Archive for the 'karate' Category

Sadly I have to inform all that Grandmaster Richard “Dick” Willett died today. I’ll have more information soon but I wanted to get the word out as I know many of his students read this blog. The information I do have is Dick was admitted into the hospital yesterday and died today.

For the general readership that may not know – Dick Willett was the reason many of us (his students) excelled in life. After taking karate lessons from Master Willett – his students were taught to excel not only in karate but at any endeavour we pursued.

Dick started with Tracy’s Karate in Northern California and after getting his black belt – he moved to San Diego to open Tracy’s Karate Schools here. Mr. Willett was promoted to Judan (10th degree black belt) in 2008 by Al Tracy and was one of the few so highly ranked masters in the world.

For more information the school website is MMAKenpoKarate.com.

I don’t know about you but if I could count how many bad karate movies I’ve seen where the good guy is surrounded by a bunch of bad guys and wins… It kind of almost shakes your faith in the martial arts. I mean because as presented – the only way the good guys could win is if the bad guys were inept! I don’t know about you but I do not want to depend on my opponent not knowing what he is doing as my defense!

Imagine you take a short-cut home through an alley and all of a sudden you see a couple of thugs in front of you but as you turn – you notice a couple more thugs materializing from behind some trash cans. You notice they have clubs and knifes and after you throw them your wallet they are still approaching? What do you do? What can you do when multiple attackers are closing in on you? More on this later.

I would submit what most karate schools (evidenced from all of the karate mass attack videos on youtube) teach is dangerous! When I was a kid I used to like watching Peter Pan and Batman and Robin but even back then I had an inkling that never never land was not real. Do we truly have to suspend common sense to take karate lessons?

In this post I intend to critique the seemingly common practice of teaching inept methods of mass attack to karate students and praise the schools that give students a realistic chance. Watch this video for context and note I am not inpuning the fighting ability of the style or participants but rather the concept/strategy employed to ward off a group of attackers. The first minute of this video has the mass attack.

Most of my early childhood years I wondered how to defend myself! I had the normal amount of bully experiences and soon learned the hard way that one had to stand up to bullies. The first lessons on how to defend myself were from Batman and Robin. It drove my dad nuts to hear me talk about how their punches would really work!

Anyway after years of learning and eventually teaching karate – do we really do a good job of teaching basic self defense? I mean there is so much fluff in the martial arts… all of that philosophy about only fighting if there is no other way out and the stuff about forms and even basics. Who ever won a fight by practicing punches from a low horse stance?

Well in this post I’ll answer the question about how well the martial arts teach self defense for the masses (most kids have had a lesson or two) and if all of the fluff actually helps but most of all I would like to say how I would teach self defense and why I would not open up a school teaching self defense.

First for your perusal is the episode of Longstreet (an old TV flick of my day) where Bruce Lee did a guest spot helping the blind man learn how to defend himself.

Imagine that you have taken a year of karate lessons from your local dojo and you decided to take a short-cut home from school (through the park) because you are running late and it is getting dark. Oh yeah – you are a 15 year-old girl. You are confident because you hold a blue belt and have actually had some sparring experience – loved it but the other girl – not so much!

Well some other teen boys approach you as dusk falls – asking if you want to party. There are three of them and they are younger than you. You tell them no thanks and as you try to leave – they block the trail in both directions! Still talking they say that have some beers in a cooler nearby and how about having a bit of fun.

Your escape route is seemingly cut off and you don’t want to go with these boys for a “bit of fun” so what do you do?

More on this later but in this post I will examine what fighting spirit is and how it can help one make good self-defense decisions. Also I will talk about the lack of fighting spirit and the ramifications of that. In a nut shell the fight or flight decision in us sometimes has to be made in an instant for us to gain a momentary advantage. If we do not act when we have a tactical advantage – your chances of a good outcome diminish!

Take a look at this video to see what is possible as Dr. Ruthless so aptly demonstrates.

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I remember one Sunday evening while I was a new bouncer at the bar. Eight guys powered past me before I could card them and ordered some beers. The obviously had already consumed a fair amount of beers. I was a bit nervous as there was the old bartender, a few dancers and everyone was depending on me to keep the peace.  

I calmly walked up to them and asked them to meet me outside. The six big guys followed me outside and I told them they were out for the night since they had not followed the rules. They were having none of that and they attacked me! More on this later but what could I do against six big guys?  I mean I was 155 pounds to their 200 and over?!!!

In this post I will address somewhat of a lost art – the much maligned sidekick! What? Yes once a staple of karate is not considered somewhat of a risk to use in a fight for some reason. Back in my day the sidekick was a great equalizer. I mean most people were inept at kicking and did not really understand how a little guy me could quickly gain the upper hand without a punch!

Here is a quick video showing some of the mechanics of the sidekick.

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Since I’ve started this self defense website I have written about many topics of martial arts. Today I am going to tell you a bit about the school I came from and highlight it’s new website http://mmakenpokarate.com/.

I have also added a Recommended Dojos link off to the right sided of this post. This is a personal recommendation based on my 36 years with this school. If you live or work near American Kenpo Karate, Kick Boxing & Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, check this school out if you are considering martial arts training!

Our lineage almost spans 800 years starting with Zenko Yoshida in the thirteenth century. Quoting from the Tracy’s Family Tree here, “This would establish the Yoshida clan’s tie to the Renzai sect of Zen and Kenpo/Kempo/Kosho.”

The reins were passed to the 21st Grand Master, James M. Mitose in the mid-twentieth centry. Ed Parker, one of Mitose and Chow’s students brought Kenpo over to the mainland in the 1950′s. 

As a teenager I remember watching Tracy’s Kenpo Karate commercials during the Kung Fu tv series. I found one old commercial for your perusal.

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You have entered into a local martial arts contest, one that advertises it is an “Open” tournament and you are trying to discern the rules. As a former salty old dog that has fought a few tourneys in the 70′s and early 80′s, you are shocked to discover that the rules have really changed!

In the early days of tournaments, Open tourneys meant that as well as being open to all styles – the rules were the same for hands and feet. One could do a jump-spinning-hook-kick to the head or reverse-punch the body for one point. Groin kicks as well as leg sweeps were legal (the three second rule to score on a downed opponents was in place).

Well this is NOT the old days anymore. The Closed tournaments still have inflated point values for kicks to the head and body but now even the open tournaments award more points for kicks!

In this article I am going to talk about the logic of a point system and what it is supposed to say about a fighter. Yes I will talk about sport karate in general and why this trend of flashier karate fighting may have happened. I will as usual give my opinion of where this went wrong (assuming you agree with me). I welcome the opportunity to hear you opinions in this regard. Here is a video about one organization’s rules.

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