Asai Tetsuhiko sensei explains Sen no Sen, Go no Sen — Seminar footage featuring Tetsuhiko Asai, founder of Asai-Ryu karate. Preserved as part of the Asai karate video collection. #karate #asairyu #shotokan #seminar
Sensei Tetsuhiko Asai, Geri waza, 浅井先生哲彦、蹴り
Sensei Tetsuhiko Asai, Geri waza, 浅井先生哲彦、蹴り — Seminar footage featuring Tetsuhiko Asai, founder of Asai-Ryu karate. Preserved as part of the Asai karate video collection.
#karate #asairyu #shotokan #seminar
This seminar footage is devoted to geri waza — kicking techniques — and it shows Asai's kicking as a complete system rather than a set of isolated kicks. Watch the supporting leg first: it stays rooted and slightly bent, and the hip turns over each kick so the power travels from the floor, not from the leg alone. Notice the rechamber after every kick — the foot returns along the same path, which keeps the balance and prepares the next movement. The kicks vary in height and direction, and the transitions between them are as instructive as the kicks themselves. For students, the lesson here is control: speed without balance is wasted, and Asai's kicks land exactly where they are aimed because the body behind them stays organised.
Tetsuhiko Asai was born on June 7, 1935, in Ehime Prefecture, on the island of Shikoku in Japan. He began studying karate at the age of twelve, training at a dojo near his home. At high school he also practised judo and earned a second dan grade, so his early years were shaped by two martial arts at once. The combination of judo's throwing and grappling with karate's striking gave his later karate an unusual range. After school he moved to Tokyo and studied at Takushoku University, where he became one of the leading members of the university karate club. He was a flexible, fast-moving fighter, and he developed a distinctive counter of his own: diving low beneath an opponent's kick and striking back before the opponent could recover. He called this movement the "submarine," and it made his name known across the karate world. The video below shows Asai in a kumite demonstration from 1987. Source: the official biography of Tetsuhiko Asai, International J...
