WhatsNew Archives

Last Updated on Tuesday, 06 December 2011 06:46 Written by George Mattson Thursday, 01 December 2011 10:41

If I had known how long this website was going to last, I would have organized things a lot better! People send me e-mail, asking me questions about a feature or an article they discovered and I don't even remember creating it! Apparently, nothing actually gets permanently deleted on the Internet. Searching for a martial art subject often turns up interesting items that I thought was lost years ago.

Today I discovered an early "WhatsNew" feature that disappeared from the new Uechi-ryu.com site, but remained on our server. In looking at it, I found quite a few very interesting articles that you might have missed. In reading the section about a subject I called "extreme conditioning", I should explain that although I singled out one Okinawan teacher for what at the time the article was written, was in my estimation, practicing something that I considered to be dangerous - However. . . I must take my share of blame for popularizing this training method when I introduced Uechi-ryu to the world outside of Asia. Although most of the younger (during the 1950s) black belts trained this way and being one of them, so did I, the practice was frowned upon by Grandmaster Kanei Uechi and all of the masters of Uechi-ryu from that era.

I don't wish to give the impression that I'm against Uechi body conditioning. . . and neither were the 50's grandmasters. . . only the practice of full-power strikes and kicks during kata practice. Often these blows are directed to fingers, heart area, kidneys, knees, throat and other areas of the body where more sensitive conditioning methods are more suitable.

To view this feature from the past, (Some links updated)  CLICK HERE!