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Why this title? If we all desire the same thing in karate we will understand Yahara Sensei's philosophy.
Chiro Kairo Ni which ran October 24-25-26 was the 3rd Camp held by the KWF in North Africa. Due tothe high demand in North Africa to experience KWF Karate, we organised this camp to be open so everyone could share. It also represented an important opportunity to get all the North African countries together to share their approach to the Traditional Karate we foster. Finally we agreed for this time that the camp would take place in Tebessa in the East of Algeria near the boarder of Tunisia and Libya. And also all the participants from the neighbouring countries Morocco, Egypt and the Middle East would be welcome to join. The Governor of Tebessa, seeing this as opportunity of cultural exchange between countries pursuing the same goals, supported this event and on behalf of everyone in the KWF we would like to offer our huge thanks for his generous hospitality
Sensei Yahara (hereinafter YS) and Otsuka Sensei, a 4th Dan KWF trainee instructor arrived at Algiers after a long flight from Tokyo and we felt obliged to give them a day's rest for a little sightseeing. Yahara Sensei had already been with me to Algeria in 2004 so he knew what to expect already.
The next day we flew to Tebessa to the venue and after introducing YS and OS we conducted the opening ceremony and soon everyone got down to training.
Practice 1:
We started with the basics (1) Zenkutsu-dachi left leg forward/ Tate-shouto-uke with the left arm pushing away the hips hanmi (profile) to the maximum with the Hikite pulled also to the maximum insuring that the front knee stayd solid and stable pointed toward the front toes. In Hikite, the back leg should be slightly bent to keep the hips compressed the foot pointed at a 45 degree or nearer if possible to the direction of attack (tsumaseki mae) with the heel anchored to the ground and with the knee should pointing toward the direction of the target as you could see from the picture. (2) The next movement is gyaku-zuki; bring the hips back to shomen tate-shouto-uke pulled back to hikkite and locked with the hips to stabilise the body on impact with the target.
Pic (2) Yahara Sensei Explaining Hanmi & Shomen
The next practice was a bit more dynamic: Combining (1) & (2) by keeping the upper body compressed in hanmi and generating explosive power through expansion of the back leg toward the target without going upward during the attack (see picture). Everything is biomechanically focused to keep power in one path; then next block with a full speed and power and counter attack in the same way again
Practice 2:
Taking things one step further, we used the same practice one while the gyaku-zuki is extended sharply using the lower abdominal muscles (tanden or hara) for kime also to control the distance and the impact with the target, and start again breathing when pulling hanmi keeping the center of gravity, balance, focus...and like a shot gun let everything out when we punch, and reload with all the points in mind. After a while we start to feel the strength of the workout; nonetheless it is a fascinating feeling. Sensei explained the corrections over and over with Otsuka sensei and showed more interesting points.
Pic (3) YS explaining the extention of the rear leg from hanmi to shomen with the punch in one spontaneous move.
The reason for this practice is to develop all the hip muscles, joints, flexibility of the hip rotation kime and, most importantly, the coordination between the upper body and lower body in conjunction. The next practice consisted of combinations of hanmi shomen moving forward with oi-zuki and gyaku-zuki keeping all the basics in mind,
YS explained the five locking points after the finishing punch. Either with oi-zuki or gyaku-zuki, hikite is always pulled to the maximum with the elbow tight on the side keeping the shoulder down; keep the tsuki toward the center and also it is vital to keep the shoulder also down while keeping the front knee slightly toward the inside parallel with the toes (picture 3) and the back leg completely extended pushing the hip against the opposite direction. The point: in gyaku-hanmi the hip is completely locked. All the five points should be locked in the same time on the finish blow of tsuki.
Practice 3
Koshi no kaiten! From zenkutsu-dachi left leg forward and gyaku-zuki on the spot, spin 360 degrees clockwise with urakan-uchi with out moving from the spot; just pivot on the ball of the feet. Easy! Maybe not. This practice needs a complete twist of the knee, ankles, join, hips back; and all the muscles need to be involved. Everything to the LIMIT. Balance is crucial and keeping the center of gravity is a challenge! The point of this practice is to drive everything with the hip rotation in one motion and to stop at the moment of impact with urakan uchi while keeping the body low and the supporting legs glued to the ground.
Next we came back with the same drive and speed anti clockwise to the same spot with the hip movement like a hammer explosively unwinding on the end of a human-sized clock spring. With practice and practice gradually gyaku-zuki and then urakan uchi with a greater power and stability
To generate power and to use kaiten urakan-uchi in YS fashion, the correct use of the hip is paramount.
Practice 4.
From fudo-dachi, (natural stance) block with soto-uke; spin 360 degree clockwise with urakan-uchi using the same principles from the previous practice koshi kaiten; but this time make sure the movement is more dynamic! As soon as you land, spin back on the same spot anti-clockwise 180 degrees with urakan-uchi. Then to make it even more challenging, from the same spot we then practiced spinning backwards clockwise with urakan-uchi with a huge spin. The balance and speed and harmony that YS executes these techniques totally belies his age, which is now over 60. YS typifies Budo Karate with all its beauty and spirit.
Practice 5.
This practice is about compression and expansion of the legs, pulling and pushing the hips and how to generate maximum power and also how to successfully execute body evasion (tai-sabaki).
From kamae, shift your whole body backward with yori-ashi to a smaller and compressed naihanchi-dachi with the knees pointed forward and the hip maximum hanmi, block with age-uke to start with then soto-uke and finaly gedan-barai, hikite while the block is done is always to the limit next spring forward with gyaku-zuki pushing the hips and expansion of the back leg to zenkutsu-dachi, all in one motion everything should stop simultaneously with gyaku-zuki. Once the attack finishes return to kamae .
After that we did more variations of this practice from yori-ashi to the next tai-sabaki and hiki-ashi stepping backward pulling and rotating the hips in one snap movement and blocking and attacking with oi-zuki. This dynamic practice is very useful for kumite.
Kicks are done in the same way. Mae-geri is performed keeping the body low and kick using the hips to generate power and speed, once the kick is out the back leg extends toward the target.
Also for mawashi-geri: with the kicking leg the use of the knee correctly with the hips rotation, toward the target the expansion of the supporting leg should be done in the same time while the ball of the foot reaches the target.
Practice 6.
With partners we used the same basics from practices 3 and 4. Next we did gohon kumite; we used practice 2 oi-zuki adding mae-geri and jiyu-ippon-kumite; we used the practice 5 with attacks of oi-zuki, mae-geri yoko-geri, and mawashi-geri keeping in mind all the basics. By the end of this practice we could see a huge difference in everyone's moves!
The last practice consisted of kata using all the fundamental basics with correct timing of each movement, correct position, etc…Sensei explained kata bunkai and more about the simplicity and understanding of the kata basics. By this time we were coming to the end of our camp and Sensei was kind enough to talked more about the history of Shotokan and how it has evolved. Yahara Sensei insists of keeping the traditional shotokan kata and the practice of the basics, as they are very important.
Yahara Sensei's view on Kata is that Kata should be kept strong and beautiful and that we should remember the original purpose behind them. When we complicate the kata, they become weak and meaningless and even loose their soul.
Kata is executed with power; precision and the whole body participate to every action executed.
Every attack should feel like it is your killing blow; every block as if that will be the only block to save your life. If kata is performed in this fashion, it will be beautiful kata in motion, but it will came with a price as anything else in life.
What we learned from this camp is that the basics are the source of Karate and it is from the basics that we extract the essence and beauty of Karate. This is Yahara Sensei's philosophy and this is Budo.
We finished the camp with the grading of 180 people and we will upload the candidates who passed shortly.
As a final note, I would like to make the following comments.
The camp was a great success at all levels. First of all, I would like to thank everyone for the high number of participants and the high level of commitment shown.
I must also say the for the majority it was the first time to experience Yahara Sensei's Karate first hand. People were surprised by Yahara Sensei's power and speed, his knowledge and how charming and charismatic he is. I would also like to say a personal thank you and thank you from all of us for the able support provided by Ohtsuka Sensei, who also helped make this a highly successful Camp.
Thank you very much Sensei and Ohtsuka Sensei.
Sid Tadrist
International Shihan
KWF
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