This month’s podcast is a cardiovascular martial arts workout! It’s been a while since we have done a workout podcast and I’d been receiving lots of requests for one. All you need for this one is a little space and some light dumbbells. You then play the podcast and work along with it for a 23 minute training session that involves various cardiovascular exercises, muscular endurance exercises, and various types of shadow fighting!

Before doing the workout, you should watch the video that goes with this podcast (found on the blog of iainabernethy.com if you are accessing this podcast via iTunes etc). This video has demonstrations of the key exercises and should make it clear what is required.

Happy 2010 everyone! Is it just me or have the 10 years since the millennium flown by!? The passage of time is what inspired this first podcast of the new decade. In it I discuss the influence “history” can have on today’s martial practise. It is my view that history can lead to ever increasing efficiency and growth, or stagnation and death depending upon how we view the martial practises passed on to us through history.

In this latest podcast we look at what kata actually is and what purpose it serves. Kata can be a kind of shadow-fighting, a physical exercise, a form of moving mediation, a pointless dance, a relic that should be consigned to history, a repository of forgotten “secrets”, and a whole host of other things besides. All of these views on what kata is can have merit depending upon what is meant by “kata”. However, none of them get to the heart of the matter in my view. In this podcast I explain what I see as the core purpose of kata.

As part of the discussion that leads to my definition of kata, we also discuss how kata came into existence and the nature of the link between kata, kumite and combat. I also look at the relationship between principles and techniques as it relates to kata. Whether you agree with my final definition of kata or not, I hope that you enjoy the podcast and find it interesting and entertaining.

In this latest podcast we discuss karate styles! Whilst the styles handed down to us are of great value, in this podcast I suggest that if too much emphasis is placed on “style” it can be extremely harmful to karate and its combative efficiency. The podcast begins by looking at what some of the past masters had to say about the notion of style, and then moves on to examine the history of the more commonly practised karate styles.

Having covered the history of the most widely practised styles, the podcast then discusses how those styles came into being through the Shuhari concept. We break down this important concept and look at how our moving away from it in recent times has been problematic for karate. We also look at how this has affected kata and the way kata are viewed and practised.

The podcast concludes by looking at both the positive and negative aspects of style and gives my own personal view on the way forward for karate as a whole.