Sensei Murayama Seminar

Some of you may remember that Shihan Kunio Murayama, an 8th dan in Shito-ryu karate, came from Mexico City to Phoenix for a training session last April. Like our Shihan, Shihan Murayama is a second-generation student to the founder of Shito-ryu, Kenwa Mabuni, and he is famous as one of the top Shito-ryu practitioners in the world.

Sensei Murayama on the cover of Masters Magazine in 2009

The seminar was a great opportunity to train with some of our martial arts "cousins" in the Shito Kai organization and compare some of the subtle differences between what they do and what we do. Murayama Sensei spent the first half of the seminar going over some interesting and very effective (ouch!!) grappling applications.

Sensei Murayama demonstrating a takedown

Murayama Sensei stressed tight, circular movements as a way to retain control of the opponent and increase the effectiveness of the technique. For example, he showed us how to add a subtle twist to this familiar arm bar in order to make it more powerful.

Sensei Murayama with Shihan, demonstrating an arm bar

As always, we were given the opportunity to work with other karateka outside of our dojo, helping us to broaden our ability to apply different techniques. In this case, almost everyone at the seminar was a Shito-ryu practitioner, but we still saw a lot of small differences, particularly when we did kata during the second half of the seminar.

Sempai Dawn working with a brown belt from another dojo

All in all it was a great experience, and those that attended were able to take home some new information as well as reinforce applications that we often do in our own dojo. A special thanks to Sensei Rabino for hosting Sensei Murayama and allowing us to attend. We had a great time and hope he comes back soon!

Brianna, Sempai Dawn, Sempai John, Shihan, and Sensei Ed with Sensei Murayama

If you want to learn more about Murayama Sensei and our cousins in the Shito-kai, you can visit his website at www.murayamashitokai.org.