This post is for my Cornell students. Welcome, to those who are just starting karate, and welcome back to my students from the Spring. Our class begins in a couple of days, and I wanted to take some time to introduce new students to the art of karate that I teach at Cornell.
I teach a unique interpretation of the fighting arts passed down from Chinese (often military officials) to the Okinawans over many hundreds of years. I believe that arts handed down as empty-hand training rituals were likely designed for both military (armed) as well as personal self-defense (unarmed) combat.
I hope that you will enjoy training with me and that you will learn some useful information.
When choosing a new martial art to train in, students should consider their goals. What do they hope to achieve through their participation in a martial arts curriculum. At Cornell, students have a wonderful range of arts to choose from. For competitive light contact point sparring, Cornell Tae Kwon Do has a first tier program. For grappling arts we have excellent Judo and Aikido programs (though Aikido is a club, not a PE program). Cornell’s Kevin Seamen teaches a whole range of striking and grappling arts including boxing, thai boxing, Jeet kun Do and Kali. He also teaches an integrative class of modern empty hand combat principles. Cornell also offers the Chinese systems of Kung fu and Tai chi and Chi gong. There is a womens self-defense course. Other non-Eastern martial arts include western fencing. In the very traditional sense of warrior training, there are aquatic and equestrian classes. In a more modern sense of martial arts, there are marksmanship classes. And in the most current form of martial training, we have a ROTC program. Cornell has a boxing club, a Thai Boxing club, a BJJ club, a kendo club, and four karate clubs (ours included). There is even a chapter of the Society for Creative Anachronisms where participants get to wield arms while wearing traditional military garb of the middle ages.
The Cornell PE karate class is taught as a traditional martial art. Traditional arts, in general, include the practice of forms or kata, which are prearranged sequences of fighting combinations. Many Okinawan kata are considered to be very old. These movements have withstood the test of time, having been handed down for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. Within the broader set of arts that include the training in traditional kata, there are quite many attributes that overlap. However each art has its own distinctive characteristics. Tae kwon do has its kicking and wushu, its jumping. Judo uses the body and legs to take down opponents. In Aikido, one evades attackers while deploying locking motions to bring attackers, unarmed and armed, to submission on the ground. Chinese arts are characterized by circular, continuous, relaxed, fast movements. Chinese kata are typically long and elaborate.
Karate has its distinguishing characteristics. First is the focus on developing maximum power in each technique, which often includes firmly rooting movements in locked stances. Second, in many systems of karate, single counter responses are the norm as compared to most other martial systems where more complex combinations are most common.
I have certain goals for teaching this class. I want to make your time with me as fruitful as I can. And at the end of the semester, if I can provide satisfactory answers to the following questions, then I will have in large part succeeded.
The overall question is “What is karate?” This leads to four separate questions.
- What are the specific movements that make up the basics of karate?
- How are those movements used in fighting? How do they improve one’s fighting ability?
- What are the broader set of movements found in karate systems?
- How do those movements differ from other martial systems? To answer this question fully, it is useful to review the historical developments of martial arts, and the evolution of karate in particular.
During the course of our semester together, I hope to provide you with the answers to these questions.