New Student

Finalizing Your Decision If you have been following these posts since the beginning, you would have made a large list of all the possible schools in your area and then whittled it down to a smaller list of 5-20 schools that work for…

Get Your List In the last article on this series we discussed how to go about making a list of possible martial arts school in your area. If you have not read the article yet, go back and read it…

Translation Hikite is broken down into two symbols. Hiki, which means “pull” and Te, which means “hand”. Therefore Hikite can be translated as “the pulling hand”. It describes the hand that is pulled to your hip simultaneously as you punch or strike with the…

Official Uniform The official uniform is a traditional white karate uniform called a “kikogi” or just “gi”. The karate gi is based on the Judo gi that was developed the same time as the martial arts belts. The gi is…

Tribute and an Answer This post is both a tribute to many of the older instructors I have had in martial arts and an answer to one of the most frequently asked questions in martial arts, “Am I too old…

Translation Commonly translated as a “high block”, Age Uke is made up of two symbols. The first is “age” which translates to “rising” rather than “high” (which would be “jodan”). The second is “uke” which we have discussed before means…

Translation Kagi Uke is made up of two symbols. “Kagi”, meaning “hooking” and “Uke” meaning “to receive” or “block”. This is translated as “to hook that which is received” or more commonly “hooking block”. There are a few ways of…

Translation This article is on two separate techniques that are taught together in Kihon Kata. The first is ude uke. The translation is of two separate symbols, like many of the other techniques in karate. The first symbol is “ude”, which means…

In honor of having two new students down at class today, I wanted to discuss the different things I have seen and heard of for the first promotion at a karate school. This is neither an argument for or against…

Three Part Series This is the first of a three part series on how to go about choosing a martial arts school. The goal of these articles is to help with the overwhelming confusion of getting into the martial arts.…

Common myths about Karate belts and a step by step instructional on how to tie your belt.

Common Mistakes I have been teaching karate for a long time to many students. The ages of my students has ranged anywhere from 6 to 60 and has included almost every demographic you can imagine. Despite this variety of students, there are…