I've been watching alot of uechu ryu, goju ryu, and shorin ryu videos on youtube lately and from what i see on some of the training it looks pretty alive, is it the same for all of you at your dojos?

LoL I know some Uechi people.

here is a video of a goju school that i liked what ii saw quite a bit
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXY4FgKlLok

it looks alot like kyokushin and enshin training

Why in the first 7 seconds were they doing Aikido?

i dont know, but that small asian sensei hits like a beast

Mas Oyama studied Goju heavily by the way.

Mas Oyama studied Goju heavily by the way.

i guess that is why it so strongly resembles enshin and kyokushin

also mas oyama studied the "god hand" as well as "iron body". i really think mas oyama waas the only karateka to actually give meaning to the saying "god hand" after he made kyokushin he accepted 250 challenge fights from martial artists all over the world( yes some boxers too) all of them left with broken bones...he hit THAT hard. people who witnessed these fights said that "if you blocked his rib shot, he broke your arm. If you took the shot, he broke your rib, if he got in close to you it was over" - source forgotten

anywho aside from my de railing of the thread....lets get back to the original post...so anyone have any input?

I can certainly see a lot of Goju in Kyokushin .More so than Shotokan.I have to say they put in more time for conditioning then I have ever seen in KK.

I wonder if anyone can answer me these next questions?
- Is that typical of Goju-Ryu in terms of conditioning?

- Do they do conditioning for in every class?

- How much sparring time is placed in a normal class?

well canuck i dont think its typical of all goju schools, the one in that video is the main dojo for goju in okinawa so im sure thats why its so vamped up.

im pretty certain the conditioning is every class in all schools, but the extent of conditioing probably varies from school to school.

no idea about the sparring that why im hoping a goju guy will come and answer these.

goju-ryu taught me everything i know about striking!

now, i only took maybe half a dozen lessons in goju.. so i know nothing.

well, i know to uh, contribute my hips to my punches.

anyway, my impression was that the instructors really knew their stuff, as far as body mechanics and power generation go.

i really only disliked the over-emphasis on traditional blocking and okinawan weapons.

since then i've done some shotokan, and every time i visit the shotokan dojo in hopes of learning something, i always get the same lesson on traditional blocking. guh.

anyway, the goju-ryu i've seen was a lot more serious (and less chi-blasting and mcdojoish) than the shotokan i've seen.

of course that doesn't speak the final word for either style.

in any case, axelton, goju-ryu struck me as pretty cool. very hardcore, despite being, you know, krotty. =)

My style is part of the Shorin-ryu lineage. We had at least one hard sparring class almost every day, and the serious students all spar hard outside of class, often with folks who practice other styles (including boxing, kickboxing, Kyokushin, Muay Thai, Judo, and BJJ). Most serious students also have competed under various rule-sets (including kickboxing but not including MMA).

I can't say whether that's typical of Shorin-ryu elsewhere.

I did Goju for three and half years, there's a good instructor about an hour from where I live, i still try to make a few visits here and there, he holds training seminars evry few months.

I dont know how often his students spar, but i know they do some grappling as well. The last time I went to one of is seminars, it consisted of mostly traditional conditioning drills. I put in a decent amount of training and am in decent shape, but his students made me look like a *****. The instructor himself is a fifty some year old asian guy about 5'5" and he's very quick, strong, and has great technique.

Anyhow, at the Goju dojo i trained at in college, we did the conditioning drills shown in the video, but not to extent shown. We sparred once a week, and for the most part it was pretty light. Occassionally myself, my instructor, and the muay thai boxer in the class would throw a little harder.

I am not sure what affilation the dojo in the vid belonged to, maybe meibukan, but it wasn't IOGKF. A lot, though not all, IOGKF instructors place heavy emphasis on body conditioning. I believe that the Chojun Miyagi festivals still hold a full contact tournament, though unlike kyokushin, they do pad up. However, IOGKF generally doesn't place a lot of emphasis on competition karate.

Depending on what province I'm in I train either Uechi-ryu or Shorin-ji ryu. Both training atmospheres appear to produce hard men, I give the technical edge to shorin-ji, but in terms of toughness and rigor, Uechi is where its at.

I'm pretty sure I can crush the local Uechi-Ryu kids, but real knockdown karate isn't very popular in the karate haven of Suburbia.