2026-04-25

Today I attended American Shotokan Karate’s Spring seminar and dan grading in Mapleton, IL. It was a great day of training and friendship, with four instructional segments as summarized below:

• Sensei Chris Travers taught strategies for consistent self-training, particularly in small spaces. Sensei Travers travels for work and often finds himself without access to a dojo or large space for training, so he shared several dills he’s developed for training anywhere, including a hotel room, requiring no more than two steps’ worth of distance in any direction. He also shared ideas for keeping self-training interesting by changing up drills, even slightly, to keep things fresh.
• Sensei Mike McCabe gave us drills and strategies for making distance during free-sparring, covering most of the commonly used basic footwork patterns: yori-ashi, ayumi-ashi/suri-ashi, tsugi-ashi, and surikomi-ashi. We combined these with jabs, reverse punches, and front kicks to cover short, medium, and long gaps between ourselves and our training partners.
• Sensei Rick Brewer taught drills to improve reaction timing by emphasizing relaxation. We began with solo punching drills with our arms in a relaxed position, and even behind our backs. Then we moved on to partner drills where one partner would initiate a reverse punch and the other would try to beat them to the punch.
• Sensei Carl Hartter taught kata Meikyo, but a version he learned from Shojiro Sugiyama, which differs in two ways from other versions I’ve learned. First, the sequence of three stepping forward blocks is downward/downward/rising, rather than the JKA’s downward/downward/inside, or SKIF’s downward/inside/rising sequence. Second, this version precedes each ryosho-bo-uke (moves 7 and 15) with an opposite-hand instance of the same block, starting on the half step. Thus, you catch the bo as your feet come together, right hand above your head, left hand forward, and then transition to a right-hand-forward version of the same block as you step forward with your right foot into kokutsu-dachi.

The dan grading was unfortunately cancelled as the only examinee suffered an injury during training, but he plans to test at the ASK Summer clinic, here in Mesa, AZ, on June 20.