Practical Karate, Again

In this sunny day I used my brother Elies, part time karateka , to shoot a video I had in mind for a while. He lives in France and came to visit, so I took the chance to take him to the roof under the mid day sun and make him part of this blog. We almost had to shoot the video wearing sunglasses! Oss, brother! In this video I must explain first that I am not saying that all the "blocks" in kata must be used like this. I am just suggesting one way of "reading" what the different uke techniques can mean in the context of a kata . Of course, I forgot to explain  shoto uke ... Well, first I show the common application to uchi uke . Then I (try to) show how this can be useless in a fight. You can see that my brother is not attacking with all his will so I can deflect quite easily, but you get the point, don't you? I choose to explain a point of view that is similar to that of Aikido , but it also is something I use in MMA and while on t

First of all, thank you to all my partners in Budokan Castellón who helped me prepare for the fight, thanks to Pedro, David, Xufei and specially Sensei Josep Florido for coming with me and helping me on fight night. Also, thanks to VFL for having me in this event. I would also thank my sponsors, but... Coming in. Spatial awareness run (thanks Ramsey!). Waiting for an opponent. Being introduced. Moving my arms. Thinking of the tactic. Where are my gloves? Well, the experience was amazing! I got to fight in a cage, in a nice promotion, against a very strong guy and then got to walk home unharmed, sure of having given all I had inside, that was not much. I gassed out too soon and could not play along very well. But it doesn't matter. The other guy, Fabio Wellinton, was more experienced, stronger and did a better fight. He was a nice guy before and after the fight and that is important too. Now, the fight:

Tomorrow is the day, thank you everyone who has helped me prepare this fight. Monday, time to put the gi on again and give some rest to my body. @practicalkarateagain in Facebook

Yes, I have been offered a MMA fight this Friday and I said yes . Can you find my interrogative face? Am I becoming a MMA fighter? No, not even a Karate fighter. I am a karateka, even if I crosstrain or push myself to try new (martial) things. My point is, how can I be sure how good my Karate is? Not how good my kime or how does my kata look or how fancy my bunkai is: am I ready to face violence? Because violence (unexpected) is what we all train for (I hope!), to be ready if shit happens. This fight will be a reality check for me. Yes, "Karate is not made for fighting in a professional arena", I also read that, but that doesn't mean that I can not go. I am not sure how good were people in Okinawa at fighting when that sentence was uttered (by Motobu?)  but nowadays many people train Martial Arts or combat sports so I think the situation has changed. In my quest for self-protection improvement I will face someone I have never seen before. A