Kata, the preset movements forming the backbone of all karate styles, have been a source of endless confusion for the vast majority of karate students. All students learn how to perform the kata, but there has never been an effective explanation of how they are applied. Until now! Nathan Johnson, a third-degree black belt in karate and a fourth-degree black belt in kung fu, has spent two decades on his quest to find the true meaning of kata. (...) In Zen Shaolin Karate, Johnson explains and illustrates in precise detail every subtle movement of two of karate's most common kata, and provides historical testimony for his explanations by integrating his findings with Zen philosophy. The author's unique interpretations of the Nai Fuan Chin and Saam Chin kata will destroy the barriers separating karate, kung fu, and aikido, and will revolutionize how kata are applied in all karate styles. (shrink)

Little is known about people’s perceived benefits and risks of sports, despite their role in shaping people’s intentions to engage in them. Here, we developed and tested a scale to measure perceived physical, emotional, cognitive, and social benefits as well as aggression-related risks of karate and football. Additionally, we compared these perceptions within and between these two sports, as well as among undergraduates with current/former participation in different types of physical activity. After a literature review, we created a 5-factor (...) scale with 20 items administered to 184 undergraduates, along with questions about physical activity participation. After removing five items, confirmatory factor analyses supported the factor structure of the scale. Factor loadings and reliability indices were acceptable, though less than desirable results were found concerning the average variance extracted of all benefits dimensions and the reliability of the social benefits dimension. Analyses of variance showed that: physical benefits were seen as the salient outcomes of karate and football, though martial artists perceived karate’s physical, emotional, and social benefits to the same extent; in comparison to football, karate was perceived to bring more emotional and cognitive benefits and to entail less aggressiveness risks; karate and football perceptions varied as a function of participant’s involvement in physical activity. This study presents a promising instrument to gather information on people’s perceptions about karate and football, which can be used to foster people’s engagement in them. (shrink)

Federations are concerned about attracting new sportsmen and sportswomen and increasing the number of members. The purpose of this research was to describe karate federations' strategies for attracting and retaining members through happiness. The analysis was carried out by designing a structural equation modeling (SEM), which allowed to analyze the main variables that influenced the happiness of the karate athlete and consequently to study their effect on people's loyalty to sports federations. In particular, Partial least squares SEM was (...) applied in an overall model when it was possible to understand the happiness role in relation with other traditional relevant variables on loyalty. The data were obtained through primary sources employing a survey sent to the autonomous federations in the discipline of karate, obtaining a sample of 682 federated members in Spain. The results of the model revealed that consumer satisfaction, engagement, and meaningful influence on consumer happiness, but engagement was the most important and relevant variable for affecting this variable. Finally, consumer satisfaction and consumer happiness influence loyalty, and consumer satisfaction was the most important variable, but consumer happiness showed a real alternative for improving loyalty in karate sports federations. Then, one of the implications of this work was that it helped to explain how the federations can be managed to achieve loyal consumers together with a more considerable increase in the number of federated members. (shrink)

The interdisciplinary research area Cognitive Interaction Technology (CIT) aims to understand and support interactions between human users and other elements of socio-technical systems. Important reasons for the new interest in understanding CIT in sport psychology are the impressive development of cognitive robotics and advanced technologies such as virtual or augmented reality systems, cognitive glasses or neurotechnology settings. The present article outlines this area of research, addresses ethical issues, and presents an empirical study in the context of a new measurement and (...) assessment system for training in karate. Recent advances in the field of cognitive assistance systems enabled largely automatized assessments of individual mental representation structures for action sequences, such as choreographed movement patterns in dance or martial arts. Empirical investigations with karate practitioners of different skill levels demonstrate that advanced software-based survey and algorithmic analysis procedures based on cognitive models generate individualized performance predictions for a movement sequence from theKanku-dai kata(a pre-defined karate movement sequence), which correlated significantly not only with formal expertise (kyu/danrank) but also with the actual likelihood of mistakes in action execution. This information could prospectively be used to define individual training goals for deliberate practice and incorporated into cognitive interaction technology to provide appropriate feedback. We argue that the development of cognitive interaction systems for sport should explicitly take ethical issues into consideration and present a particular developed engineering approach. The potential benefits of such an assistance system for intermediate and advanced practitioners include more effective and flexible practice, as well as supportive effects, and more flexible training schedules. Furthermore, we argue that researchers from the field of sport psychology can benefit from advances in technological systems that enhance the understanding of mental and motor control in skilled voluntary action. (shrink)

Traditional martial arts continue to be interesting and inspiring to many people around the globe. Some of their contemporary adaptations attract enthusiasts for whom they are especially important. In this article, the author bases his observations on his own long-term participation. The analysis takes into account the influence of the perspectives of Jigoro Kano and several other creators of modern varieties of Japanese budo. It can be concluded that regular, even daily, practice—cultivating martial arts and internalizing its values—co-creates the lifestyle (...) of instructors and advanced students. (shrink)

When I was eleven, my form teacher, Mr Howard, showed some of my class how to punch. We were waiting for the rest of the class to finish changing after gym, and he took a stance that I would now call shizentai yoi and snapped his right fist forward into a head-level straight punch, pulling his left back to his side at the same time. Then he punched with his left, pulling back on his right. We all lined up in (...) our ties and sensible shoes (this was England) and copied him—left, right, left, right—and afterwards he told us that if we practised in the air with sufficient devotion for three years, then we would be able to use our punches to kill a bull with one blow. I worshipped Mr Howard (though I would sooner have died than told him that) and so, as a skinny, eleven-year-old girl, I came to believe that if I practised, I would be able to kill a bull with one blow by the time I was fourteen. This essay is about epistemic viciousness in the martial arts, and this story is illustrates just that. Though the word ‘viciousness’ normally suggests deliberate cruelty and violence, I will be using it here with the more old-fashioned meaning, possessing of vices. Vices (such as avarice, alcoholism and nail-biting) are common, and most of us struggle with a few, but ‘epistemic’ means ‘having to do with knowledge and the justification of belief’ and so epistemic viciousness is the possession of vices that make one bad at acquiring true beliefs, or give one a tendency to form false ones. My eleven-year-old self possessed the epistemic vice of gullibility and hence showed a streak of epistemic viciousness, which led to the formation of a false belief. Other kinds of epistemic vice can lead to us failing to form true beliefs when we ought to. Consider the internet-surfing karate-sensei who stumbles upon an article claiming that chocolate milk is better than water or sports drinks for promoting recovery after strenuous exercise, and describing an experiment using stationary bikes performed at the University of Indiana, purporting to support this claim.. (shrink)

This article concerns kime, a somatic code used in the ‘empty hand’ Japanese martial art of karate. Kime is a tactile-kinesthetic entity born out of practice, coming into being in a social setting through the specific organization of the body-self, fusing body and self into one stance and movement. Kime is entirely embodied, yet can only be operated and recognized inter-subjectively. It plays a crucial role in combat and at the same time also indicates a spiritual possibility that depends (...) on eradication of emotion and volition. An analysis of kime shows how cultural understandings can emerge without necessarily using symbolic representations or verbal discourse in their construction. These somatic non-dual understandings can come to form an entire world-of-meaning directly through the moving body. The moving body shapes itself within itself even as it interacts with and contributes to shape its immediate environment. This is a world-of-meaning that includes complex inter-subjectivity founded on the speed and ambiguity of the interface between the innerness and the outerness of the body. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Zen Pathways: An Introduction to the Philosophy and Practice of Zen Buddhism (禅道の千路) by Bret W. Davis (review)Steve G. LoftsBret W. Davis, Zen Pathways: An Introduction to the Philosophy and Practice of Zen Buddhism (禅道の千路)There is no shortage of books on Zen from almost every imaginable angle. And so, what makes Zen Pathways: An Introduction to the Philosophy and Practice of Zen Buddhism (禅道の千路) by Bret W. Davis unique (...) enough to take up and read, and even re-read? And who should read it? The answers to these questions depend on who you are and what you are looking for. If you are simply curious about what Zen philosophy and practice is or is not, a student, a professor looking for a textbook on Zen Buddhism for your course, or a practitioner seeking to deepen your understanding of what it is that you are practicing, then you will almost certainly enjoy and profit greatly from this book. Davis brings to the page over thirty years of active engagement with Zen Buddhism as a practitioner, teacher of philosophy and Zen Buddhism, and scholar. Davis provides his reader with an accessible, comprehensive, and well-documented introduction to the teachings and practices of Zen Buddhism. What makes this introduction stand out and be particularly effective is that Davis provides us with a scholarly and philosophical account of Zen Buddhism that is animated by his personal experience as a long-term practitioner in Japan at the Rinzai Zen monastery of Shōkokuji and as a teacher and director of the Heart of Zen Meditation Group at Loyola University Maryland. However, as the Japanese subtitle of this work, 禅道の千路, makes clear, there are “a thousand paths of the way of Zen,” and Davis is careful to show us the paths he has traveled while leaving it to the reader to find their own paths along the way.In the course of the book’s twenty-four chapters, Davis provides his reader with a clear account and philosophical interpretation of [End Page 159] the core teachings of Buddhism (the four noble truths, impermanence, the no-self doctrine, co-origination and interconnection of the one and the many, nirvana and samsara, the great death, and so on), always relating his theoretical explanations to the concrete perspective of the practice of Zen Buddhism. His account of Zen Buddhism situates it in the historical tradition of Buddhism as it was transplanted from India to China, from China to Japan, and today from Japan to other places in the world. Davis connects these teachings to the practice of Zen, providing readers with a concrete and firsthand introduction to such Zen practices as zazen (seated meditation), kinhin (walking meditation), sanzen (interviews with a teacher), koān work, and samu (meditative work), and to the Zen practice of cultivating naturalness (jinen) in and through such art forms as karate and flower arrangement (ikebana), the Japanese aesthetics of “cut-continuance” and wabi-sabi, as well as Zen-inspired gardens, painting, and music. The book also explores a number of classical and contemporary philosophical issues from the standpoint of Zen Buddhism: the problem of the one and the many, the ethical relation to the other, the problem of evil, the nature of love, freedom and determinacy, what is God, our relation to nature, and so on. Finally, the presentation of the core teachings of Zen Buddhism and the discussion of philosophical issues is undertaken in and through an intercultural and interreligious dialogue in which the similarities and dissimilarities between different cultural and faith traditions are explored and used to help illustrate the unique standpoint of Zen Buddhism. One can mention here Chapter 12 titled “Dying to Live: Zen, Pure Land Buddhism, and Christianity.” This synoptic view of Zen Buddhism is presented in an elegant, personal style that is clear, concise, and expresses a genuine passion and spirit of openness. In copious endnotes, Davis has also provided the reader with a wealth of material for further study that has been judiciously selected from good English translations of readings in the classical works as well as contemporary scholarship. Finally, with an eye to the use of this text in a classroom or in study groups, Davis has... (shrink)

The scientific and practical fields—especially high-performance sports—increasingly request a stronger focus be placed on individual athletes in human movement science research. Machine learning methods have shown efficacy in this context by identifying the unique movement patterns of individuals and distinguishing their intra-individual changes over time. The objective of this investigation is to analyze biomechanically described movement patterns during the fatigue-related accumulation process within a single training session of a high number of repeated executions of a ballistic sports movement—specifically, the frontal (...) foot kick (mae-geri) in karate—in expert athletes. The two leading research questions presented for consideration are (1) Can characteristics of individual movement patterns be observed throughout the entire training session despite continuous changes, i.e., even as fatigue-related processes increase? and (2) How do intra-individual movement patterns change as fatigue-related processes increase throughout a training session? Sixteen expert karatekas performed 606 frontal foot kicks directed toward an imaginary target. The kicks were performed in nine sets at 80% (K-80) of the self-experienced maximal intensity. In addition, six kicks at maximal intensity (K-100) were performed after each of the nine sets. Between the sets, the participants took a 90-s break. Three-dimensional full-body kinematic data of all kicks were recorded with 10 infrared cameras. The normalized waveforms of nine upper- and lower-body joint angles were classified using a supervised machine learning method (support vector machine). The results of the classification revealed a disjunct distinction between the kinematic movement patterns of individual athletes. The identification of unique movement patterns of individual athletes was independent of the intensity and the degree of fatigue-related processes. In other words, even with the accumulation of fatigue-related processes, the unique movement patterns of an individual athlete can be clearly identified. During the training session, changes in intra-individual movement patterns could also be detected, indicating the occurrence of adaptations in individual movement patterns throughout the fatigue-related accumulation process. The results suggest that these adaptations can be modeled in terms of changes in patterns rather than increasing variance. Practical consequences are critically discussed. (shrink)