Originally posted March 10 2017<\/p>\n
Today I am writing with regards to sparing. \u00a0It is the most common question people ask when they call, “do you spar?” \u00a0My response for years has been no. I usually talk about the drills we do and how\u00a0they develop skills and reactions. \u00a0I find it seems like it usually falls on deaf ears. \u00a0That is OK, this is why we interview each other. \u00a0If that is what you want this is not your school. \u00a0If you want to learn an authentic Okinawan Martial Art (or two) the way they have been done traditionally this\u00a0is the school for you.<\/p>\n
As a student in the past we did jiu\u00a0kumete or free sparing. \u00a0We would spend about 1\/4 of our class time on this exercise. \u00a0When I was going to classes 4 and 5 times a week this amounted to several hours each week. \u00a0I learned several things including that I could block and take an incredible amount of punishment. \u00a0I often hated it,\u00a0I hated that we were not learning martial arts in my opinion. \u00a0We were not gaining an understanding of the concepts in the gifts we had been given of the katas thoughtfully crafted and carefully handed down. \u00a0It is this experience that brought me back to Okinawan style Goju Ryu and informed the response above. \u00a0Goju Ryu is a practical art developed by people whose lives depended on fighting or at least being prepared. \u00a0Kata are packages to transmit information, our job is to unpack the concepts they transmitted and develop them for use.<\/p>\n
Here is an article Mr. Hagen shared on the subject.<\/p>\n