Question about seidokaikan.....

[zAcH]

I was wandering, why don't I hear very much about seidokaikan these days? I was looking through a bunch of martial arts magazines that are like 5-6 yrs old and I saw advertisments for seidokaikan, some magazines even had two or more seidokaikan advertisments. I tried the website the advertisements listed, but it does not seem to be up anymore. So does anyone know what happned to it?

[Martin H]

Seidokaikan seems to be loosing some ground -at least in the west. Like you say, you dont see them as much as a few years ago.

Also, just to confuse things, they have officialy changed name outside of japan to Shodokaikan in order to avoid being confused with seido juku and a few other organizations with similar names.
But this name change is ONLY effective outside of japan. In japan they still use the seidokaikan name. Naturaly some seidokaikan schools outside japan still use seido anyway.

Shodokaikan apparently are a alternate way to pronounce the japanese kanji for seidokaikan, and spell it in roman letters.

[Iwaks]

Only if Ishii san did not get in trouble...

[Azimuth]

Here a link to Seido in Japan click bottom left button for Links
http://www.seido.co.jp/fast/fast.htm

Here a link to a German Seido club
check also the linkpage
http://www.fight-karate.de/

Osu

[zAcH]

Originally Posted by Iwaks

Only if Ishii san did not get in trouble...

I was thinking that might have something to do with it. And another factor might be, because there are not very many seidokaikan fighters dominating k1.

[SHIHAN MERCADO]

..... They never achieved their full potential because master iishi has no idea how to recruit new talent.

Edited by Moderator Martin H
Please talk about other groups with the respect you would have them talking about yours.
If you want to criticize a group, feel free to do so, but formulate it so that it wont offend.

[Sonik]

Semmy Schilt is now a Seidokaikan representative and he's the present K-1 champion. Musashi and Kazuya Yasuhiro are the two other best representatives of this Karate style but they haven't had much sucess and they'r eonly popular in Japan.

[zAcH]

I was watching some old pre-k1 seidokaikan fights on youtube earlier, they were pretty cool. Thats what made me ask this question.

[Shura]

The way I look at Seido Kaikan is basically an amalgamation of Kyokushin stances and kick dynamics with Muay Thai clinching and knees supplemented with boxing. It's more kickboxing than karate, but that's just the way I look at it.

[spanky11]

Originally Posted by SHIHAN MERCADO

..... They never achieved their full potential because master iishi has no idea how to recruit new talent.

Edited by Moderator Martin H
Please talk about other groups with the respect you would have them talking about yours.
If you want to criticize a group, feel free to do so, but formulate it so that it wont offend.

OK, considering that I have a shodan and lived as an uchi deschi at the Honbu, I fell as though I should add my 0.02c to this thread.

Firstly, Shihan Mercado, how can you possibly say that? In 1992 alone, he managed to easily recruit the largest names of the foreign Kyokushin fighters at the time - namely, Andi Hug, Michael Thompson, Same Greco, and many other names from Kyokushin. Clearly Kancho Ishii's focus has been K-1 (he has said many times himself, he is a promoter first and a karate-ka second).

The style itself does has its weaknesses - only geared for tournament fighting, little/no kata, and only very basic kihon, but that is what they believe produces the best fighters.

It was never their intent to grow into a monster international organisation like Kyokushin, and as such, they have only concentrated on Japan.

[_Simon_]

i KNOW this is an old topic, but i just wanted to hear from people who train in Seidokaikan. i've heard there is little 'or' no kata, and kickboxing in the syllabus.

Specifically, is there anyone on the forums from Australia who train in Seidokaikan?

I would just like to hear from people who have experienced the training, but others can participate too of course.

it's just that i can't find ANY INFO WHATSOEVER on Seidokaikan in Australia!

thanks!

[spanky11]

Ok, I trained at the Honbu in 1995-96, and I am from Australia.

The actual karate training at that time was very tough. The classes were usually 1 - 1,5 hours long, and the dojo was absolutely packed (this was when K1 had really started getting popular and Kancho Ishii was heavily promoting Seido and K1). Many nights I saw the instructor having to turn students away as there was no room in the dojo.

The classes themselves were 99.9% geared for tournament fighting, and followed the usual procedure of warmup, basics (all kicks, punches, and blocks were done in heiko dachi) - meaning, no sanchin dachi. And nearly all of the classes ended in some pretty full-on kumite. A funny thing was that as there was so many students sometimes half the class would kneel in seiza and watch the other students do basics, after the first group had finished, they would swap over.

Kicks were almost or never done in (zenkutsu-dachi).

There was rarely any kata practise (and if there was, it was done just before a grading). Seidokaikan only has 2 katas, and they are very much fighting application katas.

A few of the older instructors at the dojo that took classes sometimes ran through sanbon kihon and used more traditional kyokushin kihon combinations (they had trained in Kyokushin in the 70's, so that would explain it).

I now live in Europe, but when I was in Australia in the mid-90's, Kancho Ishii set up Sam Greco, Adam Watt, and a rather ususual character called Jim Casey as Branch Chiefs in Australia. Adam Watt didn't really want this job, and at that time Sam was concentrating on kickboxing. Jim Casey actually started with the NAS non-contact tournaments. So I guess that could explain why Seidokaikan never really took off in Australia.

PM me for more info.

[Wistycastor]

I trained at Seidokaikan hombu Osaka from 1999-2001 and can confirm all that Spanky has said. Kata was limited to 'jissen kata' and an individually-taught higher level kata which was necessary for shodan (which I never reached -my time in Japan was up.) Sensei at the time were Atokawa, Masuda, Nakamoto (who was also a Yoshinkan Aikido teacher) and occasionally Musashi and Kakuda would teach.
It was all about kumite and tournaments.
I now practice Goju Ryu and it's interesting to reflect on Seido in the light of this. Their kihon was in my opinion excellent for generating powerful body mechanics and the fact that they didn't bother with kata meant they could throw out a lot which is rarely used in full-on kumite (trad chudan uke for example). If you are going to practise kata you need to learn the applications I think, so by all but ditching kata they could focus more on kumite.
The dojo took a real hit with Andy Hug's loss and then with Kancho Ishii's tax problems. I feel it was an unpretentious, tough style with some great teachers and I'm proud of my association with it.