I have been training in Karate for a long time now. Three Decades of training in Shotokan and the longer I am here the more I realize how crazy the early days were of Karate. I see that we get weird looks when students who have been doing it for five or so years tell others they do Karate…and trust me its not justified. The Karate we do now is so much different from the original classes I took and the Karate of the 80’s and 90’s…and yes I have been told of the very different Karate of the 70’s and 60’s.
I hate doing the “When I was young” thing that made me roll my eyes when Dad did that, but to be frank, the older I get…the more I understand why he did that. Our training was so different that the only thing you can really look at today and identify what we do now with what we did then…we were the same white Pajamas!
When I started training it was a crap shoot as to what kind of injury you would get at the Dojo that night, and a pleasant surprise when you were not hurt at all. The nature and feel of classes was very different, heck the structure of a class was very different. To start with…back in the day…no warm ups! We got to class and our class started at five, we bowed in right at five and the class began with basics. Not the kind of basics that we do now were some kids and adults flick their limbs out with no purpose and then after ten or twenty they get to rest. Nope, we did 100 Choku zuki with purpose. Everything Sensei saw a weak techniques he started counting over again.
After the crazy basics, 100 punches, 100 front kicks and a variety of kicks and punches…we moved on to Kata. 25 Heian Shodans back to back was normal. No rest, the walls would be covered in condensation and in the summer pools of perspiration and condensation would sit in the low parts of the hard wood floor. More than one Bassai Dai ended on with the student slipping and falling to the floor.
We did Kumite and this is the spot that we got scared. We blasted in techniques like we meant to kill our partner…we would try and run them over and try to push our partners as far as we could…because we knew they liked it and the fact is we wanted it right back!
I think my Mother and grandmothers all thought I was crazy! On more than one occasion I had to ask how to get my own blood, or my partners blood out of my white uniform. My father told me I would get killed if I kept “playing” Karate or break my arms or legs. My uncle had broken one arm and a leg 20 years earlier at a tournament…but I would not quit! And I learned how to get blood out of a uniform!
It became common place for me to come home with bruised and bumpy forearms and sit icing my legs as the shins were black and blue! At first my mom was very concerned with the state of my arms, but after a few months of training she pretty much shook her head and walked away. Actually, it became a bit of a competition with her. She could get a nice blue and green bruise by walking past the corner of the wall, so every time I got a bruise to show her, she had one to one up me!
I think the competition ended when I broke my first toe….or maybe it was my Orbital bone? Anyways at some point my mother stopped trying to keep up with the bumps and scrapes and started to get worried about the broken bones and torn ligaments. But I showed up at class and took on all the challenges every class I could make it.
Getting injured in Karate became so common place that I started doing stupid things like cutting off casts from broken ankles and going back to class months before I was supposed to…and getting “the look” from my mother when I did this. I also cut a hand cast off early because I was going stir crazy at home and trained with sixteen stitches in my leg, arm and armpit from a work incident…I did not tell sensei however and incurred the wrath of the Dojo secretary when she found out!
Back in “the Day” that kind of thing was pretty normal for hard core students. We also had a unique way of waking up students that had been knocked out in class….and don’t get me wrong…this did not happen every day, but the two times it did while I was their…once being to myself….we pulled guys (me in one case) into the rest room and dumped buckets of cold water on them till they woke up…then back to the floor to train…if the nose did not need straightening first!
I also took Judo at the same time, and it was equally as crazy hard core! Many a finger and toe would pop out of joint during training…..it was so common we had a nick name for it! We used to tell the coach we had a “tweeky finger” Normally, if it had not popped back in on its own he would grab it…put traction on it and not so gently slam the joint back to were he felt it should be, we would tape it and go back to training.
One time in Judo my partner and I were doing Randori, he was taller than me and basically picked me up and tossed me with a perfect shoulder throw..and I have to say that until I landed it was beautiful…then I landed on my shoulder and neck with feet in the air….shoulder came out and I writhed in pain on the ground. With out checking to see if any major damage to my spine had been done…the instructor ran over, gripped the wrist of my damaged shoulder and pulled. The shoulder popped back in…sounded like a giant knuckle…and I was sent to the hospital in a sling to get checked out…to the horror of both my mother and the doctor!
Thankfully this never happened to me, but I recall a gent that trained with us that was round house kicked in the face during Kumite, he turned spat out his teeth and returned to sparring. That was just the attitude of training back then. You were not dead so you continued on. We may not have been tougher, but perhaps a bit dumber than we are now.
I stopped keeping count as to the number of busted noses (okay more than 13) and cuts I had or bumps and things needing taping. I also developed a knee disorder thru Judo that cause bleeding into my knee joint and swelling. It hurt, but I still showed up to train at the Dojo night after night. I also learned the hard way that broken ribs….are not taped anymore and you should NOT watch a comedy when you have them!
I became very good at wrapping injuries with ice bags, taping fingers and toes, putting on balm and liniment to bring down swelling, and “annoying injuries” like sprains and shin splints, or raw feet and scrapes form gis became just that…annoying…things that keep people away from the dojo now were simply a bump in the road back then.
Were we tough at the old JKA, Hell yeah, and our instructor was one of the toughest. I saw him do things that would put most men to shame…and at 70 he still does. He would train along with us and on more than one occasion sweep the floor…often literally…with me and other students. No one could come close to him physically…for a guy of about 5’3” he was scary! He also did weird things like rub your arm and get rid of a bad bump…and we are not talking a hard rub to push it down, just a light rub and it was gone…weird things like that were common with him!
Now we were tough, but probably not to smart. Not many guys lasted past Shodan. Three years of hard training and they either left and opened a club of their own…to avoid training….or they simply left! Down town training was a nightly gauntlet. It was scary and we got hurt a lot!
Those that stuck it out were tough and loved Karate. I can think of a lot of the guys from the old days that I still look up to, but a lot of them had heath and physical issues that developed, bad knees and the like.
The training that we do now is more family friendly, and to be honest most of the guys, even the tougher students in the club, would get eaten up by the old guys. But the one major change and benefit that we see now…given ten years of training, the students of todays generation will be much more healthy than us old time students. Their joints will be much more healthy and they may not have the Stories to tell but they will be around to tell them.
As far as the old time hold outs, I only know of two of us still kicking around, and I was VERY young during that training so my body is still not as beaten up as the other students. The training we do today does not break you down, it builds you up. While you wont learn skills like how to get blood out of your gi, you will learn skills like how to stay healthy while learning a very basic and dependable way of defending yourself.
To me a lot of the training of old should be brought back, but tempered to make sense and not destroy joints. We need to not swing so far into some of the family Karate we do today, respect and bring back some of the old ways, but be cautious about the training we do bring back.
Karate has to evolve, but if we move to far away from our roots, we risk losing the whole ball of wax all together.
I hope and pray that the new students learn the same kinds of skills I did with out the stupidity and bravado we had!
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