Uechi and Fitness Standards

[TG]

Quo Vadis?

Who makes sure the seniors themselves can meet whatever standard; if it wasn't in place when they made Shodan, wouldn't they have to retest to the "new" standard?
Fair for all?

TG

[jorvik]

Does anybody take the fat guy with the black belt seriously?
If you cannot be bothered in keeping yourself fit then the whole thing falls apart.and you loose respect.
Look at the Okinawans..I don't think that a black belt or a nth dan means or meant that much to them.the people they respect can walk their talk.there are some old boys with really good physiques.
But having said that, you don't need to be fit to fight.you can be old and fat and still be dangerous.you can be an old fat drug taking alcoholic and still fight real good
I've trained in clubs where there were fitness tests and in other places were there were not, generally I think that the Karate should keep you fit.
the best club that I trained in ( a typical class) you did a simple warm up,running on the spot,moving in and out like a boxer then 30 pushups 30 situps and some stretching....the pushups were done as 10 normal,10 with hands close together 10 with arms wide apart.they each worked a different muscle group so most folks could knock off 30.then we did basics
10 to 30 punches kicks combinations , then kata and finally freefighting..and that was it you could put as much or as little into it as you wanted.
The black belt you had to be able to do 100 pushups 100 situps and 100 squat thrusts, spar with the 10 black belts 2 mins each.then you did your katas etc....I think it was a good balance.
When I train at my friends club it is all hard work, basically non stop combinations against pads for 2 hours, very draining .and does get boring as well

[IJ]

I think my feelings on fitness come down to the same stuff as my feelings on power, precision, kumite, spirit, sparring skill, and understanding of one's own system. Each of these things ideally should be an inspiration to the lower ranked students and the observer... and power to the candidate if he/she can inspire the higher ups. Their just being sufficient doesn't cut it for me. Sufficient is a C+. A promotion shouldn't mean the candidate was "adequate." These things should all be inspiring, instead--that can be a mixture of inspiring improvement (something a lot of americans are in a good position to demonstrate) or achievement (in the fitness realm, lance armstrong has nowhere to go, but he may be the best trained athelete on the planet). How this is done is less important to me. It doesn't HAVE to be a new "thing," such as a timed run or something like that. I'm sure there are ways to challenge an individual's fitness on a test with the drills we currently have--if we choose to.

Caveat: that said I don't think we should be afraid to change things; we've accumulated a collection of exercises and standards that were just as made up when they took effect as anything we can make up now. In fact, I'd be more impressed seeing someone show their own well-performed, self-designed, principle-demonstrating kumite than repeating the ones I know already.

[RA Miller]

I've been out of touch for awhile- Kami told me to post here.

I'm going to ask a question. If Uechi were to set a minimum fitness standard for advanced rank, something really easy like 10 pushups and a 12 minute mile...

And Bill or Van or Dave or GEM were to live to 90 and one of them was laying in bed, dying of cancer and pneumonia, unable to stand and barely able to talk who would get the job of stripping them of their rank? They can't make the minimums after all and what's a little indignity when they're dying anyway.

The examples brought up: the military, the police, are expected to fight professionally. It is their job and they have to be capable of doing their job.. but they both have mandatory retirement ages.

What are you training for? If purely for the utility of breaking another man's bones, then yes fitness standards will help to make sure that no one who wears your patch will embarass you in a killing contest. I can't think of many other purposes that require a certain level of fitness to fulfill.

Rory

[KZMiller]

I like what Bill's saying about challenging students and developing strong practitioners. Here's my deal:

When I want to run, I run on my own. I do belly dance, sit ups, pushups, Pilates, yoga, whatever floats my boat at home that week. When I was training in $hitoryu, the thing that really annoyed me was that I'd bike several miles to get to class, arrive winded, sweaty, warm and ready to go, and then have to do jogging and situps and pushups. That really irritated me. It wasted a half hour of my time and energy on things I had done already.

There's plenty to get you in condition in the practice itself. Aside from stretches, which should be done throughout IMHO and not at the beginning of class, I think the conditioning should lay within the practice of the art itself. And if you can't keep up with the class or the intensity level, due to age or illness or injury or whatever, you can just take it as far as you can go. I feel that's the best way to get the most out of karate. Standard exercises just dilute practice for me. I think it may be a yoga/dance bias. The movements are a warmup in and of themselves. With proper planning you can start with the slow, thoughtful stuff and then build in intensity, thereby eliminating the need for 'warm up' for those who arrive at class cold. And hopefully such a class structure would inspire fitness-oriented instructors to keep the intensity of the class high enough to challenge their best students.

Kami

[maxwell ainley]

Kami,
originally uechi-ryu did not have warm ups ,you warmed up on the movements ,and if you make a study of the older formula ,actually do it not just read about it ,its very enlightening how its structured in relationship to fitness and the warm up /warm down intergrated into the progressive manner things are dished out .

The workouts are based upon the seven day,the whole work out is specific to [at first warming gradually on a focus to a uechi movement .
as movements are very gradually added over time ,fitness increases ,stamina too .
The first objective is to develop a framework for a combat form ,with time this combat form will have to explode from a cold state , at the drop a hat ,no time for warm ups .

max.

[IJ]

Vivid scenario about stripping people of their rank, but no one's suggested this be used to strip people of rank. Dan ranks, I'm told, are permanent. And if some fitness standard were added to the list of requirements, I don't see why inability to perform the fitness standard would result in a rank stripping faster than inability to perform seisan, which that same dying person also could not do and is already a requirement.

A very sick person of course would fail the test if a promotion were attempted. Unless we're talking about a ceremonial rank, that seems appropriate for a system that is based on physical prowess.

Let me ask another question... let's say you have someone who's just naturally stocky, but has very poor flexibility. That's not his fault, as the tall skinny guy next to him is more flexible and we'll say, also didn't train. Stocky guy can kick at belt level, but because he's also short, he can't kick at skinny guy's belt level which is a tad higher. So while he can do the kata, and perform the bunkai, because he hasn't made a concerted effort to improve that flexibility, the sparring and kumite are awkward. Should this be chalked up to an innate physical difference? We give smaller people a pass in sparring as we know smaller people of equal skill have a harder time, which is why we get weight classes.

Then of course skinny guy (this could be me or some of our other pupils back at uva) while flexible could improve his martial arts by weight lifting. Not by becoming a muscle head, but just by making a concerted effort. Skinny guy CAN do all those things on the test BUT could be a better martial artist if he lifted. But he didn't.

Then there's the case of a dozen young women from that clas, who unlike some female peers, just weren't very active. Cardio conditioning was weak. Sufficient to complete the kata for sure, and sufficient for a two minute sparring session (with someone not unlike her), but she could be BETTER in uechi is she took up running.

All these three people meet the minimum standards imposed by our test. However, they each failed to challenge themselves to improve their martial arts (and their overall health) despite having the chance. While a generic fitness standard makes everyone a little nauseated and would be hard to standardize, I do think there are some people who could benefit from sensei driven instructions to improve their fitness out of class. Bill does this (in a non pushy way) by suggesting weight routines where appropriate, or pointing out to students when they've worked nothing but their chests and arms and are now hunched over their pecs with skinny legs or no endurance.

Could we not ask certain things of our students on a physical level to get them to the test? If someone won't even work on a deficiency that affects their ability to be their best and not just to pass, doesn't that speak to a problem with the karate attitude we all probably agree we'd like to see?

I'm not looking for a "life XX by wednesday or you're out." I for one could have used more weight lifting, which I'm catching up on now. However I did routinely exert myself in class until I was ill and nearly took a spill slipping on my own sweat (not a sweaty person) and built up a pushup tolerance of 120 (Rich: under the tutelage of the delightful Chris Deveer, from ROTC). Bill also asked me to read up on pressure points which I did and then read more and wrote an essay on them on my own accord because I wasn't trying to meet his requirement, I was trying to be my best for myself. While I might not put a number on the fitness goal I would set for a student, I'd like to see the same kind of above and beyond when it came to a fitness deficit. That reasonable?

[mikemurphy]

I think this idea that Uechi should have physical standards because it should mean something more is a little off. What we do in our martial arts training we do for a very selfish reason only. We want to make ourselves better, whether that be physically, mentally, or spiritually. Relating what we do in Uechi to any other activity is ludicrous. Training Uechi is not the same as the Corps, or any other military or para military organization. It's not the same as training for a marathon or any other competitive sports activity. It is an avenue of self accomplishment, and that accomplishment should be whatever the practitioner wishes it to be.

I'm certainly not against someone wanting to get in better shape by doing the push ups, sit ups and running, but you don't have to waste time in the dojo for that. Isn't Sanchin and the complexities of this budo art enough to keep us busy in the dojo?

mike

[jorvik]

I do like to maintain a high level of fitness....although I've let it slip a bit lately ..........but for a while I did Kuk-Sul. and that is a Korean art with lots of high kicks.....I was never any good at it.and never would be, I am totally inflexible and very stiff.that's just the way I am, and no amount of stretching will change that.....so if I was given say a test were I had to do high kicks .I would fail, or if I had to get into the box splits .......and I have tried numerous stretching methods.
I don't think everyone has the motivation to be as fit as a world class boxer...or even the ability, how often do world class athletes injure themselves when training..........a boxer aims to be in peak condition for when he gets in a ring in say 2 months time.a martial artist trains for something that he hopes will never happen....so horses for courses, and each to his own

[Dana Sheets]

It's interesting that so much emphasis is placed on cardio strength in this thread for a short-range martial art.

I feel like if there should be any kinds of minimums it should be for core strength instead. This is a long standing tradition in the martial arts.

Stand in horse stance for 5-120 minutes (depending on tradition & rank)
hold a face down iron bridge for 2-30 minutes (depending on tradition & rank)
hold a face up iron bridge {legs & head off the ground as a minimum) for 2-30 minutes. (depending on tradition & rank)

If you read Yang-Jwing Ming's books you see many of these traditional trainings highlighted.

Now the exercises I listed above are old-school. And were sometimes used as the ticket in the door to training instead of tests for rank. However often times this kind of training was needed because you couldn't perform the techniques in the system if you were able to develop the requiste strength.

I believe American Kempo has a long tradition of testing physical fitness on ranks. Perhaps Raffi can speak to what, if any, accomodations have been made on tests in that system. Those fitness requirements start from the very beginning. They don't just pop up suddenly on a shodan test. If you want to add the tradition of testing/pushing for physical fitness it should happen from day one.

I attended a kyu rank promotion at a school where the students asked to do pushups, bridge type work, situps, and I think maybe even jumping jacks. This was a Uechi school. While not listed on the testing sheet these elements were included by the teacher who knew his students well enough to know how to push them out of their comfort zone.

Uechi is a little unique in that our techniques don't really require incredible physical agility to perform. However in order to apply the traditional system effectively you need to condition traditional weapons. That, to me, would be a more appropriate disucssion as a minimum requirement for Uechi. How many pounds of pressure can you create with a strike from a shoken, hiraken, sokusen, nukite?

[AlanL]

I attended a kyu rank promotion at a school where the students asked to do pushups, bridge type work, situps, and I think maybe even jumping jacks. This was a Uechi school. While not listed on the testing sheet these elements were included by the teacher who knew his students well enough to know how to push them out of their comfort zone.

Hi Dana,

Sounds familar . In the kyu rank tests I like to as you said "push them out of their comfort zone" this allow me to see their technique while under physical duress and help build the Uechi spirit. I already know that they are good enough to pass or they wouldn't be there. I don't use any time requirements, only ready to test when required material can be proformed proficently. However I do beleive Dan test should focus strickly on the required material. The physical foundation should have already been built.

As for my dojo classes, I like to do a variety of excersises that I feel make our Uechi stronger. Typically the first 20-30 minutes of a 90 minute class. Informal workouts is strickly Uechi practice.

[paul giella]

I was at a meeting of the New Enfland test board yestaerday and I brought up the issue of fitness standards again. It had been voted down on the first pass a few months ago, but I brought it up again because of this thread. Once again the majority feeling was that a fitness test should not be a part of the formal dan test (i.e: not at the test itself) but that it should be a matter settled at the individual dojo level. Each sensei should make his or her own judgement about whether someone is in good enough shape to face the dan test. And the test board will not pass candidates who cannot get through, especially the sparring rounds, without collapsing (or bluffing their way through the end because they are spent). A reasonable compromise, I'd say.

[jaybo]

Hey all;

I remember a time when you were either a Black Belt or you weren't. No questions about degrees, push-ups, etc. Nowadays, the BB has lost it's mystic. I had a buddy who boxed a round or two w/ a shodan and he told me....wow, if I was him, I wouldn't be telling people I was a BB...the guy couldn't fight decently in a friendly match in my buddy's eyes. Sad but true of so many BB's out there, at least at the shodan level.

Now, it seems the more you shmooze, the more degrees you get, regardless of the time put in, or lack thereof. I went 9 years before getting permission from my instructor to test for shodan. The rest of the people were nervous and one of my dojo mates even threw up in the bathroom before the test. I wasn't so nervous b/c I knew I had put the time in and my instructor wouldn't have asked me to test if I wasn't ready. Plus, I went into the MA's not for the black belt, but to learn how to fight so I guess I'm biased. My way of thinking was, well, fail or pass, tomorrow I'll still be a good brown belt or a lousy BB and I'll still be able to do x amount of knuckle push ups and so on.

I don't think there should be a fitness test aspect of a dan grading. The test itself is/should be a fitness test in my books and the training you did in order to get to be invited to test is the fitness test.

cheers, jaybo

[IJ]

I think settling the fitness issue outside of a formal test is a good way to handle it... then the question for the thread is, how should we handle it? I think the exercise prescription for a given student could vary from nothing to significant if that's the student's biggest limitation.

Mike do you really think that Uechi, or other martial arts, mean nothing to people outside of exactly what is taught? There are a lot of people who feel otherwise. For example, a judo instructor i knew explained the purpose of judo as the betterment of society thru the perfection of the individual. Then there was some stuff about throws and grappling tied in. He wasn't sitting around all day channeling chi either, he was rooted like an oak and could have thrown me over my gym and practiced non stop. He just thgouth something could and should emerge from his art than just what was on the surface.

[jorvik]

You don't need a great deal of strength to nukite somebody
or hit them in the throat ...violent people know this, criminals etc, they operate outside of our normal parameters.
I remember one case A 6ft 6ins Barman threw a little diddy bad guy out the pub, coz he was drunk and offensive.but he was with his family.and lost face.so he came back a while later and shot the barman in the head with a sawndown shotgun .that is the way these folks think.what goods a fitness test ( although, as I say I do value fitness )
when you are faced with this..you need to know the psychology.etc...my Uncle was an Alcoholic, who smoked 60 ciggarets a day ( .and it is what in fact killed him)...He was in a queue for public transport.one bad guy pushed at the back of the queue another from the front.trapping folks
while the third.went along stealing from their pockets.....when they reached Uncle Bob he chinned him so hard that the gang fled .it's mindset, .but at the same time I don't disagree