Senaga Sensei Video

[Dana Sheets]

I'd be verrrrrry interested if anyone knows where this video and its companions are distributed:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vP6-7vvIm8w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kpl4Ng-u ... re=related

[Glenn]

Is it from George's VidMag 19: Master Senaga's Karate?

[Dana Sheets]

No, I have videomag 19. That footage is from several years earlier. The videos I just posted are more recent.

[Bill Glasheen]

Very interesting videos, Dana. Thanks for posting them.

After being very deeply involved in what I am doing and reasons for doing it, it's interesting every once in a while to come up for air and see what some other good masters are doing. Obviously Senaga does what he means and means what he does. Even when you do things differently from someone else, it's cool when you see the deliberate motion of another's thoughtful approach.

The one thing I wonder about, Dana, is the work with the kami (jars) at the end of the 2nd video you posted. All the way through his Sanchin, Senaga has no core movement. And then he throws in the trunk action when moving with the jars. It's the exact opposite of what I'd expect.

Furthermore, I can't see where his frontal near-isometric contraction is acting against any resistance with the force vectors going straight down the arms. Hitting makiwara? Sure. Carrying jars? I'm scratching my head on that one.

What do you make of that, Dana? I'm specifically asking you because of our shared understanding of some Nakamatsu-inspired mechanics. You and I have some shared body language experiences.

Anyone else... you're welcome to chime in.

- Bill

[Dana Sheets]

In my understanding, the jar training is a whole body experience that progressively stresses the body in preparation for a number of things. It is, in a way, another exaggeration training in the sense that one does not do jar training the way one fights. Jar training is like adding an amplifier to a system. Whatever is there will get louder.

As for the difference between the videotaped sanchin kata and the jar training - there's probably a bit of "doing the kata for the video and making it perfect" going on. There's also the idea that he probably is doing the same kind of compression/pressure in his regular kata - just not as obviously or utilizing the results of the compression/pressure training to better power his kata.

Gushi also has that forward curve when he does the jars as do a number of senior practitioners. It looks almost like a bow being bent doesn't it? When a bow is bent there is tension in both the bow and the string. So I'd imagine that Gushi and Senaga sensei are intentionally stressing certain things to enhance their development for use in generating and manipulating forces. Added to that is the timing of the breathing, which also seems very intentional.

I can't pretend to know exactly what Senaga sensei is doing, but I have to think that there's very good reason this tradition was and is so emphatically trained.

However, I can't create that much of a bend in my own training without losing a feeling of overall connection. So either 1) I've not reached a correct level of development to look like they look even though I might be doing the same or similar things 2) I'm not developing the same things at all 3) not even in the ballpark.

For my own jar training, I've got my fingers crossed that it is number 1 but I leave room for enough error for 3 to also be true.

[Bill Glasheen]

I hear you, Dana, and I appreciate your frankness. And thanks for sharing your thoughts. You do a really good job of keeping my brain going.

I do what I do in jar training because my body tells me to do it. But there's one big difference with me. I also do at least as much Olympic weight training. More specifically, I do said training with dumbbells rather than barbells, which adds to the degrees of freedom of motion I'm working with in these whole-body exercises. So some of what Senaga/Gushi are doing may be irrelevant to someone like me who already has some of that covered (and in a better way).

I'm just going to make a note to self on this. Sometimes the epiphany strikes later. And sometimes... there really are better ways to do things - if the equipment is available.

We shall see. Mind will stay open.

Maybe we can ask Gushi about this in March.

- Bill

[David H]

Can I put in my 2 cents worth.

Whilst training in Okinawa I was informed that it was necesary to adopt the "tilted/curved" position whilst using the jars to fully engage and develop the upper back, shoulders, and forearms. I.e. in the more upright position the legs tend to take the weight.

I also questioned Sensei Takara why San Chin is now performed with more of a straight back than it seems to have been in the past. Sensei Takara said that this was due to the advent of free sparring and tournaments and the need to further protect the head.

[Bill Glasheen]

Many thanks for your input, David!

- Bill

[Bill Glasheen]

I'm of a mindset that there's no "religion" about Sanchin and the jar training. It's very much influenced by teacher and by personal preference.

To wit... Note the well-known Gushi and his student do two very different Sanchin postures while getting into Sanchin. Gushi shows the somewhat stylized "rolling of the shoulders" before ever grabbing a jar. Toyama Sensei does the same, BTW. Meanwhile his student does nothing of the kind. You'd think that if it was important, Gushi Sensei would have insisted his student do it. But no...

Uechi-ryu hand conditioning 2

Also note that the student doesn't do the exaggerated frontal contractions after each step.

There was a similar example of another teacher in French. But I refuse to post it as the teacher INCORRECTLY was pounding the student on the chest over the heart. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Again... yet another reason not to make a religion out of this stuff. Just because your name is Japanese and you trained in Okinawa doesn't mean you know what you are doing.

There's also no "fixed form" training with the jars. I was looking for another video of Shinjo Kiyohide doing the jar training (from the Discovery Channel special) but couldn't find it. If someone could post it, I'd appreciate it.

In short... Shinjo Narahiro knows what he's doing. Great practitioner, great brother, and great father. Post the video and I'll show why.

And no frontal contractions after the steps, by the way...

Here's Shinjo Kiyohide getting some publicity on The History Channel. Just a short bit of nigiri game there - with deep stances.

Iron Body

- Bill

[Dana Sheets]

Can I put in my 2 cents worth.

Whilst training in Okinawa I was informed that it was necesary to adopt the "tilted/curved" position whilst using the jars to fully engage and develop the upper back, shoulders, and forearms. I.e. in the more upright position the legs tend to take the weight.

I also questioned Sensei Takara why San Chin is now performed with more of a straight back than it seems to have been in the past. Sensei Takara said that this was due to the advent of free sparring and tournaments and the need to further protect the head.

Thanks David,
That position also pushes the jars even further in front of the hips - requiring more overall development to deal with holding that kind of weight that far in front of your legs.

Did you end up training with the forward curve with the jars? Any notable differences in doing it that way?

[David H]

I totally agree that the jars training is an exaggeration and is there to strenthen and ensure the full range of movement is engaged. In using the jars I tend to lean slightly forward (by the way, I am in no way putting myself in the same category as masters such as Sensi Gushi). I find that it enables me to feel all of the muscles involved in the strike and the synergy required in delivering a thrust. I think it also heightens your sense of awareness of where your centre of gravity lies. IMHO.

[Bill Glasheen]

Sometimes it pays to sit and listen - even as people are stumbling over the language that describes what their body knows.

I could go into a long dissertation here about the thought rush I'm getting from all the text and videos here. But instead I'll try to keep my thoughts short and sweet, and rely on the reader to digest this.

What appears to be going on here is working on a principle that a Dr. Dan Kulund described to me as "essential synergy." Dr. Kulund was one of my favorite "jock docs" back in my UVa days. He was very popular with the locals for his runners clinic where he'd film participants on a treadmill and then prescribe orthotics to correct problems that were causing pain and/or injury. He was famous for going to the local bicycle shop to get used inner tubes to give to his orthopedic patients who lived out in the sticks of western Virginia. Like the Okinawans, he was really good at using simple things easily found to get ordinary people doing complex exercises.

When you do kotekitae, you should be working on creating the perfect elastic collision. In other words you time a contraction (voluntarily and involuntarily) in a way that you reflect the force the same way a floor reflects the energy of a basketball when it hits. Reflected force is force not absorbed.

When you have someone stand or walk in myriad karate stances (sanchin dachi, heiko dachi, kiba dachi) while manipulating weight with your finger tips and boshiken thumb, you are having the individual work all the body muscles such that central control (your brain) is managing the forces in-between the floor and the tips of your Uechi weapons. This is some of the "connectivity" that Dana and others are talking about. If I was to try to program a robot to do this, the complexities of the algorithms would be considerable. But the student does it via proprioception (body awareness) and subsequent body responses (strengthening of body parts, laying down of brain synapses, etc.).

The real epiphany hit when I saw Shinjo doing kotekitae with the nubies for the History Channel special. That he was doing in the same trip that he had them doing nigiri game training. Then I saw Gushi sensei "checking" his student's sanchin dachi and heiko dachi while holding the jars, and...

Think of the body holding the weights like stringing and tuning a guitar. Think of Gushi et al "checking" the student in myriad parts of the body like plucking the strings of that guitar. Without going into a lot of detail, those perturbations on a tautly-strung system send myriad messages to that human body - all while maintaining the connection in-between floor and Uechi weapon tip.

I've seen many jar exercises coming from Uechi practitioners. The most innovative have been from myriad film clips I saw coming out of the Kadena dojo (mostly Shinjo Narahiro). There's just a hint of that in the History Channel film with Kiyohide leading the History Channel reporters in their nigiri game training.

Take time to think about all this. If you get the underlying principles, you can go far in terms of applying them in your own dojo training. And it doesn't take the most expensive and/or fragile equipment to accomplish the task.

- Bill

[Glenn]

There's also no "fixed form" training with the jars. I was looking for another video of Shinjo Kiyohide doing the jar training (from the Discovery Channel special) but couldn't find it. If someone could post it, I'd appreciate it.

The Discovery Channel show that immediately comes to mind in which Shinjo Kiyohide participated was "Way of the Warrior". Here is a link to five segments of it on Youtube, but in skipping throuh these I did not see any footage of Shinjo doing jar training. I believe the complete show is shown by these so either I missed it or it was in a different show.

In the National Geographic series a few years back where the female martial artist traveled around the world training in a different style each episode, I do remember jar training being prominantly featured in the karate episode, but I cannot remember who she studied with for that.

[Dana Sheets]

The "checking" also points out, to me, that this is meant to be a balanced development. Seeing the curve forward I think one could easily assume that the focus is on the abs and the arms - when that's not the case. The focus is on the entire body, not just one set of muscles.

[robb buckland]

""Way of the Warrior" I remember when classes were like that ......"those were the days , my friends "

Thanks for posting this is great stuff !!