Learn Karate from a book?

[Dragonfly35]

Jesse Enkamp has a blog. One tells how Soke Yoshimi Inoue taught himself karate from a book. This is the blog: The Wisdom of Inoue Yoshimi: Legendary Japanese National Team Kata Coach (Seminar Recap) Is this possible? Are there online videos that help?

 

[Gyakuto103]

Not from scratch, but as an adjunct to training in a dojo, books and videos can be very useful, the latter more so.

 

[skribs101]

It has been proven time and time again that it's pretty much impossible to learn martial arts purely from instructionals. Chewjitsu (a BJJ black belt youtuber) did a video where he explained that he and his friends used to "train jiu-jitsu" by watching UFC and trying to analyze the fights and practice together in the garage. After a few years of this, they went to a real BJJ school and were instantly humbled at how little they actually gleaned from their armchair studying.

Let's work backwards a bit. What are the mistakes I see students do with a teacher in a martial arts class? (In my case, the experience is mostly with Taekwondo, which is probably one of the closest comparisons to Karate without being Karate).

• Students are unable to focus on more than one or two details at a time. You fix one detail, then you fix another and the first detail gets lost. For example, you correct the position of the hand on the hip. Then you notice their back knee is bent and tell them to straighten it, and suddenly the hand is off the hip.
• Students don't usually judge well their stance. For example, most stances will have your feet shoulder width apart. A student may have their feet basically in a line. You tell them they need to be shoulder width, and they move one foot a half an inch thinking, "Oh, now it must be shoulder width." I don't know if they thought they were already there or if they thought they moved their foot a lot, but they definitely didn't realize how narrow their stance was.
• Students not understanding the reason why techniques are taught in a specific order. For example, in BJJ, teaching students an arm drag, and they try to step before dragging the arm and then get in the way of the drag. But instead of realizing they're in the wrong spot because they're inside the arm instead of outside of the arm, they still try the next step in the technique and can't figure out why it isn't working.

Obviously coaches will try their best to fix these issues. But these issues happen and its difficult for newer students to troubleshoot what is going on. When you take away the coaches and try to learn entirely from video, you run into more issues:

• Practitioners can't get feedback on their own mistakes, and so they build bad habits. Even if you're "learning" with friends, any details you fail to pick up are details you can't help your friends with.
• You can't feel the techniques being done on the screen, so you're not getting a good sense for the leverages involved.
• A lot of techniques you see don't really work in most situations. They may be niche techniques, or they may work because the folks at the gym haven't figured out how to counter it yet. I see this even in BJJ, half the stuff that gets posted on Instagram just doesn't work.

I think it would be even harder from a book. From a book, you don't even have moving pictures. How did the technique start? How did both players move through the execution of the technique?

Even as someone with a 4th degree black belt in Taekwondo, I don't think I could learn a Karate form through a book. I could probably superficially learn it through videos. But to truly understand it I'd need to go to a class.

 

[Dragonfly35]

Thank you. Tomorrow I go to my first class. It is a Shotokan Karate club. Ordered a couple of books on karate. The Karate Way by Dave Lowry and Becoming A Complete Martial Artist by Tristan Sutrisno and Marc MacYoung.

 

[Gyakuto103]

I love Dave Lowry, but most find his ideas dismissive and supercilious!

 

[isshinryuronin]

I love Dave Lowry, but most find his ideas dismissive and supercilious!

I enjoyed reading some of his stuff, but he is more of a writer than a martial artist.

 

[Gyakuto103]

I enjoyed reading some of his stuff, but he is more of a writer than a martial artist.

Oh that’s disappointing to hear. Have you seen him in action?

 

[isshinryuronin]

Oh that’s disappointing to hear. Have you seen him in action?

I have not. I know he has a strong background in sword arts and also has trained some other Japanese MA. His writings on TMA seem to be more philosophical/conceptual than technical (nothing wrong with that) so although he may have good TMA skills, I know him more as a writer than a martial artist.

 

[Gyakuto103]

He also wrote an excellent book on sushi appreciation!

 

[Gyakuto103]

He is a JKA 3rd Dan being awarded it when 3rd Dan meant something and was hard to achieve.

 

[isshinryuronin]

He also wrote an excellent book on sushi appreciation!

There is not as much to appreciate these days as sushi restaurants have gotten commercialized and run by those who haven't spent years in apprenticeship. When I started going in the 70's, as soon as you were seated you were presented with a warm moist towel to clean your hands and were served a cup of green tea and miso soup (at no extra charge). During the experience one or two free dishes were presented by the chef like a side of seaweed or another omakase to try. Needless to say, quality was tops! This was a level of service I've not seen since before the turn of the century. Not to say that can't be found now, but very rare and usually at a price point few can afford.

 

[Gyakuto103]

There is not as much to appreciate these days as sushi restaurants have gotten commercialized and run by those who haven't spent years in apprenticeship. When I started going in the 70's, as soon as you were seated you were presented with a warm moist towel to clean your hands and were served a cup of green tea and miso soup (at no extra charge). During the experience one or two free dishes were presented by the chef like a side of seaweed or another omakase to try. Needless to say, quality was tops! This was a level of service I've not seen since before the turn of the century. Not to say that can't be found now, but very rare and usually at a price point few can afford.

I bet in the US, they now deep fry sushi with what you refer to as ‘cheese’.

My local Japanese food restaurant is owned by Kyoko san who is from Osaka.

 

[isshinryuronin]

I bet in the US, they now deep fry sushi with what you refer to as ‘cheese’.

They do put cream cheese in sushi rolls here. I have no idea who invented that or why. I think it's a joke some Japanese guy decided to play on gullible Americans who wouldn't know any better.

 

[Gyakuto103]

They do put cream cheese in sushi rolls here. I have no idea who invented that or why. I think it's a joke some Japanese guy decided to play on gullible Americans who wouldn't know any better.

I’m sure they do something similar here in the UK; we’re the (cultural) 51st state of the USA, after all!

 

[wab251]

Jesse Enkamp has a blog. One tells how Soke Yoshimi Inoue taught himself karate from a book. This is the blog: The Wisdom of Inoue Yoshimi: Legendary Japanese National Team Kata Coach (Seminar Recap) Is this possible? Are there online videos that help?

Yes this is possible. The clue is in the article you posted:

He dabbled in other regular sports such as Judo and baseball at an earlier age, before eventually settling with Karate, which he taught himself after having bought a Karate book at the age of fifteen.

But read the next bit as well:

After some time, as the Tottori University Karate Club got stronger, and Karate gained more followers, as soon as Inoue sensei finished high school he went to Osaka to look for the teacher he had read about in his beloved Karate book. The teacher was Teruo Hayashi, direct student of Mabuni Kenwa (founder of Shito-ryu). Inoue asked to be his student for about 6 months and was finally accepted as an uchi-deshi (personal student living in the dojo). He stayed there for 4 years; eating, breathing, living Karate.

Apparently there was a Karate club he was associated with, and he eventually sought out a teacher (a very good one) and became uchi-deshi for 4 years. Any one that reads a book on Karate, gets involved with a Karate club, and then become uchi-deshi to a student of the founder of the art and spends 4 years eating, breathing and living karate, can get pretty good at it....

 

[Dragonfly35]

First session of Shotokan today. Enjoyed the training. Need to improve flexibility. Instructor was powerful and the teaching was clear. Cannot wait for next session. Ordered a Dynamic Karate book by M. Nakayama. The instructor/sensei told me it was a solid reference for this style.

 

[Fungus94]

Jesse Enkamp has a blog. One tells how Soke Yoshimi Inoue taught himself karate from a book. This is the blog: The Wisdom of Inoue Yoshimi: Legendary Japanese National Team Kata Coach (Seminar Recap) Is this possible? Are there online videos that help?

I hear people has learned probably more strange things from books than karate

But as the saying, a picture says more than a thousand words. Learning in from a textbook only may be harder. People also learn differently. Some learn by mimicking instructor. Some learn by seeking understanding the reconstruct movements.

If i reconstruct the instructors movement from my understanding i consider lesson learned. Learning a movement not knowing why is slower for me. (And is more like "follow rhe leader" or "simon says" game. I learn nothing)

 

[Simfers103]

First session of Shotokan today. Enjoyed the training. Need to improve flexibility. Instructor was powerful and the teaching was clear. Cannot wait for next session. Ordered a Dynamic Karate book by M. Nakayama. The instructor/sensei told me it was a solid reference for this style.

Delighted to hear your first session went well and that you had fun! That's all that matters!

 

[Same Trick48]

Jesse Enkamp has a blog. One tells how Soke Yoshimi Inoue taught himself karate from a book. This is the blog: The Wisdom of Inoue Yoshimi: Legendary Japanese National Team Kata Coach (Seminar Recap) Is this possible? Are there online videos that help?

Okinawan karate itself is very much modeled after a “how to” picture book - the Bubishi

 

[isshinryuronin]

Okinawan karate itself is very much modeled after a “how to” picture book - the Bubishi

Not at all. It serves to generally illustrate some basic concepts and strategy in dealing with specific attacks, arcane and largely unusable info on Chinese medicine, vital points are shown with a bit of how to attack them, philosophy and the historical roots of karate but does not tell or show "how to" do it. There are a number of positions illustrated but are just single frames of longer sequences. As is noted in McCarthy's 2016 edition:

Article 27 - "There is no explanation to accompany this illustration." Article 28 - "there is no detailed explanation to accompany this illustration." Article 32 - "There is no descriptive text accompanying the illustrations."

Most of Okinawan karate, including the traditional kata, was developed prior to the work being introduced to Okinawa. No evidence of it being there prior to early 1900's. While the Bubishi offers valuable insights into the origin of karate and some of its principles, it does not teach how to execute any techniques. You can't learn karate from the Bubishi, only to appreciate it.