Your Japanese word of the week is...

"bougyo" which means "self-defense". And that was only a small part of the kumite seminar I took part in in past Sunday.

As you may know, this weekend is the World Karate Federation's (WKF) World Championships and, for the first time in 31 years, it is being held in Tokyo. I'm volunteering on Saturday and Sunday (they signed me up as a translator!!........) so it'll be a great experience to watch, up close, the best of the best from all over the world.

But before all this, Richard organized a seminar with Antonio Oliva Sensei, who is a 5-time Spanish National Karate Champion and is now an internationally renowned WKF kumite coach, traveling to as many as 25 different countries every year to teach his approach to winning.

With Oliva Sensei was two competitors that he trained, a Latvian 17-yr old named Kalvis Kalnins (a WKF Junior World Champion) and Adam Kovacs, a Hungarian who's going to compete this weekend. The seminar was divided up into two sessions, with the 9:30am-1pm session for kids and a 2-5:30pm adult session.

The kids session was focused mainly on drills- improving their movement, leg/hand speed, and timing. One oft uttered criticism of the Japanese training method is that it's overly repetitive and predictable, with drills essentially lining up all the students and having them do one move countless number of times- exactly how sparring matches DON'T happen.

The exercises done at the seminar, however, had a random variable thrown in which mean the kids were learning how to adapt to the situation as well as sharpening their reflexes without losing focus of what they're supposed to be practicing.

I had gone to the seminar with two of my students from the high school, so I spent the morning running the drills with them and Carl (the current intern).

After a short lunch, the adult session started which had a different set of drills interspersed with short lectures.

The one thing that Oliva Sensei has really done over his 30+ years of experience is to essentially take something seemingly random and analyze it scientifically. He explained to us what is required to win matches by taking into account who the fighter is, who the judges are, where in the ring you are, the time remaining, the distancing between you and your opponent, when to be attacking/defending, and so on and so forth.

I would say that not all of it is new, and any competitor will eventually develop their own sense about these situations, but Oliva Sensei has taken it as far as to connect all the concepts together to produce a plan to win.

Despite the fact that I thought the kids session was better (lots of great drills and timing training), Oliva Sensei stressed that those are foundational skills and he's actually interested in teaching teachers the concept of tactics, which are the next level from just having ability.

Either way, it was a great seminar hampered only by the fact that I got stepped on in a really weird way by one of the guys I was practicing with. I now have a cut under the nail of my left big toe, which isn't a huge deal except for the fact that I can barely walk (which I guess is a big deal haha)....... it doesn't hurt if I don't move, I can put weight on it (so it's not broken), but it's annoying nonetheless....... I had hoped to be back training by next week, but I just want to walk normally right now haha........

I guess my toe-bougyo needs a bit of work.........

Yay karate!! =P.......