Karate Kleenex

An odd title for today's musings, but it IS relevant to where my mind has gone in the last few hours. I've been thinking about brand names, marketing and, of course, martial arts and trying to figure out keywords and search terms that will help people to find our website. Obviously, people will want to search for us locally and the words "Woodstock" or at least "Illinois" should appear, but exactly what is it we teach?

What is "karate"? Here's a definition from WordNet:

"a traditional Japanese system of unarmed combat; sharp blows and kicks are given to pressure-sensitive points on the body of the opponent"

Wikipedia adds that:

"...is a martial art developed in the Ryukyu Islands from indigenous fighting methods and Chinese kenpo"

Chinese Kenpo is what most Americans would call Kung Fu - a rather generic name for the unarmed fighting arts that originated in China. The Ryukyu Islands are part of Okinawa which in modern times is part of Japan, but some martial arts histories are very deliberate in giving Okinawa credit for the early development of karate.

Originally, the Japanese word for "karate" meant "China Hand" - but a deliberate spelling change in the late 1800's turned it into "Empty Hand". This spelling change was meant to tone down the Chinese involvement in the original concepts and make the Empty Hand more of a Japanese development.

Our history at Woodstock Mixed Martial Arts starts with Young Hong, an enterprising karate master who taught Korean Karate. Korea? How did this happen?

Korean Karate is called Tae Kwon Do, "the way of the hand and foot". Basically, Tae Kwon Do was modeled after Shotokan Karate and continues to use many of the same forms and techniques.

"Karate" really has come to mean "empty hand fighting" regardless of it's Chinese, Japanese or even Korean origins. And the word, in the United States at least, has become a generic term like Kleenex or Rollerblading.

Yes, don't say Kleenex, say "tissue". It's "inline roller skating", too. And, whether you knew it or not, elevator, thermos, escalator, walkman, q-tips, chapstick, aspirin, cellophane, dry ice, brassiere, frisbee, xerox, fedex, band-aid, lycra, jell-o, scotch tape, kool-aid to name a few, all started life as trade names - and some are still fighting for their brand identity.

So even though we don't teach much in the way of traditional karate anymore, we still teach unarmed fighting skills. We've taken the best of the old ways and forged a new method, one that has proven superior to the old arts time and again on the Ultimate Fight contests. Which would you rather watch, that Westinghouse TV from the '50s or an HD 42" Plasma with Blu-ray? Things do improve with time.

Want to find us on the Internet? Go ahead and google "woodstock karate". Just don't "google" us at Yahoo! "Google" is still at brand name...