Hojo-undo: Medicine Ball

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It requires a deep memory search to dig up my first experience with the medicine ball and yet somehow this memory, even if not conscious, is something I believe that has benefited me ever since and especially in my martial karate life. 

It has taken me a long time to come to realize some of the benefits that came in to my martial discipline mostly due to the modern Internet data world and especially due to the contributions of men like Marc MacYoung, Rory Miller and many others whose names can be found in my bibliography at the end. 

In Okinawa karate dojo you see the depicted types of equipment they created to enhance and develop physical aspects used in the system of empty hand, called back in the day, "Ti (tee)." Don't see the medicine ball or any like device in this picture. It does NOT mean there wasn't something somewhere yet we don't see it in modern dojo who still use these fine, ancient and beneficial tools called hojo-undo devices. 

The first time my boxing coach picked up a medicine ball, stood across about three to five feet from me and simply tossed it to me was an eye opener. My initial thinking was, "What is he doing tossing a funny looking basketball at me?" I was on my ass immediately, the air knocked out of me and total and complete surprise on my face while he stood over me laughing his ass off. An eye opener. 

Can you imagine how a variable weighted round ball made of leather, especially while moving around the gym floor, can teach you, without actually boxing with another person, to get your mind moving toward a more principled-based effective movement of the body to achieve both giving power and receiving power? Can anyone say, "Tori-n-Uke?" without out tori, initially. 

Can you imagine even after achieving proficiency with the medicine ball how continuing it at increasing weights can lead you to better stability, better grounding, better structure, and so on to achieve necessary power and force for self-protection and defense? 

The more one utilizes such beneficial tools, the more capable one gets don't you feel how that is not just possible but necessary? 

Isn't it interesting, as you probably already know, that it took me so long to remember and recommend adding the medicine ball to your hojo-undo device collection? 

I believe that it exists in every single boxing gym and suspect it may already exist in dojo and believe this article may be the first one to present the possibilities of the medicine ball as a great tool to develop those principles necessary to generate the power and force necessary not just for self-protection, also for sport as those who need to stop and win still need to generate appropriate power and force for the proverbial knock out, right? 

The following is just "one" of "many" video sources a sensei can and should use to "create" a model of a medicine ball in karate and martial disciplines, sooner or later you will become a believer when it is introduced and utilized, YES!






Bibliography (Click the link)

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