Post by Mod on Sept 22, 2012 7:19:13 GMT -5
Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2011 02:01:39 -0700
From: nfdojo@yahoo.com
Subject: NFDojo April 2011 newsletter
To: crys4me@aol.com; arnoldos@msn.com; tanksnam@hotmail.com; kristi.d.rowlett@gmail.com; dpbrutus4444@yahoo.com; edhershman@hotmail.com; karate.colon@hotmail.com; gonzo.groundspring@gmail.com; accjtraining@aol.com; mrs.taliesinmccall@gmail.com; hanshilg@yahoo.com; maraxon@gmail.com; mrs.taliesinmccall@gmail.com; patmcgale@yahoo.com; qistdy@yahoo.com; universalkara07@att.net; roertbattle@live.com; kobudomei@cebridge.net; coleman@eztechvids.com; plwhaley@gci.net; pedron@studio786.net
Newsletter Apr 2011.
Okinawa Kenpo Karate Kobudo
Taketo Nakamura - Grand Master
Neco Medes Flores - president
Back yard dojos!! What is that? That is the old way of teaching. You had a day job and before and after work you would teach everyday.
My sensei started out as a shoe shine boy for the marine and army barracks in Camp Zukran in Okinawa after WWII then he wound up as an engineer of refrigeration and AC. That was sensei Odo. Sensei Maehara was a carpenter, sensei Henzan was a fisherman sensei Gushiken was in construction, sensei Taketo Nakamura was a bus mechanic, sensei Shigeru Nakamura was a school teacher, and sensei Flores is a construction worker.
This is the way I have structured my life. I schedule classes once a day, 6 - 7 am for early birds, 6 - 7 pm for kids 10 and under, 7 - 9 pm for all others. Now does that mean that I have my dojo bursting at the beams? No I am lucky if I have 6 or so students at
the 7 - 9 pm class. I always have one student that shows up at all 3 classes, he is >>ME<<! Just do like I did in Okinawa. The only difference is, in Okinawa there was always a full class, every class. Even during Vietnam GI's would go on R&R and go to their perspective dojos. I would visit sensei Odo, only 20 minutes from Danang by plane. As soon as the plane took off from the ground and got to its proper altitude then it would begin its decent. I thought it was weird.
Karate is my fate, and if it is not meant to be, I'll make it my fate.
I know there are others with the same attitude. I know, they are just like me, blind obedience and unquestionable loyalty to our sensei. And I don't get along to well with these types because they are too much like me. The ones I know that are like this are mostly military retired. And very few others.
For example, Howard Webb my son a cop. He lives karate on a daily basis. He is not a fun guy, he is a deadly serious guy. He has to be. In his line of work you have to be or you are dead. You people who don't like cops, when you are in trouble call your dope dealer for help?
When you teach as a profession, you may reach a lot of people, but you have a large overhead, you have to innovate and experiment with new ways to compete with other dojos. This takes a lot out of your time from traditional karate.
My definition if traditional is to dedicate yourself to focusing on the basics, over and over, that is boring and a lot of students quit for that reason. But if all you got in over head is a light bulb, and a bathroom, which is part of your home, your overhead is extremely low. Plus you have a regular job, in the day time it's pretty easy to stick to the old ways. And the students that come will be very successful at their life long occupations. For example my dojo is in the low income part of town. I do not have locks on my dojo, I don't even have a door. There is no stealing, or gang graffiti in my neighborhood. I have physically evicted the drug dealers that do a lot of damage to the neighborhood. The law has its hands tied ... I don't. The senseis in olden times were always called to correct what was wrong in their village. I take care of problems in my village ( the hood ) where the law can't do any thing because of their hands being tied in many situations. Some of my students are prison bound because of their gang affiliations, they make mistakes, and they do survive prison terms, because when they come to me as kids, they have a tough life, no parents, street kids, single patents, abusive parents, parents on drugs, they really got a tough life. I make them tougher with kindness and hard ass training. They write their parents that are in prison telling them that my training is what makes them survive. 100% of this category serve their time, and come back and I direct them into another tough way of life, "rough necking" I just yell for them to do as I say or die. They go on to become high paid bosses in the oil fields.
Then there are the rich and spoiled. These I tell them when they prove that they are spoiled, I say, with the parents present, "your kid is spoiled he will never amount to nothing". I don't want him in my class. His attitude will only rub off on other good kids.
Then another category is people coming from across the Rio Grande from Latin America. These are mostly Indian peasants, they are highly disciplined when they come to me, on their first day they begin to learn karate. Americans usually take 6 months to a year to learn respect and self discipline. One 8 year old and his mother got machine gunned crossing the Rio Grande. He did karate, with me teaching him. He showed me his scars which he was proud of. He grew up, joined the army, got sent to to Iraq And got his legs blown off. Now he is recovering.
There are many different people who come to me to do Okinawa Kenpo, Okinawa Kenpo was started to keep karate jutsu alive. Karate jutsu means self improvement health and self-defense done the old way. No tournament sports type karate. Simply practice practice practice and practice. And keep it to yourself, keep quiet and go on with your life.
I am in the process of being evaluated In Okinawa Kenpo. I am taking a OFT (Odo fitness test). This test consist of physical and mental ability. The physical is doing the warmup exercises and all the kata and bogu kumite. The mental part is remembering all the
exercises and kata in the format sensei Odo prescribed, use of ancient okinawan training equipment.
Grand Master Taketo Nakamura is very happy with this test. He refers this as a very good way to use sensei Odo's technique. I asked Taketo of other techniques in Okinawa Kenpo and he responded: "I have seen all the other technique and sensei Odo #1". In Okinawa number one means unequaled.
I used to go to Nago with sensei Odo when he would go teach
Taketo. Taketo has very high regards for sensei Odo ... the same as his father, Shigeru Nakamura, had. Sensei Odo had high regards for Taketo and treated him as the grand master of Okinawa Kenpo. I follow sensei Odo's example (that was his
wish).
On the lighter side (maybe not):
From: Jennifer McCall <mrs.taliesinmccall@gmail.com>
Date: March 10, 2011 8:34:33 AM CST
To: nfdojo@yahoo.com
Subject: Karate Newsletter
Hi, Nick.
I started training eighteen years ago. My first style was Wado-Kai, and I made it to brown belt before marrying my instructor. After that, he saw it as a conflict of interest to promote me to black belt, but we continued our training. We went to various classes, and he would have me spar the students there as a demonstration of the effectiveness of his teaching.
We divorced, after which Taliesin and I fell in love and moved to George West together. That was about 1999, I guess. I trained with you during that time, and have trained with you off and on ever since. In the off times, Taliesin and I have practiced together.
Here is the article you requested for the newsletter:
Why Train Women?
Women are generally smaller than men, with less muscle, and are raised to be caretakers, not warriors. Why should a serious martial arts instructor spend his time training women?
In the United States, around a thousand women per year are murdered by an intimate partner. That's not some random guy on the street, or women killed by gang violence, but a woman murdered by someone she trusts, and in many cases, lives with.
It is estimated that one in every four women will suffer domestic abuse in her lifetime.
Roughly one out of every five women will go through at least one rape or attempted rape in her lifetime.
Women are often caretakers, with small children under foot. They have small, vulnerable people under their care -- people they are responsible for protecting.
Men are born and bred to be fighters. They fight over their egos, they fight because they're angry, they fight over things that could just as easily be talked through. Sometimes, they have to fight to protect themselves or those they love, but that doesn't tend to be the majority of fights men engage in. Women reverse those trends, fighting less over matters of ego and more when it's life or death. (Of course, this is putting aside, for the moment, teenagers and very young adults. Teens of both genders fight for stupid reasons…usually over each other.)
If you are a father, I ask you: As you watch your baby girl grow into a woman, what do you want for her future? Do you want her to be a victim, or entirely reliant on a man who may or may not always be present (and may or may not be abusive), or do you want her to be strong, capable, and safe?
If you are a husband, I ask you: Are you with your wife 24 hours of every day? If you are not, you can't always be there to protect her. Do you want her to have some means of protecting herself?
In my opinion, EVERY woman should be able to protect herself. EVERY woman should have the ability and the will to fight a man if he is attempting to rape or murder her, or to attack or steal her children. It doesn't matter how small she is, or how weak, or how old: EVERY woman could use martial arts in her life.
And for her to have that, there has to be men willing to train her and spar with her, because the truth is, while women sometimes find it easier to learn from and train with women, they NEED to train with men. Those women being beaten and killed in their relationships aren't being murdered by women. Those women who are raped aren't being raped by other women. When women are fighting for their lives, it is most often against men -- so they must learn to fight a man. Many of the women who have trained with or under me have had a hard time even making eye contact with the men in the class. How can they consider themselves ready for a serious, life-threatening fight with a man if they can't even look him in the eye?
No, it might be harder for her to train with men, and men might hesitate to train women, but that's exactly what needs to happen if we want all our wives and daughters -- our women --
to be safe.
Jennifer McCall
Twitter nfdojo
From: nfdojo@yahoo.com
Subject: NFDojo April 2011 newsletter
To: crys4me@aol.com; arnoldos@msn.com; tanksnam@hotmail.com; kristi.d.rowlett@gmail.com; dpbrutus4444@yahoo.com; edhershman@hotmail.com; karate.colon@hotmail.com; gonzo.groundspring@gmail.com; accjtraining@aol.com; mrs.taliesinmccall@gmail.com; hanshilg@yahoo.com; maraxon@gmail.com; mrs.taliesinmccall@gmail.com; patmcgale@yahoo.com; qistdy@yahoo.com; universalkara07@att.net; roertbattle@live.com; kobudomei@cebridge.net; coleman@eztechvids.com; plwhaley@gci.net; pedron@studio786.net
Newsletter Apr 2011.
Okinawa Kenpo Karate Kobudo
Taketo Nakamura - Grand Master
Neco Medes Flores - president
Back yard dojos!! What is that? That is the old way of teaching. You had a day job and before and after work you would teach everyday.
My sensei started out as a shoe shine boy for the marine and army barracks in Camp Zukran in Okinawa after WWII then he wound up as an engineer of refrigeration and AC. That was sensei Odo. Sensei Maehara was a carpenter, sensei Henzan was a fisherman sensei Gushiken was in construction, sensei Taketo Nakamura was a bus mechanic, sensei Shigeru Nakamura was a school teacher, and sensei Flores is a construction worker.
This is the way I have structured my life. I schedule classes once a day, 6 - 7 am for early birds, 6 - 7 pm for kids 10 and under, 7 - 9 pm for all others. Now does that mean that I have my dojo bursting at the beams? No I am lucky if I have 6 or so students at
the 7 - 9 pm class. I always have one student that shows up at all 3 classes, he is >>ME<<! Just do like I did in Okinawa. The only difference is, in Okinawa there was always a full class, every class. Even during Vietnam GI's would go on R&R and go to their perspective dojos. I would visit sensei Odo, only 20 minutes from Danang by plane. As soon as the plane took off from the ground and got to its proper altitude then it would begin its decent. I thought it was weird.
Karate is my fate, and if it is not meant to be, I'll make it my fate.
I know there are others with the same attitude. I know, they are just like me, blind obedience and unquestionable loyalty to our sensei. And I don't get along to well with these types because they are too much like me. The ones I know that are like this are mostly military retired. And very few others.
For example, Howard Webb my son a cop. He lives karate on a daily basis. He is not a fun guy, he is a deadly serious guy. He has to be. In his line of work you have to be or you are dead. You people who don't like cops, when you are in trouble call your dope dealer for help?
When you teach as a profession, you may reach a lot of people, but you have a large overhead, you have to innovate and experiment with new ways to compete with other dojos. This takes a lot out of your time from traditional karate.
My definition if traditional is to dedicate yourself to focusing on the basics, over and over, that is boring and a lot of students quit for that reason. But if all you got in over head is a light bulb, and a bathroom, which is part of your home, your overhead is extremely low. Plus you have a regular job, in the day time it's pretty easy to stick to the old ways. And the students that come will be very successful at their life long occupations. For example my dojo is in the low income part of town. I do not have locks on my dojo, I don't even have a door. There is no stealing, or gang graffiti in my neighborhood. I have physically evicted the drug dealers that do a lot of damage to the neighborhood. The law has its hands tied ... I don't. The senseis in olden times were always called to correct what was wrong in their village. I take care of problems in my village ( the hood ) where the law can't do any thing because of their hands being tied in many situations. Some of my students are prison bound because of their gang affiliations, they make mistakes, and they do survive prison terms, because when they come to me as kids, they have a tough life, no parents, street kids, single patents, abusive parents, parents on drugs, they really got a tough life. I make them tougher with kindness and hard ass training. They write their parents that are in prison telling them that my training is what makes them survive. 100% of this category serve their time, and come back and I direct them into another tough way of life, "rough necking" I just yell for them to do as I say or die. They go on to become high paid bosses in the oil fields.
Then there are the rich and spoiled. These I tell them when they prove that they are spoiled, I say, with the parents present, "your kid is spoiled he will never amount to nothing". I don't want him in my class. His attitude will only rub off on other good kids.
Then another category is people coming from across the Rio Grande from Latin America. These are mostly Indian peasants, they are highly disciplined when they come to me, on their first day they begin to learn karate. Americans usually take 6 months to a year to learn respect and self discipline. One 8 year old and his mother got machine gunned crossing the Rio Grande. He did karate, with me teaching him. He showed me his scars which he was proud of. He grew up, joined the army, got sent to to Iraq And got his legs blown off. Now he is recovering.
There are many different people who come to me to do Okinawa Kenpo, Okinawa Kenpo was started to keep karate jutsu alive. Karate jutsu means self improvement health and self-defense done the old way. No tournament sports type karate. Simply practice practice practice and practice. And keep it to yourself, keep quiet and go on with your life.
I am in the process of being evaluated In Okinawa Kenpo. I am taking a OFT (Odo fitness test). This test consist of physical and mental ability. The physical is doing the warmup exercises and all the kata and bogu kumite. The mental part is remembering all the
exercises and kata in the format sensei Odo prescribed, use of ancient okinawan training equipment.
Grand Master Taketo Nakamura is very happy with this test. He refers this as a very good way to use sensei Odo's technique. I asked Taketo of other techniques in Okinawa Kenpo and he responded: "I have seen all the other technique and sensei Odo #1". In Okinawa number one means unequaled.
I used to go to Nago with sensei Odo when he would go teach
Taketo. Taketo has very high regards for sensei Odo ... the same as his father, Shigeru Nakamura, had. Sensei Odo had high regards for Taketo and treated him as the grand master of Okinawa Kenpo. I follow sensei Odo's example (that was his
wish).
On the lighter side (maybe not):
From: Jennifer McCall <mrs.taliesinmccall@gmail.com>
Date: March 10, 2011 8:34:33 AM CST
To: nfdojo@yahoo.com
Subject: Karate Newsletter
Hi, Nick.
I started training eighteen years ago. My first style was Wado-Kai, and I made it to brown belt before marrying my instructor. After that, he saw it as a conflict of interest to promote me to black belt, but we continued our training. We went to various classes, and he would have me spar the students there as a demonstration of the effectiveness of his teaching.
We divorced, after which Taliesin and I fell in love and moved to George West together. That was about 1999, I guess. I trained with you during that time, and have trained with you off and on ever since. In the off times, Taliesin and I have practiced together.
Here is the article you requested for the newsletter:
Why Train Women?
Women are generally smaller than men, with less muscle, and are raised to be caretakers, not warriors. Why should a serious martial arts instructor spend his time training women?
In the United States, around a thousand women per year are murdered by an intimate partner. That's not some random guy on the street, or women killed by gang violence, but a woman murdered by someone she trusts, and in many cases, lives with.
It is estimated that one in every four women will suffer domestic abuse in her lifetime.
Roughly one out of every five women will go through at least one rape or attempted rape in her lifetime.
Women are often caretakers, with small children under foot. They have small, vulnerable people under their care -- people they are responsible for protecting.
Men are born and bred to be fighters. They fight over their egos, they fight because they're angry, they fight over things that could just as easily be talked through. Sometimes, they have to fight to protect themselves or those they love, but that doesn't tend to be the majority of fights men engage in. Women reverse those trends, fighting less over matters of ego and more when it's life or death. (Of course, this is putting aside, for the moment, teenagers and very young adults. Teens of both genders fight for stupid reasons…usually over each other.)
If you are a father, I ask you: As you watch your baby girl grow into a woman, what do you want for her future? Do you want her to be a victim, or entirely reliant on a man who may or may not always be present (and may or may not be abusive), or do you want her to be strong, capable, and safe?
If you are a husband, I ask you: Are you with your wife 24 hours of every day? If you are not, you can't always be there to protect her. Do you want her to have some means of protecting herself?
In my opinion, EVERY woman should be able to protect herself. EVERY woman should have the ability and the will to fight a man if he is attempting to rape or murder her, or to attack or steal her children. It doesn't matter how small she is, or how weak, or how old: EVERY woman could use martial arts in her life.
And for her to have that, there has to be men willing to train her and spar with her, because the truth is, while women sometimes find it easier to learn from and train with women, they NEED to train with men. Those women being beaten and killed in their relationships aren't being murdered by women. Those women who are raped aren't being raped by other women. When women are fighting for their lives, it is most often against men -- so they must learn to fight a man. Many of the women who have trained with or under me have had a hard time even making eye contact with the men in the class. How can they consider themselves ready for a serious, life-threatening fight with a man if they can't even look him in the eye?
No, it might be harder for her to train with men, and men might hesitate to train women, but that's exactly what needs to happen if we want all our wives and daughters -- our women --
to be safe.
Jennifer McCall
Twitter nfdojo