This ended up better than I expected! Also found a friend with a variety of martial arts experiences to help out!
My, not in depth, research on Saifa ended up kinda short. It seams no one knows who created it and Wikipedia suggests it may have been created by Miyagi (since the other branches of Naha-te don't use it). Its name being another death metal album title that says very little to me in terms of intention or objectives.
Anyway, if I was looking for a follow up from Gekisai and trying to create a series in the likes of Pinan, than Saifa definitely delivers. I wander what we can discover from Gekisai dai san?!
It seams to continue the theme of close fighting and clinches, but it adds a lot of dynamism and more realistic scenarios with a more active opponent, to whom we are engaged in a dispute for the guard in a wrestlers stance, one circling the other looking for openings and positional advantages. It also seams to hint on why Miyagi changed the original Gekisai, since, if I'm correct, it required a jacket to work and missed the idea of a guard dispute between the parties.
In our excitement though, we forgot to add any dynamism to the demonstrations, so please imagine all the applications being preceded by lots of kake-uke and never ending circling....so much circling....... if you keep on moving, everything really comes alive and, with correct timing, can be effortlessly applied to the most stubborn adversary. You can find most of the moves in modern Sumo, they are very common.
Again, my interpretation seams to reinforce the theory that slow moves in Goju-ryu kata represent grappling moves.
Here is the link for the the playlist, each sequence is explained in more details in the video description, please let me know what you think.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8s5bvAbu7xU&list=PLp-wk6da92n6r7E9KMK4AmeGR7ibRqgr6
I'd love to check out your work, but you provided the YouTube Studio link, which is only accessible to the account the videos were uploaded to. You'll have to get us a public link in order for us to see it.
Here we go-> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8s5bvAbu7xU&list=PLp-wk6da92n6r7E9KMK4AmeGR7ibRqgr6
(I fixed the link in the original post too)
By the way, what has been your experience posting these things at Reddit? My past experience with "public forums" makes me very anxious about it, although the practical karate sub is quite low profile by now.
I can see the first video, but there's no sound, and when I try to watch the other videos, it just re-loads the first one. Gotta love technical difficulties!
I've found that the karate subreddit tends to get very little engagement on practical bunkai posts, overall. Typically, you'll get one or two short, positive responses, and maybe an argument about whether it's actually practical or not, but those are usually brief. For some reason, posts about what karategi to buy, or how to prepare for a tournament, always get a lot more engagement.
Please try again, it's working as expected here. The first ones are very similar indeed, it's just the follow up that changes.
And yes, I do take the audio out, since I'm not giving any explanation to the camera and hearing people talking in portuguese in the background only makes the video confusing. Filming at the boxing gym was not a good solution, but we had no other alternative on that day.
Maybe I should add some music next time? Just so people don't think the audio is broken?
Anyway... Reddit has become a problem since the purge, I unsubscribed from most subs, everybody is really really aggressive or out of topic.
I tried another web browser, and while there was still no audio, I was at least able to watch the videos. I like where you're going with it! The breakdown is very logical, and the applications are cohesive. Well done!
Thanks o/
What I'm finding fascinating is that these solution just pop up, I'm not reaching out for any shape and my initial ideas usually fall short. Almost nothing of it is part of my background at the end, the wrestler stance is a good example, we were messing around when it just mode a lot of sense to lower the center and star circling, the flow become obvious after that. Such a shame we forgot to show at least one shot doing that.
Very cool, Saifa is my favorite kata. What you're working here is very similar to my interpretation, the main difference being that these exclusively start from grappling.
Saifa is one Kata i've found is very easy to as a continous flow, one of the reasons I like it so much is that I think the transitions from move to move are all pretty viable.
Thanks Zach o/
My first instinct was to start from grappling too, but some of the moves just required a lot of brute force to work that way. If you can stop the adversary just before a complete clinch, wile they are still moving I mean, you just make them tumble with easy. Those classifications still confusing to me actually, we don't have all those distinctions in portuguese, grappling, wrestling, etc.
I mean, what I built is almost Sumo, you can see those in action quite frequently in any match. Gekisay too, Hakuho won his last fight with a forearm to the jaw very much like the opening for Gekisay....hold opponent lower arm, sidestep, Jodan-uke.....I need to re-watch that fight!