Training equipment - makiwara and taketaba

I have been meaning to install a makiwara for quite a while now and with Eugene's help we made and installed one just over a week ago. Its a pretty simple piece of kit (2 planks of springy wood, an old cotton obi and some tape) but essential to traditional karate practice.

Makiwara practice undoubtedly helps condition and harden the hands but actually correct practice helps focus power through the whole body to coordinate the strike and so trains the ability to focus power accurately (kime in Japanese).

The base is buried about 2 feet deep to give sufficient stability. In the past when I made a makiwara for the back garden at our house in the UK I concreted in the base but found that actually the concrete crumbled and broke up after some time and repeated use. So this time its just buried firmly and we will see how that lasts. The striking pad is made form an old karate belt wrapped flat around the makiwara at chest height and secured with strong tape. Simple but works well and is not in fact too soft as it quickly compacts with use.

And thanks to the generosity of a neighbour I have harvested a huge bundle of fresh cut bamboo canes (it grows everywhere in Okinawa and quickly too) which inspired us to make a taketaba (which simply means 'a bundle of canes' in Japanese) which is used particularly by Goju-ryu karate practitioners to strengthen the nukite, or spearhand strike. I have never used this piece of kit before so this is new but immediately I can see the benefits. Not only does it toughen up and strengthen the fingers but also improves the accuracy of the spearhand strike as you naturally aim to strike cleanly between the canes and ever deeper through the cane bundle.

Next on the list of traditional training kit to make and try out - chishi . Easy enough to make and it will be interesting to see how closely the traditional chishi exercises overlap with the sledge hammer exercises we have been doing in our conditioning sessions.

Build update

I just realised how long it has been since I last posted an update on the dojo build. My only excuse is simply that there's been a lot going on over the past couple of months and doesn't time fly! So how is the dojo coming along I hear you ask? Well we have been training regularly in jujitsu and goshinjitsu at the Budokan in Naha for several months now and have a good core group attending regularly. I'm very happy with the effort and progress the guys are making and they obviously enjoy the sessions. There's a lot, lot more I want to do to explore, learn and teach but that's a whole other very long conversation. However turning to the dojo construction project at my house things have slowed down considerably due to lack of time and money. The quotes to get a contractor in to do the build were just too expensive so its back to the self build option. But the process of scouting around for quotes and meeting various people in the local building trade here has given me a few good contacts. I have been asking these guys to keep an eye out for excess or recycled building materials so I can keep costs down to a minimum. So as batches of materials become available I will nab them on the cheap and build bit by bit as it becomes possible. So how long until the dojo is built? It could be a while but in a way I quite like the idea of that, building it bit by bit, by hand. Both English and Japanese languages share the sentiment of the value of 'putting your heart into something' (in Japanese kokoro komette tsukuru) to produce something special. I would like to feel I had done that with my dojo.