{"id":8,"date":"2022-03-19T16:20:32","date_gmt":"2022-03-19T16:20:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/colinsmithkarate.co.za\/?page_id=8"},"modified":"2024-05-18T03:22:58","modified_gmt":"2024-05-18T03:22:58","slug":"about","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/colinsmithkarate.co.za\/","title":{"rendered":"About Colin"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"I am a karate man. I count myself among the lucky to have learned their karate in the South African Shotokan system. I started training in the South African Japan Karate Association (SAJKA) on 3 January 1978, a month short of my 18th<\/sup> birthday and fresh out of high school. The peerless Stan Schmidt and Keith Geyer were my direct instructors until March 1995 when I decided to go traveling.<\/p>\n

I ended up in Chicago in November 1995 after accepting a teaching position in the sclerotic Teruyuki Okazaki\u2019s International Shotokan Karate Federation, the American branch of the JKA. It lasted a year before the JKA expelled me. You can read about this and other topics in my book, PULLING NO PUNCHES\u2014Karate Myths and Other Stories<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

My expulsion was the favour of the millenium because I immediately joined former JKA star Hitoshi Kasuya\u2019s World Shotokan Karate-do Federation (WSKF) and discovered a kind of karate that I hadn\u2019t seen before: innovative rotary and multidirectional movement unlike the boring, predictable, and stale linear stuff prevalent in the JKA and its spin-offs. I spent two decades with the brilliant Kasuya, becoming an expert in his brand of karate.<\/p>\n

I lived in France and French-speaking Switzerland between 2009 and 2019, training and teaching throughout Europe with WSKF affiliates until I returned to South Africa in early 2020 just as COVID-19 arrived in France.<\/p>\n

Now in my 60s, I remain committed to karate because I believe in its myriad benefits. But I have another reason: though Stan Schmidt is gone and I long ago severed my connection to Keith Geyer, I could not have lived with myself if they, my two great teachers and mentors, had ever learned that I had quit karate.<\/p>\n

In my opinion, once you have attained godan<\/em> and remain physically capable, you cannot waiver in your commitment. You can adjust your training to accommodate the effects of aging, as I have, but you must remain engaged and involved, as I am, contributing in any measure to advancing the Shotokan. That, to my mind, is what Funakoshi meant by his 9th<\/sup> Precept: \u201cIt will take your whole life to learn karate.\u201d Put differently, the black belt is an end if you want to achieve it, but a beginning if you want to understand it. Stan Schmidt distilled this into possibly his best philosophical principle:<\/p>\n

The way of the empty hand is good
\nBut seldom clearly understood
\nIf you wish to ride on this road to gain
\nThe password, friend, is \u201ctrain, man, train!\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I generally avoid karate organizations, mired in their obsolete business model, misunderstanding of the sempai\u2013kohai<\/em> system, depressingly banal 1970s thinking, intolerably dull “seminars,” reckless stupidity, and pathetic supremacists, sycophants, braggarts, narcissists, tyrants, hypocrites, liars, cheats, cowards, heavy drinkers, and hyperinflated and hyperdiluted black belt ranks.<\/p>\n

With nothing left to prove, I prefer to remain a karate ronin<\/em>, training with and teaching those who enjoy unencumbered innovation and a chance to keep their jiyu kumite <\/em>chops nice and sharp because I, like my teachers Stan and Keith, will always do jiyu kumite<\/em> until the day I die. Anyone who won\u2019t do jiyu kumite<\/em> is not a real karateka.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am a karate man. I count myself among the lucky to have learned their karate in the South African Shotokan system. I started training<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-8","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/colinsmithkarate.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/colinsmithkarate.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/colinsmithkarate.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colinsmithkarate.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colinsmithkarate.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":35,"href":"https:\/\/colinsmithkarate.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":357,"href":"https:\/\/colinsmithkarate.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8\/revisions\/357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/colinsmithkarate.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}