Welcome to www.shotokanplanet.org.
My name is Doug and I am a 40+ year old Chicago born Shotokan Karate practitioner. I have been studying Shotokan Karate since June of 2004.
In June of 2010, I passed my test for Shodan (Black belt). Sitting behind a desk for over 20 years has impacted my training, specifically my hips, but I have steadily improved with a lot of pain and hard work over the last 6 years and have made it much farther then I ever thought I could in a fairly short time. I was recently, May of 2011, diagnosed with Crohn’s disease but by having a positive mental attitude, changing my eating habits and training harder than ever before, I plan to keep it in check.
I train with an Illinois based Karate club called the ISKC (Illinois Shotokan Karate Club) under Sensei Dominc Noia – Ni-Dan (Second Degree Black Belt). I also take an advanced class, recommend by Sensei Noia, under Sensei Martin Cieplik – Roku-Dan (Sixth Degree Black Belt), who is the Chief Examiner and a Senior Instructor for the ISKC. I also train under Sensei William Gatch, Sensei Brian Plocharczyk, Sensei Ed Brien, Sensei Beth Noia and Sensei Stephen Wail.
About shotokanplanet.org
Shotokanplanet.org is a blog about my journey to Shotokan Karate Shodan and beyond. I am sharing my workouts and the information that I learn in class to help me remember what has or has not worked for me and to hopefully help others who are taking Karate and working toward similar goals. I intend to publish all of my Karate workout information and some special tips that I learn along the way.
About Shotokanmaster.com
Shotokanmaster.com is the website where I published my Karate workouts in the past but the web hosting provider that I was using had many serious server issues and I wanted make sure that I could keep my journal up to date and minimize downtime so shotokanplanet.org was created. I am now using shotokanmaster.com as a blog about interesting things that I find about Karate on the internet and hope to add some video and more in depth Karate information in the near future.
I hope you enjoy my blog and if you see something you like or want to talk about, leave me a comment.