An important part of karate practice and especially shotokan self defence, is awareness!

Wherever you are, you need to ba aware of the people around you, the people moving towards you, away from you, the people who are looking at you. While at the same time you are aware of people, you need to also be aware of your surroundings, from buildings, parked cars, cars that are slowing down, trees, alley ways and places people can hide and prepare to pounce!

Awareness is not talked about, as much as it should be in the martial arts. No one is a hundred pecent safe, but the aware martial artist is more likely to avoid trouble, because they can see situations developing.

I see this as a part of my karate training. Wherever I go, I try to be aware of my surroundings and people. I think about my physical state, if something did happen, am I balanced, is there uneaven ground, where are the escape routes, are there any weapons I can grab (I didn’t ask to be attacked!) Obviously this does not and cannot stop all possibilities of attack, but it sure does lessen the chances.

So in closing, be aware, be safe and hopefully avoid trouble 🙂 Ossu!

“Scott Westerfeld” by Ceridwen – Own work. Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Awareness is only part of the big picture, an important part granted, but a part all the same.

Shotokan Self Defence is an area of karate practice that should be studied and practiced as the only time shotokan self defence techniques work, is after they have been drilled.

Thousands and thousands of repetitions, punching over and over again, until it becomes an automatic reflex.

There is no short cut when it comes to self defence. Just hard training.