Sparring – A medical implication

October 8th, 2007 at 0:10 · Filed Under Injuries, Karate, Medical, Sports · 6 Comments 

Last year, I wrote an article about injuries in karate. You can find the article here.

Many modern martial arts practice free sparring between two persons. In karate, free sparring or jiyu kumite, like many modern contact martial arts, such as Tae Kwon Do, Muay Thai and many more, are practiced widely as one of the training regime to strengthen physically and mentally and also often training for tournament. Free sparring events have been fabulous attraction. We can see sparring events are divided into three major age groups, children, teenagers and adults. In some sports martial arts such as TKD, protective gears are used to protect torso, shins and knees. But none can provide absolute protection from injuries.

Very often, we can see these tournament ‘fighters’ have got bruises on their limbs and sometimes on their bodies and heads. These bruises are actually internal hemorrhage where blood vessels have ruptured and cause bleeding. Together with the hemorrhage, there could be thrombosis or formation of blood clot along the wall of a blood vessel. Thrombosis can cause many medical complication, such as infarction and may also cause cancer over time when the thrombus is not cleared up by our body immune system. These medical complication will usually cause some other illness later in life which is difficult to trace back to the cause or injury suffered from a tournament many years ago.

In children, sparring is a very dangerous activities and extremely hazardous to their health. Children’s bones, joints and tendons are very soft and still in formation. An injury may cause serious health problem later in their lives.

IMHO, free sparring should not be practiced in martial arts as it causes destruction more than strengthening good health. Sparring is an evolved form of male chauvanism and the product of capitalism of commercializing tournament. Commercialization has become a key for a martial art to continue to survive in this capitalism world. Without a tournament, there will be no handsome income and publicity for the martial arts organization. Tournament has also become an instrument for marketing oneself and one’s training school if he has won many titles which highly sought after by ignorant and naive people.

Martial arts should be practiced in a non-violent way which encourages only growth and strengthening of oneself and partners. Sparring encourages violence and initiative to attack rather than defense which is contrary to the concept of olden martial arts teaching.

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Scenic Zakimi Castle

August 2nd, 2007 at 17:30 · Filed Under Blogging, Days in My Life, Environment, Karate, Okinawa, Photography, Scenery, Training Journal · 1 Comment 

Here are some scenic photos at the foot and top of Zakimi Castle.

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Floral at Zakimi Castle

August 2nd, 2007 at 17:28 · Filed Under Environment, Flowers and Plants, Gardening, Karate, Okinawa, Philosophy, Photography, Training Journal · 1 Comment 

I took a day off training and decided to have a walk at the ruins of Zakimi Castle. After all, there was no training in the afternoon and I needed some rest and to take my mind off training so that I could recover from my learning curve.

I noticed some beautiful flowers and plants along the way so I took some pictures of them to share here.

Too bad I have no idea the name of the plants. If anyone knows, please share here using the comments. Thanks.

The bud of this Cycad is really huge. Cycad is one of my favorite plant. I used to have a few at home but they did not flourishe. Whenever new bud (small) is growing, it got chewed up by caterpillars. I gave away some and left one in a pot when we remodeled our garden last month.

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