will explain better, the point I was trying to get accross.
For a beginner to shotokan karate, it is all very confusing, both arms moving together as in gedan barai (downward block), one linear in movement and one circular, then both arms stopping at the same time, but one traveling more distance than the other, for someone new to karate, this alone, is a challenging exercise.
However, after several thousand repetitions and a few years of dojo practice, this exercise becomes second nature and is no longer a brain ache!
Ask a brown belt if performing gedan barai is difficult, they will look at you like you are trying to trick them, because to a brown belt, gedan barai is 'white belt stuff'. Ask a godan (5th dan) the same question and you will probably get a very different answer.
In the UK we have our football leagues, with the premier league being as good as it gets and everyone trying to enter that top league. Next comes the Championship league, then league 1, league 2, etc.
Now a premiership player may come into league 2 and find the football very physical, but technically no where near that of the premier league.
This is so true with karate also.
In my quote I was talking about going from purple/white belt to brown, but below I will talk about going from brown to black, it is the same, but on a higher level..
A brown belt trains very hard, their training is very physical and I totally agree with this type of training, but a black belts training is much more technical, the hard physical training is still there, but the technical side of karate now starts to kick in.
It is common to see a new black belts training change, before black belt the karateka was strength technique and spirit, but mainly strength and spirit. Once black belt, the same karateka steers a lot more effort to technique.
A new black or brown belt has trained for several years, their fitness levels are up and they are used to the hard physical training, compare this to a white belt who has just starting to learn karate and has not participated in any physical activity for several years. The white belt struggles in every class, not just with technique, but fitness also. Take the black and brown belts, they have gone through several years of physical and mental conditioning, so the physical side of karate is much easier for them to deal with.
Ossu
Linden Huckle
'Congratulations on passing your brown belt, you are well on your way to black belt. Now your karate gets easier but it is harder and black belt is not important but it means everything!'
Many questions and emails later I decided to write this article, hopefully this will explain better, the point I was trying to get accross.
For a beginner to shotokan karate, it is all very confusing, both arms moving together as in gedan barai (downward block), one linear in movement and one circular, then both arms stopping at the same time, but one traveling more distance than the other, for someone new to karate, this alone, is a challenging exercise.
However, after several thousand repetitions and a few years of dojo practice, this exercise becomes second nature and is no longer a brain ache!
Ask a brown belt if performing gedan barai is difficult, they will look at you like you are trying to trick them, because to a brown belt, gedan barai is 'white belt stuff'. Ask a godan (5th dan) the same question and you will probably get a very different answer.
In the UK we have our football leagues, with the premier league being as good as it gets and everyone trying to enter that top league. Next comes the Championship league, then league 1, league 2, etc.
Now a premiership player may come into league 2 and find the football very physical, but technically no where near that of the premier league.
This is so true with karate also.
In my quote I was talking about going from purple/white belt to brown, but below I will talk about going from brown to black, it is the same, but on a higher level..
A brown belt trains very hard, their training is very physical and I totally agree with this type of training, but a black belts training is much more technical, the hard physical training is still there, but the technical side of karate now starts to kick in.
It is common to see a new black belts training change, before black belt the karateka was strength technique and spirit, but mainly strength and spirit. Once black belt, the same karateka steers a lot more effort to technique.
A new black or brown belt has trained for several years, their fitness levels are up and they are used to the hard physical training, compare this to a white belt who has just starting to learn karate and has not participated in any physical activity for several years. The white belt struggles in every class, not just with technique, but fitness also. Take the black and brown belts, they have gone through several years of physical and mental conditioning, so the physical side of karate is much easier for them to deal with.
Ossu
Linden Huckle
Linden Huckle lives in the UK and has been training and teaching karate for over 30 years. Watch some free karate for beginners videos now at learn karate online.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Linden_Huckle
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