I think Karate training is fantastic.

Karate gives a lot and takes a lot, but above all, I like the idea of being able to participate in a body & mind activity that can be practiced for life and modified for pretty much any age and state of health.

If I was to cite a negative, it would be the constant juggling of work and family time to maximise actual training time on the floor.

On top of this, making space for interstate and overseas trips, coaching and judging duties, special seminars, intensive training sessions and peripheral activities, can be a drain. Most people who do not draw their income from Karate face the same problem. Everyone makes sacrifices along the way, and most manage to knit their work, private lives and Karate together, balancing schedules to free up precious hours to be at the Dojo.

The fact is though, that growth in any endeavour is proportionate to the effort and input of the participant and in terms of Karate, this is particularly relevant. Recently, I was talking to the parents of an aspiring young gymnast aged about 10 or 11 years. This young girl had been involved in the sport for about a year and spends a bare minimum of 12 hours and sometimes up to 30 (yes, thirty) hours per week in practice. The minimum expected input time for her activity is published by the controlling body of that sport so that participants and families are aware of what is required right from the start. Her club also publishes the career path for gymnasts from new members all the way through to Australian National representative level. To even practice at state level (with no guarantee of ever representing the state) 30 hours of practice per week is required, then at national level, those from whose ranks the Olympic team is chosen, an incredible 50+ hours of practice per week is required. This is not inflated information, I am talking here about time on the mat, not including the time it takes to travel to and from the gym. This is not altogether surprising at the elite level. Most people will have heard about the crazy hours Olympic swimmers spend in the pool - I often wonder why swimmers aren’t always white and wrinkled as I am after half an hour in the bath!

These are examples of Olympic disciplines, but contrast them with the time spent by the average Karateka in actual ‘on the floor’ training. Outside of Japan, I know of very few who have trained consistently year on year for more than 10 hours per week, one-third of what is required by a state gymnast and one-fifth of what is required of an Olympian. The point is not to draw a comparison between Sport and Budo, you can’t. It may even be detrimental to ask so much of a serious Karate student, and for an average person it would be impractical. The point is that the time we have available to us is limited and we should think about making the absolute most of it.

There is a lot to be done in and for the Dojo but above all, training is the primary activity. In the time available, bodies must be warmed and limbered up, basic skills practiced, forms learned and repeated, then there are those combat judgement skills that can only be learned by continually facing an opponent in Kumite drills. On top of this, endurance must be enhanced and discipline cultivated. In these activities there is no substitute for smart, hard work, perspiration, and concentration. Understanding these attributes is important before there can be any chance of progress.

These days, we are all “time-poor” and the dilemma of making time available for Karate is a shared one. Quality time spent in the Dojo will certainly reap rewards but it also dictates the level and intensity of the instruction received. It’s a two way street and if students struggle to regularly attend, Instructors will struggle to properly deliver the finer points and to prepare the students to learn increasingly advanced techniques and subtler principles.

I’m not sure what it is like outside of JKA in Melbourne, but our Senior people agree that it is very difficult to move forward without constant revision of basic training at all levels, so much so that the basics are always favoured to ensure that every student is properly taught.

Steady development through sustained training is characterised by a certain momentum in growth, momentum that can easily be set back or halted if training is interrupted. It is common to hear people say, “oh, I’ve been away from the Dojo too long to get back into it properly” or “I’ll go to the gym first and get fit before coming back to training”. I try to respond to this by encouraging people to get right back into training. The idea of ‘preparing’ to come back to training is lost to me. Karate training is integrated, therefore it is far better to spend training time in the Dojo rather than outside of it working on say, aerobic fitness in a gym. Yes, strength and speed can diminish, a Kata sequence forgotten or the ability to keep up with others, lost. People take breaks for good reasons, train intermittently or even stop training altogether, but in making a return, especially where there is a keenness to pick up where they left off and get back ‘up to speed’, the best place to (re)start is the Dojo and the best approach is to go back and repeat the basic training. It’s surprising how quickly lost ground can be made up by taking this simple and obvious approach.

Presently I’m learning the guitar and I just want to be able to play my favourite tunes. I want to play and sing the same as the original performers because I saw them doing it, liked it and I want to do the same. I realise it will take practice, I know I can’t pick up the instrument and just do it, and it’s not that easy to learn the whole tune, yet I persist in wanting the outcome. I’ve had some success, it sounds OK, but it is unfounded, and importantly, it doesn’t allow me to take that tune and improvise with it or build additional work on it. The tune has been learned in isolation and that’s fine, but it’s built on sand. Had I given some quality time to “guitar Kihon”, I would have set myself up to learn and perform a lot easier. The less than satisfactory result is that I now “know” some advanced material, but is it advanced?

I once saw a movie where a con artist father-and-daughter team worked a successful scam whereby the father passed his daughter off as a child genius. The girl learned how to spell a single long and complicated word and, when her father asked her ‘at random’ to spell the big word for an audience, she did it in a flash with some other pre-arranged tricks thrown in. The spelling con worked for a while until someone piped back asking her to spell another, less complicated word. She couldn’t, infact she had no concept at all of spelling outside of this one-off trick.

Advanced techniques cannot be termed as such if they are passed onto students (and performed) without a good grasp of the basics. Likewise it’s difficult to acknowledge that a beginner or a person who hasn’t forged good basics is actually performing an advanced technique. A bit like me “performing” the long riff in ‘Sultans of Swing’ when I struggle with the Major Pentatonic scale, a fundamental of guitar playing.

In learning of any kind; music, sports and even life itself, it is natural to want to cut out the process and jump straight to the outcome, but it is very rare to see hyper-advancement in anything, that is the realm of geniuses. Some people are quicker, some do absorb and retain information and concepts better than others then demonstrate them like masters, and some are quite worthy of their accelerated advancement, but even here, knowledge of the basics is still required.

Yoko Nakamura Sensei is a JKA teacher and former competitor. She has been around for some time, consistently achieving national and international prominence. In 1996 when she was at the height of her competition career, I asked her if she was able to do any personal training at the Hombu Dojo on top of the gruelling Instructor Programme, her answer? an emphatic “Hai, Kihon, Kihon, to Kihon desu!” - “Yes, Basics, Basics and more Basics”.

This is not unique to Karate, sports leaders in general push the same line. Here’s what Dr. Alan Goldberg a prominent US sports psychologist says in relation basic training. “If you are serious as an athlete and have some important dreams that you're going after then you probably know how important it is to work on the physical part of your game. There's no substitute for hard work and consistent practice. You can't become a champion without having a strong foundation in the "basics." You need to learn the skills, understand strategy and build your body up both strength and endurance wise. You have to pay your physical dues to get to your goals. But don't be like most athletes! This is where most stop their training”. He makes this point very clearly then goes on to talk about the mental aspect and earning the right to advance in the search for improvement.

The Karate grading system provides a visible barometer of improvement whereby progress is measured in increments. Usually a new rank is hard earned and rightly prized. JKA grading certificates bear the words “We hope that he/she will continue to make progress…” signifying that the passing of a grading exam is a momentary reward for sustained input, a flag in the sand, a point at which recognition is given. A grading is not an end or an outcome in itself, rather it is an acknowledgment that a certain level of overall competence has been attained resulting in a public accolade. Implicit in this is the expectation of the examiner that more will come. With this recognition comes a responsibility to make further advancement, almost as if to do justice to the examiners decision to increase the rank.

In the wake of a successful grading attempt, it is customary to get right back into the Dojo and be firmly resolved to continue trainin