Karate as chess

April Blog 2025

Total 360 karate 

Karate as Chess

Highlights

This is the April 2025 blog for Total 360 Karate. This blog is going to discuss the elements of karate as it relates to chess.  

Karate is not simply a one-practice-per-week discipline.  It may start that way, and you spend an hour or two a week learning the basics.  You are on the front line of chess, learning the pawn aspects of chess/karate.  You know how to move forward, and can attack in a vertical or diagonal pattern.  

As you continue to evolve, you develop the ability to move back, and sideways.  Your attacks become less predictable.  You evolve into the knight who can see things within an L formation.  This is similar to adding the H forms in Total 360 karate.  Your confidence is rising, you are alert but calm.  You are adding more time to the discipline.  There are flashes of brilliance, things  you never thought you could see or do. 

The power begins to grow similar to a rook on a chessboard.  You understand strength and what it will take to be stronger.  You can see long-range in all directions, empowering you to go further.  You might spar with black belts, spend more time studying, and begin to research the internal aspects of karate.  We can call this the green belt ranks in Total 360 karate. 

As your perception grows, you add angles to your attack, similar to a bishop.  You recognize the compass and have incorporated all directions of fighting and defending.  The ground you cover is immeasurable.  You own the board on going all the way across.  You can see things develop.  You are reading cues.  

By now, you have spent years dedicating yourself to the craft.  Adding skills, researching, and sparring, you have developed a complete sense of where and who you are.  Perception and ability are used, and you now work on all aspects of yourself.  Karate becomes you, and you it.  The style does not matter, "it is the journey."  You control all directions.  This is where some might consider it the black belt level.  

The king's journey in karate develops when you learn how to lead, design, and educate your own studio.  Your journey is never-ending, but helping to further the future of karate by researching and developing a system that works for you and your community.

We often have to think three to four moves ahead for us to be successful in this journey.  The ability to adapt to the ever-changing world around us helps propel karate to its future.  Continue to build your game, and invite others to join and learn.  Total 360 Karate eat smart, train hard, and breathe.  Hajime.