When doing combat sports, it's bound to happen. Accidents never happen on purpose. They're never clever. Always stupid. A moment of fooling around. A slip of attention. And bam. An injury happens. What should you do then? The doctor said 6 weeks of rest. You're taking it easy. Fall out of the rhythm. You eat a bit more of what you shouldn't. You skip your strength and conditioning. And you fall of the wagon. What if it doesn't have to be that way? Most of the times you can still work on something. Footwork at a slow pace after a concussion. Grappling with a fist if your thumb is bruised. Shadowboxing. Kihon. Kata. The possibilities are just as endless. Keep training. Talk to your coach and teammates. Keep going. You can do this.

I once joined a class of Katsunori Kikuno in Tokyo. His focus was on systema at the time, some weird Russian combat system which still doesn't make sense to me, and Okinawan Karate. According to him, the key to a good jab was to use your whole body, to first unbalance yourself and not telegraph the punch at all. After class he showed me how he could throw that jab to close the distance and then follow up with two fast hooks. One to the body and one to the head. It was incredible to see how invisible the jab was and how he instantly stood at point blank range to take me out. To this day I still don't really 'get' it, but it looked a bit like Jukuchou's jab or Michael Jai White in his scene with Kimbo Slice (which I'll save for another time) In this video you can hear one of Kikuno's students explain the same concept for a straight punch: https://youtube.com/shorts/K7Cx9Z_eROY?is=bAmrkQupEVFiTjxY Bonus points if you recognize the kata 😉

Shuta, a Rishinjuku karate fighter who keeps winning his competitions, was happy with the rashguard I gifted him. He immediately put it on and started shadow boxing. We just recently made the Rishinjuku rashguard.

The first meeting was a great success as we have already a much clearer view of how to share the techniques of Rishinjuku karate 🥋 and how to develop branches in the world 🌎 for those who fall in love 😍 with it.

Megumi, the wife of Jukuchou, edits clips for their YouTube channel. This is one out of two featuring my family. The techniques is about unbalancing.