The Complete Isshinryu Armbar

A Blast from the past!

http://isshin-concentration.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-complete-isshinryu-armbar.html

Very interesting Mr Smith! Looks a lot like Waki Gatame as taught in Shodokan Aikido.

Hello Victor:

Hope you survived the hurricane all right? No power, no heat (42 degrees F inside for several days), little water, very strange food for a week was.... "interesting" experience. Don't hope to have it again anytime soon...

===
My art like yours is a "flavor" of Isshinryu. We have no living connection to Okinawa, nor any "master" or international association dictatating our practice(s).

However the art which I was taught was very much "tode" in nature, a huge pool of evil locks, wicked extensions specificly taught as fundamental applications to kata, and general self defense.

My own very, very meager studies; Utada, Konigsburg, S. Austin all re-confirmed, get caught by a good technician and OUCH is certain...

While I adamently disagree with the tone of the recent Chambers "tar and feathering" of the art of Isshinryu, I fear it has much painful truth at its core for most.

One tour or duty, two cannot engrain much subtlety or nuance. Extensions, locks, projections require obscene practice if compaired to the "ballistic striking" (punch, kick) and ballistic striking is difficult enough! I believe locks, extensions are inherent-fundamental to the practice of IR...

Theres a good reason this stuff takes a lifetime !
Jeff

Jeff,

Thank you for your reply.

Yes the study of karate is deeper than most expect. I was fortunate that my instructor's trained at two different times with Shimabuku Sensei. They experienced a deeper appreciation of the art. But much cqme from my own analysis and that of meeting Harrill Sensei, another Shimabuku student. We must try and understand how Shimkabuku was an instructor who gave his students enough ins a short time to keep them interested for a lifetime.

The recent CFA article on Isshinryu is rather sloppy and somewhat simplistic. The reality is deeper and covers a range of issues. I am working on an answer to Shimabuku's instructor's. It's contentions I hold as wrong. I will soon post it on my blog, which is a reference for my students.

We have to keep working at our arts.

The truth is my article still dosen't touch the whole issue.