000-1000 - Preamble & What This Site Is/Isn't

The Art That's Here - Preamble

I’ve been training karate in some way shape or form since 2008, and began my instruction journey in 2014. In that time, I’ve seen hundreds of students across almost a dozen dojos, but I don’t say that as a brag - moreso as credentials. Within my martial arts scene, it’s all endorsements & reputation rather than a governing body (much to the policy nerd inside me's dismay,) and I think I’ve proven my reputation enough during what I still see as the beginnings of my career to where my opinion holds some merit.

Within the circles of my personal life, I am known as “The Karate One” and I get asked a lot of questions about what I do because it’s known I’ll give a detailed answer (I'm a big fan of a good info-dump.) Recently, I was asked if karate is more a cardio sport or a "get yolked" (fitness/muscle building) sport and my answer basically boiled down to:

Sourced from Know Your Meme, screen capture from 'The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!'

My view on karate & martial arts is very much from a practitioner standpoint; people with a more competition/self-defence focus may disagree, but I see it all as a vessel to achieve your goals more than setting what those goals are.

Like with my personal training, as an example, I use kata to improve my conditioning & flexibility, plus sparring drills for cardio. That’s how I work it; given my needs as an instructor, I want a very technical training regime.

But I know of others that will purely drill bag work and kata like Sanchin to build their strength. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

I am writing this not to be prescriptivist - while I will talk about what I guide my students through in class, it’s not designed to be the be-all and end-all of your journey. This should never be deemed a Single-Version-Of-Truth, because this isn’t law or science - there is no truth here.

What I’m trying to say is that my karate teaching style is very descriptivist. I am all about giving you the tools to get what you want out of it - I’m not telling you what to paint, but I will help you out with how you hold your brushes and what paint to use and advise on colour choices. Ultimately, your art is your art. Use this as a guide to help decipher your next masterpiece.

This text, or collection of texts, is written to preserve our contributors' knowledge with the next generation. We are in an age where information should be free, not pay-walled behind subscriptions or book purchases - there's no copyright here, our karate is open source.

I'll see you in the dojo,

Beatrix Samuelsson Sensei

Founder & Chief Instructor, Open Path Martial Arts

Lead Maintainer & System Admin, Open Source Karate

What This Site Is/Isn't

This site is a guide.

The word kyōhan translates from Japanese as accomplice, and this site is exactly that. It is designed to accompany you in your training, work side-by-side with you to hone your craft.

This site is not your only source of knowledge.

Art must come from a variety of sources, treating this as your only source of truth is dangerous. This site is to be used in collaboration with a consistent training regime under an instructor.

This site is neutral.

At the time of writing, all maintainers & contributors hold their most prominent rank in Goju-Ryu karate. That does not imply Goju values are held higher than any other systems. This is not a place for debate on which style/discipline is better than another. All hold merit, and must be treated equally.

This site is not for everyone.

This site was spawned from a need we identified for ourselves. Not everyone will learn like we do, or will find this as useful as we do. And that's okay! Find the way you learn, and work with that.

A note on AI / LLMs

There is always risk with every martial arts text that someone will misuse the content, or will attempt something without proper training. This will be compounded if we allow content wholly derived from LLMs as they have a high likelihood of hallucinations.

For this reason, contributors must not submit content sourced from machine learning or similar generative tools. You must have a deep understanding of the topic you are writing about that can only be garnered from human intelligence.