Month: February 2013

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Clips Media Scholarly Pursuits

Karate Bunkai: Jion

One of the things I do a lot (probably too much) is watch martial arts videos on YouTube. I watch a lot of form tournament competitions, but I also really like to watch Karate bunkai videos.

Karate bunkai (or bunhae in Korean) means analysis or application. Bunkai partner drills involve using moves from a form to defend against an attacker.

I’d like for our students who read the blog, as well as whoever is interested, to take a look at this video. It is bunkai (bunhae in Korean) for the Shotokan-ryu Jion, and it is a very good video with useful information.

Then I have a few notes on Jion for those of us who are interested in and research forms lineage.

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Categories
Musings

Success through Visualization

With the upcoming tournament, many of my posts this month will be focused on preparing for competitions. Today we’ll take a look at one of the key ingredients of success: mental practice and visualization.

Visualization, or image training, is something many athletes (and other successful people) use to help them hone their mental focus, boost their confidence, and add to their performance. Image training aids your ability to believe in yourself and makes you more likely to perform for success.

Additionally, practicing for a competition  in your head may also help with performance/test/competition anxiety.

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Categories
General Musings

Can my black belt help get me into college?

Highly recommended reading for our high school students:

Can my black belt help get me into college?

I thought this was a great, informative article. It’s an interview with an admissions officer about how they view martial arts as an extracurricular activity on college applications. Like any activity on an application, it’s crucial that you provide details about yourself, your training, and what your focus is (and why that’s important to you), in order to showcase the strength of your character.

Categories
Musings

Conscious Effort, Instinctive Response

“Cognitive Secret: It takes long-term, conscious effort to hone a skill before the brain assigns it to the cognitive unconscious.” –Wired for Story by Lisa Cron

Wired for Story was a book I read recently (Little-known fact about Sempai Yudanjanim C: she is an aspiring writer). It focuses on the relationship between brain science and writing stories based on brain science.

I found those words in one of the chapters, and was struck by how much it applies to martial arts training, not just writing.

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Categories
General Musings

Preparing for Your Next Tournament: 6 Tournament Prep Tips

Tournament prep tips–with the tournament coming up on March 30th, I’ve had a lot of students asking me what they can do to train and prepare for it. The most basic thing is to be in class as much as possible, so the instructors can help you get ready and give you specific tips.

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Categories
Clips Media

Style Highlight: Kalaripattayu

Today I have a video clip with related commentary for you. I spend a lot of time watching forms and training videos on Youtube, and there’s certainly a wealth of information to be found and shared. Hope you enjoy a little something different!

As always, *please* do not to attempt to imitate anything from this site, all of its pages, or from anything we link to/from.

This video showcases Kalaripayattu, an Indian martial art. What I like is that Kalaripayattu utilizes the attacker’s momentum against them in a very fluid manner. I can also see movements that are very similar to some of our Arnis techniques, which shows the probable influence of Kalaripayattu on the rest of southeast Asia.

A lot of people consider Chinese Kung Fu the beginning of martial arts, but in reality, there were all kinds of arts all over the world, including southeast Asia.

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